Chain Store
Chain stores are retail outlets that share a brand and central management, and usually have standardized business methods and practices. Before considered a chain, stores must meet a litmus test, it must have more than 10 units under the same brand and have a central headquarters, otherwise it offers franchise contracts or is publicly traded.These characteristics also apply to chain restaurants and some service-oriented chain businesses. In retail, dining and many service categories, chain businesses have come to dominate the market in many parts of the world. A franchise retail establishment is one form of chain store.
The displacement of independent businesses by chains has generated controversy and sparked increased collaboration among independent businesses and communities to prevent chain proliferation. These efforts include community-based organizing through Independent Business Alliances (in the U.S. and Canada) and "buy local" campaigns. In the U.S., trade groups such as the American Booksellers Association and American Specialty Toy Retailers do national promotion and advocacy. NGOs like the New Rules Project and New Economics Foundation provide research and tools for pro-independent business education and policy while the American Independent Business Alliance provides direct assistance for community-level organizing.
In 2004, the world's largest retail chain, Wal-Mart, became the world's largest corporation based on gross sales.
Read more about Chain Store: History, Restaurant Chains, Regulation and Exclusion
Famous quotes containing the words chain store, chain and/or store:
“The name of the town isn’t important. It’s the one that’s just twenty-eight minutes from the big city. Twenty-three if you catch the morning express. It’s on a river and it’s got houses and stores and churches. And a main street. Nothing fancy like Broadway or Market, just plain Broadway. Drug, dry good, shoes. Those horrible little chain stores that breed like rabbits.”
—Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993)
“The conclusion suggested by these arguments might be called the paradox of theorizing. It asserts that if the terms and the general principles of a scientific theory serve their purpose, i. e., if they establish the definite connections among observable phenomena, then they can be dispensed with since any chain of laws and interpretive statements establishing such a connection should then be replaceable by a law which directly links observational antecedents to observational consequents.”
—C.G. (Carl Gustav)
“I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides
and I know at the news of your death,
a terrible taste for it, like salt.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)