Discounters will still thrive in the post-austerity era
Melanie HowardFuture Foundation
In the boardrooms of so many of our traditional, household-name retailers, there is one question being more stridently asked than any other. It is simply this: can the discounters be stopped? Over the past few months, the business pages and trade press have been pregnant with forecasts about Britain becoming a fully-qualified discount nation – almost Germanic in the way shopkeepers' margins are squeezed to the point where only value stores are left. One headline I saw recently could not have been more stark. It said : "It...