Chain supermarket economics

Author: Wang Haiting
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-29
Features: In recent years, the fastest-growing business model has undoubtedly been chain retail, primarily in the form of chain supermarkets. Its formation and development have provided new research areas for management studies and created new experiential spaces for economics. "Necessity is the mother of invention." Chain retail emerged to meet the needs of autonomous, free, and selective economic activities. It is a win-win design created between suppliers and consumers based on mutually beneficial rules. It is a milestone invention formed through the long-term interaction of contradiction and balance between cost and utility. Behind this invention lies a wealth of economic concepts such as freedom of will, the right to choose, economies of scale, resource sharing, transaction costs, comparative advantages, opportunity costs, business tolerance, division of labor efficiency, paradox neutrality, service boundaries, institutional capacity, game rules, economic equilibrium, win-win cooperation, equivalence symmetry, game strategies, Nash equilibrium, competition and cooperation, economic justice, consumer costs, flow dynamics, allocation power, structural power, integration power, complementary power, collaborative power, openness, personalization, humanization, community orientation, standardization, transparency, and non-zero-sum thinking as well as attention economy. Regrettably, in the field of management, a significant portion of these economic concepts still remain separated from chain retail management by a high invisible barrier. Lowering this barrier and integrating economic theory with the practical experience of chain retail is precisely the purpose of this book, which is also the origin of the title "Chain Economics." It is worth noting that combining the highly enlightening economic way of thinking with the management way of thinking in business administration, and blending advanced values that are non-utilitarian yet not contradictory to organizational interests with the utilitarian values of management—these are the two key features of this book and also a pioneering attempt.