A hypermarket combines the concept of a supermarket and a department store into one. To be defined as a hypermarket there must be at least 200,000 square feet of floor space and at least 35 per cent of that space will be used for the sale of non-food merchandise.
There is one name larger than all: WalMart, the largest hypermarket chain in the US, followed by Carrefour in France. These have the capacity to stock a staggering 200,000 different brands of goods under one roof.
The concept was first seen in 1934, when Meijer became the first name to open a one-stop shopping center, selling groceries and drug store goods, with home products and clothing added later. Meijer also had large car parks and a petrol station. It opened its first real ‘Supercenter’, called ‘Thrifty Acres’ in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1962.
In 1963, Carrefour opened its first Hypermarket at Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois, France. From 1974 to the 1990s, the Steinberg group had four hypermarkets in Québec. By the late 1980s and early 1990s Walmart, Kmart and Target had set up hypermarkets discounting goods throughout the US. Walmart called their stores Hypermart USA in 1987, and later Walmart Supercenter. Kmart called their stores ‘Super Kmart.’ In 1995, Dayton-Hudson opened its first SuperTarget store in Omaha, Nebraska. These hypermarkets began to sell fuel too.
Contribution to Retail History
The hypermarket model has grown to dominate the retail landscape globally. The combined food and non-food offering created the efficient one-stop shop and iterations of it have enabled the likes of Carrefour, Auchan, Walmart and Tesco to achieve massive scale. Having been a global phenomenon, the hypermarket in its current form is facing several challenges, not least from the growth of Internet retailing and the time pressure consumers are under.