France has kept its small, specialized boutiques but now there are also large department stores that offer a wide range of merchandise, just like in the United States. There are also the very large hypermarchés that are comparable to our Walmart and Sam's Club. Whole families come to the hypermarché because of the convenience of large parking lots, and because they can fill up their shopping cart and efficiently buy all that they need in a single place, usually at a lower price than elsewhere.

Kids in France love to shop at FNAC which is a large chain store that sells books, digital cameras, music, CDs, DVDs, cell phones and all kinds of electronic gadgets. For clothes shopping, H&M is popular, and so is Gap and Celio among young people. Monoprix is a department store that sells everything, including food, with inexpensive prices. Les grands magasins (the big department stores), like Galeries Lafayette and Printemps are much more expensive, but they have big soldes (sales) at the end of the seasons of spring and fall when it is possible to purchase things of good quality at lower prices.

French people like to buy their bread fresh every day at the boulangerie (bakery). They buy meat at la boucherie (delicatessen), pastries at la pâtisserie (pastry shop), milk and canned goods at l'épicerie (grocery store), meat at la charcuterie (delicatessen) and fresh fruits and vegetables at the weekly marchés en plein air (outdoor markets). Of course, modern life changes traditional habits so now there is also the supermarché similar to the supermarkets in the United States. There you can buy all the kinds of food you need in one place, including frozen foods. There are also traditional markets in Paris such as le Marché aux fleurs (the flower market) and le Marché aux oiseaux (the bird market) where kids like to go to look at the animals and buy small pets. Les Halles, also in Paris, is a huge market with a tradition that goes way back in time.

In Quebec there are a lot of farmers markets in the summer where people can buy fresh local products. There are lots of underground shopping malls in the city of Montreal that extend for miles. The French Canadians call it la vie souterraine (the underground life). This is especially nice when it is very cold!