“Multi-Migros” or “Brücken-Markt”?

Before the first supermarket opened, Migros managers held a competition to find a name for their new shops. Despite receiving 10,000 entries, they decided to stick with their original idea: MIGROS MARKET.

After the opening of the first Migros Supermarket in Basel, the Brückenbauer asks in May 1952: “What is a supermarket?” The slightly teacher-like answer is: “We know what ‘super’ means: larger and better than usual. We also know what ‘market’ means: it is the market.”
Those responsible recognise the defence reflex of the general public towards everything American. They therefore underline the mutuality between the modern supermarket and the traditional market: the wide variety, the relaxed atmosphere and the happiness of the customers. At the same time, they search for a new term that distinguishes it from its American roots. Before the opening of the second Migros Market in Zurich, they even start a competition to find a “suitable name for this new form of the retail business, still unknown in Switzerland”. Internally, Migros comes up with the name ‘MigrosMarkt’, but other ideas are required: “Do you have a better name?” For the suggestion used, there is a “1st prize of 500 francs in cash!”.
More than 3,000 people send in more than 10,000 suggestions. The best are then published, including ‘Migros 2000’, ‘Super-Migros’ and ‘Volks-Markt’ (People's Market). But Migros finally selects the name it had already used in the competition announcement. It did not “in this huge number of suggestions, find a name better than MIGROS MARKET”. As a crafty communicator, Gottlieb Duttweiler orders the Brückenbauer to name the Migros Market Limmatplatz at first only as “Migros-Märt”. Hence, the English term ‘supermarket’ is instantly turned into a sympathetic dialect term.