La genèse de l’hypermarché : est-il vraiment français d’origine ?

The “French” hypermarket was presented in 1963 as an innovative combination of the most prominent characteristics of modern retailing of that time. This paper describes the story of this retail concept and how it crossed the Atlantic Ocean before being diffused throughout Europe. It is by and large known that it was firstly implemented in France, but we show that it was actually done in Belgium. We analyze this phenomenon of national appropriation of this concept by Carrefour.