Mail Order Retailing in Britain A Business and Social History

by Coopey, Richard; O'Connell, Sean; Porter, Dilwyn

• ISBN13: 9780198296508
• ISBN10: 0198296509
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-03-24
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Since its inception in the late 19th century, Britain's mail order industry both exploited and generated social networks in building its businesses. The common foundation of the sector was the agency system; Sales were made through catalogues held by agents, ordinary people in families,neighbourhoods, pubs, clubs and workplaces. Through this agency system mail order firms in Britain were able to tap social networks both to build a customer base, but also to obtain vital information on creditworthiness.In this, the first comprehensive history of the British mail order industry, the authors combine business and social history to fully explain the features and workings of this industry. They show how British general mail order industry firms such as Kay and Co., Empire Stores, Littlewoods, andGrattan grew from a range of businesses as diverse as watch sales or football pools. A range of business innovations and strategies were developed throughout the twentieth century, including technological development and labour process rationalisation. Indeed, the sector was in the vanguard of manyaspects of change from supply chain logistics to computerization. The social and gender profile of the home shopper also changed markedly as the industry developed. These changes are charted, from the male-dominated origins of the industry to the growing influence of women both within the firm and,more importantly, as the centre of the mail order market. The book also draws parallels and contrasts with the much more widely studied mail order industry of the United States.The final section of the book examines the rise of internet shopping and the new challenges and opportunities it provided for the mail order industry. Here the story is one of continuity and fracture as the established mail order companies struggle to adjust to a business environment which they hadpartly created, but which also rested on a new range of core competencies and technological and demographic change.

Author Biography

Richard Coopey lectures in history at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Previously he was Senior Research Fellow at the Business History Unit of the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research interests include the history of technology, banking, retailing, and water resources. Publications include 3i: Fifty Years Investing in Industry with D. Clarke (OUP, 1995), Britain in the 1970s: The Troubled Economy with N. Woodward (UCL, 1995), and Information Technology Policy: An International History (OUP, 2004). Sean O'Connell is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Ulster. His first monograph was The Car in British Society: Class, Gender and Motoring 1896-1939 (Manchester University Press, 1998). A second monograph (Class, Community, and Credit in the UK since 1880), drawing upon research financed by the ESRC, is currently being prepared for publication by Oxford University Press. O'Connell has also recently received funding from the Leverhulme Trust to investigate the history of joyriding, using Belfast as a case study. Dilwyn Porter is Reader in History at University College Worcester and an honorary Visiting Research Fellow at the Business History Unit, London School of Economics. He has published on aspects of business, media, and sports history in Business History, Business Archives, Contemporary British History, Media History, the International Review of Retailing, Distribution and Consumer Research and Sport in History. With Adrian Smith, he recently edited Sport and National Identity in the Post-War World (Routledge, 2004). He is currently writing Close to Power, a study of financial journalism in Britain since the late nineteenth century, for Oxford University Press.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
List of Tables	x
Introduction	1	(12)
1. General Mail Order Retailing in Britain: Origins and Development till 1939	13	(30)
The Origins of Mail Order Retailing	14	(6)
General Mail Order Retailing in Britain Before 1914	20	(5)
Mail Order Houses During the First World War	25	(2)
The Expansion of Mail Order Retailing in the 1920's	27	(5)
Mail Order's Corporate Landscape Transformed in the 1930's	32	(11)
2. The Evolution of Mail Order Retailing in Post-war Britain	43	(34)
Mail Order Retailing in the Second World War	44	(4)
Mail Order Retailing and Post-war Austerity, c. 1945-51	48	(2)
The Heyday of Traditional Mail Order Retailing, c. 1950-80	50	(6)
Congeniality, Convenience, Catalogues, and Credit	56	(11)
'Mail Order is Dead. Long Live Home Shopping'	67	(10)
3. Working-Class Life, Consumer Credit, and the Making of Agency Mail Order	77	(30)
Consumer Credit and the Working-Class Family	78	(6)
The Development of Mail Order Agencies	84	(7)
Great Universal Stores, Littlewoods, and the Club System	91	(5)
The Feminization of Mail Order Agency	96	(11)
4. Mail Order Agency in Post-war Britain: The Agent, The Company, and The Customer	107	(32)
The Extent of Mail Order Agency	108	(3)
The Social Characteristics of Mail Order Agents and Customers	111	(7)
Agency Functions and Types of Agencies	118	(4)
The Company-Agent Relationship	122	(6)
Agents and Customers	128	(4)
The Disappearing Agent	132	(7)
5. Inside the Firm: Mail Order, Efficiency, and Rationalization-From Personal to Organizational Control	139	(34)
Warehousing, Order Processing, and Stock Control	140	(4)
Rationalization and Personal Control	144	(4)
The Bedaux System at Empire Stores	148	(6)
Rationalization and Personal Control into the Post-war Era	154	(2)
Mail Order Warehousing in the Post-war Period	156	(2)
Working in the Mail Order Warehouse in the Post-war Era	158	(15)
6. Disconnecting the Personal: Computers and Mail Order	173	(30)
Office Mechanization in the 1940's and 1950's	174	(2)
Freemans and the LEO Computer	176	(4)
The Diffusion of Computerization in the 1960's	180	(5)
Real-time Computing and the Mail Order Business	185	(3)
Computerization and the Mail Order Warehouse	188	(3)
Reconfiguring the Relationship with the Customer	191	(1)
Hanging on the Telephone...	192	(4)
Credit Referencing	196	(7)
7. The Second Home Shopping Revolution	203	(28)
Technologies and Cultures	204	(8)
The False Dawn of Electronic Shopping	212	(3)
Internet Shopping Consolidation and Growth	215	(16)
8. Conclusion	231	(8)
Index	239