ABSTRACT
Over the past twenty years, there has been a profound restructuring of the British retailing industry. This is particularly clear in the case of grocery retailing, where major retailing corporations (Sainsbury, Tesco, Asda, the Dee Corporation, the Argyll Group, etc.) have emerged and have expanded spectacularly so that they now dominate the market. For example, by 1984 the five corporations listed above had built up a combined market share of 43 per cent of UK grocery sales, compared to just 21 per cent for all UK independent grocers taken together. The large profits (e.g. £208 million in 1985-6 by Sainsbury - the sixth year on the run in which Sainsbury's profits had increased by more than 20 per cent) and huge positive net cash flows generated by these corporations, even in periods of economic recession, have financed major investment programmes, and there is scarcely a city or major town in Britain whose retail structure has not been transformed by the building of new superstores. This in turn, has had significant consequences for a number of traditional elements within the retail structure (independent retailers, cooperative stores, city-centre retailing areas, etc.) and for typical patterns of shopping behaviour for a large proportion of the population of Britain.
