The Boot and Shoe Trades in London and Paris in the Long Eighteenth Century

This endogenous and teleological vision of business has forgotten the
importance of what is defined in business literature as 'the environment'. The
market, but also customers, competitors, suppliers and other firms, define two
important business functions - retail and consumption. The limited space given to
historical analyses of consumption and retailing has created biases on our
understanding of production. The aim is therefore to start from consumption and
arrive .1T an analysis of production though retailing. This 'back to front' perspective
is based on two assumptions. Firstly, production is not considered as antecedent in
time compared to consumption. If we accept for instance the application of
marketing practices, production is the result of a dialectic process between
producers and customers. Secondly, production is not considered as a function
'producing value', while consumption as a function 'destroying value'.
Consumption, as the act of enjoying commodities is rather seen as the expression
of 'utility' and the transformation of potential value into real value. Production is
instead the use of natural resources in the construction of products that have not
any value in themselves. In this sense production can be considered as annihilation
of value, transforming a certain value into an uncertain or potential value.
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