Retailing is a type of business that sells products and services to consumers for their personal or family use. A retailer is the final business in a distribution channel that links manufacturers with consumers. Although a retailer can also be a manufacturer or a wholesaler in the distribution chain, most retailers direct their efforts to satisfying needs of ultimate consumers.

Retailing had its raw beginnings in early America with peddlers, a word that comes from the Old English "ped," which was a pack in which articles to be traded in the streets were stored. One of the earliest records of peddlers in the American colonies is of an itinerant hawker named Richard Graves, who in 1642 shouted his wares from house to house in an attempt to make a deal with whoever would listen to him.

Peddlers traveled throughout America selling their wares, and in the course of this...