Exploring the origin of retail stores in Europe: Evidence from Southern Italy from the 6th century BCE to the 3rd century BCE

Retail literature reports considerable research on the role that technology has played in retailing as an enabler of change, with emphasis on the shifting of power from retailers to consumers. While scholarly attention has been paid mainly to investigating the current scenario in order to predict future trends and preview retail settings for the coming years, the origins of the retail process, in terms of physical space for selling activities and history of retailing as discipline of business history, is less investigated. Using qualitative data gathered through historical documents and archaeological findings, the present study goes back beyond modern retail settings to explore the origins of points of sales as early as the Magna Graecia period (600 BCE – 300 BCE). Such historical analysis not only offers an insight into the origin of the modern retailing, but also cast broader questions about the degree to which historical interpretations of the growth of retailing have been evolved, by emphasising that after 2000 years, there are still similarities. To the authors’ knowledge, this current study is the first to extend the baseline for such an understanding back a further millennium or so.