The growth of the hypermarket and superstore has been one of the retail phenomena of the past few years. Peter Jones estimates that in the UK these large units have provided gross floorspace equivalent to 20 shopping centres the size of Brent Cross. Looking at future trends, he suggests there may be a polarisation between the large hypermarket selling both food and non‐food, and the smaller superstore concentrating on high volume food sales. This is an edited version of a paper Peter Jones presented to an URPI conference on “Retail Planning in the 1980s” earlier this year. A full report on the conference will be published by the unit later this year.