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The retailing of domestic foodstuffs and non-foodstuffs throughout the European Union has experienced a rapid transformation and expansion in recent decades, following the North American trend towards ever larger multi-market hypermarkets, often anchored in purpose-built shopping precincts. This has brought in its wake profound social and economic changes in the patterns of shopping, consumption, marketing and distribution, in addition to irrevocably altering the balance in the range of retailing options. The efficiency of individual retail stores is a key issue in the retailer's competitiveness, since the global profitability of any chain enterprise depends on the profitability of its constituent parts.