A supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. Strictly speaking, a supermarket 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 American English usage, however, "grocery store" is often casually used as a synonym for "supermarket". The supermarket retail format first appeared around 1930 in the United States as the culmination of almost two decades of retail innovations, and began to spread to other countries after extensive worldwide publicity in 1956.
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
Distribution is the process of making a product or service available for the consumer or business user who needs it, and a distributor is a business involved in the distribution stage of the value chain. Distribution can be done directly by the producer or service provider or by using indirect channels with distributors or intermediaries. Distribution is one of the four elements of the marketing mix: the other three elements being product, pricing, and promotion.
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebranded under its current name with an emphasis on consumer electronics in 1983.
British Home Stores, commonly abbreviated to BHS and latterly legally styled BHS Ltd, is an online store and formerly a British department store chain, primarily selling clothing and household items. In its later years, the company began to expand into furniture, electronics, entertainment, convenience groceries and fragrance and beauty products. BHS traded from 1928 to 2016; the brand was later licenced to an online retailer.
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.
Direct response television (DRTV) is any television advertising that asks consumers to respond directly to the company — usually either by calling a toll-free telephone number, sending an SMS message, or by visiting a web site. This is a form of direct response marketing.
Argos Limited is a British retailer operating in the United Kingdom online and through catalogues, and formerly in Ireland; it was 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.
Mail order is the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote methods such as:
PetSmart Inc. is a privately held American chain of pet superstores, which sell pet products, services, and small pets. It is the leading North American pet company, and its direct competitor is Petco. Its indirect competitors are Amazon, Walmart, and Target. As of 2020, PetSmart has more than 1,650 stores in the United States and Canada. PetSmart stores sell pet food, pet supplies, pet accessories, and small pets. Stores also provide services including grooming, dog daycare, dog and cat boarding, veterinary care via in-store third-party clinics, and dog training. They also offer dog and cat adoption via in-store adoption centers facilitated by the non-profit PetSmart Charities.
The Link was an internet based mobile phone and communications retailer in the United Kingdom. It was owned by Dixons Retail, the United Kingdom's largest consumer electronics retail group, and traded online through a dedicated retail website, which in addition to mobile phones also offered satellite navigation systems and broadband Internet services.
Brick and mortar is an organization or business with a physical presence in a building or other structure. The term brick-and-mortar business is often used to refer to a company that possesses or leases retail shops, factory production facilities, or warehouses for its operations. More specifically, in the jargon of e-commerce businesses in the 2000s, brick-and-mortar businesses are companies that have a physical presence and offer face-to-face customer experiences.
Poundland Limited is a British variety store chain founded in 1990. It once sold most items at the single price of £1, including clearance items and proprietary brands. The first pilot store opened in December 1990 following numerous rejections by landlords who had reservations about allowing a single-price store to operate, fearing it could adversely affect the local competition. An estimated 7 million customers shopped in Poundland every week in 2016, many being female shoppers in the C1, C2, D and E categories. Following a drop in share price of over 50%, Poundland was acquired in August 2016 by Steinhoff International for £610 million.
JD Sports Fashion plc, commonly known as JD Sports, JD or JD Group is a British multinational sports-fashion retail company based in Bury, Greater Manchester, England. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The Pentland Group owns 55% of the company.
Home shopping is the electronic retailing and home shopping channels industry, which includes such billion dollar television-based and e-commerce companies as Shop LC, HSN, Gemporia, TJC, QVC, eBay, ShopHQ, Rakuten.com and Amazon.com, as well as traditional mail order and brick and mortar retailers as Hammacher Schlemmer and Sears. Home shopping allows consumers to shop for goods from the privacy of their own home, as opposed to traditional shopping, which requires one to visit brick and mortar stores and shopping malls.
Disney Consumer Products, Inc. is the retailing and licensing subsidiary of the Disney Experiences segment of The Walt Disney Company. Previously, Consumer Products was a segment of Disney until 2016, then a unit of Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media (2016–2018).
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.
John Angus Donald Mills is a British entrepreneur, economist and businessman. He founded British consumer products company JML, and is its chairman and majority shareholder. The company carries out direct-to-consumer marketing through major retail stores groups and its shopping channels.
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.
