[Review of the book Cases in Retail Salesmanship

Abstract

Reviews the manual, Cases in Retail Salesmanship by Natalie Kneeland (1924). The reviewer states that anyone who can imagine the ignorance and trepidation with which a young salesgirl approaches her first customer in a department store can understand how great is the need for aids for retails salespersons. There are several textbooks on retail selling besides the long list of books covering salesmanship in general. Courses are offered by correspondence, and training is offered by most department stores. In addition to these general helps for salespersons there are a number of books giving technical information about the goods sold in department stores. In spite of the volume of such aids there is still room for another kind of help. Salespersons find it hard to pass general principles of selling to concrete instances. And they find the masses of technical information about goods quite beyond their power to assimilate. Recognizing these difficulties, Doctor Charters and his associates in the Research Bureau for Retail Training, of Pittsburgh have prepared a series of sales manuals that have as their aim the presentation of facts in their concrete setting and the recommendations of practices in the concrete. The first one, "Cases in Retail Salesmanship," is an attempt to apply the case method of instruction to all the departments of a department store. It is a collection of 135 accounts of actual sales, some reported by students of the Bureau, some by shoppers. They are reported in dialog form. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)