Fashioned markets. Supermarkets are increasingly
becoming a feature of mime urban life. In design and service, they are a
departure from the old- there.
Instead of a number of open walled sheds of
concrete pillars supporting asbestos roofs, the physical side of the
supermarkets consists of the ground floor of an ultra modem four or five-story
building with ‘glass walls in front. The comparison does not stop there.
In the old-fashioned markets, the housewife goes to
one corner of one of the long sheds to buy pork; from there she moves to
another part of another shed to buy beef; she at then cross over to the shed on
the other side to buy vegetables, and then move on to another stall in the next
shed to look for fish -- all sheds, of course. Enclosed in the same fenced
compound. By the time a housewife finishes her Saturday marketing for a week
she might have walked in and out of the sheds, and across the compound, a
distance of nearly two furlongs. As she prepares to enter the fish all, she may
find the municipal worker washing the floor, pumping wetter through a hose and
may have to move away so as not to get wet. On her way across to the work stall
she may see a blind beggar asking for alms. Old- fashioned markets are also
very noisy places.
In the supermarkets all types of merchandise are
stored and arranged neatly on steel shelves and glass walled show cases under
the same roof enclosed by glass walls. There is neatness and orderliness. As
housewife can buy all the merchandise by walling along the counter, picking and
choosing what she wants.
The pleasure and pain of bargaining cannot be
experienced in the supermarkets. Prices are fixed and labelled. It is for the
housewife to choose whether or not she wants to buy a particular foodstuff.
When she buys, she does so on the terms laid down by the supermarkets. If she
decides not to buy tomatoes at 40 cents per pound, she may not find a nearby
rival vegetable dealer calling her attention to try out his tomatoes. From this
point of view, supermarkets are organized to establish monopoly in business by
stifling competition. Efficiency and promptness in service are maintained at
the expense of the customers.
The comparatively high price a housewife pays for
merchandise bought from supermarkets is in one way justified as foodstuffs are
stored under strictly hygienic conditions. It is true that the customer can get
a wide variety of foodstuffs under. The single- roof of the supermarket; but
freshness of meat, vegetables, fruits and fish is lost when they are preserved
in refrigerators and in the stores behind the paste board walls. Exactly when
the clock at the tower chimes five, the glass-doors of the supermarkets are
closed. No frantic hurry is seen to dispose of the remaining stock at re-edited
prices as one can witness in the old-fashioned markets. At night we can see the
display of goods in the brightly lit supermarket through its glass walls. The
next day the same foodstuffs which have lost their freshness are sold at the
same fixed price. In the old-fashioned markets, the stall holders bring the
meat of freshly slaughtered pig, goat or cow, and fresh fish and vegetables. It
i the daily demand that decides the stock of their merchandise; whereas the
supermarkets specialize in bulk buying and large sales.
We Live in an affluent world where the influence of
commerce and business permeates practically every facet of man’s life.
Supermarkets are creations of the ingenuity of the world of commerce and
business to satisfy the desire of the affluent part of society for
sophistication in service and merchandise even in the sphere of marketing.