A hypermarket (sometimes called a hyperstore, supercentre or superstore) is a
big-box store combining a
supermarket
A supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores, but is smaller and more lim ...
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 th ...
facility carrying a wide range of products under one roof, including full
grocery
A grocery store ( AE), grocery shop ( BE) or simply grocery is a store that primarily retails a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, a ...
lines and
general merchandise. 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
big-box stores, typically have business models focusing on high-volume, low-
margin 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. They ...
, many hypermarkets choose
suburban or out-of-town locations that are easily accessible by automobile.
History
Canada
Loblaws established its
Real Canadian Superstore 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 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 ar ...
, The co-founders were influenced by the teachings of Colombian-born American marketing executive
Bernardo Trujillo, who taught
executive education as part of the
NCR Corporation
NCR Corporation, previously known as National Cash Register, is an American software, consulting and technology company providing several professional services and electronic products. It manufactures self-service kiosks, point-of-sale termin ...
'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
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Scienc ...
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 ...
, 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's "Grand Way" center in
Paramus, New Jersey.
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 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,
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 ar ...
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 was founded in 1920 selling western goods, went public in 1957, and switched to that name in 1965.
Seibu Department Stores 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 founded the first
Daiei in
Kobe
Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, w ...
in 1957, selling clothing, electronics, furniture and groceries all in one store.
Jusco 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
Manga ( Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is use ...]
(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 ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...
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 ...
s and other services all in the same store. A recent trend has been to combine the
dollar store concept with the hypermarket blueprint, giving rise to the "hyakkin plaza"—''hyakkin'' (百均) or ''hyaku en'' (百円) means 100
yen (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 official ...
).
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. Though ...
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 largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populou ...
. The store's innovations included a grocery store alongside a
drugstore 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
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. ...
(then grocery) chain
Meijer, 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, Michigan, Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 198,917 which ranks it as the List of municipalities in Mi ...
, 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 cos ...
chains –
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 ...
,
Kmart 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, fi ...
– started developing similar format chains. Wal-Mart (as it was known before its late-2000s rebranding as Walmart) introduced
Hypermart USA
Hypermart USA was a demonstrator project operated by Walmart in the 1980s and 1990s, which attempted to combine groceries and general merchandise under one roof at a substantial discount. The hypermart concept was modeled after earlier efforts ...
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, headquar ...
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 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 ...
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](_blank)
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 and a now discontinued format of
Kmart Australia 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
Coles Supermarkets Australia Pty Ltd, trading as Coles, is an Australian supermarket, retail and consumer services chain, headquartered in Melbourne as part of the Coles Group.
Founded in 1914 in Collingwood by George Coles, Coles operate ...
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 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 ( 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 retail stores ( warehouse club). As of 2022, Cost ...
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 me ...
, three stores in
Sydney, two stores in
Brisbane
Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a populati ...
and one store each in
Newcastle,
Canberra,
Adelaide
Adelaide ( ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater A ...
and
Perth
Perth is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the Australian states and territories of Australia, state of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth most populous city in Aust ...
, with construction underway on the fourteenth store in Queensland's
Gold Coast. There were plans for German Hypermarket company
Kaufland to open stores in Australia announced in 2019; these plans were cancelled in 2020.
Size
The average
Walmart Supercenter covers around , with the largest ones covering . A typical
Carrefour 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, 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. I ...
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 hunte ...
s that are popular in
North America, pioneered by
Fedco and today including
Sam's Club, a division of Walmart;
Costco
Costco Wholesale Corporation ( 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 retail stores ( warehouse club). As of 2022, Cost ...
, in which
Carrefour owned some shares
[Robert Spector]
"Carrefour enters U.S. via share in Costco"
''Supermarket News'', January 1985. from 1985 to 1996;
BJ's Wholesale Club on the East Coast; and
Clubes City Club in Mexico. In Europe,
Makro (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.
See also
*
List of hypermarkets
*
Types of retail outlets
*
Shelf-ready packaging
References
Bibliography
*
External links
*
{{Authority control
Food retailers
Retail formats