A department store is a retail establishment which specializes in satisfying a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories. Department stores usually sell products including apparel, furniture, appliances, electronics, and additionally select other lines of products such as paint, hardware, toiletries, cosmetics, photographic equipment, jewelery, toys, and sporting goods. Certain department stores are further classified as discount department stores. Discount department stores commonly have central customer checkout areas, generally in the front area of the store. Department stores are usually part of a retail chain of many stores situated around a country or several countries.

History

'Austin's' in Derry, Northern Ireland, claims to be the world's oldest department store. It has maintained its original position on The 'Diamond' in Derry's city centre since 1830. Other candidates for precedence include Joplings of Sunderland (1804) and Robb's of Hexham (c. 1818), both in England.

Aristide Boucicaut founded Le Bon Marché in Paris in 1838, and by 1852 it offered a wide variety of goods in "departments" inside one building. Goods were sold at fixed prices, with guarantees allowing exchanges and refunds. By the end of the 19th century, Georges Dufayel, a French credit merchant, had served up to three million customers and was affiliated with La Samaritaine, a large French department store established in 1870 by a former Bon Marché executive.

As Le Bon Marché evolved into a fully fledged department store in the early 1850s, Delany's New Mart opened in 1853 in Dublin, Ireland on Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street). What made Delany's different from most department stores of its time was its purpose-built nature; unlike others it had not evolved gradually from a smaller shop on site. Constructed to a lavish standard on the city's principal street, it was designed to rival the biggest and best in Europe. Acquired by the Clery family in the late 19th century, both the store and Imperial Hotel located in its upper floors were completely destroyed in the 1916 Easter Rising. However the store reopened in 1922, this time across numerous floors, as the famous Clerys department store that stands today, housed in a striking modern neoclassical building based on Selfridges of London.

Another claimant to the title of "World's first department store" is Bainbridges in Newcastle upon Tyne, founded in 1838 as a drapers and fashion shop but on record as collecting its takings by department as early as 1849. The ledger from that year still survives in the archives of the John Lewis Partnership who bought the store in 1952, and retained its original name until 2002 when the store was rebranded as John Lewis Newcastle. That it sorted goods out into Departments in 1849, three years before Le Bon Marche in Paris did the same, there is a strong case for Bainbridges being the world's original department store.