A general merchant store (also known as general merchandise store, general dealer, village shop, or country store) is a rural or small-town store that carries a general line of merchandise.[1] It carries a broad selection of merchandise, sometimes in a small space, where people from the town and surrounding rural areas come to purchase all their general goods. The store carries routine stock and obtains special orders from warehouses. It differs from a convenience store or corner shop in that it will be the main shop for the community rather than a convenient supplement.
General stores often sell staple food items such as milk and bread, and various household goods such as hardware and electrical supplies. The concept of the general store is very old, and although some still exist, there are far fewer than there once were, due to urbanization, urban sprawl, and the relatively recent phenomenon of big-box stores. The term "general merchandise store" is also used to describe a hybrid of a department store, with a wide selection of goods, and a discount store, with low prices. Examples include J. C. Penney and Sears.[2]
History
General dealers were established in the 18th and 19th centuries in many remote populated places where mobility was limited and a single shop was sufficient to service the entire community. Due to its close connection and confinement to its customers, general dealers often adjusted their sales offerings to the specific preferences of their community.[3]
General dealers existed, apart from mainlandEurope and Asia, in all European colonies and generally in areas where colonists encroached upon communities that previously did not trade with money.[4] In the colonies, trading or bartering in local produce had existed long before official shops were opened. The growing need for imported goods, both from European settlers and native populations, led to the establishment of a network of merchants, and subsequently to the creation of a money economy.[5]
By country
Australia
The former Narracan General Store, now located at Old Gippstown in Moe, Australia
While a large number of general stores still exist in Australia, as in other parts of the world their numbers were greatly reduced by the advent of supermarkets.
Canada
The oldest continually run general store in Canada is Trousdale's, located in Sydenham, Ontario, which has been operated by the Trousdale family since 1836. Sociability has always been a feature, as locals come to chat as well as buy.[6] Gray Creek Store in Gray Creek, Kootenay Bay, Canada is the largest and oldest general dealer in the Kootenay Lake region[7] Enniskillen General Store in Clarington, Ontario has been in operation since 1840 and still continues today. Robinson's General Store in Dorset, Ontario, voted "Canada's Best Country Store", has been owned and operated by the same family since 1921.
Dominican Republic
Woman buying from a colmado in the Dominican Republic
In the Dominican Republic, a colmado is the country's equivalent of a general store. Colmado literal translation is 'full to the brim'[8] implying its great density of goods in a small space. The colmado is much more than just a general store, for it offers a social gathering point for the residents of the town or neighborhood. The colmado is an important institution in the Dominican Republic serving as an economic, social and political center for every small community. It is common for colmados to have loud Dominican music such as merengue, bachata, or salsa playing. A common pastime for Dominican men is to play dominoes and drink a beer at their local colmado on Sundays. Another particularity of the colmado is that they provide delivery service of their products directly to the customer's dwelling. Products range from beer, snacks, toilet paper to flashlights and canned food.
General store in Angelniemi, 1930.A village store (Sepon kauppa; or "Seppo's shop") in Yttilä, Säkylä, in August 2011. This particular store was closed in 2014.
General stores (sekatavarakauppa) first appeared in Finland in 1859 when fixed shop retailers were allowed to set up shops in rural towns for the first time. Prior to that, authorised trade in rural products other than those produced in the same region depended on city travel, open-air markets and fairs.[10] A related type of store is the village store (kyläkauppa), typically located in sparsely populated towns, which still performs many similar functions to general stores. As in many other countries, their numbers were greatly reduced with the advent of supermarkets, from over 3400 such shops in 1980 to 241 in 2017.[11]
India
Tapri on Mumbai streets
In India, a tapri is a regional version of a general store. It stores all home, personal, medical, and hygienic daily-use products. Many Kirana shops sell products other than food, such as clothing or household items, stationery, toys, tools, and medicines. Small Kirana stores, which are generally located on the corner of streets and generally known as katta or tapri, sell cigarettes, tobacco, and tea.[12]
General Store on the road to Kalash valleys, Chitral, Pakistan
Recently, there has been a notable integration of Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS) services in Kirana or general stores across India. AePS allows customers to conduct basic banking transactions such as cash withdrawal, balance inquiry, and fund transfer using their Aadhaar number and biometric authentication. This integration has enabled Kirana stores to serve as financial service points, offering convenient banking services to local communities.
On 30 July 2024, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) introduced an interoperable QR code to link neighborhood store owners with consumers. With ONDC-registered buyer apps like Magicpin and Paytm, merchants can create a unique QR code that customers can scan to access their online store on the ONDC platform.[13]
Namibia
Due to its sparse population, there are still a number of general dealers in Namibia, for instance, the Solitaire General Dealer in Solitaire, an important stopover for tourists through Namibia's Namib-Naukluft Park.[14]
Puerto Rico
In Puerto Rico, a US territory, several general stores ("colmado") have proliferated since the 1970s.
Village shops are becoming less common in the densely populated parts of the country, although they remain common in remote rural areas.
Their rarity in England is due to several factors, such as the rise in car ownership, competition from large chain supermarkets, the rising cost of village properties, and the increasing trend of the wealthy to own holiday homes in picturesque villages, consequently these houses which used to be occupied full-time by potential customers are often vacant for long periods.
Of those villages in England who still have shops, these days they are often a combination of services under one roof to increase the likelihood of profit and survival. Extra services may include a post office, private business services such as tearooms, cafes, and bed and breakfast accommodation; or state services such as libraries and General Practitioner (GP) or Dental clinics; and charity partners such as Women's Institute (WI) coffee mornings held on the day most elderly villagers might collect their weekly pensions.
Community shops have become popular in some villages, often jointly owned and run by many villagers as a co-operative. The Village Retail Services Association promotes the role and function of the village shop in the UK.[18] Many modern village shops choose to stock items which draw in customers from neighbouring areas who are seeking locally sourced, organic and specialist produce such as local cuts of meat, local cheeses, wines etc.
Corner shops are usually so-called because they are located on the corner plot or street end of a row of terraced housing, often Victorian or Edwardian factory workers' houses. The doorway into the shop was usually on the corner of the plot to maximise shop floor space within, this also offered two display windows onto two opposing streets. Many have now altered the original shop front layout in favour of a mini-supermarket style. Although it is common that corner shops found in the UK were former grocers' shops, other specialist retailers also occupied such plots and have suffered the same fate of being largely replaced by supermarkets and hypermarkets, such retailers as greengrocers, bakers, butchers and fishmongers.
In popular culture
Many British television and radio series, especially soap operas, feature corner shops or village shops as cornerstones for community gatherings and happenings. A prominent example is the village shop in Ambridge, the fictional village in the BBC Radio 4 series, The Archers, (1950–present). The ITV1 soap opera Coronation Street (1960–present) has featured a corner shop since the first episode; originally owned by Florrie Lindley, it was later acquired by Alf Roberts the grocer, and after his death in the late-1990s was bought by Dev Alahan, reflecting this common change in British culture to Asian shopkeepers. The dying days and changing culture of the traditional British grocer were explored to great effect in the BBC TV comedy series Open All Hours (1976–1985), set in the real suburb of Balby in Doncaster; the shop front used for the street scenes in the series does actually exist in the area and is now a hairdressing salon. The BBC Scotland comedy series Still Game has a corner shop as a recurring location where characters can meet and gossip; the actor who plays its owner, Navid Harrid (Sanjeev Kohli), plays a similar role as Bangaram in the Radio 4 comedy series Fags, Mags and Bags which is set entirely in Ramesh's shop.
The band Cornershop in part base their image on the perception that many convenience shops are now owned by British Asian people. In terms of British popular culture, these media representations give some idea of the importance attached to local shops in the national psyche and as a mainstay of community life.
General stores and itinerant peddlers dominated in rural America until the coming of the automobile after 1910. Farmers and ranchers depended on general stores that had a limited stock and slow turnover; they made enough profit to stay in operation by selling at high prices. Often farmers would barter butter, cheese, eggs, vegetables or other foods which the merchant would resell. Prices were not marked on each item; instead the customer negotiated a price. Men did most of the shopping, since the main criterion was credit rather than quality of goods. Indeed, most customers shopped on credit, paying later when crops or cattle were sold; the owner's ability to judge credit worthiness was vital to his success. The store was often a gathering point for local men to chat, pass around the weekly newspaper, and talk politics.[19][20][pageneeded]
In the South, the general store was especially important after the Civil War, as the merchant was one of the few sources of credit available until the cash crops (usually cotton or tobacco) came in.[20][pageneeded] There were few towns and very few cities, so rural general stores and itinerant peddlers were the main sources of supply.[21][22][23]
During the first half of the 20th century, general stores were displaced in many areas of the United States by many different types of specialized retailers in trading towns and small cities. However, from the 1960s to the present, many small specialized retailers have in turn been crushed by the so-called "category killers", which are "big-box" wholesale-type retailers large enough to carry the majority of best-selling goods in a specific category, like sporting goods or office supplies. Gray's General Store of Adamsville, Rhode Island is reputed to be the oldest continually operating general store in the United States until its temporary closure in 2012.[24] It subsequently reopened in the summer of 2013.[25]
However, the convenience inherent in the general store has been revived in the form of the modern convenience store. A few variety stores draw upon the concept of having a broad variety of goods servicing small communities where big-box retailers are absent; Dollar General stores, in particular, draws its name from both the "dollar store" concept of having items at a fixed price point and the general store.
List of general stores
This is a select list of historical general stores in the United States, listed in alphabetical order.
↑ "America's top stores". Consumer Reports June 2010, p. 17.
↑ Lang, John Dunmore (1834). An historical and statistical account of New South Wales: both as a penal settlement and as a British colony. Vol.1. Cochrane and M'Crone. pp.236, 237.
↑ "The Jewish Community". News history. Archived from the original on 11 June 2012. Retrieved 2 December 2011. Through their trading activities these merchant capitalists accelerated the transition from a subsistence to a cash economy.
↑ Richard Bauman, "The La Have Island general store: Sociability and verbal art in a Nova Scotia community." Journal of American Folklore (1972): 330-343. in JSTOR
↑ "Gray Creek". britishcolumbia.com. Archived from the original on 28 January 2015. Retrieved 25 January 2015.
↑ Turner, Bryan (2000). Modern Egypt, Part Two: Orientalism (reprinteded.). p.251. ISBN9780415209069.
↑ Kaarniranta, Kim: "Elämää rahaa käärien ja velkoen": Pohjois-Karjalan maaseudun sekatavarakauppiaat ja heidän velallisensa 1860- ja 1870-luvuilla. Väitöskirja: Joensuun yliopisto. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2001. ISBN951-746-302-2.
↑ Piyali Ghosh, et al., "Customer expectations of store attributes: A study of organized retail outlets in India." Journal of Retail & Leisure Property 9.1 (2010): 75-87.
↑ Lewis E. Atherton, The Frontier Merchant in Mid-America (University of Missouri Press, 1971).
1 2 Thomas D. Clark, Pills, Petticoats, and Plows: The Southern Country Store (1944).
↑ Jacqueline P. Bull, "The General Merchant in the Economic History of the New South." Journal of Southern History 18.1 (1952): 37-59. in JSTOR
↑ Glenn N. Sisk, "Rural Merchandising in the Alabama Black Belt, 1875–1917." Journal of Farm Economics 37.4 (1955): 705-715.
↑ Roger Ransom, and Richard Sutch. "Credit merchandising in the post-emancipation south: Structure, conduct, and performance." Explorations in Economic History 16.1 (1979): 64-89; heavily statistical onlineArchived 2015-09-23 at the Wayback Machine
Dannhaeuser, Norbert. "The role of the neighborhood store in developing economies: the case of Dagupan City, Philippines." Journal of Developing Areas (1980): 157–174. in JSTOR
English, Linda. By All Accounts: General Stores and Community Life in Texas and Indian Territory. (University of Oklahoma Press, 2013)
Kaynak, Erdener, and S. Tamer Cavusgil. "The evolution of food retailing systems: contrasting the experience of developed and developing countries." Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (1982) 10#3 pp: 249–268.
Lejoyeux, Michel, et al. "Prevalence of compulsive buying among customers of a Parisian general store." Comprehensive Psychiatry (2007) 48#1 pp: 42–46.
A convenience store, convenience shop, bodega, corner store, corner shop, or superette is a small retail store that stocks a range of everyday items such as convenience food, groceries, beverages, tobacco products, lottery tickets, over-the-counter drugs, toiletries, newspapers and magazines.
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 United States usage, however, "grocery store" is often used to mean "supermarket".
Shopping is an activity in which a customer browses the available goods or services presented by one or more retailers with the potential intent to purchase a suitable selection of them. A typology of shopper types has been developed by scholars which identifies one group of shoppers as recreational shoppers, that is, those who enjoy shopping and view it as a leisure activity.
Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is the sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and then sells in smaller quantities to consumers for a profit. Retailers are the final link in the supply chain from producers to consumers.
A grocery store (AE), grocery shop (BE) or simply grocery is a retail 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, and is not used to refer to other types of stores that sell groceries. In the UK, shops that sell food are distinguished as grocers or grocery shops
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 appearance in the middle of the 19th century, and permanently reshaped shopping habits, and the definition of service and luxury. Similar developments were under way in London, in Paris and in New York City (Stewart's).
Trading stamps were small paper stamps given to customers by merchants in loyalty programs in the United States, Canada and the U.K. which predated the modern loyalty card-based and online programs. Like the similarly-issued retailer coupons, these stamps only had a minimal cash value of a few mils individually, but when a customer accumulated a number of them, they could be exchanged with the trading stamp company for premiums, such as toys, personal items, housewares, furniture and appliances. In trading stamp programs in Hong Kong continued to operate.
Aaron Montgomery Ward was an American entrepreneur based in Chicago who made his fortune through the use of mail order for retail sales of general merchandise to rural customers. In 1872 he founded Montgomery Ward & Company, which became nationally known.
In non-Asian countries, an Asian supermarket largely describes a category of grocery stores that focuses and stocks items and products imported from countries located in the Far East.
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 company headquarters is in Keene, New Hampshire. As of 2024, 503 independently owned Piggly Wiggly stores currently operate across 18 states, primarily in smaller cities and towns.
Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the retailer directly or by searching among alternative vendors using a shopping search engine, which displays the same product's availability and pricing at different e-retailers. As of 2020, customers can shop online using a range of different computers and devices, including desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers and smartphones.
A big-box store, a hyperstore, a supercenter, a superstore, or a 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 term "big-box" references the typical appearance of buildings occupied by such stores.
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.
Once the strategic plan is in place, retail managers turn to the more managerial aspects of planning. A retail mix is devised for the purpose of coordinating day-to-day tactical decisions. The retail marketing mix typically consists of six broad decision layers including product decisions, place decisions, promotion, price, personnel and presentation. The retail mix is loosely based on the marketing mix, but has been expanded and modified in line with the unique needs of the retail context. A number of scholars have argued for an expanded marketing, mix with the inclusion of two new Ps, namely, Personnel and Presentation since these contribute to the customer's unique retail experience and are the principal basis for retail differentiation. Yet other scholars argue that the Retail Format should be included. The modified retail marketing mix that is most commonly cited in textbooks is often called the 6 Ps of retailing.
Visual merchandising is the practice in the retail industry of optimizing the presentation of products and services to better highlight their features and benefits. The purpose of such visual merchandising is to attract, engage, and motivate the customer towards making a purchase.
A second-hand shop is a shop which sells used goods.
Omnichannel retail strategy, originally also known in the U.K. as bricks and clicks, is a business model by which a company integrates both offline (bricks) and online (clicks) presences, sometimes with the third extra flips.
The history of retail encompasses the sale of goods and services to consumers across all cultures and time periods from ancient history to the present.
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.
Schwegmann Brothers Giant Supermarkets, commonly known as Schwegmann or colloquially Schwegmann's, is a defunct grocery store chain that served the New Orleans, Louisiana, metropolitan area and one location in Baton Rouge until 1997. The chain developed significant innovations in grocery retailing and influenced other big box retailers that emerged in the latter 20th century and early 21st century. The founder and chief executive of the modern version of the chain was John G. Schwegmann, although his uncle and grandfather ran predecessors to the modern chain.
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