Differences between Supermarkets and Departmental Stores

Issue of comparison	Departmental store	Supermarket
Amount of service	A departmental store is a large store selling, under one roof but in physically separate departments (Cox, 2006). Departmental stores offer four or more various types of consumer goods. A departmental store is full-service retailer. Each department carrying out its own buying, merchandising and stock control.	Supermarket is a self-service shop that offers people to purchase a wide range of different foods and household products. Customers can select their necessary foods in a shopping cart, bring to the payment counter and pay for each item. Supermarket is not only offering tinned goods and processed or semi-processed foods but also fresh meat, fresh fruit, and fresh vegetables.
Relative prices	Departmental stores set different price considering different market segment. After increasing the competition, most of the departmental stores are turned into discount stores. Though departmental stores use discount price, there are different price segment for different products. Some departmental stores are high fashion specialty store (e.g. Nordstrom, Barney’s etc.) offering upscale and exclusive products, some are mid-level (e.g. Dillard’s, Boscov’s etc.) offering moderately priced products and some are price sensitive (e.g. Target, JC Penny etc.) offering discount price products (Petro, 2013).	Supermarket generally operates discount stores. This supermarket keeps their products price comparatively low compared to the typical market value.   The competition in the supermarket retail business is very high. So that supermarket stores are keeping their products price at discount rate. Aldi, Wal-mart Tesco etc. are operating discount stores globally. Supermarket offers relatively low price to the customers to pick more customers and stay in the competition.
Product lines	The product lines of departmental stores are wide. Except for grocery items, all sorts of products are founded in departmental stores. The product lines cover clothing, housewares, furniture, toiletries, home appliances, books, jewelry, toys, cosmetics, baby products, sporting goods, electronics, and products for pets, stationery and photographic equipment.	Supermarkets are generally involved with selling a wide variety of grocery items, foods, and household’s products into aisles. The product lines of supermarket typically comprise baked goods, dairy foods, fresh vegetables, fruits, meat, fish, canned and packaged goods and household products such as kitchenware, pharmacy/medicine goods, household cleaners, festival items etc.

References 

Cox, R. (2006) Retailing-An Introduction. 5^th Edition. New Delhi: Pearson Education India.

Petro, G. (2013) Department store pricing-no easy task. [Online]. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gregpetro/2013/01/10/department-store-pricing-no-easy-task-part-4-of-4/#7b9c935d103a (Accessed: 10 July 2017).