So much emphasis in chain retailing today seems to be on shrinking the big box. But some companies such as H-E-B, Kroger and Meijer who go head-to-head with Walmart's Supercenters every day are opening big and sometimes even bigger boxes to compete with the world's largest retailer.
A case in point is Kroger, which according to The Toledo Blade, has opened 78 Marketplace stores in Arizona, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas. The company's Fred Meyer division operates similar big boxes in the Pacific Northwest. The typical Marketplace store offers expanded general merchandise categories in addition to the groceries found in other Kroger stores.
"When you go to a [Kroger] Marketplace store and see furniture — which shocked me the first time I saw it — it's pretty evident that having bigger stores has let capable retailers put their toes into new markets for growth," Bill Bishop of Willard Bishop Consulting told the Blade. "And I think what you're going to see is a lot more of that."