Retailing, the selling of merchandise and certain services to

consumers. It ordinarily involves the selling of individual units or

small lots to large numbers of customers by a business set up for that
specific purpose. In the broadest sense, retailing can be said to have
begun the first time one item of value was bartered for another. In the
more restricted sense of a specialized full-time commercial activity,
retailing began several thousand years ago when peddlers first began
hawking their wares and when the first marketplaces were formed.