ABSTRACT
It was indicated in the Preface to this book that the fundamental aims of retail and commercial planning should be to promote efficiency in the operations of the distributive trades and ensure equitability in opportunities or resources for consumers primarily interacting with the retail sector. Ideally, this should be a dual responsibility with neither side taking precedence or priority over the other. In the past, however, the scales have been tipped in favour of safeguarding consumer interests and there is some justification, in a period of economic decline, for tilting them in the other direction. The two primary goals, nevertheless, need to be disaggregated into a number of goal elements, the most important of which are summarised in Table 4.1. There is no exact symmetry in the two sets of goal elements listed in the table, but the various interrelationships that do extend between them have conditioned the sorts of pairings we have made. It seems desirable to examine the goal elements in a paired form rather than individually for there are often inconsistencies and conflicts between them and it is
usually the need to reconcile these that ultimately leads to the imposition of planning controls or regulations over the distribution system. Arising from the general interplay between the goal elements are six main decision-making areas that provide the basis for deciding what types of general regulations to impose. These will be discussed in the second part of this section.
