Hypermarketization: standardized shopping in emerging economies

ABSTRACT

A hypermarket is a combined supermarket and department store that carries a large range of products. Since the opening of the first hypermarket in the US in the early 1930s, this concept has spread globally. Nowhere is this trend more visible than in India, now the world’s most populous country with a middle class that will expectedly grow to 800 million in 2030. This paper coins the theory of hypermarketization to explain why and how the hypermarket as a globalized form signifies the full integration of liberalization, retail and middle-class consumer culture in emerging markets. The argument that hypermarketization marks the point when successful economies in the Global South mature and then qualify as emerging markets is based on empirical material from fieldwork on vegetarianism and meat in hypermarkets and among middle-class groups in South India, namely participant observation and interviewing.

KEYWORDS:

• Hypermarkets
• India
• globalization
• theory
• economy
• consumer culture

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

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Johan Fischer

Johan Fischer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University, Denmark. His work focuses on human values and markets. More specifically, he explores the interfaces between class, consumption, market relations, religion and the state in a globalized world. He is the author of Proper Islamic consumption: Shopping among the Malays in modern Malaysia (NIAS Press 2008), The halal frontier: Muslim consumers in a globalized market (Palgrave Macmillan 2011), Islam, standards, and technoscience: In global halal zones (Routledge 2015), Halal matters: Islam, politics and markets in global perspective (Routledge 2015), Religion, regulation, consumption: Globalising kosher and halal markets (Manchester University Press 2018), Kosher and halal business compliance (Routledge 2018), Muslim piety as economy: Markets, meaning and morality in Southeast Asia (Routledge 2019), Vegetarianism, meat and modernity in India (Routledge 2023) and The moral economy of plant-based futures (Routledge 2024) as well as articles in journals and edited volumes. He is Editor of the Routledge book series Material religion and spirituality, Associate Editor of Research in Globalization and on the Editorial Boards of International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies and Contemporary Islam. Currently, he works on a research project on vegetarianism and meat-eating in a global perspective.