Kenneth E. Stone

RURAL RETAIL BUSINESS SURVIVAL: IMPLICATIONS FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPERS

The loss of retail businesses and sales in rural areas has been accelerating for many years. This study was conducted in 37 rural communities in Indiana, Iowa, and North Dakota that appeared to have better-than-average retail sales. The purpose of the study was to identify strategies, if any, that were employed by communities and individual businesses which contributed to viable retail districts. This study suggests several possible actions for community development practitioners involved in efforts to improve and sustain rural retail business communities. These actions include: the need to assist rural communities build a more diversified economic base, provide business management training and technical assistance, establish mechanisms to transfer established business operations to new owners, develop financing mechanisms for new or aspiring businesses, and assist rural communities to deal with change and plan for their futures.

The Measurement of a Community's Retail Market

Methods of assessing the market population serviced by a communitys retail sector are described and empirically compared. The more popular method derived from Reillys Law is used to compute market populations for fifty-seven Maine communities. The method of trade area analysis is also used to estimate market populations for the same communities. The results suggest that, on average, the two methods of determining market population are statistically equivalent. Reillys method, however, computed larger market populations for smaller communities than did the trade area analysis method.

Revisiting WalMart’s Impact on Iowa Small-Town Retail: 25 Years Later

Ken Stone conducted the first study of WalMart stores’ economic impact in Iowa in 1988. Since then, research on WalMart’s impacts has exploded. Recent studies employ sophisticated statistical techniques to more accurately measure the size and direction of effects. Many reach conclusions similar to Stone’s original work. This article updates the original Stone study with additional years of data. It draws on recent methodological advances to help account for the effects of WalMart’s strategic location decisions on estimated retail sales in Iowa. As is consistent with previous studies, we find that WalMart’s entry into smaller trade centers in Iowa had a big initial impact on host-town retail sales, with some categories experiencing significant increases while others saw declines in sales per capita. WalMart’s presence helped stabilize or even expand the local retail sector of most rural Iowa host communities. To conclude, we discuss policy implications for local economic development officials.

Agribusiness Management and Food Marketing: Discussion

The paper by Litzenberg, Gorman, and Schneider addresses a topic of growing concern to many in our profession. The crux of the problem is whether agricultural economics departments are adequately training students to effectively enter the world of agribusiness. In other words, are the departments meeting the wants and needs of one of their primary customers? Business firms that do not meet the wants and needs of their customers will