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A hypermarket or superstore is a big-box store combining a supermarket and a department store. The result is an expansive retail facility carrying a wide range of products under one roof, including full grocery store lines and general merchandise. In theory, hypermarkets allow customers to satisfy all their routine shopping needs in one trip. The term hypermarket () was coined in 1968 by French trade expert Jacques Pictet.
Hypermarkets, like other , typically have business models focusing on high-volume, low-profit margin sales. Typically covering an area of , they generally have more than 200,000 different brands of merchandise available at any one time. Because of their large surface area, many hypermarkets choose or out-of-town locations that are easily accessible by automobile.
Carrefour opened its first hypermarket in 1963, at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, France,Jean-Mark Villermet, Naissance de l'hypermarche, 1991, , Colin (publisher). The co-founders were influenced by the teachings of Colombian-born American marketing executive Bernardo Trujillo, who taught executive education as part of the NCR Voyix's marketing campaign.
In France, hypermarkets are generally situated in shopping mall ( 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 big-box store 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).
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 cafés, typical department store merchandise, a full range of groceries, and other services all in the same store. A recent trend has been to combine the variety store concept with the hypermarket blueprint, giving rise to the "hyakkin plaza"— hyakkin (百均) or hyaku en (百円) means 100 Japanese yen (roughly 1 U.S. dollar).
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 non-food 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 , and the 1960s saw the first modern-sized Fred Meyer hypermarkets. FundingUniverse: Fred Meyer Stores, Inc. History Linked 9 January 2014
The Midwest (then grocery) chain Meijer, which today operates about 235 stores in six U.S. states, coined the term "super center", Meijer website: Our Company Linked 9 January 2014 and opened the first of its hypermarket format store in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in June 1961, under the brand name "Thrifty Acres". Meijer website: Our History Linked 9 January 2014
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the three major U.S. 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 in 1988; The same year, French chains Carrefour and Auchan opened hypermarkets in Philadelphia and Greater Houston, respectively.Wollam, Allison. " Food Town to occupy portion of shuttered Auchan hypermarket." Houston Business Journal. Sunday 8 June 2003. Modified on Thursday 5 June 2003. Retrieved on 13 January 2011. Kmart opened its first Super Kmart Center in 1991; and Target came with the first Target Greatland stores in 1990, followed by the larger SuperTarget stores in 1995. Target website: Target through the years Linked 9 January 2014 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 which opened in 2004).
In the early 1990s, U.S. 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 U.S. selling fuel, representing an estimated sold each year. The History of Gasoline Retailing
As of 2022, the only hypermarket or Big-Box Store operational in Australia are Costco Wholesale Warehouses with currently sixteen stores in Australia – five stores in Melbourne, three stores in Sydney, two stores in Brisbane, two stores in Perth and one store each in Newcastle, Canberra, Adelaide and 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.
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.
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