Competing in Tough Times: Business Lessons from L.L.Bean, Trader Joe’s, Costco, and Other World-Class Retailers

Preface

Competing in Tough Times: Business Lessons from L.L.Bean, Trader Joe’s, Costco, and Other World-Class Retailers is the result of a two-year-long project. Through my experience as a professor with a special interest and expertise in retailing, as well as a marketing consultant, I carefully examined the overall strategies of 10 world-class retailers, looking for common principles that can be universally applied to other retail firms.

I started this project without any preconceived notions of what firms would comprise my list of world-class retailers, as well as what common principles these firms shared. I eventually identified 10 retailers based upon examining such key indicators of performance as sales per square foot, sales growth, ...