The book set looks at international sources from the 1950s to the present day to provide an outlook on retailing. This article mentions the structural spatial relationships in the spread of hypermarket and the personality of the retail store.  Stores use a multiple-item scale for measuring consumers to see what they want/prefer.  Findlay analyzes the oligopolistic behavior in the market as well as clarifying the difference between manufacturers’ brands. The role of brands in European marketing is compared to the role of brands in American marketing.  Findlay touches on some problems that stores face such as economic factors that affect the spending of consumers and their customers.  Findlay raises a question during the collect:  Are store brands perceived to be just another brand?

The topic of this book set is to understand the personality of stores and who they are trying to appeal to while taking into account economic concerns as well as the structure of the American marketing system.  They used in-depth interviews, expert knowledge, as well as public and private records to gather their data.  I think they did a good job with their research as well as comparing it to another market system.  This topic was interesting in the fact that they consider stores and the market system to have human characteristics.  I think it would be an interesting read for my classmates to see how their favorite stores prove or disprove their results.