Shopping the French way can be a long day's journey from the corner épicene, past sidewalk stalls to the butcher, the baker and the wine merchant. Small shopkeepers still do 85% of France's retail business, but the prudent, finicky and habitual French are rapidly succumbing to a thoroughly un-Gallic habit: one-stop shopping à l'Américaine. The pioneer and fastest-growing example of the trend is Prisunic (One-Price), the Continent's largest retail chain and a sort of bouillabaisse of the U.S. five-and-dime store, the discount house and the supermarket. In Prisunic's 304 stores, shoppers avidly fill their carts with blue jeans and...
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