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A hypermarket is a combined supermarket and department store that carries a large range of products. Since the opening of the first hypermarket in the US in the early 1930s, this concept has spread globally. Nowhere is this trend more visible than in India, now the world's most populous country with a middle class that will expectedly grow to 800 million in 2030. This paper coins the theory of hypermarketization to explain why and how the hypermarket as a globalized form signifies the full integration of liberalization, retail and middle-class consumer culture in emerging markets. The argument that hypermarketization marks the point when successful economies in the Global South mature and then qualify as emerging markets is based on empirical material from fieldwork on vegetarianism and meat in hypermarkets and among middle-class groups in South India, namely participant observation and interviewing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key agenda of policy-makers in both the developing and the developed worlds is to have an inclusive growth. Financial services have been recognised as one of the fundamental services that have the potential to achieve this objective and help move towards a more just and equitable society. This paper attempts to assess the impact of three information and communication technology-driven initiatives in the field of financial services by differentiating them on the basis of service design. This study goes beyond the stated objective of these services and uses Sen’s capability perspective to study their impact across three non-economic outcome variables viz. literacy, service-specific well-being and empowerment. The data for the study are collected from the urban poor across different locations in a large metropolitan city in South India where the three different services are being offered. The study follows a quasi-experimental design (field study) and ensures matching of the treatment and control groups through propensity score matching. The matched data are analysed using an independent samplet-test. The result of the analysis shows that service design plays a key role in increasing service literacy, improving service-specific well-being and empowering end users. The study suggests that the true challenge for providers (government and partner agencies) of these services is in designing a service that ensures a balance of structure and flexibility without constraining the choice of end users through innovative service blueprints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]