Queuing as a Changing Shopper Experience: The Case of Grocery Shopping in Britain 1945-1975

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Cambridge University Press via the DOI in this record.Queues are part of everyday routine and experienced by most shoppers, yet little attention has been given to providing historical accounts of queuing as a consumer task or as a shopper experience. This paper examines grocery shop queues and the changing experience of shoppers in historical perspective, specifically focusing upon the shift from counter service to self-service grocery formats in Britain from 1945-1975. The paper draws upon a wide range of material utilising evidence from oral histories and witness groups, which are supported by contemporary sources from Mass Observation, newspapers, shopper surveys, trade publications and reports. The conceptual framework developed in the paper explores the public and private dimensions of queues to consider the experiences and perceptions of shoppers during a period of rapid change in the retail grocery system. More generally the paper contributes to our understanding of how management innovations are connected to untraded public values.This article is based upon research undertaken as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project 'Reconstructing Consumer Landscapes: Shopper Reactions to the Supermarket in Early Post-War England'