A hypermarket (sometimes called a hyperstore, supercentre or superstore) is a

big-box store A big-box store (also hyperstore, supercenter, superstore, or megastore) is a physically large retail establishment, usually part of a chain of stores. The term sometimes also refers, by extension, to the company that operates the store. The t ...

combining a supermarket and a

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic app ...

. The result is an expansive

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and ...

facility carrying a wide range of products under one roof, including full grocery lines and

general merchandise General line of merchandise or general merchandise is a term used in retail and wholesale business in reference to merchandise not limited to some particular category. General merchandise stores (general stores) address this sector of retail. Acc ...

. In theory, hypermarkets allow customers to satisfy all their routine shopping needs in one trip. The term ''hypermarket'' (french: hypermarché) was coined in 1968 by French trade expert Jacques Pictet. Hypermarkets, like other

s, typically have business models focusing on high-volume, low-

margin Margin may refer to: Physical or graphical edges *Margin (typography), the white space that surrounds the content of a page *Continental margin, the zone of the ocean floor that separates the thin oceanic crust from thick continental crust *Leaf ...

sales Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale. The seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in ...

. Typically covering an area of , they generally have more than 200,000 different brands of merchandise available at any one time. Because of their large

footprints Footprints are the impressions or images left behind by a person walking or running. Hoofprints and pawprints are those left by animals with hooves or paws rather than feet, while "shoeprints" is the specific term for prints made by shoes. The ...

, many hypermarkets choose suburban or out-of-town locations that are easily accessible by automobile.

History

Canada

Loblaws Loblaws Inc. is a Canadian supermarket chain with stores located in the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan. Headquartered in Brampton, Ontario, Loblaws is a subsidiary of Loblaw Companies Limited, C ...

established its

Real Canadian Superstore Real Canadian Superstore is a chain of supermarkets owned by Canadian food retailing giant Loblaw Companies. Its name is often shortened to Superstore, or, less commonly, RCSS. Originating in Western Canada in the late 1970s/early 1980s, the ...

chain in 1979. It sells mainly groceries, while also retailing clothing, electronics and housewares. Its largest competitor in Canada is

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

. These are the two major Canadian hypermarkets.

Europe

The first European hypermarket is commonly mistaken to be the

Carrefour Carrefour () is a French multinational retail and wholesaling corporation headquartered in Massy, France. The eighth-largest retailer in the world by revenue, it operates a chain of hypermarkets, groceries stores and convenience stores, whic ...

store that opened in 1963, at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois,

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

, The co-founders were influenced by the teachings of Colombian-born American marketing executive

Bernardo Trujillo Bernardo Trujillo (1920-1971) was a Colombian-born American marketing executive. He hosted merchandizing seminars as part of cash register company NCR Corporation's marketing strategy, ultimately influencing the development of modern supermarke ...

, who taught

executive education Executive education (ExEd or Exec. Ed) refers to academic programs at graduate-level business schools for executives, business leaders and functional managers globally. These programs are generally non-credit and non-degree-granting, but sometim ...

as part of the NCR Corporation's marketing campaign. However, the Belgian retailer Grand Bazar preceded Carrefour by two years when it opened three hypermarkets in a short span in 1961 under the name ''SuperBazar'' after Belgian law restricting the size of department stores was abolished in January 1961. The first ''SuperBazar'', opened in

Bruges Bruges ( , nl, Brugge ) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium, in the northwest of the country, and the sixth-largest city of the country by population. The area of the whole city a ...

on 9 September 1961, initially designed to become a non-food department store, however only covered a surface area of , and was later converted into a regular supermarket. The substantially larger store that opened a week later in

Auderghem Auderghem (former Dutch spelling, now used in French; pronounced ) or Oudergem () is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region (Belgium). Located to the southeast of the region, along the Woluwe valley and at the entrance to t ...

, Brussels, covering , is regarded as a more proper hypermarket that brought the concept to fruition. It was Belgian market development engineer , who adopted the concept from his frequent trips to the United States, particularly inspired from the

Grand Union A grand union is a rail track junction where two double-track railway or tramway lines cross at grade, often in a street intersection or crossroads. A total of sixteen railroad switches (sets of points) allow streetcars (or in rarer instal ...

's "Grand Way" center in

Paramus, New Jersey Paramus ( Waggoner, Walter H ''The New York Times'', February 16, 1966. Accessed October 16, 2018. "Paramus – pronounced puh-RAHM-us, with the accent on the second syllable – may have taken its name from 'perremus' or 'perymus,' Indian for ...

. In France, hypermarkets are generally situated in shopping centers (french: centre commercial or centre d'achats) outside cities, though some are present in the city center. They are surrounded by extensive car parking facilities, and generally by other specialized

superstores A big-box store (also hyperstore, supercenter, superstore, or megastore) is a physically large retail establishment, usually part of a chain of stores. The term sometimes also refers, by extension, to the company that operates the store. The te ...

that sell clothing, sports gear, automotive items, etc. After the successes of super- and hyper-markets and amid fears that smaller stores would be forced out of business,

enacted laws that made it more difficult to build hypermarkets and also restricted the amount of economic leverage that hypermarket chains can impose upon their suppliers (the ''Loi Galland'').

Japan

The predecessor to

Ito Yokado is a Japanese general merchandise and department store, originally founded in 1920. In 2005, it was reorganized, as part of a corporate restructuring, as a subsidiary of the Seven & I Holdings Co. As of March 2013, there are 178 Ito-Yokado ...

was founded in 1920 selling western goods, went public in 1957, and switched to that name in 1965.

Seibu Department Stores is a Japanese department store. The first store to trade under the name opened its doors in 1949. Seibu is typical of Japanese department stores with a wide variety of stores doing business on several floors. The company is now a subsidiary of S ...

was founded in 1956, and opened up its grocery chain

Seiyu Group , or , is a Japanese group of supermarkets, shopping centers and department stores, headquartered in Akabane (赤羽), Kita, Tokyo.

in 1963.

Isao Nakauchi was the founder of Daiei. Life and career Isao Nakauchi served in the Philippines as an infantryman during World War II. His business empire started in Osaka 1957 and it led to the creation of "American-style" supermarkets in Japan. In 1972 he ...

founded the first

Daiei , based in Kobe, Hyōgo, Kobe, is one of the largest supermarket chains in Japan. In 1957, Isao Nakauchi founded the chain in Osaka near Sembayashi Station on the Keihan train line. Daiei is now under a restructuring process supported by Maruben ...

in Kobe in 1957, selling clothing, electronics, furniture and groceries all in one store.

Jusco is the acronym for Japan United Stores Company, a chain of "general merchandise stores" (or hypermarket) and the largest of its type in Japan. The various JUSCO companies are subsidiaries of the ÆON supermarket chain. The JUSCO name was adopte ...

was created in 1970, and eventually became known as

ÆON , commonly written AEON Co., Ltd., is a Japanese multinational holding company of ÆON Group. It has its headquarters in Mihama-ku, Chiba, Chiba Prefecture.manga (Japanese comic) stands,

Internet cafe The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

s, typical department store merchandise, a full range of groceries,

beauty salon A beauty salon or beauty parlor is an establishment dealing with cosmetic treatments for people. Other variations of this type of business include hair salons, spas, day spas, and medical spas. Beauty treatments Massage for the body is a ...

s and other services all in the same store. A recent trend has been to combine the

dollar store A variety store (also five and dime (historic), pound shop, or dollar store) is a retail store that sells general merchandise, such as apparel, automotive parts, dry goods, toys, hardware, home furnishings, and a selection of groceries. It us ...

concept with the hypermarket blueprint, giving rise to the "hyakkin plaza"—''hyakkin'' (百均) or ''hyaku en'' (百円) means 100

yen The is the official currency of Japan. It is the third-most traded currency in the foreign exchange market, after the United States dollar (US$) and the euro. It is also widely used as a third reserve currency after the US dollar and the e ...

(roughly 1

US dollar The United States dollar ( symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the officia ...

United States

Until the 1980s, large stores combining food and non-food items were unusual in the United States, although early predecessors existed since the first half of the 20th century. The

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...

chain Fred Meyer, now a division of the

Kroger The Kroger Company, or simply Kroger, is an American retail company that operates (either directly or through its subsidiaries) supermarkets and multi-department stores throughout the United States. Founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883 in Cinci ...

supermarket company, opened the first suburban one-stop shopping center in 1931 in the Hollywood District of

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...

. The store's innovations included a grocery store alongside a

drugstore A pharmacy (also called "drugstore" in American English or "community pharmacy" or "chemist" in Commonwealth English, or rarely, apothecary) is a retail shop which provides pharmaceutical drugs, among other products. At the pharmacy, a pharmaci ...

plus off-street parking and an automobile lubrication and oil service. In 1933, men's and women's wear was added, and automotive department, housewares, and other nonfood products followed in succeeding years. In the mid 1930s, Fred Meyer opened a central bakery, a candy kitchen, an ice cream plant, and a photo-finishing plant, which supplied the company's stores in Portland and neighbouring cities with house brands such as Vita Bee bread, Hocus Pocus desserts, and Fifth Avenue candies. By the 1950s, Fred Meyer began opening stores that were , and the 1960s saw the first modern-sized Fred Meyer hypermarkets. The Midwest (then grocery) chain

Meijer Meijer Inc. (, ; stylized as meijer) is an American supercenter chain that primarily operates throughout the Midwest. Its corporate headquarters are in Walker, Michigan, which is a part of the Grand Rapids metropolitan area. Founded in 1934 ...

, which today operates about 235 stores in six US states, coined the term "super center", and opened the first of its hypermarket format store in

Grand Rapids, Michigan Grand Rapids is a city and county seat of Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 198,917 which ranks it as the second most-populated city in the state after Detroit. Grand Rapids is the ...

, in June 1962, under the brand name "Thrifty Acres". In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the three major US

discount store A discount store or discounter offers a retail format in which products are sold at prices that are in principle lower than an actual or supposed "full retail price". Discounters rely on bulk purchasing and efficient distribution to keep down cost ...

chains –

Kmart Kmart Corporation ( , doing business as Kmart and stylized as kmart) is an American retail company that owns a chain of big box department stores. The company is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States. The company was inc ...

and

Target Target may refer to: Physical items * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artillery, f ...

– started developing similar format chains. Wal-Mart (as it was known before its late-2000s rebranding as Walmart) introduced Hypermart USA in 1987, followed by

Wal-Mart Supercenter Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

and Auchan in 1988; Kmart opened its first Super Kmart (originally called Kmart Super Center) in 1991; and Target came with the first Target Greatland stores in 1990, followed by the larger SuperTarget stores in 1995. Most Greatland stores have since been converted to SuperTarget stores, while some have been converted into regular Target stores with the exception of 2 entrances (one example of this is the

Antioch, California Antioch is the third-largest city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area along the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. The city's population was 115,291 at the 2020 cen ...

location). In the early 1990s, US hypermarkets also began selling fuel. The idea was first introduced in the 1960s, when a number of supermarket chains and retailers like

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

tried to sell fuel, but it didn't generate sufficient consumer interest at the time. Today there are approximately 4,500 hypermarket stores in the US selling fuel, representing an estimated sold each year.The History of Gasoline Retailing

Australia

In Australia, Hypermarkets were at their peak during the 1980's. This was especially prevalent during the era of South African owned

Pick n Pay Stores The Pick n Pay Group is a retail business in the fast-moving consumer goods industry. The Group operates through multiple store formats under three brands – Pick n Pay, Boxer and TM Supermarkets. Pick n Pay also operates one of the largest on ...

and a now discontinued format of

Kmart Australia Kmart Australia Limited ( /ˈkeɪmɑːrt/ ''KAY-mart'', doing business as Kmart, Kmart Australia, Kmart New Zealand and Kmart Australia And New Zealand and stylised as ''Kmart'') is an Australian chain of department stores owned by the Kmart G ...

Stores known as Super Kmart. This trend in the Australian market soon lost its appeal into the 1990's. Super Kmart stores were discontinued and Coles Supermarkets and Kmart Stores opened in the former location. Pick n Pay continued to operate in Australia until the 2000's when their locations at Aspley and

Sunnybank Hills Sunnybank Hills is an outer southern suburb in the City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. In the 2021 census, Sunnybank Hills had a population of 18,085 people. Geography Sunnybank Hills is about from Brisbane CBD, in Queensland, Austral ...

were converted into Coles Supermarkets and Kmart Department Stores. As of 2022, the only Hypermarket or Big-Box Store operational in Australia are

Costco Costco Wholesale Corporation (Trade name, doing business as Costco Wholesale and also known simply as Costco) is an American multinational corporation which operates a chain of membership-only Big-box store, big-box retail stores (warehouse c ...

Wholesale Warehouses with currently thirteen stores in Australia - four stores in

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

, three stores in Sydney, two stores in

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...

and one store each in

Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...

, Canberra,

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

and

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth i ...

, with construction underway on the fourteenth store in Queensland's Gold Coast. There were plans for German Hypermarket company

Kaufland Kaufland is a German hypermarket chain, part of the Schwarz Gruppe which also owns Lidl. The hypermarket directly translates to English as 'buy-land'. It opened its first store in 1984 in Neckarsulm and quickly expanded to become a major chain ...

to open stores in Australia announced in 2019; these plans were cancelled in 2020.

Size

The average

Walmart Supercenter Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

covers around , with the largest ones covering . A typical

hypermarket still covers , while the European trend in the 2000s has rather turned towards smaller hypermarkets of . In France, INSEE defines hypermarkets (french: hypermarché/s) as non-specialized markets with a minimum size of .

Future

Despite its success, the hypermarket business model may be under threat from online shopping and the shift towards customization according to analysts like

Sanjeev Sanyal Sanjeev Sanyal is an Indian economist and popular historian. He is a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India, and has helped prepare six editions of the Economic Survey of India starting in 2017. Sanyal ha ...

, Deutsche Bank's Global Strategist, until 2015. Sanyal has argued that some developing countries such as India may omit the hypermarket stage and directly go online.

Warehouse club

Another category of stores sometimes included in the hypermarket category are the membership-based

wholesale Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. In ...

warehouse club A warehouse club (or wholesale club) is a retail store, usually selling a wide variety of merchandise, in which customers may buy large, wholesale quantities of the store's products, which makes these clubs attractive to both bargain hunters ...

s that are popular in North America, pioneered by

Fedco Federal Employees' Distributing Company, known as Fedco, was a membership department store chain that operated in Southern California from 1948 to 1999. History Beginning The chain was unusual in that it was a nonprofit consumers' cooperative. ...

and today including

Sam's Club Sam's West, Inc. (doing business as Sam's Club) is an American chain of membership-only retail warehouse clubs owned and operated by Walmart Inc., founded in 1983 and named after Walmart founder Sam Walton as Sam’s Wholesale Club. , Sam's C ...

, a division of Walmart;

, in which

owned some sharesRobert Spector
"Carrefour enters U.S. via share in Costco"
''Supermarket News'', January 1985. from 1985 to 1996;

BJ's Wholesale Club BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc., commonly referred as BJ's, is an American membership-only warehouse club chain based in Marlborough, Massachusetts, operating on the East Coast of the United States in addition to Ohio, Michigan, and Indian ...

on the East Coast; and

Clubes City Club Clubes City Club is the wholesale club of Mexican grocery store Soriana founded in 2002, in this same year it opened the first club in Torreón, Coahuila, in Fundadores Square, that also has a Soriana store. As of 2021 it has 34 stores. ''City ...

in Mexico. In Europe,

Makro Makro is a Dutch international brand of warehouse clubs, also called cash and carry stores. Makro was founded by SHV Holdings, a Dutch conglomerate based in Utrecht in partnership with German company Metro AG, with the first warehouse club ...

(owned by METRO AG) leads the market. However, warehouse clubs differ from hypermarkets in that they have sparse interior decor and require paid membership. In addition, warehouse clubs usually sell bigger packages and have fewer choices in each category of items.

References

Bibliography

External links

* {{Authority control Food retailers Retail formats