Coping with Retail Giants critically analyzes the modern retail market and identifies how businesses gain the competitive edge over the major retailers that currently control the market. Dr. Samli argues that as society advances economically, consumers will seek better values generated by the retailing sector.

A formidable strategic tool any business can use to become and remain competitive in the shadow of retail giants.

Written by an economist who has been tracking the impact of superstores on small businesses for five years. Stone has conducted more than 200 seminars on his research for community groups and trade associations in 46 states during the last three years. In this superlative guide, he offers practical advice on how small retailers can survive and thrive in the age of giant discount stores. Provides strategies for small businesses to compete effectively by improving four major areas—merchandising, marketing, customer service and customer relations.

Focusing on the specific requirements of small and medium retailers, this resourceful guide is packed with practical insight and covers the gamut of retail issues, emphasising relationship management, customer service, in-store merchandise analysis, and special promotion opportunities for smaller retailers.

This book discusses the current landscape of our market economy, which is in the hands of financiers and billionaires who decrease competition as well as consumer power. In order for society to fully thrive and provide its members higher living standards and quality of life, it must distribute and deliver the fruits of the economic activity without discrimination and favoritism. This book exposes the real problem of economic inequality, poverty, and the elimination of the middle class and argues for a progressive market economy in the face of regressive conservatism. The author warns of business failures, rigid and unrealistic laws, widespread unemployment, and class warfare without a fair, functional system. Until action is taken to reverse this situation, our market economy will continue to be abused by the greedy and the powerful, stripping it of any potential for advancement and growth.

Includes articles on international business opportunities.

Along with fast-food workers, retail workers are capturing the attention of the public and the media with the Fight for $15. Like fast-food workers, retail workers are underpaid, and fewer than 5 percent of them belong to unions. In Hard Sell, Peter Ikeler traces the low-wage, largely nonunion character of U.S. retail through the history and ultimate failure of twentieth-century retail unionism. He asks pivotal questions about twenty-first-century capitalism: Does the nature of retail work make collective action unlikely? Can working conditions improve in the absence of a union? Is worker consciousness changing in ways that might encourage or further inhibit organizing? Ikeler conducted interviews at New York City locations of two iconic department stores—Macy's and Target. Much of the book’s narrative unfolds from the perspectives of these workers in America’s most unequal city.When he speaks to workers, Ikeler finds that the Macy’s organization displays an adversarial relationship between workers and managers and that Target is infused with a "teamwork" message that enfolds both parties. Macy’s workers identify more with their jobs and are more opposed to management, yet Target workers show greater solidarity. Both groups, however, are largely unhappy with the pay and precariousness of their jobs. Combined with workplace-generated feelings of unity and resistance, these grievances provide promising inroads to organizing that could help take the struggle against inequality beyond symbolic action to real economic power.