From Traditional Retailing to E-tailing: The Death and Rebirth of the Hypermarket Format?

Abstract E-tailing is slowly but undeniably developing in France for convenience goods. Even if its significance in the next few years will not be as promising as was hoped for, it should represent a new distribution channel partially competing with traditional retailing. This is verified by the fact that the hypermarket format, symbol of the French retailing industry’s world success, has entered a phase of decline. From this observation, the paper suggests using a part of or whole hypermarkets by transforming them into logistical infrastructures for e-tailing. Two alternative models are proposed, which could serve as a basis for reflection for future research on the connection between traditional retailing and e-tailing. Keywords e-tailing, France, hypermarket, logistics, traditional retailing Introduction The United States is often presented as the natural home of the major innovations that have occurred in retailing throughout the 20th century, both for retail formats and marketing techniques. But among the “inventors of modern retailing”, to refer to Thil’s (1966/2000) famous terms, the central place occupied by European entrepreneurs should not be overlooked. Is it possible to forget that the hard discount format, with ever increasing sales in Europe since the early 2000s, was introduced by the Albrecht brothers, creators of Aldi in completely devastated post-war Germany? This is also true of the hypermarket format, a purely French invention at the beginning of the 1960s, whose international success for the last forty years is the major vehicle for growth of the Carrefour group, now the world’s second largest retailer after Wal-Mart. Hypermarkets are undeniably the symbol of an economic revolution which led France, then other European countries, towards a mass retailing based on discount positioning. A recent biography of the creator of Carrefour tells how he was quite obsessed with selling food and non-food products at low price, refusing the principle of balance between low profit margins and high profit margins, as suggested by Bernardo Trujillo, NCR’s famous guru (Paturle 2005). Over time, following the model of the wheel of retailing, the hypermarket format continually went beyond discount positioning by offering an increasing number of consumer services (Filser & Pache 2005). Consequently, price levels went up and resulted in a “midlife crisis” which may be fatal. Currently, only one retail format has a real low price strategy for 95