A hypermarket (sometimes called a hyperstore, supercentre, or superstore) is a big-box store combining a supermarket and a department store.[1] The result is an expansive retail facility carrying a wide range of products under one roof, including full grocery 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.[2]
Hypermarkets, like other big-box stores, typically have business models focusing on high-volume, low-marginsales. Typically covering an area of 5,000 to 15,000 square metres (54,000 to 161,000sqft), they generally have more than 200,000 different brands of merchandise available at any one time. Because of their large footprints, 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. These are the two major Canadian hypermarkets.
Europe
The Belgian retailer Grand Bazar 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 on 9 September 1961, initially designed to become a non-food department store, however only covered a surface area of 3,300 square metres (36,000sqft), and was later converted into a regular supermarket. The substantially larger store that opened a week later in Auderghem, Brussels, covering 9,100m2 (98,000sqft), is regarded as a more proper hypermarket that brought the concept to fruition. [3] It was Belgian market development engineer Maurice Cauwe[fr], 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.[4]
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 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 in 1963. Isao Nakauchi founded the first Daiei in Kobe in 1957, selling clothing, electronics, furniture and groceries all in one store. Jusco was created in 1970, and eventually became known as ÆON.
In Japanese, hypermarkets are known as 総合スーパー (Sougou Suupaa, General Merchandise Stores). There is a distinction in Japanese between スーパー (Supers) and デパート (Departs) with the former being discounters, but the latter selling luxury brand clothing and quite often high-end groceries as well.
Hypermarkets may be found in urban areas as well as less populated areas. The Japanese government encourages hypermarket installations, as mutual investment by financial stocks are a common way to run hypermarkets. Japanese hypermarkets may contain restaurants, manga (Japanese comic) stands, Internet cafes, typical department store merchandise, a full range of groceries, beauty salons and other services all in the same store. A recent[when?] 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).
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.[7] The term "hypermarket" itself is still rarely used in the US.
The Pacific Northwest chain Fred Meyer, now a division of the Kroger supermarket company, opened the first suburban one-stop shopping center in 1931 in the Hollywood District of Portland, Oregon. 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 4,200 to 6,500m2 (45,000 to 70,000sqft), and the 1960s saw the first modern-sized Fred Meyer hypermarkets.[8]
The Midwest (then grocery) chain Meijer, which today operates about 235 stores in six US states, coined the term "super center",[9] and opened the first of its hypermarket format store in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in June 1962, under the brand name "Thrifty Acres".[10][11]
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the three major US discount store chains – Walmart, Kmart and Target – 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 and Auchan in 1988;[12] Kmart opened its first Super Kmart (originally called Kmart Super Center) in 1991;[13] and Target came with the first Target Greatland stores in 1990, followed by the larger SuperTarget stores in 1995.[14] 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 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 14billion US gallons (53billion litres) sold each year.[15]
Australia
In Australia, hypermarkets were at their peak during the 1980s. 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 1990s. 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 2000s 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 Wholesale Warehouses with currently thirteen stores in Australia - four stores in Melbourne, three stores in Sydney, two stores in Brisbane and one store each in Newcastle, Canberra, Adelaide and Perth, 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.
Iran
Hypermarkets did not exist in Iran until 2009 (1388 ه.ش.). Before that, there were some local hypermarkets, but international branches were nonexistent. Despite their late arrival, hypermarkets in Iran have achieved a significant degree of growth. The first branch was opened in Tehran under the name of Iran Hyperstar through a collaboration between Carrefour and Majid Al Futtaim Group based in The United Arab Emirates. The Emirati holding is the main shareholder with about 75% of the company's shares. New branches were established after Iran Hyperstar’s first store found relative success. Now, other branches have been established in Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad, Ahvaz, etc.[16]
Size
The produce section of a typical Walmart Supercenter (Walmart's hypermarket brand) in Mexico
The average Walmart Supercenter covers around 16,500m2 (178,000sqft), with the largest ones covering 24,000m2 (260,000sqft).[17] A typical Carrefour hypermarket still covers 10,000m2 (110,000sqft), while the European trend in the 2000s has rather turned towards smaller hypermarkets of 3,000 to 5,000m2 (32,000 to 54,000sqft).[18] In France, INSEE defines hypermarkets (French: hypermarché/s) as non-specialized markets with a minimum size of 2,500m2 (27,000sqft).[19]
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.[20] Sanyal has argued that some developing countries such as India may omit the hypermarket stage and directly go online.[21]
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.
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".
A grocery store (AE), grocery shop (BE) or simply grocery is a foodservice 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 (though in everyday use, people usually use either the term "supermarket" or a "corner shop".
Atlantic Superstore is a Canadian supermarket chain. The chain operates 54 stores in the Maritimes of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. It is owned by George Weston Limited through Loblaw Companies Limited, and operates under the Atlantic Wholesalers division of Loblaws.
Shun Fat Supermarket is a Chinese Vietnamese American supermarket chain in the San Gabriel Valley region in California, Sacramento, California, San Pablo, California, Las Vegas, Nevada, Portland, Oregon and Garland, Texas.
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 costs.
Meijer Inc. is an American supercenter chain that primarily operates throughout the Midwestern United States. Its corporate headquarters are in Walker, Michigan, which is a part of the Grand Rapids metropolitan area. Founded in 1934 as a supermarket chain, Meijer is credited with pioneering the modern supercenter concept in 1962. About half of the company's 259 stores are located in Michigan; the others are in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The chain is ranked by Forbes as the 14th-largest private company in the United States, and is the country's 21st-largest retailer by revenue as of 2020.
A warehouse 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 and small business owners. The clubs are able to keep prices low due to the no-frills format of the stores. They are distinguished from traditional cash-and-carry wholesale businesses in that their warehouses are substantially larger in size, and they do not cater purely to businesses but also allow some or all types of consumers to obtain memberships. They are also distinguished from warehouse stores in that they usually charge annual membership fees, and require presentation of proof of membership at the warehouse entrance and again at the point of sale.
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.
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.
Auchan is a French multinational retail group headquartered in Croix, France. It was founded in 1961 by Gérard Mulliez and is owned by the Mulliez family, who has 95% stake in the company. With 354,851 employees, of which 261,000 have 5% stake in the company, it is the 35th largest employer in the world.
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 from other retailers, notably French retailers such as Auchan and Carrefour, and the Midwestern big retailer Meijer. At its peak Hypermart USA had 4 locations. 2 located in Texas, one in Kansas, and one in Missouri.
Big C, operated by Big C Supercenter Public Company Limited under Big C Retail Corporation Public Company Limited, is a grocery and general merchandising retailer headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand. Big C is as of 2016 Thailand's second-largest hypermarket operator after Tesco Lotus. It has operations in five countries, namely Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Hong Kong.
Chedraui is a publicly traded Mexican grocery store and department store chain which also operates stores in the U.S. in the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Nevada under the banner name El Super and stores in Texas under the banner name Fiesta Mart. It is traded on the Mexican Stock Exchange under the symbol CHEDRAUI.
Omni Superstore was a chain of supermarkets in the Chicago area and was owned by Dominick's. In 1997, Dominick's phased out Omni and converted the stores into Dominick's because the concept was not generating enough revenue compared to other Dominick's stores.
Remke Markets is a chain of American supermarkets in the Cincinnati metropolitan area.
Comercial City Fresko, S. de R.L. de C.V. is a Mexican holding company of hypermarkets headquartered in Mexico City, Mexico. It operates the hypermarkets La Comer, City Market, Fresko and Sumesa, which have a strong presence in Mexico City and Central Mexico.
References
↑ "Hypermarket". Investopedia. 24 June 2007. Retrieved 26 September 2018.
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