nickshanagher

My local council, South Oxfordshire, asked me to complete a survey on Sunday trading as a local resident. The deadline is next week. The first question was about the current arrangements and what I thought. There were five options: large shops shouldn’t open six hours is already too long current restrictions are about right large shops should be allowed open for longer no restrictions. My answer was the current restrictions are about right. The next question was about what would happen if the council allowed large stores to open for longer. The menu included 10 options and a space for other. The options were that it would: encourage me to shop more in my local town give me more flexibility impact on my religious or cultural beliefs have a positive impact on my business have a negative impact on my business increase footfall to my business reduce footfall to my business provide more employment opportunities open to me in the local area mean that I need to...

“Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push – in just the right place – it can be tipped,” writes Malcolm Gladwell at the end of his breakthrough book, The Tipping Point . It is a great read for retailers who puzzle why their shoppers do one thing and politicians do another. Or why some marketing sticks and some sure fire products stall. Gladwell is a journalist who tells great stories. In this book he talks about the success of Airwalk when the west coast US footwear maker rose from sales of $16 m in 1993 to $175m in 1997. And then bombed… What went wrong? Gladwell interviewed former president Lee Smith. Airwalk made a critical mistake, he said. “We had a segmentation strategy where the small core skate shops – the 300 boutiques around the country who really created us – had a certain product line that was exclusive to them...” And then they stopped doing that… Smith was asked by his category manager what h...