ARTICLE IN PRESS

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 381–392

www.elsevier.com/locate/jretconser

Macro-level change and micro level effects: A twenty-year perspective

on changing grocery shopping behaviour in Britain
Ronan De Kervenoaela, Alan Hallsworthb,, Ian Clarkec,1
a
Faculty of Management, Sabanci University, Turkey
b
Management School, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
c
Management School, Lancaster University, UK

Abstract

In this paper we summarise key elements of retail change in Britain over a twenty-year period. The time period is that covered by a
funded study into long-term change in grocery shopping habits in Portsmouth, England. The major empirical findings—to which we
briefly allude—are reported elsewhere: the present task is to assess the wider context underlying that change. For example, it has
frequently been stated that retailing in the UK is not as competitive as in other leading economies. As a result, the issue of consumer
choice has become increasingly important politically. Concerns over concentration in the industry, new format development and market
definition have been expressed by local planners, competition regulators and consumer groups. Macro level changes over time have also
created market inequality in consumer opportunities at a local level—hence our decision to attempt a local-level study. Situational
factors affecting consumer experiences over time at the local level involve the changing store choice sets available to particular
consumers. Using actual consumer experiences thus becomes a yardstick for assessing the practical effectiveness of policy making. The
paper demonstrates that choice at local level is driven by store use and that different levels of provision reflect real choice at the local
level. Macro-level policy and ‘one size fits all’ approaches to regulation, it is argued, do not reflect the changing reality of grocery
shopping. Accordingly, arguments for a more local and regional approach to regulation are made.
r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Retail structure; Locality; Lifestyle; Grocery

1. Introduction areas and the effect of long-term change on consumer choice

The opportunity to take both a micro- and macro-level
perspective on retail change is a challenging one: this paper
attempts a perspective on a quarter century of retail change
in Britain. Whilst there have been many thoughtful general
commentaries on wider retail change (Dawson, 2000, 2004),
studies that also focus on local effects and on observed
consumer behaviour are rare unless concentrating on
deprived areas affected by store loss. Change in consumer
behaviour can be driven by many factors: market competi-
tion; response to consumer demand; outcomes of regulatory
policy and so on. What has especially been neglected is the
cumulative impact of macro-level change on local (micro)
Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1 483 686753.
E-mail address: A.Hallsworth@surrey.ac.uk (A. Hallsworth).
1
Senior fellow, Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM).
and behaviour (Clarke, 2000). To support our general-
isations about change we will draw briefly on empirical
findings from a research project on grocery shopping in
Portsmouth, England. We view shopping as a wider social
practice embedded in a defined social context (place and
time) rather than seeing each purchase as a unique decision.
Our perspective, then, is of a symbiotic relationship
between consumer behaviour and long-term retail change.
The consumer both affects, and is in turn affected by, the
changing retail scene. This approach is inevitably discursive,
but can be organised around a number of subheadings:
 Society, work and consumption;
 Retail structure and in-store provision;
 Local (micro-level) choice;
 Retail change and legislation.

0969-6989/$ - see front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jretconser.2006.02.003
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
382 R. De Kervenoael et al. / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 381–392
Our research leads us to question if retailing in Britain is
regulated at the appropriate scale.
2. Society, work and consumption
British lifestyles are increasingly complex and difficult to
define. Our empirical work draws on studies in Ports-
mouth, England, that actually commenced in 1979—the
year that Margaret Thatcher initiated the neo-conservative
political agenda in Britain. Since 1979, many traditional
work forms have all but disappeared: mass employment in
mining, iron and steel, shipbuilding and so on. Some
former workers in these sectors will now make up the 2.7
million individuals in Britain who are—in 2005—not
defined as unemployed because they are receiving state
welfare (incapacity benefit). A macro-level approach
requires us to look at those wider trends—the societal
sea-changes—that have given rise not only to new forms of
routinised behaviour, but also potentially including such
concepts as the rise of anti-consumerism and Generation X
(or Y—Bakewell and Mitchell, 2003). Our work on food-
shopping behaviour at the local level is proving timely in
light of new developments industry-wide that are leading to
further market concentration and which demand policy
responses. A useful starting point, then, is to look at
changes in the nature of work in Britain. The full-
employment economy of the immediate postwar period
was taken to mean the single (often male) ‘‘social wage’’
supporting one household. The expectation was that many
women need not aspire to participate in paid work. In the
new millennium, with divorce rates and job insecurity
rising, and more hours worked than in most of Europe, the
multi-wage household is increasing. Underlying this we
observe that persons aged 65 or over account for about
25% of the market. Single-person households are increas-
ing in number whilst the average household size (estimated
at 2.34 persons per household in 2002), is declining. Indeed,
one-person households made up 29% of all households in
2002; with two person households accounting for around
another 35% . The average number of children per woman
of childbearing age is now 1.64, the lowest since records
began in 1924 whilst over 50% of women are employed:
leading to many dual-earner households. For the most
part, two incomes are now needed simply to support the
lifestyle that the single, social, wage once offered. (Office of
National Statistics, 2003 a, b). That said, two or more
incomes also bring access to mainstream consumption—via
car ownership—a situation that now presages actual car
dependence. Car dependence may be a particular problem
in an ageing society when older shoppers may be prevented
by infirmity from continuing to use a car. Our case studies
included less mobile elderly individuals ‘‘trapped’’ in areas
where most neighbours were mobile.
It has recently been noted that household break-up can
precipitate a fall into destitution as the safety net of
the welfare state has been progressively hollowed out
(see The Observer, 2005). Indeed, over our twenty-year
period the very poor in Britain have become relatively
worse off: a trend not reversed by the current New Labour
government. Where comparable figures exist, they show
that the richest 20% in Britain owned half the national
wealth in 1938, this fell to 44% in 1973, but rose back to
51% in 1986 (Crafts and Woodward, 1991, p. 13). Huhne
(2003) wrote that, compared with mainland Europe,
Britain was generally low on the list in terms of income
per head, life expectancy, health and education spending.
This included the poorest 10% of the population receiving
a lower share of income than in any other EU country.
Riddell (2003) wrote of a modern underclass dating back to
1976 when ‘economic growth stopped narrowing the gap
between rich and poor’. Adding ‘one in five families with
children had no earner by the 1990s—four times the level in
1968’. A former New Labour Minister Meacher (2003)
wrote that ‘under Mrs Thatcher, the y fifth of the
population with the lowest incomes had their share of post-
tax national income cut from 10% to just 6%.y the richest
fifth increasedy.from 37% to 45%’. Things were not seen to
improve much in recent years. ‘From 1997 to 2002 the post-
tax income of the bottom tenth (nearly 2.5 million house-
holds) fell 2% to an average £3,339 per household. For the
top tenth it rose 39% to £54,514 per household’. The
significance of Meacher’s choice of figures is that they
closely cover the period over which we are studying change.
The crucial point, though, is that a less stable society must
surely generate less stable purchasing habits.
2.1. Time to eat and cooking abilities
As long ago as 1991, McHugh et al. (1991) pointed out
that ‘‘time constraints imposed by the workplace mean that
many (women) now require food products with substan-
tially reduced cooking cycles.’’ McHugh et al. (1991, p. 13).
So, when family structures change so does eating beha-
viour. For example, 78% of all meal times in 2002 had only
one or two people present and market analysts Taylor
Nelson Sofrès (2003) predict that if this level of growth
continues, eating alone will be the norm by the end of 2010.
Clearly, coping with shopping for such fragmented
mealtimes cannot be unproblematic. This introduces the
topic of convenience food (Gordon and Walton, 2000).
BBC News, 2002 reported that Institute of Grocery
Distribution ‘(IGD) research has found that consumers want
more than just convenience, they also want help and
inspiration in choosing what to eat in terms of menus and
not just products’. The act of purchasing, ready-to-eat, a
whole meal may be an attempt to re-create the formal
mealtime—but without the time, effort, and risk of failure.
This introduces the possibility—which we will not pursue
here—that there has been a parallel failure, in British
Society, to educate consumers on what, and how, to cook.
Convenience food leads to new behaviours such as
individualistic eating, de-skilling of the population in terms
of cooking, and the micro economy of the household
(Warde, 1999). The geography of retailing is even a
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R. De Kervenoael et al. / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 381–392
Fig. 1. The consumer economics of food: convenience food. Source: Adapted from http://www.geest.co.uk/gst/ourmarkets/uk/marketdrivers/
convenience/.
fundamental source of re-ordering the time-geography of
consumers’ everyday lives (Pred, 1996). As Fig. 1 indicates,
this is a self-reinforcing circle increasing the reliance on,
and importance of, convenience food in modern Britain.
Building on the convenience food agenda has been the
role of major superstore chains in pioneering food that
barely needs to be prepared. This has led food retailers to
regard fast-food outlets as rivals—and to re-create such
outlets in their stores (easily possible in the largest stores).
Because ‘‘convenience’’ abstracts the time—and skill—that
goes into actual cooking it has clear implications for diet:
particularly of the disadvantaged (Finch et al., 1998). Nor
can such trends be unconnected with the obesity epidemic
currently observed among British children.
That said, we note that the rise in influence of the Soil
Association with its organic agenda (Bentley et al., 2003) is
testimony to resurgent interest in alternative food and
supply chains. There is also clear evidence of demand from
richer consumers for ‘‘fashion food’’. This sits alongside
the rise of Chinese and Indian ethnic food in the everyday
diet—not that such outlets necessarily find business to be
unproblematic (Patel, 1988). Fig. 2 summarises the
complexities faced by the post-modern British food
383
consumer. Three main forces are at work; convenience—
as already described—but also pleasure and health. Fig. 2
serves to show the main changes, and the compromises,
that consumers are facing while shopping. Consumers
themselves are more volatile and unpredictable. This
reinforces the idea that shopping choice and competition
are socially constructed concepts set in a very specific time
and geographical scale (Miller et al., 1998).
3. Retail structure and in-store provision
As the British consumer has changed so has provision
with, as we have suggested, car ownership (or at least
access to a car) as the key. Our earliest study (Hallsworth,
1979) was initiated because British retailing had begun to
restructure to accommodate the car and the earliest
manifestations were often still in central locations. In
Portsmouth, Tesco had built a large store with a multi-
storey car park—and simultaneously closed several much
smaller high street supermarkets. This was part of the
national trend to larger, but fewer car-based stores and a
widespread abandonment of the traditional High Street as
the prime location for grocery shopping -with odd notable
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384 R. De Kervenoael et al. / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 381–392

Fig. 2. Evolution of the buying interface towards the post modern consumer, (Adapted from Datamonitor 2003).

exceptions. The higher general levels of income and
employment in southern Britain—coupled with a high
and rising housing market—may have helped sustain a
north-south consumption divide. So, Britain’s ‘‘great car
society’’ has cemented—in 20 years—the hegemonic posi-
tion of the large out-of-town superstore: societal change
thus elides into consideration of the structure of retail
provision.
For the very poor and immobile, conversely, Tauber’s
(1972) question of who shops where may reduce to
‘‘wherever they can reach’’. Overwhelmingly, the single
most mentioned factor in shopping choice is ‘‘conveni-
ence’’—more research is yet required to unpack what that
word really means.
Though the total numbers of stores run by major chains
decreased when they moved from supermarkets to super-
stores, the range available within the newer larger stores
has increased dramatically over the same period. In the
large superstores, some lower-priced own-label lines are
there to meet the spending capacity of those poorer
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R. De Kervenoael et al. / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 381–392
consumers who use the store. By putting such products on
the shelves, operators are admitting that spatial restrictions
on choice are bringing in the lower-spending groups that
are surely not their main target customers: the in-store
offer thus comes to mirror local social and economic
divides. The detail of provision at local level is important
when it is clear that store choice and product choice are
becoming interdependent (Louviere and Gaeth, 1987;
Fotheringham, 1988; Marsden and Wrigley, 1995).
Accordingly, the penetration of own label is now a major
facet of everyday grocery shopping in Britain: ‘The key
development has been the introduction of own label ranges
based around consumer preferences and lifestyles [y] ‘we
are beginning to witness secondary and tertiary brands being
squeezed off supermarket shelves.[y]. A worst-case scenar-
io for branded manufacturers could be the gradual reduction
of categories to commodity status’ (MacFarlane, 2003).
Low-priced own-label also offers a trading response to the
European hard discounters (Aldi, Lidl, etc.) who also
appeared in our time frame and who dominantly offer
retailer brands that are unfamiliar to the British consumer.
In fact, Sainsbury has had a long tradition of own-label
whereas the early Asda and Kwik-Save formats empha-
sised the discounting of manufacturer branded goods. As
many authors have noted (Wrigley, 1987, 1998; Shiret
1991,1992; Hallsworth and McClatchey, 1994; Burt and
Sparks 1994, 1997, 2003) the notion of Britain as the fabled
golden land of high retail margins may have been
overstated. But still the European hard discounters
came—and, in most areas, made no appreciable impact.
Possibly this was because the low prices were offered
through their narrow range of unfamiliar retailer brands.
Many suspect so, since the less-informed British consumer
is unaware of the quality testing that goes on in Germany
into the unique brands offered by Aldi, for example. Still,
leading British retailers ignore no threat—however ephem-
eral. The resurgence of British retailers’ so-called value own
labels took place in part as a response to the price-driven
threat of discounters such as Aldi.
Table 1
Own brand penetration
Own brand 1980 1992 1995
Sainsbury 54 55 47.8
Tesco 21 41 41.8
Safeway/Morrison 28 35 35.5
ASDA 5 32 34.0
Sources: Own brand, assembled from Marketing, 1st August 2002, p. 15 and Wrigley, 1998, 2002. Figures are based on percent of customer spend.
Penetration will vary depending on product categories: see store annual reports. In terms of actual sales for Tesco, for example, in 2005 it represents about
50%.
a
Author’s guesstimates (with additional thanks to Richard Gathard, IGD).
385
As Table 1 shows, own labels have evolved over the
period since 1979 and quality, choice and variety now
characterise all superstore own-label lines: with segmenta-
tion of own brand now also a common practice. Asda
noted in their 1997 annual report to shareholders that their
‘ybrand plays a vital role in delivering value and it
continues to grow in stature as well as volume (Asda,
1997). In fact, Asda in 2002 had 8500 own label food lines
and 3500 non-food. y’Asda Smart Price’ (with about 650
lines) has a clear mandate to compete with the discount
retailers (our emphasis) ‘Asda Extra’, however, is a special
premium range (about 130 products) aimed at consumers
needs for ‘authenticity and excitement’ and, finally, there is
Asda’s ‘Organic’ range (125 own label lines).
3.1. Provision: spatial change and retail patterns of
provision
Almost to emphasise its hegemony, alongside the rise of
the superstore, Britain has seen the inevitable decline of the
small shop. It can be argued that the logistical revolution to
Regional Distribution Centres (RDCs)—also key to
WalMart’s success in the USA—is a vital ingredient in
superstore success. A logistics revolution led by Tesco
directly re-configured the supply chain in Britain (Fernie
et al., 2000). Driven by point-of-sale data and a re-
emergent emphasis on own label, the market leaders
developed RDCs throughout the 1980s and 1990s (France
and Garnsey, 1996; Hopping, 2000; Bonney, 2002; Disney
et al., 2003). Yet the orientation of supply chains to the
needs of the larger powerful retailers makes it even more
difficult for the small operator to compete. When smaller
stores close, local residents have to use the larger super-
stores more. As Baron et al. (2001) emphasized there is
continuing decline in the numbers of independent food and
grocery retailers over the last decade (see also Smith and
Sparks, 2000). The whole panoply of more organized
rivals—from the 7–11 format to hypermarkets—serves to
undercut the independent small shop. The major effects of
2002 2005 Own brand labels in %
44 50 Taste the Difference, Be Good to Yourself, Blue
Parrot Café, Freedom, Perform+Protect (Household/
health and beauty), Jeff &Co (Clothing),
Perform+protect Active natural, TU
41 42a Finest, value, Organics, Healthy Eating, Kids,
Florence & Fred, Cherokee (Clothing)
33 55 The Best, EatSmart, EatStreet, Savers, Morrison
44 46a GoodForYou, Extra Special, value, Kids, George At
Asda (Clothing_). More for kids CD, and extra
services (see online offer range)
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these temporal and locational shifts has obviously been felt
by the consumer but the high street, independently owned,
(‘‘mom and pop’’) convenience sector has now been
transformed into the modern convenience store: ‘Channels
[Grocers, CTNs, Forecourts, Off Licences] were easy to
identify– with the only real distinction between retailers in
each channel being whether they were multiple or indepen-
denty[y] yIndependents are declining by 5% per year but
the decline within specialist independent is more dramatic:
CTN storey 20% in the last year, Off Licences –12%,
Forecourts 7%, Grocers 4%, but independent c-stores by
just 1%’ (Bunn, 2003). The format war is now well advanced
with most of the multiples copying (and buying up) the new
convenience stores by going back to (albeit now much more
fashionable) high street premises aimed at young single
metro-livers (our link to generation Y).
Operational innovations (primarily by Tesco and Sains-
bury) include so-called loyalty cards. These cards can be
used to relate specific purchases to named individuals: the
underpinning to which is bar code scanning. This
technology was not even applied in Britain in 1979, whilst
now we see further advances in radiofrequency coding
technology. As already noted, the demise of the smaller
independently owned convenience outlet continues; ex-
acerbated in some areas where rising property values which
make re-conversion to private residences a more profitable
activity. Indeed, a further lively debate revolves around the
ability of small stores even to obtain competitively priced
goods in a market dominated by large retailers. Table 2
shows how it is larger retailers that have driven change.
grocery chains: Asda, Tesco Sainsbury and Morrisons
(which took over Safeway in 2004)—testimony to the fact
that the increasing power of retailers towards channel
leadership has dramatically changed the overall retail offer
(Burt, 2000; Clarke et al., 2002). Furthermore, market
share concentration was boosted when the Co-operative
movement (Hallsworth and Bell, 2003) sold off both
superstores and superstore sites to its erstwhile rivals. A
further player, Gateway is now trading as Somerfield, but
its early growth by merger eradicated high street chains
whose fascias were once prominent in Britain such as
Lennons, Fine-Fare, Dee, Wellworth, MacFisheries and so
on. Inevitably this has reduced the ‘‘choice set’’ of store
fascias available to the British consumer (Kirkup et al.,
2004).
Since the superstore sector now operates through larger
and fewer outlets, most consumers experience choice in the
form of choosing between a number of competing super-
stores. In reality however, there are spatial differences in
superstore provision across different parts of Britain (Poole
et al., 2002). As we look at the last 20 years we find that
these developments have been underpinned by internal
retail trade factors such as economies of scale, warehouse/
logistic systems, new managerial structures, own brand and
global sourcing (Robert and Paasschen, 1996; Cotterill,
1997; Fernie and Pierrel, 1996).
3.3. Provision: recent product operations at the social
interface

A more recent significant change has been the introduc-

3.2. Losing fascias—the impact on choice tion and growing importance of non-food products within
stores led by the newly created space in out of town
Market concentration has been a key feature of our locations. ‘y., in 2002 non-food products sold in our retailer
quarter century of change. There are now only four major superstores rose by 12% whereas groceries and fresh produce

Table 2
Retail development profiles of leading UK retailers

Early 1970s Development of the first few hypermarkets; stores mainly district centre, Canned food. third party logistic providers.
Late 1970s Development of retail warehouses. Frozen food.
Mid 1980s Development of a large non food range in retail parks, regional shopping centres, ready meal innovations and own brands. Chilled
technology, composite distribution facilities. Deregulation of domestic transport, introduction of bar codes.
Late 1980s Development of EDI, EPOS and other IT technologies. Emergence of four national players. All under 1 roof strategy. Sunk cost and
property cost spiralling.
Early 1990s Development of loyalty card, and e-tailing, EDLP proposition, Supply chain management improvements, entry of hard discounters,
concentration within the industry, changes in opening hours and Sunday trading. factory outlets, and club warehouses. Fresh,
prepared food. Share of food bought in supermarket reaches 60%.
Late 1990s Development of multi formats, return to the high street, planning restrictions in the UK leading to the globalisation of many retailer
brands. Advances in credit card usage. Home meal replacement solutions. ECR collaborative relationship between retailers and
manufacturers. Food labelling regulation.
2000s Supply chain management, on line auctions, backhauling, open book costing, factory gate pricing, upstream consolidation, multi user
consolidation centers.
Beyond Product availability problems, better management at peak time, further stock reduction, international dimension, real time
information, demand amplification, lean thinking (e.g. value stream, value flow). Consolidation in the hard discount markets.
Problems to be faced due to changing demography including the grey wave.

Source: Guy 1998. The contrasted data sources are not directly comparable. IGDFactory gate pricing, open book and beyond, 2003. Authors’ own
additions.
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R. De Kervenoael et al. / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 381–392
rose by 4% and 5% respectively’ yand.. ‘As the larger out of
town stores plan to stock more and more non food items,
groceries are being squeezed off the shelvesy in the 1990 the
ratio was groceries 80% non food 20% y just a few years
later evidences suggest a more even spread reaching a plateau
of 60:40’ (Watkins, 2003). Note, too, that the larger retail
formats are using improved stock control to reduce the in-
store space devoted to storage and thus to increase the
selling area. This has made superstores into edge or out of
town shopping ‘destinations’ and one-stop shopping is the
norm in Britain. The shift to non-food is even seen by some
as a further threat to the viability of the High Street—now
dominated by services and non-food outlets.
4. Local (micro-level) choice
Our intent is to augment the macro-level trends with
some evidence on local-level outcomes. How do store
closures, openings and modifications such as those noted
above (as well as changed offerings within the stores) affect
evolving consumer choices? Once at ground level, all
geographic areas are subtly spatially different. The bigger
and more powerful retailers—in what is already a highly
concentrated market—have tended to use sophisticated
market assessment methods to maximize profits from
individual locations. Equally, ‘saturation in grocery store
development is essentially a meaningful phenomenon at
local level’ (Guy, 1996, p. 9). Findings demonstrate, for the
most part, that mobile affluent consumers have ample
choice of foodstores in areas where no chain has market
dominance.
When we look closely at the micro-scale problems begin
to appear. Small wonder that food desert researchers
headed to an area of Leeds (Seacroft) originally built as a
post-war council (social welfare) housing estate (Wrigley
Individual / Social
Routines / lifestyles
Identity / age / household composition
Perceived economic access Unaware
Circumstances
Reference groups / norms / expectations
Mobility / perception of ease of access
Newness to area / experience Positive
search
Situation-Specific / Purpose / Task
Who is doing the shopping (and who with)
Time available / trip-chaining / task
Motivation / Orientation
Shopping orientation / habit vs variety /
purchasing vs looking
Spatial and Competitive Context
Area infrastructure (ease of access)
Supply / competition / access facilitators
Fig. 3. Choice set determinants and theoretical vs real choice sets. Source: Kirkup et al., 2004.
387
et al., 2000–2004). Unserved by the market-leaders, the
area had apparently ceased even to offer basic healthy food
products. The residents, by implication, were bereft of
choice, (Whelan et al., 2002; Wrigley, 2002; Wrigley, Warm
et al., 2002). This is crucial since, as confirmed by Guy
(1996) ‘It is at the local level that shoppers make their
choice and battles for market share are fought out’ (Guy
1996, p. 6; see also Guy, 2004; Guy et al., 2004; Clarke et
al., 2004; Wrigley et al., 2002). While situations illustrating
extremes of deprivation are clearly very interesting we are
concerned here with the experiences of ‘ordinary’ con-
sumers. Fig. 3 offers our view of how real choice develops
at a local level and from a consumer perspective. Starting
with the local choice set available to them, each household
or consumer devises their own shopping repertoire. Yet
choice at the local level does not rest solely on the number
of stores within a geographic distance. Real choice and
behaviour also change according to personal circumstance;
as a result not just of micro scale conditions but of
pressures on individual consumers at a specific time and in
a specific socio-spatial environment. Our researches con-
firmed the impediments imposed by, for example, shopping
with small children and/or crossing busy roads. Some
groups found particular stores to be too big, others even
disliked their fellow shoppers. For some households,
purchase choices were tailored to the presence or absence
of key family members on a daily or weekly basis. At a
mundane level, consumer choice also needs to take into
account the variety of goods sold within local stores.
Choice is both relative and perceived whilst attitudes
towards ongoing changes carry different implications for
different consumers—even within a very local area.
Attempts to marry ongoing local structural changes with
changes in behaviour, but note that stores that closed were
soon forgotten: spending soon moved elsewhere.
Local retail provision
Aware Unaware
No exp Experience/knowedge No exp
Coping
strategies
Inaccess Perceived access (physical / economic) Inaccess
Self-excl Inclusion Self-excl
Simplification Constraints
Abrog Inclusion Abrog
‘Real’ Local Choice
Family Special Trip Internet
Trips Treats Chaining Shopping
‘Real’ Extended Choice
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388 R. De Kervenoael et al. / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 381–392
5. Retail change and legislation
Transparently, changes that occur on the ground are
always influenced in some way by what market regulators
will accept. Institutionally, land use planning is expected to
act as a counterweight to competition and other similar
regulatory mechanisms. In respect of the latter forms of
control, Britain can be seen as markedly liberal—giving
planning officers much to resist. As noted, grocery market
power is basically now held by four chains—a huge
transformation from 1979. Arguably responding to the
long-working-week culture of modern Britain, two further
key operating practises have come in: Sunday trading in
1994 and 24 h trading late in the 1990s. The former was not
uncontested and gave Margaret Thatcher her only Parlia-
mentary defeat:legislation only reached the statute books
after her departure as Prime Minister. At present the
debate on retail regulation in the UK, like the debate on
choice, remains in a state of flux. Whilst, after 1979,
Thatcherism presaged total market liberalisation many of
the more extreme retail formats failed to emerge (Schiller,
1986; Norris, 1989; Fernie, 1998). In the time period
covered here the British planning system reacted by
introducing several market-resistant policies (a) the se-
quential test; (b) the class of good test; (c) the regeneration
argument and (d) the demonstration of need argument.
Indeed, the retail development market has been more
restrictive since 1996 (currently under review) with IKEA
complaining of the difficulty in finding sites for its big-box
format. In June, 2005, the British media reported that
IKEA might attempt to mould its format to current
planning restrictions by building a store on seven floors in
an urban area. Warehouse Membership clubs, too have
had comparatively little success—not least related to the
smaller size of British houses. We should not underestimate
these structural/cultural impediments to the globalisation
of larger retail formats (Goldman, 2005). In Britain,
though, an appeal to ‘‘regeneration’’ themes can unlock
large development sites—notably in the economically
neglected and industrially declining north of England. We
cite 1996 as a regulatory turning point since the so-called
‘sequential test’ for retail planning was introduced in 1996.
The PPS 6 policy revisions from 2004 presage a possible
period of liberalisation for very large sites. Of particular
interest are Government proposals for ‘‘affordable’’ hous-
ing in an arc to the east of London from Cambridgeshire to
Kent—housing that will require retail infrastructure. This
crucial topic has been addressed by Lowe et al. (2004) who
discuss the 2003 ‘‘Sustainable Communities’’ plan in some
detail. They note proposed spending of £610 m for ‘‘the
development of 200,000 new homes’’ but with ‘‘little
government-driven central planning’’ Lowe et al. (2004
p. 1). However, they note that ‘‘despite this explicit
inclusion of retailingythere appears to be very little policy
formulation in relation to the place of retailing’’ though
‘‘regional spatial strategies’’ could ‘‘allocate future growth’’
Lowe et al. (2004 pp. 2–4). They also note a potential
loosening of the stricter PPG6 retail planning rules that,
from 1996, worked in favour of established centres (for
good summaries see Guy and Bennison, 2005, Wood et al.
2005). Possibly Britain is poised for a new turn in the
(spatial) wheel of retailing: liberalising trends are certainly
seen elsewhere—not least in the Netherlands (Hallsworth
and Evers, 2002, Evers, 2004).
Overall, then, the regulatory domain is complicated by a
separation of physical store development (dealt with by the
town planning system) from competition (dealt with by
central government bodies, such as the Office of Fair
Trading and the Competition Commission). This separa-
tion reflects the entrenched view that retail competition is a
matter for commercial judgement, rather than for planners.
Planning applications are currently judged largely in terms
of how new retail outlets might affect the trading vitality
and viability of existing retail centres. The idea of possible
local monopolies echoes not only our own observations on
uneven provision, but also Raven and Lang’s (1995) report
for the Institute for Public Policy Research, which made a
similar argument about the problems of assessing mono-
polies on a national basis when different supermarket
chains have very different local and regional concentra-
tions.
A useful way of examining the artificial separation of
competition issues from land-use planning issues is through
studying the contrasting—sometimes institutional—voices
that seek to influence opinions. These range, for example,
from Raven and Lang’s (1995) report for the Institute for
Public Policy Research, (above) to retailers who lobby
national and regional planner networks to influence the
form of development control (Pal, et al., 2001). Retailers
also develop relationships with local planning agencies and,
through them, seek to adjust planners attitudes towards
development, bringing their resources to bear on local
decision-making. This emphasises the importance to retail
growth of new store planning permissions when success is
measured by rising market share. There are also voices
promoting market liberalization—notably McKinsey & Co
who claimed that UK retailing was being constrained by
regulation. As ever, the liberalising role-model was the
USA—(Hancher and Moran, 1989; Clark, 1992; McKin-
sey, 1998) and McKinseys did not hesitate to use largely
the same report to urge liberalisation upon the Nether-
lands.
British local authorities have—over the last two dec-
ades—also had to learn the importance of winning
financial grants. They now seek loan guarantees and work
in partnerships as they seek to maximise the chances of
locally acceptable market innovations. In an environment
of free competition the local authority economic regenera-
tion budget has often been reduced (Stubbs et al., 2002).
This is one reason why large stores can sometimes still be
built in off-centre locations. The argument that a large new
store will offer both construction jobs and, later, in-store
jobs can be compelling in an area of high unemployment
and where other forms of new investment are unlikely. This
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R. De Kervenoael et al. / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 381–392
latter point feeds directly back to the deindustrialisation
and deskilling of much of the traditional industrial
heartland of northern Britain.
6. Retail consumption : linking real behaviour to market
regulation
The need to understand practical implications of
regulation led the 2000 Competition Commission report
to suggest that ‘in principle one would use isochrones
centred on the individual households y as it is individual’s
travel for groceries that one is seeking to unravel’
(Competition Commission, 2000, p. 34). Our own studies
suggest that this is complex: choice at a micro level may
involve constraints, coping strategies, and abrogation of
options. Choice can also be cleverly extended through
solutions devised by consumers (e.g. trip sharing) or by
retailers (e.g. Internet shopping, delivery services) (Kirkup
et al., 2003; Clarke et al., 2004). Thus the interface between
individual consumers and macro-regulation is a difficult
one and has, in reality, rarely been attempted. There still
seems to be no satisfactory definition of adequate provi-
sion—or how it might be recognised and protected in law.
The ‘real’ significance of regulation can only made
apparent in distinct social, geographical and economic
contexts. This fact was a major impetus behind our
Portsmouth research—more substantial accounts of which
are available elsewhere. Britain’s Competition Act—which
brings Britain into line with EU Competition Policy—
mentions geographic markets, but these are not precisely
defined. Meanwhile, grocery shopping habits go on
mutating in response to changes both social and local.
The 2000 Competition Commission report on super-
markets was commissioned not least because of fears that
market power was concentrated in too few firms. Again,
this report, too, seemed to take a snapshot approach—
accepting (controversially) that retailing had two mar-
kets—superstores and convenience stores. By not embed-
ding the research in the local, however, the opportunity to
understand shopping behaviour was eschewed. Consider,
Declining birth rate
Ageing population
Fall in Household size
Increasing Female Employment
Time poor / cash rich
Diet / Health concerns
Knowledge of food/ cooking skills
Meal preparation time/eating alone
Choice of product
Choice of retailers
Shopping routines / lifestyle
Convenience
Fig. 4. Main structural and behavioural changes influencing grocery retail development over the last 20 years.
389
for example, a typology of convenience shopping styles
produced by the Institute for Grocery Distribution (IGD):
 Top up shopping—supplemental purchases of fresh
goods between major shops.
 Distress shopping—in response to a sudden, unexpected
need for a specific item.
 Impulse shopping—unplanned shops, often for ‘‘treats’’
(IGD, 2003, p. 5).
It does not follow that these low-volume purchases
exclusively occur in small local shops or convenience
stores. In our empirical research, such purchases are seen
being made in superstores: by people for whom the
superstore has also become the local store. However,
perhaps the most interesting conclusion by the Competi-
tion Commission report of 2000 was that the grocery
market was found to be oligopalistic and to exhibit abuses
of market power—yet no direct counter-legislation was
proposed. A code of conduct in dealing with suppliers was
drawn up, but was voluntary and has been met with
widespread apathy. A review of the code later revealed the
extent to which fearful suppliers refused to use it to
complain about retailers. Lobbying groups soon cam-
paigned, currently without success, to move this new
supermarket code from voluntary to compulsory status.
That said, in permitting Morrisons (but not their 3 main
rivals) to bid for Safeway, the Competition Commission in
2003 began to adopt some of the market share analyses
favoured by the US Federal Trade Commission though it is
beyond the scope of this paper to point out the huge
underlying procedural differences between the two.
Retail change may be a fact of life in Britain as
elsewhere, but we feel we have found many significant
changes over our time-frame. The particular twenty-year
time-period may have been deeply affected by coinciding
with the deregulatory aspects of Thatcherism and Reaga-
nomics. Some trends, of course, merely continue a post-war
pattern—see Fig. 4 which summarises trends we have
observed both locally and nationally.
Multiple store formats
Multiple channels especially e-grocery
Development of Non food services
Development of Own brand
Internationalisation vs local small shop
Internationalisation of diets
Food quality concerns
Food Miles and environmental issues
Morality of food production
Car dependence
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390 R. De Kervenoael et al. / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 381–392
In society at large there are the overall rises in car
ownership and the fall in family size: in retail, the decline of
the small, independent shop. Some trends have developed
over our time-period—the general growth in computer
usage and, in retail, EPOS/EFTPOS and e-retail. We could
go on—but the interesting problems surely lie in addressing
the unintended or unanticipated micro-level fall-out from
macro-level changes. An obvious one is the question of
how the old and frail—too old to use a car—will cope as
the nuclear family fades faster in Britain than in mainland
Europe. Spatially, how should we address the problems of
urban (and rural) food deserts as demand ebbs away—
followed by supply (The Times, 1997).
7. Conclusions
Such has been the scale of social change in Britain over
our study period that, whilst, in 1979, respondents were
fairly easily categorised into the (then) Registrar-General’s
classification of occupations we declined to attempt to
apply that in our follow-up from 2001. Social fragmenta-
tion, mirrored by the collapse of the middle-market in
Britain that was symbolised by the departure of C&A,
carries on apace. Charity shops and discounters for the
poor at one end—high-end specialists for the rich at the
other. Structurally, in major markets, the act of grocery
provisioning is now dominated by off-centre, car-based
stores. The resurgent ‘‘new’’ convenience store sector is
being stalked by superstore chains seeking to increase
market share. Fresh food provision—and diet—are threa-
tened in many areas. We end, however, with a thought on
regulation. The British retail market tends to be regulated
in a universalist/catch-all manner seemingly ignorant or
uncaring of regional differences such as the north/south
differences we have logged. In other arenas, from levels of
University fees (and attendant personal debt) to political
representation via regional assemblies/ parliaments, there
are distinct spatial manifestations: most clearly experienced
in Scotland and Wales. In the retail context, the important
innovation of a Centre for the Study of Retailing in
Scotland is a clear manifestation of regional/national
differences that exist—but which are often ignored. It is
surely time to consider if control by central Government in
London is appropriate for a sector where the outcomes are
so evidently socially and spatially mediated. Indeed, the
particularity of London with its high spending base and
lesser scope for superstores makes it an especially poor
base from which policymakers might reasonably generalise
about a wider national scene. Neither food deserts nor out
of town regional shopping centre ‘‘palaces’’ are everywhere
evident: a clear restatement of the importance of the local
(and regional) scales of analysis. It is thus interesting to
note that in Spain, for example, much of retailing is
regulated at the level of the autonomous region (Coca-
Stefaniak et al., 2005). Likewise, Omholt (2005) has argued
strongly that Norway—with a population of less than 5
million—has, for years, been ill-served by national-level
retail planning policy. Across Europe in general the
administrative region, usually fiercely supportive of re-
gionally produced food, is a key influence: in Britain it is
not. Though local level resistance to top-down policy-
making is sometimes evident, often through carefully
approved land-use plans, the ability to set a regionally
agreed agenda for what is acceptable retail growth has
never been permitted. Britain has too often favoured
regulation from above—the national level—when other
scales may well be more appropriate as local consumers
seek to cope with the consequences of macro-level changes
of the sort we have identified.
Acknowledgement
We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Economic
& Social Research Council (ESRC) for the three year
research project (started April 2002) on which much of this
paper is based (Grant Reference No. R000239531; ‘Retail
Competition & Consumer Choice: Long-term change and
household dynamics’). The authors are grateful to the
editor and the anonymous referees for the insightful,
informed, critical and constructive comments that have
enhanced the paper.
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