ABSTRACT
On Thanksgiving Day each year New York City plays host to the colourful and elaborate Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The parade through the streets of Manhattan is one of the most important events in the city’s calendar; dating from 1924, it remains a symbol of the wider role of the department store as an institution at the heart of New York urban life and aims to create an almost emotional bond between the store and its customers. Despite its bankruptcy in 1991, and its subsequent incorporation as merely one of several divisions of the giant Federated Department Stores (see Chapter 2), Macy’s — as New York City’s and the world’s largest department store — retains a certain aura and a unique place in the hearts and minds of consumers in New York and beyond.
