Includes bibliographical references and index.

List of tables of figures -- Notes on the contributors -- General editor's preface -- Introduction: transformations of retailing in Europe after 1945 / Ralph Jessen and Lydia Langer -- Consumer society revisited : affluence, choice and diversity / Frank Trentmann -- 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 Hamlet -- 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 -- 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 Heineman -- "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 -- 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.

Electronic reproduction. Palo Alto, Calif. : ebrary, 2011. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ebrary affiliated libraries.