Globalising Retail Seminar

Globalizing Retail Seminar, University of Surrey UK, 17 - 18 July 2006

The aim of this seminar was to document and debate the rise of transnational retailing since the mid 1990s and to assess its broader impacts on global and local supply chains, on labour standards, on the nature of consumer society in emerging markets, and so on. Consideration of the organizational characteristics of the emerging retail transnational corporations (TNCs), the challenges these firms face in operating across national and institutional divides, and the developmental impacts of retail TNCs on host economies in emerging markets, raises and illuminates a number of important conceptual debates of interest to a range of social science disciplines.

The Globalizing Retail Seminar presentations are available for download

Thinking Through Transnational Retail

John Dawson (Edinburgh/Stirling)
‘Retailer internationalisation: What is being internationalised?'

 Neil Coe (Manchester) and Neil Wrigley (Southampton)
‘Host economy impacts of transnational retail: the research agenda'

Operating across institutional/national divides

Susan Christopherson (Cornell, USA)
‘Neither Global Nor Standard - Corporate strategies in the new era of labor standards'

 Mark Palmer (Aston) and Paula O'Kane (Ulster)
‘Learning and adaptation in retail TNC strategizing'

 Steve Burt (Stirling) and John Dawson (Edinburgh/Stirling)
‘International retail divestment'

 Yuko Aoyama (Clark, USA)
‘Why foreign retailers fail? Carrefour and Wal-Mart in Japan'
Discussant: Florence Palpacuer (Montpellier, France)

Global supply chains, market governance, and ethical trade

Nebahat Tokatli (New School, New York)
‘Global sourcing: insights from the global clothing industry - the case of Zara'

Alex Hughes, Martin Buttle (Newcastle) and Neil Wrigley (Southampton)
‘Organizational geographies of corporate responsibility: a UK-US comparison
of retailers' ethical trading initiatives'

Bill Vorley (Int. Inst. for Envir & Dev)
‘Transnational retail, market structure and governance: the policy challenges'

Keynote paper: Globalizing retail and emerging markets
 Thomas Reardon (Michigan State, USA)
‘"Proactive Fast-Tracking" Spatial Diffusion of Supermarkets in Developing Countries: Implications for Food Trade and Standards'

Globalizing retail: The case of China

Shuguang Wang (Ryerson, Canada)
‘The Role of Overseas Capital in Shopping Centre Development in Shanghai,
China'

 Arieh Goldman (Hebrew Univ) & Wilfred Vanhonacker (HKUST, Hong Kong)
‘The food retail system in China: Strategic dilemmas and lessons for retail
internationalization/modernism''

 Steve Arnold (Queens, Canada)
‘Wal-Mart in China'
Discussant: Julian Frost (BDO Stoy Hayward)

Globalizing retail: What can be learned from fashion retail

Christopher Moore (Glasgow Caledonian)
‘Luxury Places and Spaces - The role of the flagship store in the
internationalisation of luxury fashion retailing'