The historical evolution of the Greek retail trade: a first overview of its organisational-functional and spatial restructuring

Abstract

The history of retailing has become an area of growing scholarly interest over the last few decades, with publications mainly concerning the national historiography of retail and wholesaling. On the other hand, although the retail sector is considered to be one of the most historically significant sectors of the Greek economy, the economic history of the Greek retail industry remains a notoriously underdeveloped area of inquiry and, as such, is on the margins of economic and social studies in Greek historiography. In this paper, we, attempt to provide a first concise (and certainly not exhaustive) analysis of the historical development of the Greek retail sector from the nineteenth century to the present (in circa) day. Specifically, we aim to analyse the evolution of the Greek retail trade to assess the spatial and social impacts associated with establishing and operating "new forms" of commerce. The focus is on the sectoral and organisa-tional restructuring of the retail trade with the changes in the standards of the spatial location, which relate to the establishment and operation of retail businesses. Students and scholars of the history of retailing would benefit from this worthwhile exercise which for the first time provides a first overview of the historical development of the Greek retail sector.

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RESEARCH
Manioudisand Meramveliotakis
Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (2023) 12:73
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13731-023-00343-7
Journal of Innovation and
Entrepreneurship
The historical evolution oftheGreek
retail trade: arst overview ofits
organisational-functional andspatial
restructuring
Manolis Manioudis1 and Giorgos Meramveliotakis2*
Abstract
The history of retailing has become an area of growing scholarly interest over the last
few decades, with publications mainly concerning the national historiography of retail
and wholesaling. On the other hand, although the retail sector is considered to be one
of the most historically significant sectors of the Greek economy, the economic history
of the Greek retail industry remains a notoriously underdeveloped area of inquiry and,
as such, is on the margins of economic and social studies in Greek historiography. In
this paper, we, attempt to provide a first concise (and certainly not exhaustive) analysis
of the historical development of the Greek retail sector from the nineteenth century
to the present (in circa) day. Specifically, we aim to analyse the evolution of the Greek
retail trade to assess the spatial and social impacts associated with establishing
and operating “new forms” of commerce. The focus is on the sectoral and organisa-
tional restructuring of the retail trade with the changes in the standards of the spa-
tial location, which relate to the establishment and operation of retail businesses.
Students and scholars of the history of retailing would benefit from this worthwhile
exercise which for the first time provides a first overview of the historical development
of the Greek retail sector.
Keywords: Greek retailing, History of retailing, Organisational structure, Spatial
restructure, Small shops, Department stores, Consumption
Introduction
Historically, the retail sector developed largely in tandem with the Industrial Revolu-
tion and is most closely associated with the subsequent transition to a mass-production
economy. During the second face of the Industrial Revolution (1850–1880), mass pro-
duction of cheap goods encouraged a significant increase in consumption, paving the
way for the emergence of the retail industry. In plain terms, it was the revolution in mass
production, which created an endless stream of (relatively) cheap goods accessible to the
masses, that sparked the retail trade. is, in turn, spawned the first small, specialised
shops and then department stores.
*Correspondence:
g.meramveliotakis@nup.ac.cy
1 University of Patras, Patras,
Greece
2 Neapolis University Pafos,
Paphos, Cyprus
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e history of retailing has become an area of an increasing scholarly interest over
the last few decades (see inter alia Alexander & Akehurst, 1998; Findlay & Sparks,
2002; Deutsch, 2010; Stobart & Howard, 2018; Scott & Fridenson, 2018)with publica-
tions mainly focusing on the national historiography of retail and wholesaling (Jacques
& Sandgren, 2018). In this vein, Alexander (2010) assesses the evolution of the British
retail market during the twentieth century, while Alexander and Doherty (2022) take
an institutional view of the historical shaping of retailing in Britain. Ekberg and Jensen
(2018) analyse the development of modern retailing in Denmark and Norway from the
perspective of cooperative food retailers. Hardaker (2017) explores the evolution of the
Chinese grocery retail industry by delineating the impact of international retailers in
China over time. Meanwhile, the of retail trade in the Iberian Peninsula over the long
period from the nineteenth century to the Second World War is discussed by Alves and
Morris (2017) and Jacques (2018) examines contemporary French retail history, study-
ing both the transformation of retail structures and the evolution of government retail
policy from 1945 to 1973. Heyrman (2018) provides a detailed assessment of the role
of legislation in the evolution of the retail sector in Belgium. Hilton (2018) challenges
the idea that the history of retail development can be defined exclusively by the West-
ern experience and seeks to explain socialist forms of retail in former socialist Eastern
European countries. Yi (2015) traces the fundamentals historical characteristics of the
Korean retail trade. On the other hand, there have also been numerous studies (e.g., Bai-
ley, 2015; Crossick & Jaumain, 2019; Howard, 2021) on the historical development of
retailing in North America and Western Europe, with a focus on the development and
operation of department stores as business enterprises.
It is worth noting that although the retail sector is considered as one of the most his-
torically important sectors of the Greek economy (Balios, etal., 2015; Panigyrakis &
eodoridis, 2007), the economic history of the Greek retail sector remains a notori-
ously underdeveloped area of inquiry. is means that the study of the history of Greek
retail trade has not received much attention from economists and economic historians,
nor social scientists in general. us, there seems to be a considerable gap in the study
of the history of the Greek retail trade, which could be considered as the Cinderella of
economic and social sciences, as it is on the margins of economic and social studies
in Greek historiography. Two notable exceptions are Aranitou’s (2021) edited volume
Retailing: History, Economy and Transformations in retail trade and Chatzioannou’s
(2018) edited volume entitled Retail Stories. In the introductory chapter of the later vol-
ume the editor notes that the volume inaugurates a new and attractive field of study,
that of retailing (Chatzioannou, 2018). Additional exceptions could be considered a few
archival publications from various Greek chambers of commerce and industry (Elefthe-
riou etal. 2021); (Chatzioannou & Mavroidi, 2022; Laliouti, etal., 2017), which provide a
detailed mapping of the historical development of trade unionism, with some references
to the historical development of Greek retail.
We, therefore, attempt to provide a first concise (and certainly not exhaustive) narra-
tion of the historical development of the Greek retail sector from the nineteenth century
to the present (in circa) day. Specifically, we aim to analyse the evolution of the Greek
retailing to assess the spatial and social impacts associated with the establishment and
operation of “new forms” of commerce. e focus is on the sectoral and organisational
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restructuring of the retail trade with the changes in the standards of the spatial location,
which relate to the establishment and operation of retail businesses.
In what follows, the first section presents a brief history of the retail trade from the
end of the nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century, with the
emergence of the first small shops, especially in Athens, the country’s capital. During
the nineteenth century, as Potamianos (2017b) observes, Athens’s growth led to the
rise of consumption and caused the multiplication of retailing. is is when the retail
trade acquires its structural characteristics of small size and locality. e second section
presents the transition from small to large stores, focusing on the process of shaping
the ecosystem of supermarkets. e third section examines the transition from depart-
ment stores to shopping centres, which marks the modern economic history of retailing
and encapsulates wider changes at the level of consumption. e further development
of department stores based on investments by Greek companies (e.g., Fokas, Hondos
Center) is overshadowed by the entry of large international chains (e.g., IKEA, Zara,
Media Markt), which are undergoing a reshaping of market shares. Installing large shop-
ping centres—multi-spaces that combine entertainment with shopping (food, fun, fash-
ion)—is modifying consumer habits. Finally, some essential economic characteristics of
retailing are depicted and highlighted to identify its historical transformations through
its microeconomic variables. Last, we offer our open conclusion and guidelines for fur-
ther research.
The long nineteenth century: fromtheitinerant trade tosmall shop
e long nineteenth century here refers to the period from 1821, the year of the Great
War of Independence that led to the formation of the Greek state, to the late 1920s,
when the effects of the Asian Minor Catastrophe began to be felt so severely in Greek
society and the structure of the retail trade in particular. Borrowing the term "long nine-
teenth century" from Hobsbawm (1962), we have coined this phrase to accentuate the
distinctiveness of a historical period emblematic of the evolutionary formation of the
Greek retail sector. Specifically, it is the period of the gradual transition from the itiner-
ant trade to the establishment of the small shop.
e significant contribution of trade to the historical development of the Greek econ-
omy is well documented in numerous studies (e.g., Harlaftis, 1994; Harlaftis & Kardasis,
2000; Kardasis, 1998). Ipso facto, the historical importance of the Treaty of Kioutsouk-
Kainartzi (1774) for the flourishing of trade and the economic revival of Greece is unde-
niable. Commercial activity, extended from Alexandria to Odessa, led to a resurgence of
Greek economic activity and a profound transformation of ideas and ideology (Karda-
sis, 1998). In this context, the revolutionary character of the commercial capital for the
Greek War of Independence in 1821 is also undeniable (Mazower, 2022).
Additionally, the decline in commercial activities before the outbreak of the 1821
revolt, combined with the depreciation of the Turkish currency and the subsequent fall
in real wages, aggravated the poverty of the middle and lower classes in the Greek areas.
e next crisis in the commercial sector exacerbated the general economic crisis into
which the Greek era had been plunged. It paved the way for the culmination of revolu-
tionary perspectives. It was also for Moskof (1972, p. 105) this economic decline that “…
brings about a change in the psychology of the Greek ethnic man", that leads him/her
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to accept the ideological romanticism that flourished in Europe throughout the nine-
teenth century and politically linked to the creation of nation-states. us, the prosper-
ity of trade in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and its subsequent decline in the
first quarter of the nineteenth century are also (indirectly) related to the formation of
national consciousness in the Greek Christian region.
e Great Revolution of 1821 led to the formation of the independent Greek state,
which, through challenging conditions, attempted to integrate into the European market
throughout the nineteenth century. It was during this process that the sectoral structure
of the Greek economy began to take shape. However, inefficiencies and discontinuities,
a reflection of the underdeveloped and immature stage of the Greek social formation
characterised it.
As far as the retail trade is concerned, the sector was initially structured mainly on the
basis of the itinerant business, which accounted for the bulk of domestic consumption.
Itinerant traders supported daily consumption by supplying (primarily) necessities and
(less frequently) luxury goods. From Sombart’s (2019 [2011]) economic sociology per-
spective, the itinerant merchant of the time can be conceived as the decisive ’economic
actor’, the ’social agent’, able to foster change and transformation in Greek retailing. In
plain terms, the itinerant merchant was the social agent, who triggered the transition
from the Ottoman bazaar to the organised store, one of the most fundamental transfor-
mations in Greek economic history (Mazower, 2022). Mainly, Potamianos (2018) shows
how itinerant traders gradually became shopkeepers, thus contributing to the transfor-
mation of the retail trade from an activity of mostly travelling merchants to an organised
housed, ‘established’ business. It is in this context that the fundamental characteristic
of the Greek retail trade, its small size, unfolded and developed: small traders, itinerant
traders, and small self-employed professionals, they all in Athens, the country’s capital
city (Chatziioannou, 2018); (Aranitou, 2006; Potamianos, 2015a, 2015b).
In the mid-nineteenth century, the first small commercial establishments began to
appear, following the (rapid) urbanisation of Greece and Athens in particular.1 Athens
was the city where the configuration of urban space (and the intensity of urbanisation)
mainly pronounced. Significantly, in only 50 years, the urban population rose from
around 8% in 1853 to 28% in 1879 and 33% in 1903 (Svoronos, 1994). Foreign travel-
lers’ descriptions are revealing. For instance, Deschamps (1992, p. 47) notes that "the
new Athens is lengthening its streets, enlarging its squares, spreading its new houses
and growing at an incredible rate". Cheston (1887: 104) vividly depicts the Greek capital:
"Athens is being transformed into a beautiful city of 50,0000–60,000 inhabitants. Ermou
Street, from the Palace Square to the Piraeus Railway Station, is full of small shops, as
are Aiolou and Athinas Streets". In a similar vein, Biris (1965, p. 48) points out that
Aiolou Street in downtown Athens "…is full of cafés, pastry shops, restaurants and vari-
ous shops".
e urbanisation process in the country’s capital has been invariably trending towards
the concentration of retail trade in specific districts and streets. e most significant
commercial street was Athinas Street, which houses concentrated the so-called “general
1 By 1834, when Athens became the official capital, the city numbered only 7000 residents.
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trade”. Building blocks away, on Ermou Street, luxury clothing and footwear stores have
been concentrated. In his novel, e Spectacles of Psyri, Mitsakis (1988 [1890], p. 181)
points out that in the historic district of Athens, "in the surrounding small shops…, there
are many street sellers, small groceries, small tobacco shops and small corner shops".
Between the 1860s and the 1890s, the retail ecosystem was mainly based around Ermou
and Aeolou streets and the surrounding alleys, which comprise the city’s current com-
mercial centre make up the current commercial centre of the city (Lozos, 1984). In the
late nineteenth century, Athens’ shopping streets gradually began to resemble their
European counterparts. According to Biris (1965, p. 48), “… the commercial life, despite
the peculiarities with which it was formed, resembles the corresponding ones in West-
ern European cities. In Ermou and Stadiou Streets, one could find all the novelties of
Parisian culture and several foreign languages were spoken”.
Despite the cosmopolitan character of the streets, small businesses continued to con-
stitute the backbone of the retail sector. Given the relatively inelastic demand for food
and the ability of the existing food industry to ensure a constant and regular supply, the
vast majority of shops initially appeared were grocery stores. ey were followed by
shops selling building materials and other materials necessary for the growing needs of
urbanisation and housing in the capital. On the other hand, some of the first retail shops
catered to the urban public, who could afford to buy expensive fabrics, clothes and shoes
(Kairofyllas, 1999).2
Retailing, with relatively low barriers to entry, started to expose a large proportion of
the population to market fluctuations. is means that the professions of artisan, shop-
keeper and small trader, which developed after 1870 and which were based on the pos-
session of small means of production, made part of the urban population, engaged in
these professions, dependent on the fluctuations of a market that was less predictable
than the one in the agricultural sector (Pamuk & Williamson, 2011).
At the end of the nineteenth century, according to the press of the time, the grocery
trade accounted for the largest share of retail activity in Athens and Piraeus’ markets,3
supplying a wide range of foodstuffs, both fresh and pre-packed,4 often used, also, as
meeting places, especially for the lower classes.5 e provision of these products was
heavily dependent on various imported goods, Russian flour, French bacalao and Dan-
ish butter being the most important imports. On the other hand, it was food retailing
that essentially commodified agricultural production, forming the final link in the value
chain of food supply that gradually developed during the nineteenth century.
On the other hand, textile, clothing and footwear retailers, as well as luxury goods
retailers (e.g., florists, glassware, etc.) are concentrated in the traditional shopping
2 Late nineteenth-century urban fiction is also evidence of this. Specifically, in Vlachos’ (1997 [1884], p. 205) short story
e First Ticket, the wife and daughter of Perdikis, the book’s wealthy protagonist, "dress up in Lizie," in a downtown
Athens’ luxury store. Clothing as a symbol of social stratification and status was a ubiquitous feature of the nineteenth
century. As Hobsbawm (1975, p. 343) aptly puts it: "’Clothes make the man’, the German proverb goes, and no age was
more conscious of this than one in which social mobility could actually place large numbers of people in the historically
novel situation of playing new (and higher) social roles and therefore having to wear the appropriate costumes".
3 Piraeus is the port city of Athens, in the sense that it is located within the Athens urban area in the Attica region of
Greece.
4 Newspaper Eboria: Commercial, Industrial and Maritime Newspaper, Year First, (1896), no. 6, p. 1.
5 Greek literature of the late nineteenth century bears witnesses to this. For example, Papadiamantis’ short story Father
at Home (1895) takes place in a grocery store in a south-western district of the city, which also functions as a social
meeting place.
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streets of Athens, contributing to the shopping centre’s glamour (see Table1). According
to Potamianos (2017a, 2017b), between 1875 and 1925 there was an intensification of a
trend that can still be seen today, namely the concentration of similar shops (piazzas) in
certain areas of the centre.
As regards the main issues faced by most retailers, the cleaning of the sidewalks, the
weight measurement, the keeping of trade records, the establishment of trade schools,
the combating of smuggling, mutual accounting and bankruptcies constituted the signif-
icant problems of the time. Additionally, the problem of high prices and shameful prof-
its”, remained a principal challenge till the popular mobilisation against high prices in
Greece during WW I (Potamianos, 2015b). More specifically, regarding book-keeping,
the press recorded many classes of traders that did not keep books and attributed to
“…the merchants’ ignorance of the usefulness of books. is has resulted in breaking
the law, cheating in commercial transactions and deceiving society”.6 Concurrently, the
first shop advertisements appeared in the daily and weekly press and the bill of exchange
started to be used in commercial transactions.7
e Asia Minor Catastrophe in the second decade of the twentieth century constituted
an accelerating factor for further developing the Greek retail trade. First, refugees that
had settled in Athens after 1922, enhanced the city’s trading ecosystem, since a large
proportion of them started to get involved in retailing, either as owners of shops, or as
employees. Indicatively, the League of Nations had recorded that one in seven people
registered with the Athens Chamber of Commerce (EBEA) in 1926 was a refugee. It
was a man from Asia Minor, Antisthenes Meimaridis, who founded Ilion Crystal, which
would later become one of the most famous department stores in Athens. Second, the
availability of a larger labour force, of entrepreneurialskillsand capital brought in by
well-offrefugees, contributed to the further specialisation in retail. is increased the
volume of speciality shops considerably, selling knitting, fabrics, footwear, and station-
ary. For the first time, several shops that decoupled womenswear and menswear. ese
shops made Athens’ historic centre an attractive place for small-scale activities incentive
time pressure, like leisure and “fun” shopping. Most shops were concentrated around
Omonia and Syntagma’s squares and the Aiolou and Ermou traditional shopping streets.
Table 1 Typical retail stores during 1870–1935
Name Store label Year/place Description
Georgios Sgourdas Sgourdas 1870, Aiolou Building hardware
Athanasios Pallis Pallis 1870, Ermou Stationary
Konstantinos Eleytheroudakis Eleytheroudakis 1898,Syntagma Square Bookstore
Georgios Dragonas Dragonas 1896, Aiolou Clothing
Fotios Pournaras Pournaras 1910, Fokionos Clothing
Nikos Georgiou or Lemisios Lemisios 1912, Likavittou Footwear
Konstantinos & Theoklis Stroggylos
Panos & Minos Athanasoglou
Stroggylos
Salon Avert
1931, Ermou
1935, Ermou
Shirts
Clothing
6 Newspaper Eboria: Commercial, Industrial and Maritime Newspaper, Year First, (1896), no. 8, p. 3.
7 Newspaper Eboria: Commercial, Industrial and Maritime Newspaper, Year First, (1896), no. 11, p. 2.
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Special mention should be made of Greek comprador capital, which was a constitu-
tional factor that hindered the development of the retail trade, since it subordinated pro-
ductive investment to short-term speculative activities. Having become addicted to high
rates of profit, the Greek comprador bourgeoisie sought short-term profits in practices
and sectors that could easily lead to its withdrawal, usually through acquisitions and
sales. Specifically, it began to invest mainly in speculative ventures, banks, mines, the
merchant fleet, shipping and commerce (Tsoucalas, 1977).
Unfortunately, the outbreak of the Second World War, the German occupation and fol-
lowing Greece’s Civil War interrupted the economy’s normal reproduction and adversely
affected the retail sector. Despite the micro-history of the grocer who became rich by
exploiting the opportunities of the “black markets” during the war (Mazower, 2022), the
sector experienced inevitable destruction.
From thesmall tothedepartment retail store: atransition withatime lag
An important chapter in the history of retailing, the emergence of department stores,
can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century in England, France and the United
States (Cochoy, 2018; Howard, 2021; Porter, 1971).8 Undoubtedly, the development of
department stores was associated with the gradual increase of massive consumption and
prosperity that had marked the period that followed the second phase of the Industrial
Revolution (Haupt, 2012). e urbanisation trend and the creation of large urban mar-
kets favoured the development of big establishments. Initially, department stores spe-
cialised in clothing and footwear and catered mainly to upper-class shoppers. However,
as the average per capita income increased and urbanisation intensified, department
stores expanded to appeal to a wider audience, celebrating a democratising luxury.
In Greece, the first large stores appeared later than in other European countries, at
the end of the nineteenth century. “Small trade" and small shops continued to constitute
the core characteristic of the country’s retail sector, since only a handful of department
stores were established in Athens until World War II (Table2). Yet, despite this slower
development, these first Greek establishments shared all the organisation novelties and
innovations with their European counterparts: the increased number of employees, set
of building blocks, wide range of products, and innovative forms of management, consti-
tuted forces that fundamentally revolutionalised the retail landscape. It is worthy men-
tioning, that in most cases, the labels contained the owner’s name and most of them
became known by their owner’s name,9 indicating that these first large establishments
evolved from small shops.
On a micro-historical scale, one of the most prominent examples was the Labropoulos,
Bros., Ltd. department store, which until its closure in 1999, was the main competitor of
Μinion, the largest store in Athens. Founded in the early twentieth century, Labropu-
los’ store showed remarkable resilience during the German occupation of 1941–1944. It
continued to cater to its public and civil servant clientele, selling its products at pre-war
prices and running soup kitchens for its employees and the homeless. ough forced out
8 In his novel, e Ladies’ Paradise (1883), Emile Zola colourfully describes the new world of retail that was emerging
in Paris in the 1870s. Larger and brighter buildings with a wide variety of goods appeared in the central streets of Paris.
9 It was not until the 1960s that this peculiarity started to fade away.
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of business during the Greek Civil War, the establishment enjoyed steady growth in the
years that followed, largely because of the 1950s rapid urbanisation.
In the post-war period, the impressive performance of the Greek economy, which had
been characterised by monetary stability, economic growth, rising disposable income
and extensive state intervention, stimulated and promoted the further development
of big establishments in Athens (Iordanoglou, 2020). Department stores reached their
zenith between the early 1970s and the early 1980s. During this period, department
store companies were key in initiating the development of regional shopping centres that
attracted people to the city centre. e latter covered around 2km, from Omonia Square
via Hafteia and Stadiou, to Athens’ Town Hall Square and Ermou.10
e development of department stores (until the 1990s) inevitably led to a higher
turnover, to an increased number of waged labourers, thus constituting the retail sector
as one of the largest employer in the Greek economy. Eventually, the department store
crisis began in the mid-1990s, when some old-established retail ’brands’ such as Dia-
manti Bros. (1996), Meimaridis-Pirpiroglou SA (1997) and Labropulos Bros (1999), went
bankrupt due to economy containment.11 Gradually, department stores became a relic of
another age, substituted by shopping centres and malls, thus signalled the start of a new
era in Greek retailing.
The emergence ofsupermarkets inGreece
As the most frequently visited type of large food store, the supermarket reflects the ideal
of large-scale retailing as it restructured the whole commodity chain of food supply from
start to finish, transforming retail markets at an extensive scale. e first supermar-
kets appeared in the United States, with the King Kullen brand being the first to oper-
ate in New York City since 1930 (Magnan, 2012; Stanton, 2018), while in Europe the
great expansion of supermarkets took place in the 1950s (Bailey & Alexander, 2017). In
Greece, the first supermarkets opened in the 1960s, a period marked by the development
Table 2 The first emblematic landmarks
Owner Store label Year/place Description
Georgios Dragonas Dragonas 1896, Aiolou, Department store/clothing
Chrysikopoulos Athenee 1898, Stadiou Department store/clothing
Iosif, Gerasimos & Kostas Klaoudatos Klaoudatos 1900, Aiolou Department store/wide range
of goods
Xenophon & Vasilios Lambropoulos Labropoulos Bros, Ltd 1906, Aiolou Department store/wide range
of goods
Anastatios, Antonis & Antisthenis
Meimaridis, Katina Pirpiroglou & Akron Ilion Krystal 1925, Aiolou Department store/ crystal and
glassware
Giannis Georgakas Minion 1934, Hafteia Department store/wide range of
products
Nikos & Giorgos Katratnzos Katrantzos Sport 1939, Stadiou Department store/sportswear
10 Smaller cities had fewer department stores, but the differences were primarily ones of scale rather than the organiza-
tional patterns of operation.
11 During the 1990s, three successive governments introduced austerity packages as part of a tightening economic pol-
icy. e aim was to reduce inflationary pressures and the country’s large current account deficit, which led to a signifi-
cant decline in consumption and demand.
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of a robust internal mass-consumer society (Charalambis, etal., 2004).12 Supermarkets
not only transformed food provisioning and eating habits but also started to change the
previously more interpersonal nature of retail transactions with the introduction and
spread of self-service.
In 1961, the first Marinopoulos store was opened in Kolonaki, followed by Panagio-
tis anopoulos, who installed his first store in Kypseli, and expanded relatively quickly
by ten more stores between 1962 and 1972, becoming the largest supermarket chain in
Greece at the time. In 1968, the first Alpha-Beta Vasilopoulos was opened in Psychiko,
while in the same year the first Sklavenitis store was opened in the middle-income dis-
trict of Peristeri. It should be noted that the first food retail cooperative in Greece was
established in 1964 in essaloniki, the country’s second-largest city, to meet the basic
need for housing for the lower-income city’s population. During the 1970s, Greece expe-
rienced a remarkable increase in supermarkets, concentrated in the country’s largest cit-
ies of Athens, essaloniki, Patra, Larissa and Heraklion (Tables3, 4 and 5).
In the mid-1980s, a dramatic reduction in small grocery stores was recorded, due to
increased competition from supermarkets.13 Competition among supermarkets has also
intensified as powerful new players, including large multinational supermarket chains,
have entered the Greek market. is resulted in numerous mergers and acquisitions,
Table 3 The first supermarkets
Owner Laber Year/location Description
Dimitris Marinopoulos Marinopoulos 1961, Kolonaki/Athens SM
Panagiotis Thanopoulos Thanopoulos 1962, Kypseli/Athens SM
Co-op Consumer KONSOYM COOP 1964, Thessaloniki SM
Ioannis Karaoglou Karaoglou 1967, Larissa SM
Gerasimos & Charalampos
Vasilopoulos Alpha–Beta Vasilopoulos 1968, Psychiko/Athens SM
Ioannis, Spyros Sklavenitis &
Miltiadis Papadopoulos Sklavenitis 1968, Peristeri/Athens SM
Nikos Veropoulos Veropoulos 1973, Athinon-Lamias Highway SM
Co-op Metro 1976, Korydallos/Aths SM
Table 4 The first wave of shopping centres
Shopping centre Location Year
Shoppingland Kifissia/Athens
Galleria Glyfada/Athens 1980–1983
Plaza Glyfada/Athens
Maroussi Centre Marousi/Athens
Μegaro NTORE Heraklion 1981
Megaro Ermeion Thessaloniki 1985
Megaro Prapopoulou Patra 1985
12 During this period, the Greek economy performed remarkably well, with GDP tripling in just a decade.
13 According to Amer Nielsen Research (1997), published in Self Service journal, the number of large and medium-
sized grocery stores increased by 148.6% between 1986 and 1985 (from 3,160 to 7,857), while the number of small stores
decreased by -58.8% (from 21,332 to 8,768) (Self Service, 1997).
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Manioudisand Meramveliotakis Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (2023) 12:73
mainly by multinationals.14 Undoubtedly, the economic history of supermarkets is of
particular interest since they consist of the most dynamic sector of Greek retailing.15
From department stores toshopping centres, malls anddiscount villages
The rst wave ofshopping centres
e geographical concentration of several shops in a given area was undoubtedly a
revolutionary process that mainly, if not exclusively, benefited the large (multinational)
chains (Cohen, 1996; Howard, 2015; Ozuduru, etal., 2014). As Sombart (1967, [1913])
vividly demonstrated in his influential studies of capitalism and luxury, the shopping
centres, being the epitome of modernity, represents the rationalisation of consumption
and reflects the commodification of needs in the urban West, being as such a key instru-
ment of modern consumer society.
In Greece, in the 1980s, the aforementioned escalation of the department store crisis
paved the way for the gradual emergence of shopping centres, shopping malls and dis-
count villages.16 In the early 1980s, the emergence of the first two shopping centres in
the high-income districts of Kifissia and Glyfada in Athens added a new dimension to
the structural changes already underway in the retail sector and accelerated the existing
tendencies towards concentration in the sector. Later, shopping centres started to appear
in other major Greek cities, essentially precipitating the emergence of malls.
e first wave of shopping centres demonstrated that Greek retail sector was maturing
and industry contributed significantly to redefining urban space. Contrary to the Ameri-
can (and European) experience, Greek shopping centres were the result of (mainly)
Table 5 Second wave of shopping centres
Shopping centre Location Year
Sanyo Carrefour Mall Maroussi 1999
Village Park Agios Ioannis Rentis 1999
Shopping Center Macedonia Thessaloniki 2001
Veso Mare Patra 2001
City Gate Thessaloniki 2004
City Link Athens 2005
Outlet Thessaloniki 2008
Mediterranean Cosmos Thessaloniki 2005
The Mall Athens Maroussi 2005
Golden Hall Maroussi 2008
Mc Arthur Glen Designer Athens Spata 2011
Smart Park Spata 2011
14 In 1991, Praktiker and Continent opened their first stores in Greece. A year later, Macro inaugurated its first store
in Athens, and in 1995 consumers started shopping at IDEA. e first wave of acquisitions began in 1991 with the Bel-
gian Delhaze and Alpha–Beta Marinopoulos. In just 6years, between 1991 and 1996, 295 acquisitions and mergers took
place, representing 19% of the total number of existing supermarkets (Self Service, 1997).
15 Consistently the industry with highest annual retail volume.
16 Shopping centres and shopping malls are often used interchangeably. Historically, however, the former denotes a
planned development that was typically open-air and situated away from the city centre. On the other hand, the term
mall refers to the enclosed shopping centre, a format which, as we will see, succeeded the first wave of shopping centres.
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Manioudisand Meramveliotakis Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (2023) 12:73
construction/contracting sector initiatives.17 In fact, the Greek construction capital took
advantage of the existing infrastructure and started to build the first shopping centres
in areas with easy and high accessibility. It is therefore not surprising, given the acces-
sibility and proximity to major roads and the Athens and Piraeus electric railway station,
that the first two shopping centres are located in Kifissia and Glyfada districts.18 Gradu-
ally, shopping centres began to be settled along the main road axes (e.g., Kifissias and
Vouliagmeni high roads), hence leading to the over-concentration of shopping centres,
at first in the northern suburbs of Athens, in the municipality of Maroussi, making the
latter the largest commercial centre in Greece at the time. en, more shopping centres
started to emerge in other high-income district of Athens, such as Chalandri, Cholargos
and Psychilo. However, they were relatively small, no larger than 1200 m2 (e.g., Lem-
osCenter, Cosmos).
As mentioned by Delladetsimas and Loukakis (2013), the criteria for the establishment
of a shopping centre in a specific area were either increased commercial activity or the
absence of a sufficient commercial circuit. In addition, market capacity, proximity to a
road network and the availability of land played an equally important role. However,
largely due to the country’s fiscal turmoil in the 1990s, only a very small number of the
first wave of shopping centres survived as they faced unresolved financial hardships.
The second wave ofshopping centres: theappearance ofshopping malls
Until the mid-1990s, Greece was ranked at the bottom among European countries
regarding shopping centre to population ratio. e second wave was characterised by
multinational companies entering the Greek market, followed by the first malls. e lat-
ter is considered to be larger than shopping centres and include a wide variety of both
branded and locally based shops, offering a range of consumer choices and activities,
from retail and supermarkets to cafes, play areas and cinemas. e first malls were
located in suburban areas of Athens and other major cities in the country, at transit and
transfer points, close to intersections and highways.
In addition, the emergence of second-generation shopping centres resulted from ini-
tiatives by large private investors, mainly credit institutions, and transnational retail
companies. Moreover, unlike the first generation, this second generation did not rely
exclusively on the existing infrastructure but also established new plants and facilities.
e first commercial centre that marks the arrival of the second generation of shop-
ping centres is Sanyo Carrefour Hellas Holding S.A., which began operations in 1999.
Another notable example is Village Park, which opened its doors a few months later in
the same year. It is also worth mentioning two examples that represent the pinnacle of
the evolution of second-generation shopping centres. e first is the Mediterranean Cos-
mos (2005) in essaloniki, which is comparable in size and scope to the capital’s major
shopping centres. e second is e Mall Athens, also founded in 2005, which today is
considered the most important representative of the success story of shopping centres
in Greece, since, among other things, it records more than thirteen million visitors per
17 Both in U.S.A. and Europe department store companies were key in initiating the development of shopping centres.
18 Shopping centres developers carefully plotted the location of their projects, hoping to make it as enticing as possible
for affluent suburban population to come and shop.
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Manioudisand Meramveliotakis Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (2023) 12:73
year, in a country with a population of eleven million (Lalas, 2012).19 As Lalas (2012)
aptly concludes, the emergence and subsequent development of malls indicates the sys-
tematic reproduction of an explicitly commodified and spectacular experience of the
dominant consumer culture in Greek society..20
The Greek retail trade: arst depiction ofnumbers
Historically, the structure and composition of the retail sector in Greece have always
been characterised by its very small size and, consequently, by the presence of a large
number of very small (micro) and small enterprises. It also accounts for a particularly
high proportion of the country’s employment, whether in paid work, self-employment,
family or care work.
During the inter-war period (and according to the 1930 census of the General Statistical
Service of Greece (GSSYE)), 99,240 firms were recorded, employing 174,460 people. e
low average level of employment in the retail trade sector (1.75 per establishment) indi-
cates the limited use of wage labour by the sector. Furthermore, out of 99,240 firms, 70,094
employed one person, while 26,411 employed between two and five. Significantly, 63.3%
(110,142) of the 174,460 employees in the sector are the business owners. e fact that there
are only 196 establishments with more than 26 employees, most of which are credit/bank-
ing institutions, also documents the dominance of small size in the sector (ELSTAT, 1934).
e next available recorded data are from 1958, some 15years after the end of the
Second World War. It is worth noting that, despite the devastating effects of both the
inter-war Great Depression and the Second World War, the total number of enterprises
appears to have increased by 5.5% in the 28years between 1930 and 1958. e aver-
age number of employees remains low (1.72 employees per establishment). On the
other hand, sole proprietorship is the dominant form of business ownership (90.7% are
sole proprietors), while the share of limited liability companies is extremely low (0.1%)
in the sector. During this period, approximately 26% of the country’s retail activity, i.e.
26,890 shops and 55,724 employees (average employment of 2.07 employees per shop),
is located in the commercial capital of post-war Greece, Athens. Most of the establish-
ments are primarily engaged with the retail sale of food and drinks (13,247 operations or
49.2%), followed by the sale of textiles, clothing and footwear (2251 operations or 7.5%).
More generally, “the short” twentieth century, as shown in Fig.1, is characterised
by a steady increase in the number of shops in absolute terms over time, but at a
declining rate. e cumulative increase is approximately 76%, reflecting the ’normali-
sation’ of the economy after the Second World War and the country’s subsequent civil
war, as well as the tertiarisation of the economy and the deepening of the country’s
deindustrialisation. It should be noted that the methodology used by ELSTAT has
changed since 1994, and therefore it is impossible to make reliable comparisons with
the preceding period.21 As there were no facts at the time to justify such a significant
19 ese are pre-COVID19 pandemic recordings.
20 By dominant consumer culture we denote these meaning-creating activities that tacitly embrace the dominant repre-
sentations of consumer identity and lifestyle ideals, portrayed in advertising and mass media, which generateimperative
ethos of radical individualism oriented around a ceaseless quest for personal distinctiveness and autonomy in lifestyle
choices (Arnould & ompson, 2005).
21 e authors contacted ELSTAT to investigate this change in methodology, but it was not possible to identify the spe-
cific changes as ELSTAT does not keep archival records of previous methodology.
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Manioudisand Meramveliotakis Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (2023) 12:73
reduction in retail activities (i.e. -18.5%), it can be argued that this reduction should
be attributed to the new methodology adopted.
Undoubtedly, the Greek sovereign debt crisis between 2010 and 2019 has seen the
greatest pressure on the retail sector, reflected in the contraction of both domes-
tic consumption and production, with the cumulative decline in the number of
retail establishments between 2011 and 2016 amounting to − 27%. e figures in
Fig.1highlight the resulting centralisation of the market through the process of "crea-
tive destruction" that takes place during the crisis.
Epilogue
e economic history of retailing is an exceptionally multifaceted field of study, which
requires a critical evaluation of complex documentary material (archives, the daily
and periodical press, urban literature, etc.) and its connection with the development
of the Greek economy over time. Moreover, understanding the transformation of
Greek retailing from the itinerant trader of Ermou Street, to the individual commer-
cial enterprise, to the department store, to the shopping centre and the mall, requires
an understanding of the economic changes in Greek social formation. As the title sug-
gests, this article attempts to provide an initial overview of the historical organisa-
tional and spatial transformations of Greek retailing. Of course, much of the history
of the Greek retail sector remains to be written, and there are big opportunities both
for illuminating, conceptually sophisticated studies of particular cases and for wide-
ranging integrative, comparative and interdisciplinary work. By the same token, a
more systematic study is therefore required of the micro-history of the people (own-
ers and labourers) who underpinned the development of Greek retailing. Also, to
shed light on the wider macro-economic and social aspects that have been dialecti-
cally linked to the establishment of retail chains and department stores.
5.5%
28.8%
19.0%
15.1%
-18.5%
22.5%
10.1%
-17.4%
-3.1%
-6.4%
-30.0%
-20.0%
-10.0%
0.0%
10.0%
20.0%
30.0%
40.0%
0
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
1930 1958 1969 1978 1988 1994* 2000 2006 2011 2015 2016
Retail Trade Stores Change (%)
Fig. 1 Retail stores (numbers and %). Resource: Hellenic Statistical Authority/Authors’ calculation. *Change in
the methodology used by the National Statistical Service for the period 1994–2016 compared to the period
1930–1988
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Manioudisand Meramveliotakis Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (2023) 12:73
Today, amidst the mega-trends of the international economy, such as the pandemic
and the energy crisis, the Greek retail sector faces the challenge of digital transforma-
tion, which could trigger a new series of transformations. In any case, the specific nature
of the Greek retail sector, characterised by the resilience of its small size, should once
again determine the range of these changes. e Greek retail ecosystem comprises
micro-enterprises as 96% of them are employing less than 9 persons. e digital trans-
formation is a major challenge for these enterprises as digitalisation is not only tending
to modernize retail operations but is leading to a “paradigm change” through the shift
from the physical to the digital sphere. us, retail enterprises should invest in “omni-
channel” retailing by merging physical and digital interactions and offer to consumers a
modern shopping experience. e technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, such
as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data mining, Blockchain or 3D Printing are transforming
the retail era and lead the Greek retail ecosystem towards a complete transformation.
Acknowledgements
Not applicable.
Author contributions
Authors have worked together and contributed equally.
Funding
No funding received.
Availability of data and materials
Not applicable.
Declarations
Competing interests
The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.
Received: 26 July 2023 Accepted: 10 October 2023
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