Hypermarket

[1] The result is an expansive retail facility carrying a wide range of products under one roof, including full grocery lines and general merchandise.

Typically covering an area of 5,000 to 15,000 square metres (54,000 to 161,000 sq ft), they generally have more than 200,000 different brands of merchandise available at any one time.

[citation needed] Because of their large footprints, many hypermarkets choose suburban or out-of-town locations that are easily accessible by automobile.

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 (36,000 sq ft), and was later converted into a regular supermarket.

The substantially larger store that opened a week later in Auderghem, Brussels, covering 9,100 m2 (98,000 sq ft), is regarded as a more proper hypermarket that brought the concept to fruition.

They are surrounded by extensive car parking facilities, and generally by other specialized superstores that sell clothing, sports gear, automotive items, etc.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

[20] 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.