Specialized Trade

trade in commodities that cater to a certain market, such as sporting goods, or trade in commodities of a single kind, such as bread and baked goods, meat, fish, dairy products, fabric, clothes, or footwear. Specialized trade results in a wider and more diversified selection of goods and creates conditions in which consumers can choose the goods they need more easily. It also brings a fuller understanding of popular demand, so that industry can respond accordingly.

In the USSR, specialized trade, both wholesale and retail, is carried on, among others, by specialized offices and warehouses of the ministries of trade of the Union republics, by a network of specialized stores belonging to local trade organizations, by specialized stores run by consumers’ cooperatives, by the wholesale and retail network of the all-Union “Soiuzkniga” association of Goskomizdat of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, and by a network of pharmacies. In 1974 the USSR had 180,000 grocery and other stores.