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L’hypermarché, inventé en France en 1963, a participé d’une mutation profonde des structures du commerce de détail. Cet article s’intéresse au processus d’américanisation ayant favorisé ces évolutions, et plus spécifiquement aux séminaires Modern Merchant Methods, organisés par la National Cash Register et animés par Bernardo Trujillo entre 1957 et la fin des années 1960. Ces stages aux États-Unis, s’adressant aux professionnels du commerce pour leur vanter entre autres les avantages de la vente en libre-service, ont laissé une forte empreinte en France. Ils restent toutefois mal connus. Aussi cet article vise-t-il à documenter leur fonctionnement et à interroger leur influence, notamment en les comparant aux missions de productivité.

The Americanisation of French Retail at the Start of the 1960sHypermarkets, invented in France in 1963, were part and parcel of the drastic transformations of retail trade structures. This article examines the process of Americanization behind those changes, and more specifically the role of the Modern Marketing Methods seminars, organized by the National Cash Register and led by Bernardo Trujillo between 1957 and the end of the 1960s. These courses were offered to retail professionals in the United-States and touted, among other things, the advantages of consumer self-service; despite being US-based, these seminars had a strong impact on French business. However, as these seminars are not well known by historians, this article seeks to document their functioning and to examine their influence, in particular by comparing them to the productivity missions of the 1950s.