Small-Scale Retail Stores in Central Kyoto umder the Large-Scale Retail Store Act : A Case of Perishable Foods

As the scale of supermarkets was larger and their mechandise line was more general after late 196O's, movements of small and medium-sized retail firms against supermarkets grew more excited. The movements resulted in their protective application of the Larue-Scale Retail Store Act, the law for the purpose of adjusting businesses of larze-scale retail stores in order to secure businesses of small and medium-sized retail firms. Kyoto was called 'one of the hardest city in Japan for large-scale retail stores to open'. After describing retail policies and conflicts among different kinds of retail firms in Kyoto, this paper investigated empirically some characteristics of retail stores in which perishables were purchased by households in four districts (cencus tracts) of central Kyoto. The characteristics investigated were share of customers of each retail store based on the store patronage inquiry, and location, scale, type, and opening date of each retail store based on the retailers'directory in Kyoto and on obserbations in the fields. As a result, the author found the structure of competitions among various retail seores in central Kyoto under the Large-Scale Retail Store Act. The findings are as follows. In central Kyoto, people have patronized traditional retail markets, which are some city markets opened after late 1910's and many private markets opened from late 1940's to l960's. However, the growth of supermarkets decreases customers of traditional retail markets as well as of petty and small firms. Though central major firms located large-scale and general supermarkets in the suburbs and in the fringe of central Kyoto from late 1960's to early l97O's, some of local small and medium-sized firms have located small-scale supermarkets below the base area of the Large-Scale Retail Store Act in central Kyoto since the middle of 1970's. Small supermarkets of local small and medium-sized firms shared as many customers as traditional retail markets in 1987, when shares of each retail store were investigated. While some of small and medium-sized firms, instead of central major firms, are going to occupy an important positon in the local retail trade through the modernization of the type of retail stores under the protective applications of the Large-Scale Retail Store Act, most of petty and small firms, including petty firms which constitute traditional retail markets, are about to be forced to close their stores owing to their financial difficulties and their aging. Small firms have been definitely stratified in central Kyoto since the middle of l970's.