Three Innovations that Created the Supermarket
The modern supermarket is the result
of three innovations: self-service, the big box and the shopping cart.
Self
Service On September 6, 1916, Clarence
Saunders opened the first “Piggly Wiggly Self-Service” grocery store
in his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. Customers entered the revolutionary
store through turnstiles and walked through four aisles to view the
store’s 605 items sold in packages and organized into departments.
They selected their goods as they continued through the maze to a cashier. Instantly, packaging and brand recognition became important to companies and consumers. Without self-service, modern branded packaged goods would not exist.
The concept of the "Self-Serving Store" was patented by Saunders in 1917. The Piggly Wiggly phenomenon grew rapidly; at the end of the 1930s, there were over 2,600 stores across the United States. Other independent and chain grocery stores changed to self-service through the 1930s.
In many ways, Aldi is the modern concept most true to Clarence Saunders vision.
The Big Box "Pile it high,
Sell it low" was the slogan and philosophy of Michael J. Cullen.
On August 4, 1930, he opened the first King Kullen “supermarket” in
a sprawling former garage in Jamaica, Queens. At 6,000 square
feet, the store would be modest by today's standards, but it was five
times the size of its competitors. It offered no credit, no delivery
and ample parking. Customers drove to the store in their new automobiles
from a wide trading area and used the car to carry their "stock-up"
shop home.
King
Kullen was a low-overhead, price-cutting operation well suited for depression
wracked shoppers. When Cullen died in 1936 he had fifteen stores
in operation. By 1950, the supermarket had become the standard
and the remaining grocers became convenience store.
The
Shopping Cart The shopping cart was the bright idea of Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Humpty
Dumpty grocery chain in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In
observing the shopping habits of his customers, realized he could provide
better service and sell more groceries if only he had some means of
helping them carry more merchandise. From this simple observation
in 1936, the shopping cart was born.
Goldman went on to found the Folding Carrier Basket Company and became one of the richest men in America. The effectiveness of the shopping cart in retailing can be seen by comparing the success of retail stores that use shopping carts with those that don’t. Wal-Mart uses shopping carts. Sears doesn’t.
Add in the UPC bar code and that's everything you need to open a modern supermarket. That's it. Everything else is just different layout, signage and shelves, or bolting new departments onto the existing box.
What about Wal-Mart you ask? Haven’t they invented anything? Sure their Retail Link probably counts as a major innovation. Unfortunately, unlike the shopping cart, supermarkets don’t have access to this. So leading retailers around the world are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in their IT systems in an attempt to catch up. Besides, information technology doesn't change the shopping experience, it just makes everything behind the scenes occur more smoothly at a lower cost.