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The purpose of this paper is to provide a historic perspective on the supermarket industry that has changed from the small Mom and Pop stores to major supermarket chains.

This study is a review of secondary information from trade literature, popular new media and academic publications.

The changes in supermarkets and food stores followed the trends in how consumers have changed and developed. As consumers around the world continue to change, so will food retailers.

The author could have included more on the development in underdeveloped countries.

This paper has practical implication in that to understand that food retailers must continue to follow consumer and technology changes if they want to grow and prosper. To quote Winston Churchill, “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”

Supermarkets must be responsive to consumer changes and as consumer become more demanding for convenience so must supermarkets must continue to provide it or disappear.

This study is original to the extent that it brought together the different eras in supermarket. The actual changes have been well known.

Argues that, by the early 1990s, an estimated half of all non‐restaurant food sales in Hong Kong went through supermarkets. Local independents and small local chains cater to the lower end of the market. Two large local chains focus on Hong Kong′s broad middle class and control over half of packaged food sales. Some Japanese supermarkets also target the local Chinese middle class. They define the two major local chains as their main competition, and make little attempt to maintain their Japanese identities. Other Japanese supermarkets are niche marketers. They maintain their Japanese identities more strongly, and give more weight to Japanese products. These stores are located in major shopping districts rather than in the main residential districts. They target expatriates, who may account for 30 to 40 per cent of customers. Finally, one Japanese store has positioned itself as the top quality supplier for the upper end of the market, and presents an international, not Japanese, image.

This chapter evaluates the proliferation of supermarkets in developing countries using data collected between May 2005 and June 2006 in Citlalicalli, Mexico. Contrary to the experience of most developed countries, this study revealed that supermarkets and small retailers can coexist by catering to different income groups and product categories. Consumer choices are driven by the desire to reduce transaction costs in terms of time and money. In striking a balance between the two, consumers look for retail outlets that offer them the best value for their money with the least amount of time spent in shopping trips. Location of the store plays a critical role in buying choices that consumers make. In developing countries, generally, only high-income consumers can afford to own cars and choose to buy most products in supermarkets. Consumers without cars buy frequently purchased goods (foods) in small stores and infrequently purchased goods (consumer durables) in supermarkets.

Despite huge investments within the modern trade arena, Vietnam remains a traditional trade retailing country. The purpose of this paper is to establish the combined effects of motivation, store attributes and demographic factors on the predictive outcome of store format choice in Vietnam.

A logistic regression model is used to determine the effect of these factors on the predictive outcome of traditional markets or supermarkets in purchasing non-food products or processed food products.

The dichotomy between what supermarkets and traditional markets have to offer is simple but effective. Utilitarian-motivated shoppers are more likely to shop at traditional markets. They emphasize the need to buy products quickly, find a good price, with less travel time and hence lower travel costs. Hedonistic shoppers are motivated by feelings of happiness; they shop to relieve stress and to keep up with trends. Significant difference in store choice also exists between older and higher income shoppers.

Future research should examine the sociocultural dimensions of shopping at traditional stores by exploring how such shopping relates to, and is embedded in, the formation and changes of individual identity, especially in communities outside of Ho Chi Minh City where shoppers are almost entirely dependent on traditional stores.

Traditional stores have the benefit of convenient location and savings in both time and travel costs. These benefits are being eroded as supermarkets and transnational retail corporations establish new stores close to the traditional stores.

Shopping at traditional markets is part of the social culture and is embedded in individuals’ identity formation, despite increasing urbanization and shoppers’ higher incomes.

This study comprehensively explores the interactions between store choice and motivation, store attributes and demographic factors, taking into account contemporary and contextually relevant factors.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the difference between service quality dimensions of supermarkets and discount stores.

The paper focuses on service quality dimensions of customers in supermarkets and discount stores. The study has selected one store from each retailer type located in Eskisehir, Turkey and used the scale of the service quality of retail stores. The research has employed a face‐to‐face questionnaire for collecting data from customers on different days and at different hours of the week. A total of 891 questionnaires, 682 for supermarkets and 209 for discount stores, have been analysed.

Results indicate that the customers of the supermarket and the discount store differ in their perception of some service quality dimensions. While the supermarket customers perceive physical aspects and store policy dimensions at a higher level, the discount store's customers give more priority to interaction with personnel dimension.

Further qualitative studies can provide deeper insights about service quality dimensions of supermarkets and discount stores. The results are also a starting point for further academic research about the different retailer types.

The paper contributes to the understanding of behaviours and attitudes of supermarket and discount store customers. Retailers in Turkey will primarily benefit from the study.

The paper compares the customer perception of service quality dimensions of two different types of grocery retailers; a supermarket and a discount store.

The overall purpose of this study is to enhance the understanding of customer perceived service quality within grocery retailing in a North European context. We do this by comparing customer perceived service quality evaluations of the traditional supermarket store with evaluations of the discount store.

This study is based on empirical data from four store cases (two traditional and two discount stores), including information gained from a total of 542 respondents. In the study, we have used and tested a model of grocery store service quality, presented in Vázquez et al. (2001), with structural equation modelling (LISREL) and traditional multivariate analysis (SPSS).

The ability of the Vázquez et al. (2001) model to capture customer perceived quality was below 40 per cent for both concepts which signals limited relevance and that important dimensions in the service evaluation could be missing for both of the two concepts, at least in a North European context. The results show that the traditional supermarket outperforms the discount stores on all service aspects but availability and reliability. When comparing the determinants of the service quality evaluation, the two concepts are very similar. Finally, the overall results regarding determinants of service quality show resemblance to retail studies in other countries and cultures.

This study has been limited to investigate service quality in Sweden and from two out of at least five possible retail concepts. As the explanatory power of the model is limited, future studies should explore other possible determinants of service quality, e.g. the role of technological innovations.

Kotler and Keller (2012) proposes five generic differentiation strategies: product, service, people, channels and image. The results suggest that traditional grocery stores that choose to differentiate and position themselves by focusing on service rather than physical product differentiation should work with assortment issues as well. In order to decide which aspect of service to choose and promote, companies should emphasise differences that are considered important by customers, distinct from competitors and superior in terms of delivering the overall benefit – in this case – in terms of service quality. The results show that the policy dimension would satisfy all three criterions.

The study enhances the understanding of customer perceived service quality within grocery retailing, specifically in comparison between the supermarket and the discount store concept.

This study is the first to focus on whether there is a divergence in service quality and service quality measuring between the traditional supermarket concept and the growing discount concept, and if so to what extent. Furthermore, it is a test of a model that has gained acceptance in Latin and South European countries, but in the context of Northern Europe.

In the context of increasing competition between chained retailers and family-owned retailers, it is key to understand the customer's format choice. Using a logistics regression (i.e., binary logit) model, we explain customers' preference to buy in supermarkets or in small-scale, mom-and-pop stores like nanostores. We collect a representative sample of over 110 surveys from customers in the district of Surco, Lima, Perú, which is a representative area of the features of Lima's residents. We asked customers to focus on analyzing their preference between two retail formats: modern channel (i.e., big-box retailers, supermarkets, and hypermarkets) and traditional channel (i.e., mom-and-pop stores, nanostores). Our surveys included factors pertaining retail format attributes as well as factors related to the purchasing process. The results showed that time available for purchase and a comparatively better perceived service at a mom-and-pop store (i.e., nanostore) are significant factors that explain a higher probability of selecting these retailers, while a better store's ambience benefits more supermarkets. The overall discrete choice model is able to explain 65% of the variance using pseudo R-squared of the actual format choice decisions.

The paper studies the relative use of a variety of distribution channels by Japanese consumers when purchasing clothing. In this way it aims to illustrate the potential of various channels for the sale of a range of garment types by three groups of consumers and, therefore, provided guidance to potential entrants to the Japanese market. The study was carried out by means of a convenient sample and covered the years 1990–93. The three groups of consumers covered were female students, their mothers and their fathers. A total of 46 articles of female clothing and 32 articles of male clothing were covered in the survey. The results suggested that in the case of some garments consumers did not appear to distinguish clearly between channels of distribution as forward methods of purchase. This was particularly true of male consumers. Many items were habitually purchased, however, via only one channel — this was especially the case with women consumers. Males made very little use of mail order but much greater use of department stores and specialty stores.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how five price image dimensions influence shopping intentions for different store formats.

In total, 306 espondents evaluated three stores from a list of 18 retailers on a multiple‐item scale, resulting in 918 price‐image measurements. Based on these data, a covariance structure analysis in Mplus analyses the direct and indirect impact of five price image dimensions on shopping intentions. A multiple group analysis identifies differences in the effects between store formats.

The impact of image dimensions differs substantially between store formats. For discount stores, value for money is by far the most important image dimension. For supermarkets, price level and value are equally important, but price perceptibility and price processibility are also relevant. For organic food stores, value is most important, followed by price processibility and evaluation certainty. For the weekly market, price perceptibility plays a key role in explaining customers' shopping intentions.

The results carry several implications for retail pricing practice, as they indicate that retailers should not focus exclusively on price level competition. Depending on the store format, retailers should attach importance to the price image dimensions in varying degrees.

The study contributes to the literature by: advancing price‐image measurement; modelling direct effects on shopping intentions; analysing a number of different indirect effects in an integrated model; and taking the moderating effects of store format into account.

There is an argument that the channel of distribution reflects the economic development of a country. China is a developing country. When supermarket technology was introduced to China in 1981, supermarkets were mainly serving visitors from overseas. When the economic environment improved during the 1990s, supermarkets in China shifted focus to the local community. The findings of this study showed that the nature of problems faced by supermarkets changed over time during the past 18 years. In the 1980s, most of the problems were related to technology transfer and the support from supplementary industries. In the 1990s, the problems were mainly related to competition and management issues. If China joins the WTO the Chinese government will speed up the development of the service industry. Supermarkets will then become a new power in the retailing industry in China. Multinational retailing giants will play a significant role in the technology transfer. However, their presence will also create tremendous pressure on local operators, forcing many inefficient ones out of the retailing scene.