| Chapter 1: | The Chain Store Historically Considered |
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Figure 1.2 Selected Chain Store Growth Rates
Data are normalized to date by author. Wal-Mart data from Wal-Mart’s 2005 data release. The remaining data are from Lebhar, 1952.
What makes Wal-Mart different is its increasingly strong growth in later life. Notably, this graph omits A&P, which had over 15,000 stores at its peak in the 1940s.
Interestingly, retail itself has declined in relative importance throughout all of the 20th century for which we have reliable data. Perhaps the first widespread concern with the retail sector occurred shortly after World War I. Lawrence Mann, a well-known economist of the period, began an article in the field’s premier journal with the statement “No important field of business statistics has been so neglected ...as retail and wholesale merchandising” (Mann, 1923, p. 609). By the end of the decade, the federal government began collecting data on employment and wages by industry. The retail sector mattered most at the outset of the collection effort and has declined as a share of total income ever since (Figure 1.3).
This declining share of retail trade is fairly consistent with the inexorable productivity growth in this sector. Of interest is the drop in the retail share during World War II, when consumer goods were heavily rationed.