Page 50 - DMGT550_RETAIL_MANAGEMENT

Unit 3: Types of Retailer

Cornershops are usually so called because they are located on the corner plot or street end of a Notes
row of terraced housing, often Victorian or Edwardian factory workers’ houses. The doorway
into the shop was usually on the corner of the plot to maximise shop floor space within, this also
offered two display windows onto two opposing streets. Many have now altered the original
shop front layout in favour of a mini-supermarket style. Although it is common that cornershops
found in the UK were former grocer shops, other specialist retailers also occupied such slots and
have suffered the same fate of being largely replaced by super and hypermarkets, such retailers
as green grocers, bakers, butchers and fishmongers.

In Popular Culture

Many British TV and Radio series, especially soap operas, feature corner shops or village shops
as cornerstones for community gatherings and happenings. Prominent examples are the Village
shop in Ambridge, the fictional village in the BBC Radio 4 series, The Archers, (1950–present
day). Or the ITV1 soap opera Coronation Street (1960–present day) featuring a cornershop; it was
owned, until recently, by Alf Roberts the grocer and after his death in the late 1990s was bought
by Dev Alahan, reflecting this common change in British culture. The dying days and changing
culture of the traditional British grocer was explored to great effect in the BBC TV comedy
series. Open All Hours (1976–1985), set in the real suburb of Balby in Doncaster, the shop front
used for the street scenes in the series does actually exist in the area and is a hair salon in reality.
The BBC Scotland comedy series Still Game has a corner shop as a recurring location where
characters can meet and gossip; the actor who plays its owner, Navid Harris (Sanjeev Kohli),
plays a similar role as Ramesh in the Radio 4 comedy series Fags, Mags and Bags which is set
entirely in Ramesh’s shop.
The band Cornershop in part base their image on the perception that many convenience stores
are now owned by British Asian people. In terms of British popular culture these media
representations give some idea of the importance attached to local shops in the national psyche
and as a mainstay of community life.

United States

Grays General Store (1788) in Adamsville, Rhode Island was purportedly the oldest continuously
operating general store in the United States.

During the first half of the 20th century, general stores were displaced in many areas of the
United States by many different types of specialized retailers. But from the 1960s through present,
many small specialized retailers are in turn crushed by the so-called “category killers”, which
are “big-box” wholesale-type retailers large enough to carry the majority of best-selling goods
in a specific category like sporting goods or office supplies.
However, the convenience inherent in the general store has been revived in the form of the
modern convenience store and the hypermarket, which can be seen as taking the general store
or convenience store concept to its largest possible implementation.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
8. A general store, general merchandise store, general dealer or village shop is a rural or
small town store that carries a general line of ..................... .
9. ..................... shops have become popular in some villages, often jointly owned and run by
many villagers as a co-operative.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 45