Barriers to ‘industrialisation’ for interwar British retailing? The case of Marks & Spencer Ltd
研究以玛莎百货为例，考察两次世界大战期间英国零售业采用美国大规模零售方法是否面临障碍，发现该公司从中获得了显著的生产率提升，反驳了零售业‘工业化’障碍论。
Research on international differences in retail productivity has highlighted formidable environmental barriers to the ‘industrialisation’ of mass retailing as a driver of declining British interwar productivity growth in this sector (and in services more generally). We examine evidence for such barriers, using a case study of a firm that built its interwar expansion strategy on ‘American’ retail methods – Marks & Spencer (M&S). We find that, rather than facing barriers to the adoption of American mass retail practices, M&S reaped major productivity gains from this process. This adds further evidence to an emerging literature rejecting the barriers to industrialisation thesis for retailing.