In the smaller companies, the complexities of the trade, especially the art and science of merchandising, are learned solely by rotation through one department after another. This direct experience method is often supplemented by talks from heads of departments.
In the larger companies specialized courses cover every phase of the retail field, and often require half the work to be done on the student's own time. The training aimed at developing a buyer's sense of merchandising hard though it may be, qualifies a program graduate to enter any aspect of the retail trade, and advance with rapidity unknown in other fields of business.
Opening in personnel, control, finance, management, and advertising are filled from the same training group that supplies a store with its assistant buyers, depending on individual talents.
Of course the problem facing the man about to enter the retail field, whether to stake his chips with a large or small firm, with a single store or with a chain cannot be answered.
The battle between the single store and the chain store has been in progress ever since the close of the Civil War, when the chains first began t spread out over the country.
Until recently the mortality rate among independents has been high, yet the cause of the rate has largely been poor management. Independents still do over half of all retail business, and can usually truthfully claim to give customers more individual, personal service than can the chains. Individual stores tend to foster higher employee morale and greater interest in the welfare of the company. In certain states, chain stores operation has been the target of high taxation by legislatures.
Yet, through standardized methods of operation, efficient management, scientific location, and the advantages gained through quantitative buying, the chains have taken almost half the total sales volume away from the independents. But the necessity for standardization in the chain store will prevent it from ever eliminating the small merchant with his personal contacts with the customers.
The advantage is with the chains, and large independents in attracting college graduates into the field, yet the dominating attraction of the retail trade can be found in any part of the tremendous field, from the grocery to the specialty store to the department stores.
The appeal of the field is in its infinite variety of problems. Retailing stretches from baby pins to refridgerators from bathing caps to water sprinklers. It involves all kinds of humanity; it faces all kinds of problems. It is a dynamic proposition.