Talk:Supermarket

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"Supermercado" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Supermercado and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 May 7#Supermercado until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. feminist (talk) Слава Україні! 13:32, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Challenging edit by User:Keizers on 13 July 2020[edit]

I'm challenging this edit as (1) grossly inaccurate and (2) failing verification.

The text I am challenging is as follows: "In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is synonymous with supermarket,[1] and is not used to refer to other types of stores that sell groceries.[2][1]" The cited sources do not actually say that, and it's also just plain wrong. By the time I was eight or nine years old, I was well aware that in American English, the term "grocery store" refers to both big and small stores that sell groceries (especially the classic "corner grocery store" seen in inner-city areas) and overlaps with the "supermarket" concept. Any objections before I take out the trash? --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:10, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm changing it now to just say that it's often a synonym for supermarket. You are right that I didn't prove that grocery store doesn't refer to something smaller than a supermarket, although to be honest I'm not familiar with any format which is still like that, not in the city and not in the suburbs, except for specialized ethnic food stores, and I personally would be likely to call one of those a "food store" (e.g. "Russian food store") but I will stick to what is in the referenced sources. Keizers (talk) 15:37, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by supermarkets?[edit]

yes 38.183.26.35 (talk) 15:02, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Very good question (and observation)! That information is included in the article. Hopefully that solves your concern? Keizers (talk) 15:06, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Challenging deletions on 3 May 2024[edit]

I'm challenging this edit on 3 May 2024 by User:CoolieCoolster of four fully-sourced paragraphs.

The last time I looked into this issue at a research university library over a year ago, the scholarly consensus is that the FMI study got it right and the first supermarket was King Kullen. Frankly, as a Californian, it would be much more cool if Alpha Beta or Ralphs had been the first, but under WP policy, I defer to the published reliable sources on this issue. If you believe that consensus is wrong, it's your burden under WP policy to find a published reliable source (see WP:RS, WP:V) that attacks the FMI study as arbitrary and then update this article to explain that there are dissenting perspectives on the issue. Coolcaesar (talk) 16:10, 9 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Aside from the article not giving any consideration to international grocery stores that contributed innovations of their own to the supermarket concept, there is no consensus that King Kullen was the first supermarket in the United States, as different sources arrive at different conclusions by adjusting the parameters for what differentiates a supermarket from a grocery store. I'll list articles below based on their claimed 'first supermarket':
If looking specifically for another printed source, Once Upon a Store: A Biography of the World's First Supermarket by William H. Marnell in 1971 considered "Uphams Corner Market" to be the first supermarket.
Given that sources cannot agree on which grocery store was the first supermarket, it makes more sense to simply state the innovations that each contributed to the modern supermarket concept, something that ultimately evolved beyond the contributions of either Piggly Wiggly or King Kullen. While it could be stated that sources consider either Piggly Wiggly, King Kullen, or another one of the listed innovators to be the first supermarket, stating that any one of them were the first supermarket—even in the context of the existence of dissenting opinions—is invalid given the clear lack of consensus.
Furthermore, regardless of the sources ultimately used, they should also be verified to not simply defer to the claims made by the supermarket chains in question, given that both King Kullen and Piggly Wiggly use the claim to bolster their marketing. -CoolieCoolster (talk) 05:27, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Coolcaesar I don't want to make another edit just for it to be reverted, so if there's a reason why the sources I listed shouldn't be considered as breaking with the consensus you claim to exist, feel free to say so before I edit the article again. -CoolieCoolster (talk) 03:52, 11 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
From my perspective, it looks like you're cherry-picking sources which either don't pass muster (e.g., food blogs) or barely pass muster under WP:RS (lifestyle magazines) to try to find a debate among journalists when the issue was already settled in the published historical literature. You're also definitely misreading at least one of them: the American Heritage article expressly identified King Kullen as "the first true supermarket".
If I recall correctly from the last time I investigated this, published books and articles by historians and freelance writers who have studied supermarkets for extended periods of time tend to favor King Kullen. A recent example is Benjamin Lorr's 2020 book, which clearly frames Piggly Wiggly's self-service innovations as merely setting the stage and then on pages 30 and 31 shifts to portraying King Kullen as the first supermarket. If I recall correctly, the Levinson book on A&P (formerly available on Google Books but since pulled offline) also identifies King Kullen as the first supermarket.
The Marnell book is unavailable within 300 miles of my location. I checked WorldCat and now I'll have to decide whether it's worth a detour to UH Manoa when I visit Honolulu later this year. I was thinking about visiting anyway this year to review the old GTE Hawaiian Tel phone books to confirm if my memory is correct. When I visited Lahaina for the first time as a young child, I remember seeing prominent warnings to tourists that "in case of emergency, dial 9-1-1, do not dial HAWAII 5-0!" I've always wanted to add that to the 9-1-1 and Hawaii 5-0 articles on Wikipedia, but I can't do that unless I can provide specific, verifiable citations. --Coolcaesar (talk) 23:30, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just because a group of academics came to one conclusion on the matter at a point before journalists came to a different conclusion, doesn't make the former opinion any more valid than the latter one. Furthermore, the articles I listed were merely the first ones that came up for the search term 'first supermarket', so unless the search engine happens to be a Piggly Wiggly fan, no cherry-picking occurred. At the very least, Time Magazine, Zocalo, Tennessee State Museum, and the book discussing 'Uphams Corner Market' are valid sources.
In its current state, the paragraph on the 'first supermarket', even if King Kullen were to remain listed as the undisputed first supermarket, reads like a puff piece for King Kullen:
  • King Kullen was not the first grocery store with a dedicated parking lot; per the Zocalo article, that was a Ralphs store in 1926.
  • "Other established American grocery chains in the 1930s, such as Kroger and Safeway Inc. at first resisted Cullen's idea," suggests that all grocery stores that lowered their margins, cut costs, or switched to lower cost suppliers did so not in response to shifting market expectations, but rather King Cullen's implementation of that idea. Is there evidence that grocery stores across the United States that adopted the proto-supermarket business model in the early 1930s did so based on the operations of King Kullen, rather than instances of multiple discovery? Regardless of whether King Kullen was the first or not, the term 'resisted Cullen's idea' should be rephrased if they were not actually resisting the implementation of ideas that were knowingly associated with King Kullen.
  • As discussed by the Troy, Ohio Historical Society a 1920 newspaper article in Troy reported on the opening of a Piggly Wiggly location, discussing innovations Piggly Wiggly had made, such as store aisles, shopping baskets, price tags, a check out stand, and "prices lower than elsewhere". Several of these innovations are attributed in the Wikipedia article to King Kullen, however based on this source, should be attributed to Piggly Wiggly instead.
As the article also mentions that Piggly Wiggly had made use of advertising prior to 1930, the academic definition of a supermarket listed in the Wikipedia article only leaves King Kullen with the 'volume selling' attribute. While I could try and find a source mentioning some grocery store that sold products in bulk before King Kullen, the point is ultimate mute; different definitions of which innovations separate a supermarket from a grocery store can be employed to arrive at different results. Therefore, rather than drawing a line in the sand as to what was or wasn't a supermarket, it seems much more productive and informative to instead document the innovations that led to the modern supermarket, and mention the pioneers, King Kullen included, that made that possible.
As I'd rather improve other articles than push improvements to this article up a mountain, I'll leave it here for now. At the very least, however, the paragraph in question needs to be updated to reflect the innovations made by Ralphs and Piggly Wiggly, as stated above, rather than King Kullen. -CoolieCoolster (talk) 02:31, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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