ABSTRACT
“Seeing change: ‘the personality of a store’” discusses the defining shift from flagship stores to satellite stores. Between the pioneering suburban branch opened by Strawbridge & Clothier in 1930 and Neiman Marcus’s sister shopping mall store at Preston Center, satellite locations gave middle-class and high-class consumers alike the experience of shopping at major retail locations without having to travel into the city, where traffic and parking were sometimes more trouble than they were worth. Such developments not only softened the image of department stores as elitist establishments, but also paved the way for what was to be the next sea change in the development of merchandising: the national retailer.
