Hypermarket

A hypermarket is a specific type of store that offers customers a wide variety of goods and products, ranging from food and beverages to clothes and household appliances. Hypermarkets might also be called big box retailers because these stores share the same concept. However, big-box retailers don’t always include a grocery section, while it’s essential for hypermarkets. Sometimes, hypermarkets might also look like warehouses.

Different countries have different popular hypermarkets. For example, one of the most famous US hypermarkets is Walmart, while in the UK it’s Tesco, in Russia it’s Magnit, in Spain it’s Carrefour, etc.

Although Walmart is considered to be one of the most well-known hypermarkets in the US, Fred Meyer is often seen as the first one. It was opened up back in 1931 in Portland. Its range of products consisted of groceries, clothes, and pharmaceuticals.

Characteristics of the Hypermarket

Usually, hypermarkets are great in size and might be described as stores where you can find anything to meet your everyday needs. Hypermarkets are specifically designed for saving customers’ time and efforts in search of the desired items. Therefore, they create a serious competition in the market. Local shops and small supermarkets often can’t offer consumers the same range of products or make discounts equal to the hypermarket’s ones. The latter is managed to balance the expenses by operating with large volumes of goods.

Another distinctive characteristic of the hypermarket is that it stands against the formation of labor unions, which, in contrast, are quite typical for supermarkets. These unions try to get different bonuses for employees, such as money awards, health care insurances, recreational activities, etc. Preventing these unions helps hypermarkets to keep their costs under control.

Hypermarkets as a threat to other stores

All the aforementioned characteristics make hypermarkets a solid threat to local vendors and supermarkets, because it’s hard for them to compete with such giants. Below are listed some of the main hypermarkets’ advantages over other stores:

• Flexible prices. Price policy of hypermarkets is more flexible than it’s in supermarkets. Also, they’re able to lower the prices for some items in order to attract customers. These discounts don’t cause hypermarkets any harm or losses due to their large sales volumes that eventually compensates the price.
• Wide assortment of products. Due to their impressive size and large range of goods, hypermarkets lure a great number of customers, while local stores can’t offer them such a wide choice.
• Convenient location. In hypermarkets, you’ll probably find anything you need for your day-to-day life, and sometimes even more than that. It’s incomparably convenient for busy people, because shopping in hypermarkets saves their time and effort.

Actually, hypermarkets might be able to rival not only small vendors, but malls and shopping centers as well, because both of them have a wide assortment of products and convenient location. Additionally, malls consist of many local shops, which separately might not withstand the hypermarket’s pressure.