INDEPENDENT RETAIL TRADE AS PUBLIC SERVICE?
INDEPENDENT RETAIL TRADE AS PUBLIC SERVICE?

Summary/Abstract: Despite the fact that Slovak people increasingly often spend their money in small grocery shops small-scale independent retailers vanish. Under small self-standing traders, we understand retailers with shops that are not a part of any trade net with the size up to 400 square meters. In the Czech Republic, the situation with not large independent retailers in the rural area is so critical that in the endeavour to prevent a significant deterioration of quality of life for hundreds of thousands of its citizens, the state considers grants for local shops. Independent stores co-create the retail net in Slovakia mainly in smaller towns and in the countryside. In smaller cities, they often compete for the favour of their customers with Asian shopkeepers who have gradually moved with their cheap assortments from stalls and marketplaces into physical shops in the city centres. In the rural area, this phenomenon does not seem to be present. In the first chapter, we present the basic theoretical background to retailing and the main marketing decisions of retailers. In the second chapter, we deal with the investigation of customers of small self-standing retailers and the structure of their marketing mix. In the third chapter, being inspired by the prognoses of experts from retail practice, we discuss the future of small independent retail traders in smaller Slovak towns and in the rural area.

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