ABSTRACT
Inevitably in a book of this kind there will be important aspects of the subject that are given only scant attention or passing reference. The topics selected here are those which have been most fully reported in the geographical rather than marketing literature and which have particular interest or significance from the spatial point of view. Topics which regrettably have had to be neglected include: the patterns of movement in the physical distribution of goods from producers to retail and service outlets; areal differences in the trading policies and organisational structure of firms; the layout of individual business establishments and the circulation of consumers inside them; the special problems involved in the accessibility of shops, particularly in terms of the delivery of goods and consumer use of car parks and bus-stops. The whole field of wholesaling and related commercial service activities has had to be virtually eliminated from the book; and international comparisons in the field of retailing have had to be restricted to North America and Western Europe. There is also the problem in this type of book that much of the statistical data that are presented become changed or outdated by the time of publication. The book pre-empts the final tabulations of the 1971 Census of Distribution which had still not appeared by the end of 1974.
