shop

Building or part of a building used for the retail sale of goods. Roman stoae were market stalls enclosed by an arcaded walkway; shops changed little from ancient times until the latter part of the 19th century, when the growth of manufactured goods and the concentration of population in big towns gave rise to the department store, the chain store, and the supermarket.

History The world's first department store was the Bon Marché in Paris, France, opened in 1852. Macy's opened in the USA in 1858, Whiteleys in the UK in 1863, and Wertheim in Germany in 1870. The main innovation was goods at set prices.

Chain stores took the form of many shops scattered in different towns or counties, able to buy wholesale in such quantities that prices could be lowered below those of smaller competitors. As a development of wholesale purchase came direct links with factories producing goods, often under the same ownership, which further cut costs, and even the elimination of the shop itself by direct mail or online order.

Self-service had been originated in the USA many years earlier by Clarence Saunders. It developed rapidly after World War II as a result of staff shortages and labour costs, and was introduced in supermarkets for groceries and in hypermarkets outside towns. In the USA in the 1970s the ‘controlled shopping environment’ developed, consisting of an air-conditioned enclosed mall of up to 250 shops in carpeted arcades, often on several levels, with music, free parking, cinemas, restaurants, and child-care facilities; for example, Woodfield Mall, Chicago. The idea was adopted in the UK and elsewhere.

Methods of payment By the end of the 20th century several methods of payment were in use. For direct debit from a bank account, customers used a plastic card inserted in a computer terminal at the point of sale (an example of EFTPOS). Laser checkouts automatically read a bar code on the packaging of the goods and deliver an itemized bill to the customer, as well as recording for the store the deduction of the item from shelf stock.

Customer incentives Trading stamps, originating in Britain about 1851, were developed in the USA and re-exported to the UK (Green Shield) in 1958, but became a casualty of the recession and changed shopping habits in the late 1970s. Loyalty cards and shop-specific credit cards were widely used from the 1990s as an incentive to retain customers.