"Johnson astutely reveals that franchises are not Borg-like assimilation machines, but, rather, complicated ecosystems within which creative workers strive to create compelling 'shared worlds.' This ...finely researched, breakthrough book is a must-read for anyone seeking a sophisticated understanding of the contemporary media industry." - Heather Hendershot, author ofWhat's Fair on the Air?: Cold War Right-Wing Broadcasting and the Public Interest While immediately recognizable throughout the U.S. and many other countries, media mainstays like X-Men, Star Trek, and Transformers achieved such familiarity through constant reincarnation. In each case, the initial success of a single product led to a long-term embrace of media franchising - a dynamic process in which media workers from different industrial positions shared in and reproduced familiar cultureacross television, film, comics, games, and merchandising. InMedia Franchising, Derek Johnson examines the corporate culture behind these production practices, as well as the collaborative and creative efforts involved in conceiving, sustaining, and sharing intellectual properties in media work worlds. Challengingconnotations of homogeneity, Johnson shows how the cultural and industrial logic of franchising has encouraged media industries to reimagine creativity as an opportunity for exchange among producers, licensees, and evenconsumers. Drawing on case studies and interviews with media producers, he reveals the meaningful identities, cultural hierarchies, and struggles for distinction that accompany collaboration within these production networks.Media Franchisingprovides a nuanced portrait of the collaborative cultural production embedded in both the media industries and our own daily lives.
Marjorie L. Hilton presents a captivating history of consumer culture in Russia from the 1880s to the early 1930s. She highlights the critical role of consumerism as a vehicle for shaping class and ...gender identities, modernity, urbanism, and as a mechanism of state power in the transition from tsarist autocracy to Soviet socialism.Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russia witnessed a rise in mass production, consumer goods, advertising, and new retail venues such as arcades and department stores. These mirrored similar developments in other European countries and reflected a growing quest for leisure activities, luxuries, and a modern lifestyle. As Hilton reveals, retail commerce played a major role in developing Russian public culture-it affected celebrations of religious holidays, engaged diverse groups of individuals, defined behaviors and rituals of city life, inspired new interpretations of masculinity and femininity, and became a visible symbol of state influence and provision.Through monarchies, revolution, civil war, and monumental changes in the political sphere, Russia's distinctive culture of consumption was contested and recreated. Leaders of all stripes continued to look to the "commerce of exchange" as a key element in appealing to the masses, garnering political support, and promoting a modern nation.Hilton follows the evolution of retailing and retailers alike, from crude outdoor stalls to elite establishments; through the competition of private versus state-run stores during the NEP; and finally to a system of total state control, indifferent workers, rationing, and shortages under a consolidating Stalinist state.
Retail has never existed in a vacuum. This interdisciplinary volume explores how English commercial, co-operative and charity retailing were shaped by and in turn influenced their social and ...political environments, from the local to the global, between the late nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries. Historians, sociologists, archivists and heritage professionals engage with current debates on the rise of modern business and the decline of the high street, class and credit, professionalisation in the voluntary sector, migration and the end of empire. This book will be a key resource to better understand retail and community in an era defined by social change, shedding new light on the enduring centrality of community relationships to modern retailers.
Style and Statistics Bullard, Brittany
2016, 2016-11-22, 2016-11-30, 2017.
eBook
A non-technical guide to leveraging retail analytics for personal and competitive advantage Style & Statistics is a real-world guide to analytics in retail. Written specifically for the non-IT crowd, ...this book explains analytics in an approachable, understandable way, and provides examples of direct application to retail merchandise management, marketing, and operations. The discussion covers current industry trends and emerging-standard processes, and illustrates how analytics is providing new solutions to perennial retail problems. You'll learn how to leverage the benefits of analytics to boost your personal career, and how to interpret data in a way that's useful to the average end business user or shopper. Key concepts are detailed in easy-to- understand language, and numerous examples highlight the growing importance of understanding analytics in the retail environment. The power of analytics has become apparent across industries, but it's left an especially indelible mark on retail. It's a complex topic, but you don't need to be a data scientist to take advantage of the opportunities it brings. This book shows you what you need to know, and how to put analytics to work with retail-specific applications. * Learn how analytics can help you be better at your job * Dig deeper into the customer's needs, wants, and dreams * Streamline merchandise management, pricing, marketing, and more * Find solutions for inefficiencies and inaccuracies As the retail customer evolves, so must the retail industry. The retail landscape not only includes in-store but also website, mobile site, mobile apps, and social media. With more and more competition emerging on all sides, retailers need to use every tool at their disposal to create value and gain a competitive advantage. Analytics offers a number of ways to make your company stand out, whether it's through improved operations, customer experience, or any of the other myriad factors that build a great place to shop. Style & Statistics provides an analytics primer with a practical bent, specifically for the retail industry.
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. InHard 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.
The book includes new theory, original empirical evidence, and applied case studies synthesizing advances in innovation and technology for the retail sector. Chapters identify the challenges ...retailers face in response to new practices, suggesting how the sector can respond to technological developments, ethical considerations and privacy issues.
The inside scoop on boosting sales through spot-on analytics Retailers collect a huge amount of data, but don't know what to do with it. Retail Analytics not only provides a broad understanding of ...retail, but also shows how to put accumulated data to optimal use. Each chapter covers a different focus of the retail environment, from retail basics and organization structures to common retail database designs. Packed with case studies and examples, this book insightfully reveals how you can begin using your business data as a strategic advantage. Helps retailers and analysts to use analytics to sell more merchandise Provides fact-based analytic strategies that can be replicated with the same success the author achieved on a global level Reveals how retailers can begin using their data as a strategic advantage Includes examples from many retail departments illustrating successful use of data and analytics Analytics is the wave of the future. Put your data to strategic use with the proven guidance found in Retail Analytics.
We study the cyclical properties of sales, regular price changes, and average prices paid by consumers ("effective" prices) using data on prices and quantities sold for numerous retailers across many ...US metropolitan areas. Inflation in the effective prices paid by consumers declines significantly with higher unemployment while little change occurs in the inflation rate of prices posted by retailers. This difference reflects the reallocation of household expenditures across retailers, a feature of the data which we document and quantify, rather than sales. We propose a simple model with household store-switching and assess its implications for business cycles and policymakers.
The article deals with a overview of various theories and studies examining the concepts of partnerships, relationships and strategic alliances. We present various perspectives and theories dealing ...with these concepts, in connection and interdependence with the supply chain and the supply chain management. In conclusion, we try to establish a model to become the basis for our further study of strategic alliances and their strengths.
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