Description
Book SynopsisOffering a comprehensive social history of the Bon Marche, the Parisian department store that was the largest in the world before 1914, this title explores the bourgeois identities, ambitions, and anxieties that the emporia so vividly dramatized.
Trade Review"Michael Miller ... is able to breathe life into [the store's] ambitious owners and directors, pile its counter high with goods mundane and exotic, and people its aisles with obsequious clerks and glittering-eyed shoppers... [He] has written an absorbing study that can be read with pleasure by anyone interested in modern techniques of mass selling or in French culture before World War I."--Jean T. Joughin, Business History Review "Michael Miller has written a book that is both fascinating and original, about a large department store and its place not only in business history, but in the history of French society, culture, and bureaucracy."--Eugen Weber, The Times Literary Supplement
Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction3INew Stores19IIThe "Grand Magasin"48Merchandise and the Mass Market48Finance and Purchasing53Organization58IIIThe Boucicauts75Building Organization Men: The Base77Building Organization Men: Management112Ritualization121Entrepreneurial Roles and Business Change127IVThe Directors130Faithful Continuators130Members of a Single Family143VSelling Consumption165An Eighth Wonder166A Way of Life178VISelling the Store190Ambivalence and Hostility190A Model Community215Conclusion231Appendix241Bibliography245Index259
