Contemporary Ethnic Retailing: An Expanded Framework of Study.

Wang, Shuguang ; Hernandez, Tony

INTRODUCTION

Ethnic retailing is not a new phenomenon. Concentrations of retail activity focused on specific ethnic groups have existed in North American cities for over a century. Traditionally, ethnic retailing refers to businesses that are owned and operated by members of an ethnic group, and that offer culturally specific and suitable goods to serve the co-ethnics of the business owners. The traditional definition implies that the ownership, operation, merchandise, and clientele are all ethnic specific; together, they form an isolated system, where money is retained within the same ethnic group. This definition of ethnic retailing has, however, been blurred, with some ethnic retailers (selling both goods and services) now expanding their business scope to cross ethnic boundaries, and also with mainstream retailers entering the realm of ethnic retailing. Some of the recent changes are well accounted for by the later theoretical developments such as Mixed Economy and Mixed Embededness. Others necessitate the need for further theorization. Based on our observations of the recent business developments in metropolitan Toronto, this paper discusses the changing meaning of ethnic retailing and proposes a new typology for the expanded study of ethnic retailing. The paper is divided into five sections. The first section reviews the theoretical advancements made in the last three decades on ethnic entrepreneurship and ethnic economy, and presents an expanded list of factors for reconceptualization of contemporary ethnic retailing. The second section establishes the size and spatial structure of the ethnic consumer markets in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) to provide the geographic context for the various case studies. In the third and fourth sections, we identify the new trends of ethnic retailing and present examples of mainstream retailers participating in ethnic retailing. Our discussion of the new trends is framed around the extended list of factors. The final section provides a summary discussion, where the new typology is also presented.

ADVANCEMENT IN THEORIZATION OF ETHNIC ECONOMY AND THE NEED FOR A NEW APPROACH TO DEFINING CONTEMPORARY ETHNIC RETAILING

The traditional approach to defining ethnic retailing was developed by sociologists and anthropologists from the perspective of entrepreneurship and in the context of ethnic economy. In the traditional approach, an ethnic economy, of which ethnic retailing is a major part, is defined as consisting of ethnic employers (including the self-employed) and their co-ethnic employees (Aldrich and Waldinger 1990; Bonacich and Modell 1980) that exist when "any immigrant or ethnic group maintains a private economic sector in which it has a controlling ownership stake" (Light and Gold 2000, 9). An ethnic economy must also depend on the existence of a co-ethnic consumer market. Despite its narrow market orientation, ethnic economy has evolved into an integral part of the larger economy in most immigrant-receiving countries and become an important area of academic research (Light and Gold 2000).

The history of ethnic business is almost as long as the history of the immigration of minorities to the immigrant-receiving countries. In recent decades, however, ethnie businesses have not only proliferated significantly but also undergone multifaceted structural changes and diversification. Accordingly, successive and progressive theorization has been made by more than one generation of scholars to advance our understanding of the meanings of ethnic economy and entrepreneurship.

In the early years of immigration, ethnic businesses tended to concentrate in peripheral commercial activities that were left over by the larger economy (such as laundries, restaurants and grocery stores). They were small in scale and were confined to small areas in the inner city. Initially, such businesses occurred when the concentration of ethnic households reached a threshold and generated sufficient demand for a range of goods and services. After that, each wave of immigration added new consumer demand for more ethnic commercial activity. In all cases, the ethnic store owners (often also store operators) spoke the same language as their customers, so that the new immigrants felt "at home" when shopping in a store environment of their own ethnicity. The engagement of the immigrant entrepreneurs in ethnic commercial activity in the early years is sufficiently explained by the Blocked Mobility Thesis (Bonacich and Modell 1980), according to which, the store owners were all need-based, or necessity, entrepreneurs. Due to the existence of racial discrimination in the mainstream society, as well as language barriers, members of ethnic minorities had limited wage-earning employment opportunities. The absence of competition from the dominant mainstream group in ethnic retailing and consumer services channeled them into such entrepreneurship as a means of economic survival.

Based on the expansion and diversification of the Chinese ethnic economy in Canada after the mid-1980s, Li (1993) identifies four types of ethnic business in the contemporary ethnic economy: (1) traditional individual-owned and family-operated commercial activity, mainly in retailing and food services; (2) professional services, ranging from medical, law, accounting to real estate; (3) those owned and controlled through overseas capital investment by corporations with headquarters in the immigrants' home countries and subsidiaries in Canada; (4) businesses established with investment made by business immigrants with transplanted capitals. Li (2010, 207) further points out that it would be incorrect to describe Chinese entrepreneurship in Canada as mainly geared towards ethnic Chinese consumers in the cultural niche market. He argues that the recent changes in overseas Chinese businesses and investment towards corporate expansion, capital intensification, and market globalization have cast doubt on the earlier theoretical propositions. He therefore calls for the need to go beyond the monolithic understanding of the Chinese immigrants' engagement in business and take into account the emergence of the new forms of entrepreneurship beyond the conventional wisdom of Blocked Mobility Thesis, for a broader understanding of ethnic entrepreneurship (Li 1993 and 2010).

Indeed, the Blocked Mobility Thesis is no longer adequate to account fully for the new development patterns of ethnic entrepreneurship, as not all contemporary ethnic entrepreneurs have gone into business ventures because their wage-earning employment opportunities were blocked. Many recent immigrants arrived in their adopted countries with the prior intention of establishing a business; and their engagement in business activity did not stem from blocked mobility experience (Marger and Hoffman 1992).

In seeking to explain why business creation rates vary greatly among ethnic groups, and why some groups (such as the Chinese and Koreans) are more likely than others to open ethnic-based businesses, or are more likely to succeed, an alternative theory--Cultural Resources Thesis--was presented, which postulates that the existence and success of ethnic businesses is a result of differentiation in the possession of cultural resources. That is, some cultures value business enterprises highly, and the transplanted cultural endowments include ready-to-use skills that give the members comparative advantages for engaging in business activities (Barrett et al. 1996; Light 1984; Razin 1988; Razin and Langolis 1996). This seems true of many immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China (Tseng 1995), who are culturally motivated towards various commercial activities and often bring ready-to-use capital and business skills to their country of destination.

By synthesizing the earlier theories, Waldinger et al. (1990) developed the influential, and more comprehensive, Interactive Model of Ethnic Entrepreneurship. According to this model, ethnic business strategies are developed on the basis of two pillars: structural opportunities and ethnic group characteristics. The former depends on the presence of favorable market conditions, such as sufficient demands for ethnic consumer products and access to business ownership (i.e., market niches with limited competition and limited institutional restrictions). The latter relies on the availability of both ethnic and class resources, including aspirations derived from cultural endowments, business know-how, access to capital, and ethnic social networks (or kinship). This model further explains why some ethnic groups have higher rates of business creation and ownership than do others, thus leading to the development of ethnic economies with high levels of institutional functionality and completeness.

From a distinct perspective, geographers added a more explicit spatial component to the theorization of ethnic economy. Kaplan and Li (2006) use five factors simultaneously to identify an ethnic economy. These are: ethnic ownership, employment, customer base, sectoral specialization (i.e., ethnic consumer goods not available elsewhere), and spatial concentration (see Figure 1). Also with reference to the Ethnic Enclave Theory, Kaplan and Li (2006) emphasize that the most important attribute of an ethnic economy is the geographical concentration of ethnic businesses and the spatial proximity to their (co-ethnic) consumers. Residential segregation of ethnic minorities in certain urban areas provides a competitive advantage to ethnic minority enterprises, as they serve the unique needs of their co-ethnic clients while facing little competition from firms of the prevailing culture (Jamal 2005). In other words, spatial concentrations of ethnic businesses and the corresponding ethnic population form an enclave market, present opportunities for nearby employment, and establish a power of agglomeration (Kaplan 1998; Kaplan and Li 2006).

Expansion of ethnic economies beyond commercial activity to include professional services, production and import/export has led to a gradual shift from enclave economies towards a mixed economy or integrated economy (Kloosterman and Rath 2001; Nee et al. 1994). Kaplan and Li (2006, 5) list the ethnically-owned electronics firms in Silicon Valley and garment factories in other U.S. cities as examples of a mixed economy. With products being consumed by a much wider customer base across ethnic boundaries, these businesses became an integrated part of the mainstream economy.

Following the shift towards a mixed economy, another conceptual framework, known as Mixed Embeddedness, was proposed as an extension of the Interactive Model of Ethnic Entrepreneurship, to guide examination of ethnic/immigrant entrepreneur-ship in a mixed economy (Kloosterman et al. 1999). According to this framework, ethnic businesses are not only embedded in a narrow social network of immigrants to reduce transaction costs and gain cheap labor; they are also embedded in the socio-economic, political and institutional environment of the country of settlement. Within a mixed (and more formal) economy, ethnic businesses are presented with an expanded opportunity structure (e.g., availability of new resources and expanded market size); at the same time, they are entering business areas of government control and are exposed to formal regulations, along with increased competition.

Ethnic retailing is only one component of an ethnic economy, and its shift to a mixed economy is more recent than the ethnic businesses in professional services and manufacturing. While the latest theorizations have significantly advanced our understanding of the increasingly complex ethnic economies in general, there is a need for a retail specific framework to guide research on contemporary ethnic retailing. For instance, some recent changes in ethnic retailing (such as crossing of ethnic boundaries) can be well explained by the concepts of Mixed Economy and Mixed Embeddedness; but the participation of mainstream retailers in ethnic retailing and the separation of ownership from management are new development trends that have not been examined in the existing literature. These more recent developments necessitate a new conceptual framework, under the umbrella of Mixed Economy and Mixed Embeddedness, for an up-to-date understanding of contemporary ethnic retailing. The conceptual framework that we propose in this paper consists of an expanded list of factors (see Figure 2), including supply chain, store frontage/fascia, in-store signage, product mix, store atmospherics, location type, marketing, and management staff--all elements of the retail industry in the mainstream economy. The use of these factors allow us to gauge the degree of convergence of ethnic retailing towards the mainstream retail economy. While the new framework and the earlier model overlap to a certain degree, we argue that a more holistic perspective that extends discussion to a broader set of factors is required for an informed understanding of the ethnic retail sector.

STUDY AREA AND DATA SOURCES

The Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) is chosen for this study for two reasons. First, this region has one of the largest and most diverse immigrant populations in North America, known as "the world in a city" (Anisef and Lanphier 2003); accordingly, it has one of the largest ethnic economies with almost all types of ethnic commercial activities. In particular, most new and innovative types of ethnic retail businesses originated in this region before they expanded to other Canadian cities. It provides a fertile ground for such an academic enquiry. Second, having lived in Toronto for more than two decades enables us to utilize our extensive knowledge of the region, accumulated from the reading of local newspapers and numerous site visits.

The Canadian census are readily available for use to gauge the expansion and fragmentation of the ethnic consumer markets (i.e., the demand side). However, no systematic data are available for a comprehensive analysis of the structural changes in ethnic retailing, because no government agencies in Canada keep business records by ethnicity. In the 1990s, when we conducted similar studies, we used local Chinese business directories (also known as Chinese business yellow books) compiled by such ethnic Chinese newspaper publishers as Ming Pao, World Journal, and Sing Tao Daily. As business advertising shifted to the Internet, such directories discontinued. (Even the paper version of World Journal itself had been discontinued.) Our analysis in this paper is based largely on data and information that we collected from various local news media, company websites, and site visits over an extended period of time. (1) Also due to the lack of systematic data, this study focuses on the larger businesses of retailing, because they best reflect the new trends in the shift to corporate retailing and to a mixed economy. As well, they tend to be operated by the younger generation of transnational entrepreneurs, who have their own links with suppliers in their country of origin (Chen and Wellman 2007; Lin and Tao 2012). While not inclusive of all large businesses, this study fills a gap in the existing literature, as identified in the preceding section of this paper.

EXPANSION AND FRAGMENTATION OF THE ETHNIC CONSUMER MARKET

To a large extent, the existence and prosperity of ethnic retailing depend on the size and location of the corresponding ethnic consumer market. In general, the term "ethnic" is used in reference to a specific cultural or racial group. In the Canadian census, the variable "ethnicity" includes a long list of culturally different groups of people; both English and French--the politically dominant majority--are also listed under this variable as ethnic groups. In the literature of ethnic economy, however, the term "ethnic" is used in a much narrower sense, referring to the minority groups that are characteristically different from the politically dominant majority. Another Canadian census variable, "visible minority," is more suitable for the purpose of studying ethnic retailing and ethnic markets, though this term has attracted controversy. (2) This variable identifies only ten ethnic groups in Canada: Chinese, South Asian, Black, Filipino, Latin American, Southeast Asian, Arab, West Asian, Korean, and Japanese. The U.S. definition of ethnic minority is similar to Canada's visible minority, with the largest ethnic groups in the U.S. being African Americans, Hispanics, Chinese, and South Asians.

From a business point of view, ethnic minority groups collectively represent a large consumer market worthy of serious marketing considerations (Omar et al. 2004). In both Canada and the U.S., the ethnic consumer market has been expanding rapidly, a result of not only increased immigration but also the expansion of the second and third generations of immigrants through new family formation. At the same time, the ethnic market has become more fragmented than ever, due to the diversification of immigration. This is especially true in the immigrant-receiving metropolitan areas, where visible or ethnic minorities now constitute a large segment of the consumer market. This market is no longer represented by low and unstable demand to be met by specialist businesses of low economies of scale. Population diversification has created new opportunities for ethnic entrepreneurs, and ethnic retailing has become an increasingly visible component of the retail landscape and the broader retail economy.

As Table 1 shows, the population of visible minorities in the Toronto CMA increased by 20 percent in the five years between 2006 and 2011. Visible minority groups collectively accounted for nearly 47 percent of the CMA's total population. In the same five-year period, the total population of the CMA grew by 435,300 persons. Almost all of this increase (98%) was attributed to the growth of visible minorities. The largest visible minorities continue to be represented by the South Asians (832,000), Chinese (530,830), Blacks (396,500), and Filipinos (229,000). These four groups now account for 77 percent of the total visible minority population. All other visible minority groups, except for the Japanese, also grew considerably in population size: they now range from 60,000 to 223,000 persons. The trajectory of change, in both absolute and relative terms, has placed the 'ethnic consumer' firmly on the radar screen of mainstream businesses.

Within the CMA, almost all visible minority groups concentrate in the City of Toronto and the surrounding municipalities. Only a small proportion of them live in the outer suburbs and exurban communities. It is more important to note that different groups exhibit varying patterns of spatial concentration, though they are also increasingly dispersed in residential patterns and mixed into other neighborhoods of the host society.

The Chinese heavily concentrate in the Central and East Chinatowns in the former city of Toronto, northeast North York, northwest Scarborough, Markham, Richmond Hill, and Mississauga (see the top map in Figure 3 and the reference map in the Appendix). The South Asians, which are composed of immigrants and their descendants from the four countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, are more dispersed than the Chinese, with concentrations in Scarborough, Mississauga, southern Markham, northwest Etobicoke, and particularly Brampton (see the bottom map in Figure 3). Blacks are similar to the South Asians in spatial concentration: they cluster in Brampton, northern Etobicoke, Mississauga, and Scarborough, but have also formed a notable cluster in Ajax and Pickering (see the top map in Figure 4). The settlement pattern of the Filipinos is also similar to that of the South Asians, but different from the pattern of the Chinese, albeit without concentrations in Markham, Richmond Hill, and the former city of Toronto (see bottom map in Figure 4).

As Figure 5 shows, the Latin Americans concentrate in Etobicoke, Brampton, and Mississauga. The Southeast Asians concentrate in northern Etobicoke, Mississauga, and also Vaughan. The Arabs concentrate in eastern Milton as well as Mississauga. The West Asians concentrate in northeast North York, southwest Markham, and Richmond Hill--overlapping with the Chinese. The Koreans maintain a cluster in the former city of Toronto (on Bloor Street West near Christie Street). In recent years, they formed a new area of concentration along Yonge Street from Sheppard Avenue in North York to Major Mackenzie Drive in Richmond Hill. The Japanese are the only group without an obvious concentration in the Toronto CMA.

The various concentrations of visible minorities have led to a transition from suburban homogeneity (composed of middle-class whites) to suburban diversity, and to the formation of ethnoburbs--a term coined by Wei Li in a case study of the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County to describe a new pattern of ethnic settlement (Li 1998 and 2006). A study by Wang and Zhong (2013) reveals that the ethnoburbs in the Toronto CMA not only added a new layer of social space to the existing multicultural mosaic of the metropolitan region, but also created enclave markets and afforded new business opportunities for ethnic retailing.

Indeed, the 2.6 million visible minorities in the Toronto CMA collectively constitute an enormous ethnic consumer market. A report by Perry Caicco of CIBC World Markets estimates that over the next decade, up to 70 percent of retail sales growth in Canada will likely come from visible minorities (Flavelle 2012). A study by Statistics Canada projected that the City of Toronto and its suburbs will surpass the 50 per cent visible minority mark by 2017 and will approach almost 63 percent of the CMA's population by 2031, including 1.1 million ethnic Chinese and 2.1 million South Asians (Javed 2010). According to the 2016 Canadian census, the population share of visible minorities in the CMA has increased further to 51.3 percent, indeed passing the 50 percent mark (Statistics Canada 2017). These dramatic demographic changes will likely serve to further redefine the retail market. Ethnic retailing will only become more important to retailers, and market segmentation along the lines of ethnicity will become more critical for retail success in Canada. To mainstream retailers, ethnic consumers are no longer a negligible part of the mass market.

RECENT TRENDS OF ETHNIC RETAILING

Ethnic retailing was historically limited to businesses owned and operated by ethnic entrepreneurs. These businesses resulted from the propensity of ethnic group members to shop at businesses catering to their needs for familiar products and favorable brands (Jones and Simmons 1993). For many years, ethnic retail stores clustered along unplanned retail strips, typically seen in the inner city ethnic enclaves (such as the Chinatowns and Koreantowns found in many North America cities). They were initially only relevant to small groups of minorities and had

little impact on mainstream society. As suggested by the traditional school of ethnic enclave economy, spatial concentration in a protected market is a necessary defining factor of ethnic retailing. This, however, is no longer the case as ethnic retailers have now moved away from the inner city enclaves to the ethnoburbs, therefore shifting from unplanned streetfront locations to becoming tenants within mainstream planned shopping centres and contemporary power centres. They have also developed large format supermarkets, comparable to mainstream big-box stores, to offer a broader product range and more choices. This section of the paper discusses these trends with reference to ethnic retail changes in three sectors: grocery, general merchandise retailing, and banking services. Most examples presented here are derived from the experiences of the Chinese community, because the Chinese entrepreneurs frequently lead innovations in development of ethnic retailing in Canada.

Ethnic Grocery Retailing--the flourishing of large format supermarkets and the growth of multicultural marketplaces

Among all ethnic consumer goods, food is perhaps the most closely tied to ethnic identity and is the most frequently consumed. Currently, the Toronto CMA has more than 50 Chinese supermarkets, across six municipalities (see top map in Figure 3). They sell not only food but also a wide range of daily use household products. Many of these Chinese supermarkets were opened in succession to mainstream supermarkets, or to other mainstream retail outlets, which has resulted in some very large Chinese supermarkets. A number of them have also taken the position of anchors in mainstream community shopping centres. Several recent Chinese supermarkets, such as Al Premium, Sunny, and Oceans, have even taken tenancy in mainstream power centres to increase their visibility and accessibility to generate a larger market draw. Compared with the earlier generations of store operators, the younger generation of Chinese entrepreneurs (with many of them being opportunity entrepreneurs) possess more class resources including transnational linkages. They not only make their stores appealing, but also are better able to organize merchandise supplies directly from their home country.

While the Chinese-operated supermarkets are still largely fragmented in ownership, different forms of business alliance and chain development have begun to emerge. The T&T Supermarket chain was started by a Taiwanese immigrant, Cindy Lee, in 1993 in Metropolitan Vancouver. As of May 2016, the company has expanded to operate 23 stores in five metropolitan areas in the country, and has become Canada's largest Asian supermarket chain (T&T Supermarket 2017). Unlike the other Chinese supermarkets that provide discounted product offerings, T&T dubs itself "The Asian Loblaw of Canada" (Flavelle 2007) and aims to attract a cross-section of affluent consumers. From the onset, T&T Supermarkets deviated from the stereotype of Chinese grocery stores and adopted characteristics of a mainstream Canadian supermarket (in size, store layout, and merchandise organization), yet taking on a distinctly Asian flair with regard to the products and brands offered, and the social and cultural environment that it creates for its customers (Hii 2007; Wang et al. 2013). T&T's first store in the Toronto CMA opened in 2002, not in the inner-city Chinatown, nor in a Chinese shopping plaza, but in a mainstream shopping mall -the Promenade Shopping Centre in the City of Vaughan. By 2016, six more stores had been added in four different municipalities in the Toronto CMA.' Their store size is comparable to any large mainstream supermarket.

In 2001, seven Chinese supermarkets formed a business alliance, known as Long Tai Group (later renamed as FoodyMart Group). While not a true retail chain and owned by different investors and entrepreneurs, the seven stores coordinate and collaborate in business operation in order to enhance their position and leverage with suppliers and promote their store image through joint efforts. The total floor area of the member supermarkets is 300,000 square metres, carrying more than 40,000 varieties of products (FoodyMart Group 2017).

While only the 9th visible minority group in size in the CMA, the Koreans have also developed four modern supermarkets: three under the banner of Galleria; the other carries the H Mart brand. The first Galleria supermarket opened in 2003 in Thornhill of Markham; the second opened in 2010 in North York of Toronto; the third opened recently in Oakville. Gallerias vision is rather ambitious: to expand the chain to 20 locations by 2020 (Galleria Supermarket 2016). H Mart is owned and operated by the Hanahreum Group headquartered in New Jersey with 51 Super H Mart stores in the United States at the end of 2015 (H Mart 2017). In Canada, it began opening stores in Vancouver in 2003. Now it has five supermarkets in the Vancouver CMA and four in the Toronto CMA. One of the four Toronto stores is a large, modern supermarket located in Richmond Hill; the other three are much smaller. All the four H Mart stores and one of the Galleria supermarkets are located in the new area of concentration of Koreans (see the bottom left map in Figure 5).

In January 2016, an announcement was made that a large Filipino grocery chain, Seafood City Supermarket, would open its first Canadian store in the Toronto CMA in early 2017 (Sagan 2016). With no coincidence, the site of the modern supermarket was chosen in Mississauga, an area of Filipino concentration. The supermarket, which indeed opened in September 2017, took tenancy in a power centre -Heartland Town Centre, to fill the space vacated by a defunct mainstream building material retailer--Rona. (4) Like the owner and operator of H Mart, Seafood City Supermarket already boasts 22 stores in the United States. In Canada, both the Toronto CMA and the Vancouver CMA are home to the largest Filipino communities. Future Vancouver stores are also in the works.

Not every ethnic group has the same level of self-sufficiency in ethnic retailing. This can be explained by both the Cultural Resources Thesis and the Interactive Model of Ethnic Entrepreneurship. Smaller groups often do not have the same levels of "structural opportunities" and "ethnic group characteristics" to develop their own ethnic retail stores. Their consumer needs are met by retailers outside the community. It is important to note, however, that retailing owned and operated by South Asians--the largest visible minority group in metropolitan Toronto--is abnormally under-developed. Only three Indian/South Asian-focused food retailers were observed in our study: Golden Groceries (with 4 locations), Subzi Mandi Cash & Carry (3 locations), and Patel Brothers (3 locations), mostly located in Brampton, Mississauga and Scarborough. Compared with the Chinese and Korean supermarkets, the South Asian-focused food stores are much smaller. Moreover, Golden Groceries has recently disintegrated: two of the four stores were closed; the other two were sold to separate operators. Patel Brothers changed hands and were renamed Panchvati.

Ethnic supermarkets have traditionally not targeted mainstream consumers, nor advertised in mainstream news media. However, some ethnic retailers are now proactively crossing ethnic boundaries by extending merchandise offerings to consumers of other ethnicities. For example, the Chinese-owned Al Premium supermarket in Scarborough targets both Chinese and South Asians. The same store has two separate meat shops: one sells pork along with other types of meat; the other shop sells halal meat only. The store workers are a mix of Chinese and South Asians. Two new Sunny supermarkets, owned by Kai Chen--a Mainland Chinese immigrant--have the same store layout: with two meat shops and a mix of Chinese and South Asian employees.

The Chinese-owned Oceans Fresh Food Market is another example. It has four large format supermarkets in the Toronto CMA, with two of them in the City of Brampton. Notably, Brampton is home to a large population of South Asians and Blacks (mainly West Indians), with a much smaller number of Chinese (see Figure 3). Apparently, the main consumer targets that the two Oceans supermarkets in Brampton aim at are the South Asians and West Indians. One of its stores is located inside Brampton's largest shopping mall--Shoppers World. Its other Brampton store is located in a mainstream shopping plaza (at Queen Street East and Highway 410). These Oceans stores do not even carry a Chinese name in their store fascia. As is touted on its corporate website, "Oceans positions itself as the shopping destination for home cooked meals from around the world. The look of the stores is very much European in style and scope with grocery aisles named for countries such as India, Jamaica and Vietnam for example and filled with products from those countries" (Oceans Fresh Food Market 2017). Recently, the owners of Oceans started to build a second banner of supermarkets, branded as Nations Fresh Foods. The first Nations store is a 50,000 square foot supermarket opened in 2012 in Woodbridge Square plaza in the City of Vaughan--a suburb heavily populated by Italian Canadians. Its second Toronto store opened on February 1, 2017 in Mississauga, also taking over the space of a former Rona store. The third store is slated to open on November 16, 2017 in Toronto's Stockyard Mall to fill the space (80,000 square feet) vacated by a former Target department store (Kucharsky 2015). Like the Oceans supermarkets, none of the Nations stores are located in areas of Chinese concentration, nor do any of them bear a Chinese name on their store fascia.

Ethnic General Merchandise Retailing--the emergence of junior department stores

Ethnic retailing in Canada has long lacked department stores. In metropolitan Toronto, this void is being filled by a new player, The Best Shop. This business venture was created by a Chinese immigrant, Jimmy Chen, originally in a dollar store format. In the last ten years, it has expanded into a mini-chain of junior department stores at five locations employing more than one hundred workers (Jie 2017). Of more importance, The Best Shop stores have assumed the role of anchors in the respective Chinese shopping centres that host them. (5)

The merchandise carried in The Best Shop stores range from home decor, kitchenware and stationeries to home electronics such as rice cookers, microwave ovens, portable air conditioners, TV sets, compact washing machines and mini fridges. While most merchandise are not ethnic specific by utility, nearly all are imported from China (confirmed by our site visits). The owner of The Best Shop even operates his own import business to bypass the middlemen. As a transnational entrepreneur, he travels back and forth between Canada and China to procure merchandise himself and to ensure that the supplies are of a specified quality (Jie 2017).

Among other things, the success of The Best Shop is attributed to the ability of the homeland country to manufacture good-quality, yet low-priced, consumer goods. These goods are competitive in price and are popular among the ethnic Chinese consumers. At one time, merchandise offerings at The Best Shop stores included a wide range of apparel, but apparel was discontinued because of stagnant sales (Helen 2013). The Best Shop's business strategy is to focus on merchandise not available in the stores or on the websites of the mainstream retailers, to avoid competition (Jie 2017).

The owner of The Best Shop has the vision of expanding the junior department stores into other Canadian cities and eventually into full-line department stores, to get a share of the market vacated by the mainstream retailers Zellers, Target, and Sears. Its first store outside of the Toronto CMA opened in Richmond in British Columbia in July 2017. In addition to the junior department stores, The Best Shop owner operates a large furniture store, selling furniture also imported from homeland China.

Ethnic Retail Banking--continued expansion and outreach

Banking is a highly regulated business sector in Canada. The operation of a modern bank must be supported by sufficient capital and is subject to government regulation. Until the 1990s, banking services in Canada were provided mainly by the mainstream banks, namely Royal Bank of Canada, CIBC, Scotia Bank, TD Bank, and Bank of Montreal (known as the 'Big Five'). Beginning in the 1990s, ethnic banks serving mainly the Chinese were opened in Canada, first, Bank of China (Canada) (BOCC); then, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). Unlike credit unions that were collectively owned and democratically controlled by the participating members, both Chinese banks in Canada are fully owned subsidiaries of, and controlled by, the state-owned financial institutions in China, and are full-service banks.

After establishing a Toronto Representative Office in 1992, BOCC was incorporated as a Schedule II Bank in 1993. Since opening its first branch in Toronto's Central Chinatown in 1994, BOCC has steadily expanded its branch networks in the metropolitan areas of Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and Calgary. At present, it operates in the Toronto CMA at six locations.

ICBC entered Canada through acquisition of Bank of East Asia (BEA)--an earlier ethnic bank in Canada (established in 1918 in Hong Kong, with operations in Hong Kong, China, Southeast Asia, UK, and the U.S.) In 2010, ICBC acquired 70 percent of BEA's ownership, and renamed the bank ICBC. At the present, ICBC serves Toronto's Chinese also at six locations.

Both banks actively pursue business opportunities by providing products and services that cater to the needs of immigrants from mainland China. Their services include not only loans, investments, and currency exchange, but also remittance to mainland China. The latter service facilitates transnational capital flows between Canada and China with efficiency and low cost, as money is wired through the banks' own networks in the motherland country.

ICICI Bank, India's largest private sector bank, is another example of ethnic bank services in Canada. Headquartered in Mumbai, India, ICICI Bank opened up banking services in Canada in 2003 as a Schedule II Bank (ICICI Bank of Canada 2017). It currently operates 8 branches in Canada, with 6 in the Toronto CMA: two in Brampton, one in Mississauga, one in Scarborough, and two in Toronto. (The remaining two branches are in Calgary in Alberta and Surrey in British Columbia, respectively.) The branch locations in Canada reflect their predominantly South Asian customer base (see Figure 3 bottom map).

PARTICIPATION OF MAINSTREAM RETAILERS IN ETHNIC RETAILING

In some sub-sectors of retailing, particularly food retailing, ethnic minority owned-and-operated businesses are taking significant market shares from the mainstream retailers. According to a report by Perry Caicco of CIBC World Markets, ethnic retailers in metropolitan Toronto now take in between $4-5 billion a year in food sales, as much as the total sales of Wal-Mart's food division in the Toronto CMA (Condon 2013). Mainstream corporate retailers have realized that supermarkets cannot be a melting pot providing generic products to everyone, and that merely running ads in ethnic media during ethnic festivals is not enough to capture the new market growth. They need to engage in ethnic retailing in a variety of new ways, ranging from acquiring ethnic business operations to hosting ethnic retailers as co-tenants on their business premises.

Acquisition of ethnic retailers

The prominent example of this strategy is Loblaw's acquisition of T&T Supermarket. The success of T&T in expanding the chain to five metropolitan areas in Canada did not go unnoticed by the mainstream retailers. In 2009, Loblaw acquired T&T's entire operation and turned it into a wholly-owned subsidiary. For Loblaw (Canada's largest grocery retailer), the acquisition of T&T represented an opportunity to capitalize on Canada's burgeoning demand for international food and to penetrate one of the fastest growing ethnic food markets in the country. After the change of ownership, however, T&T continues to be operated by the same management team and is sourced by the same supply chains. In the eyes of the ethnic consumers, T&T is the same with no difference. Many do not even know it is no longer owned by ethnic Chinese. As Loblaw President Allan Leighton told analysts at a conference call (Shaw 2009; Strauss 2009), "Today we have a relatively small share [of the ethnic market]. Our objective is to be the number one player, and T&T gives us the platform to build to this objective. ... There is a huge amount of learning we can get from [T&T] in terms of [product] ranges and sourcing, and it should help our core stores too." Leighton's remarks indicated that Loblaw would also use T&T's network of suppliers to increase Asian food stocks across its store portfolio, in order to meet the demand of the mainstream population for exotic foods.

Metro, Canada's third largest food retailer, has been experimenting with similar strategies. In 2011, Metro purchased a 55 percent interest in Marche Adonis, an ethnic supermarket chain founded by Lebanese immigrants with five stores in Montreal, catering to the large community of West Asians (Marotte 2011). The partnership has allowed the Marche Adonis brand to bring ethnic retailing expertise into the Toronto market. After the acquisition, Marche Adonis continues to be managed independently by the original owners, much like the case of T&T after its acquisition by Loblaw. Marche Adonis now operates 10 stores, with two of them in the Toronto CMA: one in Scarborough; the other in Mississauga.

Introduction of ethnic supermarkets into supercenters as co-tenants

In the first decade of its presence in Canada, Wal-Mart focused on the operation of discount department stores acquired from WoolCo in 1994. Later, it expanded with opening Sam's Clubs and supercenters. The Sam's Clubs were not making money, so Wal-Mart closed all of them and has since been focusing exclusively on opening supercenters--a format combining both food and general merchandise under one roof. To capture a share of the lucrative ethnic consumer market in the Toronto CMA, many Wal-Mart supercenters installed designated shelf-space for ethnic food, a practice that Wal-Mart has been doing for many years in the U.S. This in part meets the needs of the smaller ethnic groups, which do not have cultural motivations and structural opportunities for developing their own ethnic retailing.

In Scarborough--a Chinese and South Asian populated ethnoburb (see Figure 3)--a new Wal-Mart Supercenter experimented, in 2014, with installing a Chinese-style meat shop and a fresh fish department. That operation, however, did not last long due to the lack of experience on the part of Wal-Mart in supplying and selling ethnic foods properly. Having realized that it had a gap in serving the local ethnic communities, Wal-Mart invited the ethnic Chinese grocer--Al Premium--to co-tenant the expansive supercenter to provide "a great selection of international food" (Al Premium 2015).

In July 2015, Al Premium, at the invitation of Wal-Mart, entered an agreement to open a supermarket within the Scarborough Wal-Mart Supercenter. Five months later, on December 18, the supermarket opened to shoppers (see Figure 6). In addition to the Chinese-style meat shop and the fresh fish department, the Al Premium supermarket includes bakeries, fruits, vegetables and packaged food from China, India, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. This is part of Wal-Mart s "Store of Community" Plan--a plan of store adaptation to place and local demographics (Kashty 2015). By "contracting" the food section of a supercenter to an ethnic supermarket operator, Wal-Mart hopes to increase sales of its general merchandise from the cross-shopping traffic generated by Al Premium, in addition to collecting rent from the supermarket operator. The paring of a general merchandise store with an ethnic supermarket within the same supercenter is truly novel, not seen in Canada before. Similar to Loblaw, Wal-Mart will also use Al Premium to source the supply of ethnic foods for its other supercenters, and it is highly possible that if this business cooperation proves successful, Wal-Mart may acquire Al Premium outright and turn it into a Toronto subsidiary.

Ethnic marketing

Many other mainstream retailers sell generic, rather than ethnic-specific products and services; but the selling of generic products and the delivery of generic services to a diverse consumer market also requires a carefully designed ethnic strategy--typically embodied by ethnic marketing. Banks are seen as a prominent example among such retailers employing ethnic marketing to compete for ethnic consumers.

At the centre of Toronto's inner city Chinatown are five bank branches. All of these branches are owned by the Big Five mainstream banks, but all of them include Chinese characters in their store fascia, and virtually everyone who works in these branches, from branch managers to financial advisors and tellers, is ethnic Chinese, because nearly their entire clientele are ethnic Chinese. Customers go to a bank branch not simply to withdraw cash from an ATM or through a teller. Their needs include learning of investment options and negotiation for favorable loan/mortgage terms, and often involve interactions with a financial adviser. These services can be complex and difficult to communicate for ethnic consumers in a second language. Ethnic consumers, particularly newcomers in the country, naturally prefer to deal with an advisor who speaks their own language with the same cultural background.

With the formation of ethnoburbs, ethnic banking has expanded beyond the inner city to other locations in suburban metropolitan Toronto. Instead of using the term ethnic banking, the mainstream banks describe the practice as multicultural banking. Depending on the area's demographics, services are provided in different languages. Figure 7 shows examples of multicultural branches in Scarborough that are designed to specifically serve ethnic Chinese customers. Similar to those in the inner-city Chinatown, these suburban branches are also staffed virtually exclusively with ethnic Chinese employees, have bilingual store signs, and provide consumer guides and information brochures printed in the Chinese language. Within diverse ethnic neighbourhoods, the banks are now catering to combinations of ethnic groups. For example, a bank branch in Scarborough has a mix of South Asian and Chinese employees to serve a broader ethnic customer base.

Other mainstream retailers are now also engaging in ethnic marketing through the use of ethnic languages to facilitate consumption of generic merchandise. Examples are Home Depot, Rona, Wal-Mart, and Shopper's Drug Mart. Of particular note, in the Chinese-concentrated ethnoburbs (such as Scarborough, North York and Markham), Chinese has become the second official language in retailing, where both English and Chinese characters are displayed on bilingual signs. As yet, no other ethnic languages are seen being used by mainstream retailers in their store fascia--although this will likely change with increasing concentrations of specific ethnic groups being targeted by major retailers.

SUMMARY DISCUSSION WITH A NEW TYPOLOGY FOR EXPANDED STUDY OF ETHNIC RETAILING

Our research shows that ethnic retailing has not only been expanding in business scope and geographical distribution, but it has also been changing in ownership, sources of capital, and market orientation, thus becoming more integrated and embedded in the broader local economy. This also manifests the transition of ethnic retailing towards mixed embeddedness. Ethnic retailing is no longer limited to businesses owned and operated by ethnic retailers, the cornerstone of the traditional definition of ethnic retailing. Mainstream retailers have begun to enter the realm of ethnic retailing in various ways, blurring the boundaries between ethnic retailing and mainstream retailing. Ethnic retailing can no longer be defined and described simply using the traditional ethnic economy approach, as illustrated in Figure 1.

From a business point of view, retailing is all about the selling and delivery of goods and services to the end consumers. Therefore, we argue that the foremost defining factor for ethnic retailing should be customer orientation, instead of ownership and entrepreneurship. Based on the expanded list of factors depicted in Figure 2, ethnic retailing can now be differentiated into seven types, as portrayed in Figure 8.

The backbone of ethnic retailing is still those businesses that are owned and operated by ethnic retailers. These retailers are either citizens or landed immigrants of Canada. Most of these businesses serve their co-ethnics, such as the majority of the Chinese supermarkets and all of the Korean supermarkets (Type A in Figure 8). These businesses have all of the typical ethnic store characteristics. The business owners have full control of the operating capital and store management. All employees including store managers are co-ethnics. The use of ethnic language in store fascia and in-store signage makes the stores easily recognizable and creates a familiar shopping atmosphere for their customers. These businesses often also utilize unique supply chains to procure ethnic products from the immigrants' homeland countries or from local producers and processors that are also owned and operated by co-ethnics. As well, these stores tend to be located in areas with concentrations of ethnic minorities that they serve.

Some ethnic retailers expanded their business scope beyond their own ethnic community to serve multi-ethnic consumers, creating a varied form of ethnic retailing (Type B in Figure 8). These businesses do not have the same characteristics as those of the Type A stores. Examples are Al Premium and Sunny supermarkets, which serve both Chinese and South Asians. While they are still owned and operated by retailers of a particular ethnicity, who exercise full control of the operating capital and business management, the product mix and the mixed team of employees create a multicultural atmosphere and shopping environment. These businesses must also rely on an expanded supply chain in order to source products from different countries. While they have similar store frontage and fascia as Type A stores, they tend to be located in areas with concentrations of multi-visible minorities, particularly in Scarborough and Markham.

There are other ethnic retailers who do not, at all, aim at co-ethnics as their target market. Instead, their stores are designed to serve consumers of different ethnicities. This form of ethnic retailing, Type C in Figure 8, is represented by Oceans and Nations supermarkets. As a further testimony, neither the Oceans stores in Brampton nor the Nations store in Vaughan have a Chinese supermarket fascia. Inside the stores, both the product mix and workforce reflect the consumer base they aim to serve.

Ethnic minority owned-and-operated retail businesses, especially food retailing, will continue to thrive because of their comparative advantages that are difficult for the mainstream retailers to duplicate. They are often able to strategically source products from immigrants' home countries. Home brands are particularly important to attract ethnic customers that are new to Canada, therefore providing a strong emotional linkage to their customers (Wang and Lo 2007). The ability to provide a large assortment of home brands is the main merchandising strategy that differentiates ethnic retailers from the mainstream retailers, which offer only limited lines of ethnic foods. According to Lo (2009), ethnic retailers purposefully reproduce homeland images in their store environment and reinforce ethnic identity in the consumption sphere. Indeed, the store environment is richly cultural and ethnic and in many respects celebrates ethnic identity.

Despite the challenges, many mainstream retailers (grocers, banks and other service providers alike) have already adopted mixed marketing strategies to target ethnic consumers, leading to other forms of ethnic retailing (Types D, E. and F in Figure 8).

Through acquisition, Loblaw gained ownership (i.e., capital control) of T&T Supermarket, but left the subsidiary's operation in the hands of the original management team. Besides, all other store characteristics, from product offerings and store atmosphere to store fascia and supply chains, remain unchanged. By acquiring Marche Adonis, Metro is exercising the same strategy.

In the case of Wal-Mart hosting an Al Premium supermarket as part of its super-center, the mainstream retailer does not own the ethnic business, but lets the ethnic retailer operate the store-within-store independently. Outside, the supercenter still has the typical Wal-Mart store front. Inside, the food section has all of the characteristics of an ethnic supermarket. This represents a case of co-operation in which retailers and consumers of different backgrounds interact and adapt to one another (Jamal and Chapman 2000; Penaloza and Gilly 1999). If this form of co-operation brings steady profits for both parties, the experiment may well lead to a Wal-Mart acquisition of Al Premium, and more Al Premium supermarkets may be installed in other Wal-Mart Supercenters in selected neighborhoods. In the U.S., Wal-Mart has established a multi-cultural marketing department and new programs for Asian Americans. It piloted a micro-site geared to Vietnamese American consumers, with information available both in English and Vietnamese (Orgel 2008). The Canadian experiment is consistent with its U.S. pilot program.

The mainstream retailers that sell "generic" products are engaged in ethnic retailing mainly through ethnic marketing. In the case of banking, this ranges from creating multi-cultural branches staffed with ethnic employees to using bi-lingual signage (both inside and outside the stores) to inform consumers of the products and services. While this unavoidably increases business operating costs, the mainstream retailers realize that they must embrace the increasing fragmentation of the mass consumer market and adapt to it accordingly. In a study of 739 J.C. Penney department store outlets, researchers from Temple University, Rutgers University and Davidson College found that profits rise when workers' ethnicity mirrors their customer base (Campbell 2012).

Still at an early stage, retailers from immigrants' home countries have begun to establish overseas operations in Canada to serve their co-ethnic consumers. These are exemplified by Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and ICICI of India (Type G in Figure 8). As overseas subsidiaries, their capital is fully controlled by their state-owned parent companies in China and India. Their branches look very much the same, both inside and outside, as those in the home country, and serve virtually only the ethnic Chinese and South Asian consumers in Canada. Compared with the mainstream banks, their range and location of services are still limited, but they represent an important new trend of ethnic retailing. Given the growing size of the Chinese population in Canada, it is expected that more transnational retailers from China will land in Canada to fill certain gaps in ethnic retailing. It should be pointed out that Toronto and the other metropolitan cities in Canada do not have banks owned-and-operated by local ethnic minorities. This is a major difference from the U.S. (as reported in Li et al. 2006).

In sum, ethnic retailing in Canada has evolved into a diverse and complex business sector, as illustrated in Figure 8. Some types of businesses are well explained by the existing theories and models. For example, Type A consists of typical businesses of ethnic retailing, which are adequately explained by the traditional model in Figure 1. Types B and C, which are extensions of Type 1, both have characteristics of a mixed economy, though they do not aim to serve mainstream consumers. However, due to their size and location in mainstream shopping centres and power centres, all of Types A, B and C are much more "formal" (as opposed to "informal"), meaning that they must follow the mainstream business conventions and are increasingly subject to government regulations. They are therefore better understood in the context of mixed embeddedness. Because the existing theories and models are all developed with ethnic entrepreneurship and cultural resources as the main thread, they are inadequate in explaining Types D, E, and F businesses, which, in our view, are all new forms of contemporary ethnic retailing. The typology presented in Figure 8 provides a useful framework to inform and guide expanded study of ethnic retailing. Specifically, it identifies and defines new forms of ethnic retailing and calls for more research on the engagement of mainstream and transnational retailers in ethnic retailing, including their business strategies and the opportunity structures presented to them. More case studies at other locations are welcome to address such research questions as: (1) How do Types B and C retailers mobilize multicultural resources for success? (2) How can mainstream retailers best leverage ethnic market knowledge from ethnic business owners/operators in cooperation? Is this knowledge transfer a two-way process? (3) Is the process of transnational 'ethnic' retail internationalization different from the general retail internationalization (e.g., Bank of China opening in Canada versus Wal-Mart opening up in Canada)? (4) What policy changes are needed to facilitate these forms of economic integration and mixed embeddedness for the benefits of the entrepreneurs, consumers and the larger society alike? New theories can be developed only through more research and more case studies across a wider range of metropolitan cities.

NOTES

(1.) On a couple of occasions, we conducted non-structured personal interviews with business owners, but few owners were willing to be engaged in an extensive conversation.

(2.) The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Racial Discrimination has urged Canada to reflect upon its use of this 'visible minority' term (Canwest News 2007; Woolley 2013).

(3.) The four municipalities are: Toronto (1 store), Markham (3 stores), Richmond Hill (1 store), and Mississauga (1 store)

(4.) Rona was acquired by the U.S.-based Lowe's in 2016.

(5.) The host shopping centers are: Pacific Mall and Century Plaza in Markham; Peanut Plaza in North York; Golden Square Centre in Mississauga; and Oriental Centre in Scarborough.

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APPENDIX: THE TORONTO CENSUS METROPOLITAN AREA (CMA)

The six former municipalities of Toronto, North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke, York and East York were amalgamated into the current City of Toronto in 1998.

SHUGUANG WANG is Professor of Geography at Ryerson University in Toronto. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of retail geography, immigration and settlement studies, ethnic economy, and internationalization of retailing. His recent publications include: Corporate Retailing (2017, in The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology); Why Best Buy's Dual Brand Strategy Failed in Canada (with J. Valencia, 2016, in Professional Geographer); Social Infrastructure and Vulnerability in the Suburbs (with L. Lo, P. Preston, P. Anisef, P. and R. Basu, 2015); Ethnic Retailing (with Z. Zhuang and T. Hernandez, 2015, in Immigration, Integration and the Settlement Experience in North America; China's New Retail Economy: A Geographical Perspective (2014)).

TONY HERNANDEZ is the Director and Eaton Chair in Retailing at the Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity, and Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Ryerson University, Toronto. His research focuses on Canadian retailing and commercial real estate with an emphasis on location strategy and decision making. His recent publications include: Locational Intelligence Research and Applications (with M. Rice, 2017); and Ethnic Retailing (with C. Zhuang and S. Wang, 2015, in Immigration, Integration, and the Settlement Experience in North America). TABLE 1. Size and distribution of visible minority groups in the Toronto CMA Visible Number of persons minority 2006 difference between 2006 and 2011 Chinese 485,295 530,830 45,535 South Asian 682,985 832,640 149,655 Black 350,535 396,575 46,040 Filipino 171,370 229,160 57,790 Latin American 98,635 115,470 16,835 (Hispanic) Southeast 69,625 88,960 19,335 Asian Arab 52,950 72,920 19,970 West Asian 75,040 94,625 19,585 Korean 54,845 59,410 4,565 Japanese 18,590 16,265 -2,325 Multiple visible 106,070 157,660 51,590 minority Total visible 2,169,785 2,594,515 424,730 minority CMA total 5,064,485 5,499,785 435,300 Visible % of total CMA Spatial concentrations minority population (see Figures 3-5) 2011 2006 2011 Chinese 9.6 9.7 Central and East Chinatowns; northeast North York; northwest Scarborough; Markham; Richmond Hill; Mississauga South Asian 13.5 15.1 Scarborough; Brampton; Mississauga; southern Markham; northwest F.tobicoke Black 6.9 7.2 Brampton; northern Etobicoke; Mississauga; Scarborough; Ajax; Pickering Filipino 3.4 4.2 Scarborough; northwest North York; Mississauga; Brampton Latin American 1.9 2.1 Etobicoke; Brampton; Mississauga (Hispanic) Southeast 1.4 1.6 Northern Etobicoke; Mississauga; Asian Vaughan Arab 1 1.3 Mississauga; eastern Milton; eastern North York West Asian 1.5 1.7 Northeast North York; southwest Markham; Richmond Korean 1.1 I.1 Former city of Toronto (Bloor West); North York; southwest Markham; Richmond Hill Japanese 0.4 0.3 No obvious concentration Multiple visibl 2.1 2.9 minority Total visible 42.8 47.2 minority CMA total 100 100.0