Michaela Beranová

Faculty of Business and Management

Brno University of Technology

SMALL-SCALE RETAIL IN CZECH REPUBLIC FROM THE CUSTOMER´S PERSPECTIVE

Czech Republic

E-mail: beranova@fbm.vutbr.cz

ABSTRACT. Customers´ position towards a retail outlet is essential to life for this shop in the view of its competitiveness. Namely it is only a customer who points out in what type of retail outlet he (or she) will realize his (her) purchases and what sort of purchases.

The environmental development in the 90´s of the 20th century meant a number of changes for post-communist countries. Formerly closed economies were opened and foreign companies have been allowed to penetrate territorial markets. In the concrete for the branch of retail business, this opening of markets has meant an incidence of trans-national retail giant companies and their super and hyper markets. Till this time, customers were accustomed to smaller shops of very limited supply of goods. This fact has caused, among others, the change of customers´ position towards shopping and the change of their shopping behaviours that have very sensible affected the competitiveness of small-scale retailers.

In my work then I deal with the competitiveness of small-scale retail of the type of grocery, general goods, because especially these retail outlets, so called “retail outlets of village type”, have suffered the greatest injuries because of super and hyper markets´ arrival.

For a relevant assessment of competitiveness of this type of shops is necessary to identify many causing factors and to determine their weight significances. So it is impossible to exclude the factor of customers.

In the article, there are introduced partial findings of my research on which basis is constructed the initial background for my next work and its outcomes.

Received: July, 2011

1st Revision: September, 2011

Accepted: October, 2011

JEL Classification: L81, P2

Keywords: competitiveness, customer, retail outlet, small-scale retail.