Proposal:Shop=hypermarket

shop=hypermarket
Proposal status: Draft (under way)
Proposed by: Ilias
Tagging: shop=hypermarket
Applies to:
Definition: A significantly large self-service retail store that sells a wide range of goods, including groceries, household items, clothing, electronics, etc.
Statistics:

Draft started: 2025-06-21

Proposal

This proposal aims to approve the tag shop=hypermarket in order to standardize its usage for mapping very large retail stores, and most importantly separating it from shop=supermarket and shop=department_store.

This proposal revives an earlier inactive one from 2008 made by wagner51. In the meantime, hypermarkets became a lot more present.

Rationale

Currently, a tag doesn't exist for hypermarkets. This leads to confusion and inconsistency, where a user will tag a hypermarket with either shop=supermarket or shop=department_store. However, the three definitions are very different (see below).

Difference with supermarket and department store

  • Hypermarket: a significantly large self-service retail store that combines food and groceries with a broad selection of non-food items such as clothing, electronics, toys, and household goods. It’s designed as a one-stop shop for weekly or bulk shopping, often located in suburban areas with large parking facilities, e.g. Walmart Supercenter and Carrefour.
  • Supermarket: a medium-sized store focused mainly on food and everyday household items. It serves local neighborhoods and is intended for regular, quick shopping trips, e.g. Lidl, Aldi, and Carrefour Market.
  • Department store: sells mostly non-food items across multiple categories such as fashion, home goods, cosmetics, and electronics, typically organized into separate departments. Unlike hypermarkets, department stores rarely sell fresh groceries, e.g. Macy’s, Galeries Lafayette, and El Corte Inglés.

Many companies have different brands, one operating supermarkets and another operating hypermarkets, e.g. Walmart Neighborhood Market and Walmart Supercenter, Target and Super Target, Carrefour Market and Carrefour, Supercor and Hipercor, Auchan Supermarché and Auchan Hypermarché, Marjane Market and Marjane, Coop and IperCoop, Super U and Hyper U, Intermarché Super and Intermarché Hyper, etc.

We find ourselves obliged to tag both brands as shop=supermarket, which is only correct for one of them.

Current usage

  • shop=hypermarket: the tag in question is used only 3 times. It was used sparsely since 2008, attaining 50 uses in 2014 (see tag history), but its usage diminished until now.

  • :supermarket=hypermarket: this tag is used 129 times, mainly in France (a country where hypermarkets are very present) since 2020. This should be deprecated in favor of shop=hypermarket, as a hypermarket is not a subtype of a supermarket.

Features/Pages affected

External links

Comments

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