Department Stores

Department stores can be characterized as innovative forms of retailing established in the nineteenth century. The basic business idea was to sell a broad range of goods with low profit margins and high turnover in purposely built multistory buildings. Goods were displayed and sold for fixed and ticketed prices, as opposed to the traditional practice of bargaining and selling from behind the counter. Whereas, in older shops, entry implied an obligation of purchase, department stores invited the public to look around regardless of the intention of buying.

The classic department stores of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been extensively studied beyond the field of business history and became a kind of historical laboratory for the analysis of the early consumer society. The stores came to symbolize the beginnings of modern consumer culture with its ethos of self-indulgence, dreamlike aesthetics, and elaborate commodity displays, changing gender relations and blurring class hierarchies. Moreover, the monumental architecture of these stores illustrated the rapid transformation of urban environments.

Historians describe the Parisian grands magasins of the mid-nineteenth century, especially the Bon Marché and the Magasin du Louvre, as the first department stores. Both were founded in the 1850s and expanded in earnest from the late 1860s. Other stores and other cities followed, and by 1900, monumental buildings were raised in the largest cities of Europe, the United States, Japan, and Australia. While dry goods, accessories, and clothes, both ready-to-wear and couture, often dominated in the European stores, the American department stores, such as Wanamaker's, Marshall Field, or Macy's, offered a complete range of goods including food, furniture, vehicles, and even pets. Also, customer service developed considerably in the United States. Returns, refunds, professionally administrated credit, and store cards were introduced. In 1909, American businessman Gordon Selfridge launched the concept of the “American department store” in Europe by building his store in London. By this time, the largest stores both in Europe and [Page 436]in the United States had grown into huge enterprises occupying entire blocks in the city centers and providing work for up to ten thousand employees. The uniformed sales staff was educated in sales techniques and represented the cultivated image of the store.

Although every store has its own history, the developments of department stores around the world were similar to each other as transnational contacts between the companies frequently occurred.