Introduction to Business covers the scope and sequence of most introductory business courses. The book provides detailed explanations in the context of core themes such as customer satisfaction, ethics, entrepreneurship, global business, and managing change. Introduction to Business includes hundreds of current business examples from a range of industries and geographic locations, which feature a variety of individuals. The outcome is a balanced approach to the theory and application of business concepts, with attention to the knowledge and skills necessary for student success in this course and beyond.

The economic, social and environmental implications of recent changes in retailing constitute significant contemporary issues, which are the focus of this timely book. Retail change deals with the internationalization of retailing, the development of shopping centres in the city and at suburban sites, and the growth of leisure shopping. It provides an up-to-date review of the central questions faced by undergraduate students in planning, business studies and geography. The retail environment of developed economies has undergone revolutionary change since the 1970s, and the process is far from over. In the book the major elements central to contemporary retail change are developed across the whole spectrum of spatial scales relevant to present-day society. The first part adopts an economic perspective and focuses on the process of business concentration and its increasingly international orientation. This is followed by analyses of change in the urban region, concentrating on the emergence of the great variety of new retail forms associated with retail decentralization. The planning implications of retail change are developed in the third part. The future of the city-centre and other traditional shopping centres is examined in the light of challenges presented by new facilities. Alternative future scenarios contingent upon laisser-faire or interventionist government policy controls are also discussed. The social implications of retail change are developed in the final section. All students and researchers concerned with the evolution and development of the retail sector of advanced economies will welcome this book as an authoritative source of contemporary findings and commentary. Rosemary D. Bromley and Colin J. Thomas are Lecturers in Geography at the University College of Swansea, Wales.. This book is intended for undergraduate students taking courses in economic geography and retailing in departments of geography, business studies, planning, etc.

Big Box USA presents a new look at how the big box retail store has dramatically reshaped the US economy and its ecosystems in the last half century. From the rural South to the frigid North, from inside stores to ecologies far beyond, this book examines the relationships that make up one of the most visible features of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century American life. The rise of big box retail since the 1960s has transformed environments on both local and global scales. Almost everyone has explored the aisles of big box stores. The allure of “everyday low prices” and brightly colored products of every kind connect shoppers with a global marketplace. Contributors join a growing conversation between business and environmental history, addressing the ways American retail institutions have affected physical and cultural ecologies around the world. Essays on Walmart, Target, Cabela’s, REI, and Bass Pro Shops assess the “bigness” of these superstores from “smokestacks to coat racks” and contend that their ecological impacts are not limited to the footprints of parking lots and manufacturing but also play a didactic role in educating consumers about their relationships with the environment. A model for historians seeking to bring business and environmental histories together in their analyses of merchant capital’s role in the landscapes of everyday life and how it has remade human relationships with nature, Big Box USA is a must-read for students and scholars of the environment, business, sustainability, retail professionals, and a general audience.