Tomorrow's Super Market

Abstract

T HE plans of the super market industry, and food retailers in general, for the immediate future seem destined to revolutionize consumer shopping habits. They will challenge the best minds in advertising and promotion and keep research departments of manufacturers and advertising agencies busily occupied with new and improved packages and packaging, new copy appeals, and new sales approaches. Discussions with super market operators indicate that the super market industry has charted improvements and expansions of its system of retailing to such a degree as to encompass, in a short period, the normal progress of a decade. For just as the shrunken dollar of the last postwar depression hastened the beginning of the super market era, so the shrunken manpower pool during the recent war has given impetus to the ultra super markets, which will carry on to its next forward step the technique of selfservice and make for food retailing economies not hitherto seen in this country. Two trends in these plans of the super markets are especially evident in the programs thus far outlined. First is the rapid extension of self-service into fields heretofore often thought impossible to adapt to self-service. Most significant of these is the complete self-service meat and delicatessen department, which may revolutionize the entire meat retailing business. Another important trend is the expansion of the super food market into all household needs: wines and liquors, drugs and cosmetics, and numerous