High street retail oligopoly
We've written before about how McDonalds, the Gap, Starbucks, et al. have altered the geography of the US street, where they have increasingly taken over the best locations from locally-owned businesses and where every sign becomes an advertisement for a multinational firm. As we've noted before, Europe and other countries have been a little behind in this phenomenon, but every sign is that they are catching up fast.
See, for example, a recent Guardian article called "Retail chains 'cloning' UK towns: Global brands are swamping the individuality of the high streets" (6/6/05). The title tells it all. The article cites a report from the New Economics Foundation makes that claim, based on a survey of British towns.
The report
found 42 of the 103 towns it surveyed in England, Scotland and Wales had become clones, with few local businesses supplied from the surrounding area and a diminished range of specialist outlets. In these towns, independent butchers, greengrocers, pet shops and dry cleaners had been driven out by national supermarket retailers, fast food chains, mobile phone shops and global fashion outlets.
Towns were scaled based on the number of independent outlets and range of specialist shops. The worst, Exeter, scored around 7 points of a possible 60. The chains range from national British-only companies to big multinationals like the aforementioned Gap and Starbucks. In many instances, city and town governments actively aided the chains by changing zoning policies to help them dominate the high streets,
The article quotes foundation policy director Andrew Simms as saying: "Clone stores have a triple whammy on communities. They bleed the local economy of money, destroy the social glue provided by real local shops and steal the identity of our towns and cities. Then we are left with soulless clone towns….Local people might be excited at first by the arrival of US retailers such as Gap and Starbucks. But they soon tired of 'Latte-chino blandness'."
One the big chains win out, there is no going back to the old town geography. Big chains may lose out, but it is usually to even bigger stores. Undercapitalized shops hare hidden away in side streets, if they can persist at all. And as the local merchant class disappears, there is no one left to defend policies of diversification and local ownership.
