Encounters in African urban peripheries: Exploring people-supermarket dynamics in a South African neighbourhood

The increasing dominance of large supermarket chains is often criticised, including for impacts on poor households as well as effects on small businesses. Yet retail investment in malls and supermarkets is a strategy for economic development in some marginalised areas, and can elicit positive customer responses. A diversity of positions signals the need to understand the supermarket effect better, including at the specific zone of encounter between supermarkets and their local customers and contexts. In this article, consumer narratives from urban peripheries in South Africa complexify assessments of big retail in poorer neighbourhoods. They show the multiple and diverse ways supermarkets are intertwined in residents’ lives, far beyond grocery supply and access, and how this is largely positively experienced. The data also shows the many ways a local retail store works to enhance its relationships, building links across geographic scales and institutions but particularly at the micro-local level of the neighbourhood. Showing there is ‘more’ to supermarket experiences and interactions than is sometimes recognised, the article argues for understanding this hyper-local interface better to help inform how community gains can be crafted, despite the dominance of large retail.