The past week has brought plenty of pledges on belt-tightening as big names such as Argos, JJB and Bhs all reacted to consumers' tightened purse strings.
The benefits of intense focus on cost were evident at WHSmith yesterday. Boss Kate Swann was able to unveil profits of£64 million against a loss of£135 million last time. She readily put much of the improvement down to cost control and it would be churlish not to pay tribute to the impressive results she has achieved in desperate times.
But it's interesting to contrast many public companies' focus on cost as a remedy for current ills, with the options available to some privately owned retailers.
Despite the fact that he has had to book a near 6 per cent decline in annual operating profits at Bhs, Philip Green is as keen to invest in the business as he is to limit expenditure.
Although turnover is down 4 per cent in the current year, he has already spent£20 million on improving his shops and drafted in key staff, such as former Selfridges marketing director Beverley Churchill. And he is still developing new markets, as shown by plans to create a£100 million home business.
He can only do that because he is the owner of Bhs and not answerable to the short-term investor mentality that can plague public companies. You have to wonder, when this downturn is over who will be best placed to benefit from boosted spending levels? The retailers for whom cutting costs is everything, or the ones that also tried to excite shoppers and improve their offers in preparation for the reopening of purses?
Using a journalistic platform to complain about bad service can be a bit dodgy - there is always a nagging doubt about whether the writer wants to engage readers or line up some compensatory freebies.
But celebrating good service is excusable. As retailers struggle to cope with the bleakest high street conditions in years, service standards remain one of the benchmarks that can tip the balance between success and failure. Exemplary performance is worth emulating.
Recent experience shows online giant Amazon has set the bar high. An enquiry about the non-arrival of an order was acknowledged and dealt with in the space of 24 hours. A short e-mail exchange led to the missing order being fulfilled in just a click.
Rather than putting the customer through hoop after hoop, replacement products were dispatched and Amazon took on the burden of following the supply chain back to see where the originals had disappeared to.
Once disappointed by a retailer, consumers are reluctant to buy again. Many retailers, however, love to hide behind systems - bureaucratic and technological - to put off sorting out customer gripes.
But the speed, courtesy and efficiency with which Amazon apparently deals with customer complaints is a classic example of how to turn a problem into the opportunity of increased customer loyalty and more business in future.
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