Supermarket
A supermarket (also called automercado or supermarket) is a commercial retail establishment that offers consumer goods in a Self-service among which are food, clothing, hygiene items, perfumery, and cleaning. These stores may be part of a chain, generally in the form of a franchise, which may have more locations in the same city, state, or country. Supermarkets generally offer products at a low price. To generate profit, supermarkets try to counter low profit margin with high sales volume.
Other kinds of self-service stores, such as hypermarkets, also sell clothing and vehicle accessories such as tires.
History
In the early days of retail, an assistant would typically fetch items from the shelves behind the merchant's counter while customers waited in front of the counter, indicating the items they wanted. Most food and merchandise was not presented in individual consumer-sized containers, so a helper would measure and wrap the exact amount requested by the consumer. This offered opportunities for social interaction: many viewed this style of shopping as "a social occasion" and often 'paused to chat with staff or other customers'. These practices were, by nature, slow and labor-intensive, and therefore also quite expensive. The number of customers that could be served at one time was limited by the number of staff employed in the store. Grocery shopping also often involved trips to multiple specialty stores, such as a grocery store, butcher, bakery, fishmonger, and dry goods store, in addition to a general store. Milk and other short-lived items were delivered by a milkman.
The concept of a cheap food market based on economies of scale was developed by Vincent Astor. He founded Astor Market in 1915, investing $750,000 of his fortune in a 165' by 125' (50×38 meter) corner of 95th and Broadway, Manhattan, creating, in effect, an outdoor mini-mart that sold meat, fruit, produce, and flowers. The expectation was that customers would come from great distances ("miles around"), but in the end, even attracting people from ten blocks away was difficult, and the market closed in 1917.
The self-service grocery store concept was developed by businessman Clarence Saunders and his Piggly Wiggly stores, the first of which opened in 1916. Saunders was awarded several patents for the ideas he incorporated into his stores. The stores were a financial success, and Saunders began franchising.
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, founded in 1859, was another of the first successful grocery store chains in Canada and the United States, becoming common in North American cities in the 1920s. Early self-service grocery stores did not sell meat no fresh products. Combination stores selling perishable goods were created in the 1920s.
The general trend since then has been to stock shelves overnight so that customers the next day can get their own products and bring them to the front of the store to pay for them. Although there is an increased risk of shoplifting, the costs of proper security measures are offset, at best, by reduced labor costs.
Historically, there has been debate over the origin of the supermarket, with King Kullen and Ralphs of California having strong claims. Other contenders included Weingarten's and Henke & Pillot. To end the debate, the Food Marketing Institute together with the Smithsonian Institution and with funding from H.J. Heinz, investigated the matter. They defined the attributes of a supermarket as "self-service, separate product departments, discount pricing, marketing and volume selling".
They determined that the first real supermarket in the United States was opened by a former Kroger employee, Michael J. Cullen, on August 4, 1930, inside a former 560 m2 garage in Jamaica, Queens in New York City. The store, King Kullen, operated under the slogan "collects a lot. Sell it cheap". At the time of Cullen's death, in 1936, there were seventeen King Kullen stores in operation. Although Saunders had brought self-service, uniform stores, and nationwide merchandising to the world, Cullen built on this idea by adding separate food departments, selling large volumes of food at reduced prices, and adding a parking garage.
Other American supermarket chains established in the 1930s, such as Kroger and Safeway Inc., initially resisted Cullen's idea, but were eventually forced to build their own supermarkets when the economy plunged into the Great Depression., while consumers became price sensitive to a level never before experienced. Kroger took the idea a step further, pioneering the first supermarket surrounded on all four sides by a parking lot.
As large supermarket chains began to dominate the market in the United States, able to supply consumers with the desired lower prices as opposed to the smaller "mom and pop" with considerably higher overheads, the reaction to this infrastructure disruption was manifested through numerous campaigns against the networks. The idea of "monopsony," proposed by Cambridge economist Joan Robinson in 1933, according to which a single buyer could overcome the market power of multiple sellers, became a strong rhetorical device against chains. With public reaction came political pressure to level the playing field for smaller vendors who lacked the luxury of economies of scale. In 1936, the Robinson-Patman Act was enacted as a way to prevent those larger chains from using this buying power to gain advantage over smaller stores, although the law was poorly enforced and did not have much of an impact on prevention. of the power of the largest chains in the markets.
Supermarkets proliferated in Canada and the United States with the increase in car ownership and suburban development after World War II. Most North American supermarkets are located in suburban shopping centers as a flagship store along with other smaller retailers. Usually, their brand is more regional than national. Kroger is perhaps the most domestically oriented supermarket chain in the United States, but it has retained most of its regional brands, including Ralphs, City Market, King Soopers, Fry's, Smith's, and QFC..[citation required] In Canada, the largest such company is Loblaw, which operates stores under a variety of banners targeting different segments and regions, including Fortinos, Zehrs, No Frills, the Real Canadian Superstore, and Loblaws, the company's foundation. Sobeys is the second largest supermarket in Canada, with stores across the country, operating under many banners (Sobeys IGA in Quebec). Quebec's first supermarket opened in 1934 in Montreal, under the name of Steinberg's.
In the UK, self-service took longer to establish. Even in 1947, there were only ten convenience stores in the country. In 1951, former US Marine Patrick Galvani, son-in-law of the president of Express Dairies, proposed to the board of directors to open a nationwide chain of supermarkets. The first UK supermarket under the new Premier Supermarkets brand opened in Streatham, South London, taking in ten times more a week than the average British department store at the time. Other chains caught up, and after Galvani lost to Jack Cohen in 1960 to buy the 212 Irwin's chain, the industry underwent major consolidation, giving rise to 'the big four'. #3. 4; dominant in the UK today: Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons.
In the 1950s, supermarkets used to issue trade stamps as incentives for customers. Currently, most chains issue "membership cards", "club cards" or "loyalty cards" specific to each store. These cards often allow the cardholder to receive special member discounts on certain items when the credit card-like device is scanned at checkout. The sale of selected data generated by club cards is becoming a major source of revenue for some supermarkets.
In many countries, traditional supermarkets face intense competition from discounters such as Wal-Mart, Aldi and Lidl, which are typically non-unionized and operate with greater buying power. There is also competition from warehouse clubs like Costco that offer savings to customers who buy in bulk. Superstores, such as Wal-Mart and Asda, often offer a wide range of goods and services in addition to food. In Australia, Aldi, Woolworths and Coles are the major players in the sector, with strong competition between all three. Aldi's increased market share has forced the other two to cut prices and increase their private label product ranges. The proliferation of these department stores and superstores has contributed to the continued disappearance of older local grocery stores. little; increasing dependence on the automobile; urban overexpansion due to the need for large spaces and the increase in vehicle traffic. For example, in 2009, 51% of Wal-Mart's $251 billion in domestic sales were from grocery products. Some critics consider the chains' standard practice of selling products at a loss to be anticompetitive. They are also wary of the bargaining power large, and often multinational, companies have with suppliers around the world.
Online-only supermarkets (21st century)
During the dot-com boom, Webvan, an Internet-only supermarket, was created, which failed after three years and was acquired by Amazon. British internet supermarket Ocado, which uses a high degree of automation in its warehouses, was the first successful exclusively online supermarket. Ocado expanded to serve other supermarket firms such as Waitrose and Morrisons.
Grocery stores such as Walmart employ third-party food delivery services such as DoorDash. Other online food delivery services, such as Deliveroo in the UK, have begun to pay specific attention to supermarket delivery. Autonomous delivery robots are offered by several companies that partner with supermarkets.
Micro Fulfillment Centers (MFCs) are relatively small warehouses with sophisticated automated shelving and case systems that prepare orders for pickup and delivery. Once the order is complete, it will be picked up by the customer (i.e., "click-and-collect") or bring it home. Supermarkets are investing in micro-fulfillment centers in the hope that automation can help reduce the costs of online commerce and e-commerce by shortening delivery distances. the store to the home and speeding up deliveries. In short, many say MFCs are the key to profitable online order fulfillment.
Operation
Customers who enter a supermarket usually go through it with a cart or basket, in which they keep the products they want to buy. The products are distributed by sections: cleaning, fresh food, frozen food, beverages, household essentials, personal care, etc. These, in turn, are organized into aisles classified by their nature (biscuits, cereals, fruits, meats, etc.). The customer makes the payment in boxes that are generally located at the exits of the establishment.
The distribution of sections is very similar in all supermarkets. The intention is for the customer to describe the widest route possible, so basic necessities are placed at different points on it and, generally, far from the entrance: meat, fish, fruit and vegetables, toys, bread, milk, water etc
Furniture with shelves where products are displayed are called gondolas and their side, gondola head. For their part, frozen and dairy products are displayed in refrigerated chests. The part of marketing that deals with the techniques of optimizing the sale of products in a self-service area is called merchandising.
To prevent theft of merchandise by unscrupulous customers, supermarkets have a security system using mirrors and cameras, which monitor even the most remote corner so that no customer can secretly hide any product inside their clothes (in order to not pay it at the till) without being caught. To enhance security against theft, customers are required to leave their purses, backpacks or handbags immediately after entering the supermarket on a holding rack by the front door.
In recent years, the appearance of the online supermarket has proliferated, which differs from the traditional one by not having stores and having a 100% online operation.
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