The volume focuses on processes of transformation in the retail business in several European countries mainly during the second half of the 20th Century. After World War II, structures, practices and the culture of retailing in most West European countries went through a period of rapid change. The post-war economic boom, the emergence of a mass consumer society, and the adaptation of innovations which already had been implemented in the USA during the interwar period, revolutionized the world of getting and spending.

Contents: Introduction: transformations of retailing in Europe after 1945, Ralph Jessen and Lydia Langer; Consumer society revisited: affluence, choice and diversity, Frank Trentmann; Part I Americanization of Retailing? The Introduction of Self-Service: The coming of the supermarket: the processes and consequences of transplanting American know-how into Britain, Gareth Shaw, Adrian Bailey, Andrew Alexander, Dawn Nell and Jane Hamlett; The long way to the supermarket: entrepreneurial innovation and adaptation in 1950s-1960s Italy, Emanuela Scarpellini; How West German retailers learned to sell to a mass consumer society: self-service and supermarkets between 'Americanization' and 'Europeanization', 1950s-1960s, Lydia Langer; Beyond self-service: the limits of 'Americanization' in post-war West German retailing in comparative perspective, Jan Logemann. Part II New and Old Places of Consumption: Automatic trade: self-service and the polycentric early history of slot machines, Angelika Epple; Mail order retailing in Britain since 1945: credit community and technology, Richard Coopey; What sex are sex shops? The retailing of erotica in West Germany before the legalization of pornography, Elizabeth Heinemann; 'Everything that exists in capitalism can be found in the department store': the development of department stores in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949-2000, Ralf Banken. Part III Scientific Knowledge, Technical Innovations and the Retail Trade: Managing the unmanageable: the professionalization of market and consumer research in post-war Europe, Stefan Schwarzkopf; Irradiating fish - improving food chains. Retailers as mediators in a German innovation network? 1968-1977, Karin Zachmann; Cool alliances: freezers, frozen fish and the shaping of industry-retail relations in Norway, 1950-1960, Terje Finstad; The barcode revolution in German food retailing, Annika Menke; Index.