Under retail trade (Swiss and Netherlands: Detailhandel) one understands a form about trading venture, which is directed to sell goods at final consumers and/or final users and in small quantities however without manufacturers, that sell their products directly to the customer circle mentioned. Big consumers and partly also the retail trade are served by the wholesale. The retail trade is thereby part of the marketing machinery and forms an important paragraph channel.

The retail trade is extremely variously arranged, among other things regarding

• Industries
  • Special firms lead goods mainly an industry, see specialist shop
  • Goods/department stores lead goods from a multiplicity of industries

• Surface intensity and/or types of firm
  • Specialized markets
  • Self-service department store
  • Supermarket
  • Consumer market
  • Junk shop
  • so-called '' aunt Emma shops ''
  • Discounter

• Place of the trade
  • stationary trade (in
  • ambulatory trade (on markets, by Hausieren)
  • Versandhandel

In economical regard the retail trade is a market intermediary between manufacturers and consumers. One speaks thus also of the trade as intermediate. Importantly here particularly its assortment function, thus the preselection, is which it meets from a total offer to goods of a kind. Thereby it facilitates the market overview for the consumer. The assortment organization depends particularly on (assumed) the needs of the clientele desired.

Because in the retail trade many homogeneous offerers buhlen around the same Nachfrager, a lively competition unfolds here. Often however on the basis individual examples it is argued that this competition was led, particularly of principal-strong large-scale enterprises with means as displacement competition. One fears thereby a concentration on few offerers and thus at longer term a higher price level. Furthermore these tendencies have effects also in regard concerning town construction and raumordnerischer:

A) By the misalignment of wide retail businesses from the city centers into peripheral areas a depopulation of city centers threatens.

b) By the market penetration of individual industries by branch enterprises and retail chains with their to a large extent uniform structural organization, progressing always further, the shopping streets of the city centers will lose ever exchangeably and at individuality.

See also: Metro, REWE Group, Aldi, Lidl, whale Mart, Carrefour, shopping centre, MPreis, EuroHandelsinstitut (EHI).

Federations

The German retail trade is represented at present still by 2 country widely acting federations:

1. HDE - Federation of the German retail trade
2. BAG - Federal Association of Labor of the central and large-scale enterprises of the retail trade registered association.

Both federations want to fuse in the autumn 2006 to only one federation, with seat in Berlin.

Literature

• Mueller Hagedorn, Lothar: The trade. Stuttgart 1998.
• Mueller Hagedorn, Lothar: Commercial marketing. Stuttgart 2002.
• Spiekermann, Uwe: Basis of the Konsumgesellschaft. Emergence and development of the modern retail trade in Germany, 1850-1914. Munich 1999.

Related links

• Federation of the German retail trade
• Federal Association of Labor of the central and large-scale enterprises of the retail trade registered association.
• EHI EuroHandelsinstitut registered association.
• Institut for commercial research
• Website with statistics over the retail trade in the Federal Statistical Office

Articles in category "Retail trade"

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