chain store

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A chain store or retail chain is a retail outlet in which several locations share a brand, central management, and standardized business practices. They have come to dominate many retail markets, dining markets, and service categories in many parts of the world. A franchised retail establishment is one form of a chain store. In 2005, the world's largest retail chain, Walmart, became the world's largest corporation based on gross sales.

In 1792, Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna established W.H. Smith as a news vending business in London that would become a national concern in the mid-19th century under the management of their grandson William Henry Smith. The world's oldest national retail chain, the firm took advantage of the railway boom during the Industrial Revolution by opening newsstands at railway stations beginning in 1848. The firm, now called WHSmith, had more than 1,400 locations as of 2017.