The Making of the Modern Supermarket : Self-service adoption in British food retailing, 1950-1975

The Making of the Modern Supermarket describes the emergence and growth of the modern supermarket format in Britain, showing how the original American innovation of self-service was adapted to the different postwar British context in a number of ways.During the early 1960s various retailers began to experiment with larger formats, which became known as supermarkets.Sainsbury's was a late mover into self-service, but began to develop a different supermarket model, emphasising fresh foods and perishable goods.This led it to pursue a more expensive path of development as it invested in self-service, creating its novel supermarket format by the end of the 1960s.The book explores in detail how this Sainsbury's format evolved.It was driven by the company's historic commitment to selling fresh meat and other perishable goods, which demanded a much greater commitment to refrigeration in Sainsbury's self-service format than was the case for its peers. Because most consumers were suspicious of b