There are tons of stores out there, how are they all classified and fit together?  All of these stores are retail stores.  According to the text there are general-merchandise, department, discount, convenience, supermarkets, superstores, hypermarkets, warehouse clubs, warehouse showrooms, specialty, category killers, and off-price types of retail.  The first one mentioned, general-merchandise, is a retail outfit that offers many products and several types of retail stores fall under this category.  First of which is a department store, which consists of a larger store, employing 25+ people and offer many products.  Department stores offer a variety of services also, and some example of such stores would be JC Penny and Sear's.  The second type of retail under general-merchandise would be a discount store.  A discount store typically consists of brand names and generic names offered at low prices.  These stores are self-service, where they try to have a high turn-over rate of products by offering the lowest prices possible, thus moving more product.  Examples of these discount stores include Wal-Mart and Target.  Another general-merch retailer would be a convinience store, which are typically small in size and are self service.  These stores offer a much smaller product offering and are products considered to be "convinience products."  These products include;  soft drinks, coffee, snacks, tobacco, newspapers, and such.  Most conviniece stores consist of gas stations, such as a 7 Eleven.  Supermarkets also fall under the general-merchandise category, and are large, self-service types of retail.  Supermarkets carry many products and divide the store into departments to organize the wide type of products offered.  An example of such retail would be Albertson's.  Superstores are giant stores that are similar to supermarkets but sell approxiametly four times as much different types of products.  An example would be a Wal-Mart, where they offer food, non-food, appliances, automotive, electronics, tire, gardening, and such.  Hypermarkets combine the two supermarkets and discount stores together for a complete package. Hypermarkets have been tried by the likes of K-Mart and Wal-Mart.  These mega stores are larger that superstores, incredibly large, in the 225,000 to 325,000 square feet figure!  Another type of retail is the warehouse clubs, where you can only shop there if your a member, such as Costco.  These retail outlets are in huge stores as well, but things come in vast quanities.  Stocking is also easy in these stores, cause they just put a pallet up thats full of the merchandise.  Nothing in these stores can be bought in small quantities.  Another one is warehouse showrooms, which display products but offer very minimal services.  The costomer must transport, finance, and have store larger quantites of food.  General-merchandise retail does not offer everything however, such as specialty items.  Specialty retailers offer specialty items and may offer a lot of depth within a specific product line.  There are two other types of retailers that don't fit the general-merch. description as well, one of which is a category killer.  A category killer large stores that focus on specialty items as well, but are so big and have so much of the specialty items that they can offer them at low prices.  An example of this type is Home Depot and Lowes.
And the final non-general-merchandise store is an off-price retailer.  Off-price retailers buy manufacturers' pick up unwanted items and sell at huge discounts.  An example of this would be the Cinch Outlet Store in Denver, Colorado.  This store picks up all products that maybe don't meet manufacturers' specs, are done being offered or off-season, and returns.