Talk:Marketplace

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 November 2021 and 10 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Shibo Huang.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:27, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

To expand or not to expand? That is the question!

Some time ago, the section "Around the World" only covered a few countries and had been tagged with "Needs expansion". I took this on board, and set about expanding the article, ensuring that at least some nations from each continent were represented. As there are some 195 countries in the world today, it is difficult to know how far to take it. But apparently, according to some recent edits, it has already gone too far. I see edit summaries with phrases like "it is huge" and "sigh" which suggest that someone is not happy with the current length. So, when people get together and figure out whether the article needs to be expanded or not, do please get in touch. Until then, I am over it. BronHiggs (talk) 01:04, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Fresh-Market / Fresh Market

Hi, I hear the term "Fresh Market" banded about quite a bit w/o a clear definition. I assume a fresh market sells pretty much "fresh" goods eg. vegetables and everything a wet market does, but differs in that goods can also be sold outside? I also assume a fresh market is a type of public market (although [it seems particularly] in the US, it looks as if [several] markets that are private also have been given the label similar to that of "fresh-market"). The term might also be a British bastardisation of alfresco markets, but I find that somewhat unlikely. I checked google scholar, and the term is used quite a bit in scientific papers, but I couldn't find any papers with a clear definition of "Fresh-Market" inside worth citing (not that I looked very hard). It would be good if the term "Fresh-Market" was documented somewhere, perhaps wikipedia or wikitionary. Note that when people talk of fresh markets they may also use the term in a business-like sense eg. "This is a fresh market for our adult entertainment business", which I believe is something completely different, ie. an adjective rather than a noun. The phrase seems undocumented though as it stands, in either form. 2A00:23C5:F089:FB00:7CD4:FAD:EA44:512A (talk) 23:20, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Street market vs. Market place

In Spain and many other countries a Street Market (Mercadillo, Mercat al carrer) it is not the same thing defined by the term "Market place" (Plaza del mercado, Plaça del mercat), so it is necessary the Street Market to be able to link them to it The concept is describing by "Mercadillo, Mercat al carrer" that it is not a Flea market because they dont sale second hand things, the shops pay less taxxes because they are "mercado ambulante", in English is normaly referred to as a "street market" or "open-air market". These markets are temporary setups where vendors sell various goods, usually new, in public spaces like streets or plazas. The term "mercado ambulante" aligns well with "itinerant market" or "mobile market," emphasizing the mobility and temporary nature of these markets. Essentially, these markets offer a lively and dynamic shopping experience. Mcapdevila (talk) 09:41, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

I will split my reply into few notes, as the comments are completely independent, so

(1) it is very natural that the ontological notions do not map well between different languages. Take, for example, clock and watch: in English, these are two quite different things with clear distinctions between them, so we have two articles. In many languages (including, among major ones, German and Russian), there is only one word describing both. Naturally, de.wikipedia and ru.wikipedia do not have an article for the English watch, as this notion cannot be expressed in these languages (there is an opposite situation with restaurant, where English is the one that has a catchall term). Thus, if in English there is no clear distinction between open-air marketplace and, say, covered marketplace, etc. − and I will argue below that this is actually the case − then we IMHO should not have an article with a title Street market that attempts to describe the non-existent English idea of Spanish: mercadillo. Instead, IMHO, we should arrange our articles in a way that WP:RS arrange them. That said, I see no problem with an article about the particular Spanish type of the open-air marketplace, but we should not hide its regional status. Om particular, the title should hint at its Spanish origins (something like Mercadillo). Викидим (talk) 05:44, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

(2) A decent English-level review of the various shopping environments (generic term that covers everything from the display of door-to-door salesman to a city mall) can be found in

• Coleman, P. (2007). Shopping Environments. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-136-36650-5. Retrieved 2025-01-08.

I do not know of a better source, but am open to suggestions (due to the time of publication, coverage of online shopping by Coleman is inadequate). Викидим (talk) 05:56, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

(3) Coleman looks at the marketplace structures from the historical perspective, linking the evolution of cultural expectations and selling techniques to the spatial organization of the shopping process, mostly in Chapter 2, Historical Evolution. I will provide a brief retelling here, as it can be used in this article, if there would be consensus to use the Coleman's book:

1. the early marketplaces were using temporary setups, cf. the multipurpose Greek agora;
2. switch to permanent locations Herodotus attributes to Lydians (this is missing in Coleman, but can be easily sourced from good secondary RS)
3. shared-use buildings of Ancient Rome (cf. Trajan's Forum). My comment: This is where open-air/covered split first breaks down: it is impossible to put this arrangement (and, say, mediaeval souks) neatly into a category
4. with the fall of Rome, action switches to the East with its bazaars. My comment: Is it a street marketplace / an open-air marketplace / an ancient city mall? The answer (per my understanding of Coleman) is neither, it's a bazaar.
5. medieval times in Europe at first are associated with a regression to open-air arrangements (the only permanently covered retail spaces in many Italian cities were located in a broletto underneath the city hall), but recovery sees the specialized buildings adjunct to the city halls. These halls housed the shops, but the customers stayed outside. This arrangement persisted in Northern Europe until the time when large panes of glass became available and affordable. My comment: Again, is this a street marketplace? An open-air one? In any case, it is not a mercadillo.

Викидим (talk) 06:59, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

(4) My proposal is therefore, to:

• rename the Street market into mercadillo, since, like broletto, it is a regional (although spanning multiple countries) variant, removing from text any attempts to make it generic;
• explain the generic notions of the open-air market and street market as known in English language in this article. Since these ideas span many physical implementation with very different appearance and business arrangements, these belong in an overview article (this one or, possibly, yet unwritten shopping environment).

Викидим (talk) 07:17, 8 January 2025 (UTC)