This study focuses on the embryonic stages of the COVID‐19 pandemic in China, where most people affected opted to abide by the Chinese government’s national self‐quarantine campaign. This resulted in major disruptions to one of the most common market processes in retail: food retailing. The research adopts the theory of planned behaviour to provide early empirical insights into changes in consumer behaviour related to food purchases during the initial stages of the COVID‐19 outbreak in China. Data from the online survey carried out suggest that the outbreak triggered considerable levels of switching behaviours among customers, with farmers’ markets losing most of their customers, while local small independent retailers experienced the highest levels of resilience in terms of customer retention. This study suggests avenues for further scholarly research and policy making related to the impact this behaviour may be having around the world on society’s more vulnerable groups, particularly the elderly.

This paper complements the preceding one by Clarke et al (2004a) which looked at the long-term impact of retail restructuring on consumer choice at the local level. While the previous paper was based on quantitative evidence from survey research, this paper draws on the qualitative phases of the same three-year study, aiming to understand how the changing forms of retail provision are experienced at the neighbourhood level within selected households. The empirical material is drawn from focus groups, accompanied shopping trips, diaries, interviews and kitchen visits with eight households in two contrasting neighbourhoods in the Portsmouth area. The data demonstrate that consumer choice involves judgements of taste, quality and value as well as more 'objective' questions of convenience, price and accessibility. These judgements are related to households' differential levels of cultural capital and involve ethical and moral considerations as well as more mundane considerations of practical utility. Our evidence suggests that many of the terms that are conventionally advanced as explanations of consumer choice (such as 'convenience', 'value' and 'habit') have very different meanings according to different household circumstances. To understand these meanings requires us to relate consumers' at-store behaviour to the domestic context in which their consumption choices are embedded. Our research demonstrates that consumer choice between stores can be understood in terms of accessibility and convenience, while choice within stores involves notions of value, price and quality. We conclude that choice between and within stores is strongly mediated by consumers' household context reflecting the extent to which shopping practices are embedded within consumers' domestic routines and complex everyday lives.

The globalization of fashion brands has occurred as major fashion designer houses have expanded their product ranges and diversified into middle‐market diffusion lines. Central London has been the target for some of this development activity in the 1990s. Charts the growth of designer outlets in the UK capital with particular attention to foreign companies and their market‐entry strategies.

Over the last two decades, fundamental changes have taken place in the global supply and local structure of provision of British food retailing. Consumer lifestyles have also changed markedly. Despite some important studies of local interactions between new retail developments and consumers, this paper argues that there is a critical need to gauge the cumulative effects of these changes on consumer behaviour over longer periods. In this, the first of two papers, we present the main findings of a study of the effects of long-term retail change on consumers at the local level. The paper provides an overview of the changing geography of retail provision and patterns of consumption at the local level. It contextualises the Portsmouth study area as a locality that typifies national changes in retail provision and consumer lifestyles; outlines the main findings of two large-scale surveys of food shopping behaviour carried out in 1980 and 2002; and reveals the impacts of retail restructuring on consumer behaviour. Despite significant retail restructuring, the research reveals a surprising degree of behavioural inertia; it also underlines the strengths and limitations of survey research in understanding this phenomenon. The paper ends by problematising our understanding of how consumers experience choice at the local level, emphasising the need for qualitative research-the topic of our complementary second paper.

Drawing on practice theory, this paper develops an understanding of the interrelationships between where and when consumers shop (the internet, stores, and their preferred retailers), and what they purchase (via the internet and in-store). Ethnographic case studies are presented of two consumers' internet and store-based shopping practices and how these intersect with their everyday lives, using data generated from multiple, complementary methods over an eighteen-month period. To this end, the paper contributes to the extant internet grocery shopping literature by offering a wider understanding of internet usage, as well as to broader debates surrounding retail change and shopping practices. The managerial implications of internet shopping on the contemporary retail grocery environment are also described and discussed.