Supermarkets and Big Stores - The Pioneers Of Selling A Wire Processing Machine, Art Sets, and Other Wares All In One Convenient Place

Not so very long ago, people's transportation abilities were limited, so stores tended to be small shops clustered in the downtown area where more people would have access to them. But as downtown property prices skyrocketed and more and more people bought cars, allowing them to move to the suburbs, a new retail trend emerged: the big box store. Modeled on early department stores such as Harrods in London, Macy's in New York City, and Hudson's Bay Company in Canada, these stores offered one stop shopping to customers who could get out to their multi-acre locations. If you want to learn about big box shopping, you've come to the right place.

These department store models were so successful that rather than creating a whole new store in a different city, the first store was carbon copied into subsidiary locations, creating what we now know as a chain store. There are hundreds of big box chain stores in Canada and the United States, each of which is familiar to the public consciousness. These multi-million dollars chains include Wal-Mart, Zellers, Target, H&M, IKEA, Meijer, Superstore, Sears, JC Penny, Macy's, Winners, Kmart, Marshalls, and Costco.

The business model behind a big box store is that there's no need to share profits with other proprietors if you can provide customers with everything they're looking for in one trip at the best price. Having so many wares together in one store also means that the likelihood of impulse purchases is high, given how many other things the customer has to walk past before he or she locates their desired item. Most big box stores also have rewards cards, points programs, and their own credit cards to encourage spending and store loyalty.

Each big box store has a consumer focus. Wal-Mart, for example, aims to provide lower income people with products that are priced cheaply enough for them to afford, while stores like Neiman Marcus aim for upscale products at reasonable prices that are desired by middle income people. While most department stores offer a cross section of wares from clothing to food to car tires, some focus on providing the maximum cross section of a certain area of retail. IKEA, for example, is a furniture store that sells everything you need to outfit a home, from throw pillows to sofas to soup bowls and shower curtains.

If you want to find a big box store, you'll need to look in the suburbs. These stores are too vast to be located inside a city where the land is at a premium. Instead, companies will buy up plots on the outskirts where property is cheaper. Often you will see many big box retailers clustered together into a business park, or two or three big box stores acting as "anchor" stores at an indoor shopping mall. If you want to learn more about big box stores, such as specifics about different stores and what you can find in them, click through our store of articles on major retailers.