Queuing as a Changing Shopper Experience: The Case of Grocery Shopping in Britain, 1945–1975

Queues are part of everyday routine and experienced by most shoppers, yet little attention has been given to providing historical accounts of queuing as a consumer task or as a shopper experience. This paper examines grocery shop queues and the changing experience of shoppers in historical perspective, specifically focusing upon the shift from counter-service to self-service grocery formats in Britain from 1945 to 1975. The paper draws upon a wide range of material using evidence from oral histories and witness groups, which is supported by contemporary sources from the Mass Observation Archive, newspapers, shopper surveys, and trade publications and reports. The conceptual framework developed in the paper explores the public and private dimensions of queues to consider the experiences and perceptions of shoppers during a period of rapid change in the retail grocery system. More generally, the paper contributes to our understanding of how management innovations are connected to untraded public values.