SHOPPING a new feature of the retail trade is the development of the idea implied by the title, "A Shopping Week." Unless one has seen it in operation, it is rather difficult to describe what is implied in this connection. Generally speaking, it might he explained as a method of co-operative advertising to boom one district of a city against another, or one town against another, or one section of a town against any popular centre. It has largely had its in the changing conditions of the retail trade; first in the large cities, and secondly in the large trading areas in the provincial centres. large London, this idea of a co-operative enterprise has been worked by tradesmen in outlying districts to counteract the tendency of suburban dwellers to go to the West End on special shopping tours. In the provinces, shopping weeks have been organised by cities, notably Leeds, where the idea has been to focus the attention of a large area of small towns on the enterprise of Leeds retailers, with a view to securing the patronage of the smaller towns for the city of Leeds, in place of the one or two near-by shopping centres. Incidentally such a campaign as was organised at Leeds would also divert trade from the smaller boroughs which are situate round the city of Leeds within a tram or a short railway journey.
Many experiments have been tried, and the idea seems to have con siderably extended. It is being worked in the suburbs of London more freely, and has been used to revive interest in neglected shopping thorough fares in London and its district ; it is also being used to bring trade from one district of a city to another; while it is also being employed by smaller enterprising boroughs to prevent people from shopping in adjacent towns or in the next nearest city. It is a growth of the modern tendency to com petition in the retail trade, and has its outcome probably in the tendency of modern capitalism, with its increased advertising resources, to cast a wider net and take up trade from a constantly extending area. The West End traders advertise and indirectly benefit each other, so that a great section of the London population come to a recognised West End shopping thoroughfare. The bigger stores in outlying districts in self-protection have had to devise means to stop the shopping public in those districts from going to the centre. Towns outside of London, but within an easy railway journey, are now concentrating on stopping shoppers from going fiaam the outlying town either to the suburb or the West Pd. Provincial cities are aiming, first
of all, at preventing buyers from going to London, either direct or through mail-order channels, and are also concentrating on getting an increased share from the smaller towns which surround them. In self-defence the small towns are now concentrating with a view to preventing leakage of trade towards the nearest city, or to towns adjacent which are sometimes only a penny tram-fare away.
The idea of a shopping-week organisation is broadly a co-operative enterprise organised amongst traders in a section of a city or in a town, or in a district of a town, and the movement is readily understandable when one focuses this general idea of its scope in one's mind. It is simply an extension of the old trading idea, which was, by superior advertising and superior shows, to attract trade from a rival establishment. Instead of the word "establishment," locality is now meant. A bird's-eye view of the whole plan is gained by examining a characteistic experiment, and one of the most characteristic experiments was that run by the tradespeople of Leeds.
Leeds is a very thriving provincial centre, and the retail interest has a huge field in the district of Leeds itself; but there is a still more valuable field within a very short distance from the city of Leeds proper. Clustered. round Leeds are many small towns of from thirty to fifty thousand in habitants, or even more. Access to Leeds is easily gained from these towns by train, while they are also linked up with the chief city in the West Riding by tram. All these towns have their own shops and shopping centres, and the general wants of the inhabitants can be met within the towns themselves. But the inhabitants of the-:e towns are also possible supporters of enterprise in Leeds, and the shopping week devised by the Leeds tradesmen was designed to give the people in these towns the habit of shopping in Leeds thoroughfares. This habit, to a certain extent, they would already have through the ordinary influences of competitive trading, but the shopping week was a deliberate attempt to focus the attention of the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns of Leeds, and to organise in them the habit of mind of shopping in the Leeds centre.