Welsh Journals

HYPERMARKETS AND SUPERSTORES: WAS CARREFOUR, CAERPHILLY A RED HERRING? ALAN HALLSWORTH Hallsworth, Alan 1985: Hypermarkets and Superstores: Was Carrefour, Caerphilly a Red Herring? Cambria 12 (2) pp. 189 to pp. 205. Part II of Davies, W.K.D. (ed) Human Geography from Wales: Proceedings of the E.G. Bowen Memorial Conference. ISSN 0306-9796. The Carrefour hypermarket in Caerphilly in 1972 did not prove to be the forerunner of a 'wave' of similar operations in Britain. Smaller, so- called 'superstores' have proved to be more popular. A comparative study of the development experiences of the Carrefour and Asda chains and a behavioural study of consumer attitudes in one store of each type outside Portsmouth help explain the superstore advantages. Alan Hallsworth, Dept. of Geography, Portsmouth Polytechnic, Lion Terrace, Portsmouth England. P01 3HT. During the late 1950's a revolution began in the retailing sector of the economy in the Western World. Stimulated by the growth of suburban areas, which were dependent on cars for journeys to work or to shop, and the use of trucks to transport goods, American developers began to construct out-of-town shopping centres. At the same time certain food retailers developed large supermarket operations, soon capturing much of the retail trade in food. Western European countries lagged behind in these changes because of the slower growth in the car-owning population, the higher density of cities, better public transport systems and usually tighter planning controls which favoured city centre developments. Nevertheless, by the middle of the 1960's very large retailing operations began to appear in Western Europe, and especially in France, huge one-stop operations surrounded by a big car park the hypermarché perhaps combining elements of the American large supermarkets and shopping centres, but under one management (Parker 1975). A derivative of the French term 'hyper-marché' (hypermarket) is usually used to describe these operations which, especially in the years 1970 to 1973, were frequently constructed in freestanding buildings over 100,000 square feet in size (Davison 1982 Ch. 3). It is the objective of this study to review the geographical implications of the development of these very large, one-stop shopping stores in Britain, with specific reference to the hypermarket and superstore operations of two leading companies, Carrefour and Asda. At the very onset it must be stressed that the two terms are not always easily distinguished the difference lies mainly in scale and location. Here, the pure