Proposal:Department store

shop=department_store

A department store is a large store with many departments, selling a broad range of goods across many product categories such as clothing, furniture, home appliances, electronics, cosmetics, jewellery, toys, sports equipment. Department stores are often multi-storey, and may be carpeted, in contrast to large supermarkets (with trolleys)

See definition on Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_store

Status

Proposal for discussion

But a tag Tag:shop=department_store is also documented

Proposed by

Dutch

Similar tags

• shop=supermarket - For supermarkets. Some supermarkets take on a gigantic department store feel, with large aisles for garden furniture and TVs. These would still be tagged as supermarkets because they tend to have different characteristics: Significant proportion still given over to selling food and other more supermarket style goods. Shopping trolleys and smooth floors for wheeling them. A department store might sell food, or even have a mini-supermarket as one of its departments (which you may decide to map separately)
• shop=mall - For shopping malls. These are large buildings containing different shops within them. Large shopping malls quite often contain department stores in fact. Meanwhile a department store is a single shop with many departments.
• shop=variety_store - Similar to a department store, but selling cheaper stuff generally in aisles with trolleys.

Comments

Feel free to comment here.

Will this have a universal meaning throughout the world? We could do with a definition. Something like: 'A large, often multi-storey, store selling a broad range of consumer goods.' This could probably and should be improved upon. Martijn van Exel

Description added -- Harry Wood 12:53, 31 March 2011 (BST)

I particularly like the 'may be carpeted' :D Martijn van Exel 07:19, 2 May 2011 (BST)

I like the description located on the tag:shop=supermarket page which states: "They have little or no area given over to food items, although some department stores may have a supermarket inside them as one of the departments." This will help differentiate department stores that contain a grocery department inside versus an actual supermarket even though both may have similar features.--Knordstrom 23:23, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Very thin line here

A supermarket with non-food aisles vs. a department store with a supermarket section? What on earth is the distinguising factor here?

With stores such as Walmart, and increasingly Target and others, where would they fit?

For example, my local Target recently added a supermarket section. So, did it magically turn from a department store to a supermarket at that point? Or was it a supermarket without groceries before?

Likewise, we have two Walmarts -- one with a supermarket section and one without. So is one a department store and the other a supermarket? Considering they are the same store brand, and sell the same items (aside from groceries), it doesn't make sense IMO for them to be tagged differently.

What we really need is a "hypermarket" tag for these situations.

The traditional department store as pictured in the article is dead and buried in the US. We have some multi-story department stores, e.g. Sears (an endangered species!) but they aren't the palatial galleries that may be common in other places. Those are only seen in black and white movies. These stores simply have departments arranged among the floors. Stores like Target and Walmart don't fit either as supermarkets or department stores under the OSM designations. -KTyler 22:48, 5 June 2012 (BST)