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 limited in the range of merchandise than a hypermarket or big-box market. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is often used to mean "supermarket".
Claire's is an American retailer of accessories, jewelry, and toys primarily aimed toward tween and teen girls. It was founded in 1961 and is based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The company is primarily owned by Elliott Management and Monarch Alternative Capital, but, in 2022, announced plans to go public with an initial public offering.
Merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer. At a retail in-store level, merchandising refers to displaying products that are for sale in a creative way that entices customers to purchase more items or products.
Piggly Wiggly is an American supermarket chain operating in the American Southern and Midwestern regions run by Piggly Wiggly, LLC, an affiliate of C&S Wholesale Grocers. Its first outlet opened in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee, and is notable as the first true self-service grocery store, and the originator of various familiar supermarket features such as checkout stands, individual item price marking and shopping carts. The current company headquarters is in Keene, New Hampshire. 499 independently owned Piggly Wiggly stores currently operate across 18 states, primarily in smaller cities and towns.
Caldor, Inc. was a discount department store chain founded in 1951 by husband and wife Carl and Dorothy Bennett. Referred to by many as "the Bloomingdale's of discounting," Caldor grew from a second story "Walk-Up-&-Save" operation in Port Chester, New York, into a regional retailing giant. Its stores were earning over $1 billion in sales by the time Carl Bennett retired in 1985, by which time Caldor was a subsidiary of Associated Dry Goods.
Zayre was a chain of discount stores that operated in the eastern half of the United States from 1956 to 1990. The company's headquarters was in Framingham, Massachusetts. In October 1988, Zayre's parent company, Zayre Corp., sold the stores to the competing Ames Department Stores, Inc. chain, and in June 1989, Zayre Corp. merged with one of its subsidiaries, The TJX Companies, parent company of T.J. Maxx, which still exists today. A number of stores retained the Zayre name until 1990, by which time all stores were either closed or converted into Ames stores.
Argos Limited is a British catalogue retailer operating in the United Kingdom and formerly in the Republic of Ireland, acquired by Sainsbury's supermarket chain in 2016. It was established in November 1972 and is named after the Greek city of Argos. The company trades both through physical shops and online, with 29 million yearly shop customers, and nearly a billion online visitors per annum. It has also franchised overseas to countries such as China.
A big-box store 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 term "big-box" references the typical appearance of buildings occupied by such stores.
Best Products Company, Inc., or simply Best, was a chain of American catalog showroom retail stores founded by Sydney and Frances Lewis in 1957 and formerly headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. The company was in existence for four decades before closing all of their stores by February 1997 and completely liquidating by December 1998. At the time of their second bankruptcy filing in September 1996, the company operated 169 Best stores and 11 Best Jewelry stores in 23 states, as well as a nationwide mail-order service. When in operation, Best Products was traded on the NASDAQ exchange as "BESTQ".
Service Merchandise was a retail chain of catalog showrooms carrying jewelry, toys, sporting goods and electronics. The company, which first began in 1934 as a five-and-dime store, was in existence for 68 years before ceasing operations in 2002.
A catalog merchant is a form of retailing. The typical merchant sells a wide variety of household and personal products, with many emphasizing jewelry. Unlike a self-serve retail store, most of the items are not displayed; customers select the products from printed catalogs in the store and fill out an order form. The order is brought to the sales counter, where a clerk retrieves the items from the warehouse area to a payment and checkout station.
Brendle's was a chain of catalog showrooms based in Elkin, North Carolina, USA. Its showrooms carried jewelry, toys, sporting goods, and electronics. At its peak in 1990, Brendle's operated 58 showrooms in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Tennessee.
Field inventory management, commonly known as inventory management, is the task of understanding the stock mix of a company and the handling of the different demands placed on that stock. The demands are influenced by both external and internal factors and are balanced by the creation of purchase order requests to keep supplies at a reasonable or prescribed level. Inventory management is important for every other business enterprise.
Golfsmith International Holdings Inc. was an American golf specialty retailer based in Austin, Texas. Each store, along with golfsmith.com, housed a wide selection of golf clubs, shoes, apparel, gadgets and gear from all the major brands as well as proprietary offerings. They also offered custom club fitting, lessons and services for golfers.
Shop-Rite was a chain of catalogue stores in Ontario, Canada, that operated from the 1970s to 1982. In a Shop-Rite catalogue store, customers would browse the catalogue, select their merchandise and apply to the store clerk for the item.
Showrooming is the practice of examining merchandise in a traditional brick-and-mortar retail store or other offline setting, and then buying it online, sometimes at a lower price. Online stores often offer lower prices than their brick-and-mortar counterparts because they do not have the same overhead cost. Staff writers at the Wharton School have observed that showrooming and buying elsewhere is not new in itself, but its impact has become more significant with the greater availability of online purchasing.
Retail apocalypse refers to the closing of numerous brick-and-mortar retail stores, especially those of large chains, beginning around 2010 and accelerating due to the mandatory closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The retail format influences the consumer's store choice and addresses the consumer's expectations. At its most basic level, a retail format is a simple marketplace, that is; a location where goods and services are exchanged. In some parts of the world, the retail sector is still dominated by small family-run stores, but large retail chains are increasingly dominating the sector, because they can exert considerable buying power and pass on the savings in the form of lower prices. Many of these large retail chains also produce their own private labels which compete alongside manufacturer brands. Considerable consolidation of retail stores has changed the retail landscape, transferring power away from wholesalers and into the hands of the large retail chains.
