Do people 'shop' in the USA?

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DaveBee
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Re: Do people 'shop' in the USA?

Postby DaveBee » Thu Feb 09, 2017 4:28 pm

golyplot wrote:After thinking about it more, I don't think "market" is outdated, it just refers to a different thing than "store".

A market is a place where multiple people come to buy and sell things. Often it's outside, with people setting up stalls to sell their wares. A store is a single business run indoors. Of course, to confuse things, some stores are named Farmers' Market, even though the farmers don't physically come to sell their stuff and it's really just a store. Also, grocery stores are often called supermarkets for some reason.
My mistake though was to think that US americans used it as a verb, equivalent to shopping.

I think I got that from a TV show (competing families, attempting to live as pioneers would have done), my memory tells me a lady said something like "...you shouldn't do your marketing [meaning shopping] when you're hungry"
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Re: Do people 'shop' in the USA?

Postby golyplot » Fri Feb 10, 2017 4:28 pm

Interesting. I've never seen that usage.

At least in American English, "market" as a verb is a concept related to advertising. For example, "this shampoo is marketed to teens."
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Re: Do people 'shop' in the USA?

Postby Soclydeza » Fri Feb 10, 2017 10:12 pm

to market as a verb = to find ways to get people to buy your product/service
the market as a noun = a place where people go to buy things

A shopping market (sometimes called a shopping mart) usually refers to something like a grocery store; one company sells a variety of products, usually food/produce (for example, Shop Rite, Weiss, Publix, depending on what part of the country you are in).

A market (by itself) usually refers to a place (usually outdoor) with a bunch of different small private vendors selling all different kinds of products, from food to items to antiques to clothes, etc. (for example, a flea market)

A mall is kind of like a market, except the vendors (just called stores in this context) are usually part of larger corporations that can usually be found in other malls around the country (or region).

to shop is the most common term to describe the act of buying things (if one were to go to any of the above mentioned places, they would be shopping).

a shop is another word for a store, except it usually refers to smaller, local businesses. For example: if someone says "I stopped by a few stores on my way home", I would think they maybe went to Walmart, then Shop Rite, then Barnes and Noble. But if they said "I stopped at a few shops on my way home", I would think that they passed through a small town that had a bunch of small, privately owned businesses that only existed in that town.
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Re: Do people 'shop' in the USA?

Postby reineke » Sat Feb 11, 2017 3:06 am

Till they drop.
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Re: Do people 'shop' in the USA?

Postby golyplot » Sat Feb 11, 2017 5:33 am

Also, on the internet you may occasionally see an alternate use of "shop" as a shortening of "photoshop", referring to the act of manipulating an image or a manipulated image. But that's usually obvious from context.
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Re: Do people 'shop' in the USA?

Postby Cainntear » Sat Feb 11, 2017 2:11 pm

Ah right, so you "work" in "shops" and you "shop" in "stores". Where do you "store"? :-p
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Re: Do people 'shop' in the USA?

Postby Ani » Sat Feb 11, 2017 2:40 pm

Cainntear wrote:Ah right, so you "work" in "shops" and you "shop" in "stores". Where do you "store"? :-p



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