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- Title
Marks & Spencer and the Decline of the British Textile Industry, 1950-2000.
- Authors
Toms, Steven; Qi Zhang
- Abstract
From the end of World War II, British clothing retailers--most notably, Marks & Spencer (M&S)--increasingly dominated the domestic textile industry, to some extent arresting its decline. This article uses financial and archival evidence to examine the distribution of costs and benefits in the M&S vertical network. It shows that these benefits became less tangible for textile firms from around 1985, in the context of lower-cost overseas competition. We chart the visible and invisible evolution of network management, demonstrating that retailer-producer collaboration evolved from a bilateral vertical partnership model to a hybrid version that retained partnerships with leading suppliers and an emphasis on domestic sourcing, but also facilitated offshore production.
- Subjects
MARKS &; Spencer PLC; TEXTILE industry; FINANCIAL performance; FINANCIAL crises; INDUSTRYWIDE conditions
- Publication
Business History Review, 2016, Vol 90, Issue 1, p3
- ISSN
0007-6805
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S0007680516000027