What is retail sale in non specialised stores in ISIC Rev. 5?

Retail sale in non specialised stores in ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, covers shops that sell a wide range of goods across many product families, without specialising in one family. Supermarkets, hypermarkets and department stores are the familiar examples, because a shopper can buy food, clothing, household goods and more in one visit. The classification groups these stores by breadth of range, which matters for statistics because their sales cut across product areas that specialised stores keep separate. This guide describes the grouping only.

Why does breadth of range matter more than floor size?

In ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, a non specialised store earns its description from the breadth of what it sells, not from how large its building is. A shopper in a supermarket, hypermarket, or department store can buy food, clothing, household goods, and more in one visit, crossing product families that specialised stores keep separate. Sales from such a store therefore cut across product areas and cannot be assigned to a single goods family without losing information.

Size, on its own, misleads in both directions. A large specialised store is still specialised if its range stays within one family, however big the shop is. A vast clothing store that sells only clothing has a wide floor and a narrow range, and the range is what the classification records. A small general store is non specialised if its range genuinely spans many families, however modest its floor area. A village shop with a few shelves can therefore sit on the non specialised side, while a flagship single-family store sits on the specialised side, and floor size explains neither placement.

What does the village shop sell, and what does the clothing chain not sell?

Take the village general store in detail. It sells food, cleaning products, stationery, and small household items. No single family dominates the description, because the shop exists to cover many everyday needs in one place. A shopper might arrive for food and leave with stationery and a cleaning product as well, and that mixed basket is ordinary for such a store. The breadth is not an accident of a single week. It is the pattern of the shop.

Set that beside a large clothing chain store that sells only clothing. Its shelves may fill a whole building, its stock may run to thousands of items, and its sales may dwarf the village shop. Yet its range stays within one family, so its description stays specialised in ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, despite its size. The comparison shows why a reader should ask about range before asking about square metres, staff numbers, or turnover. Those measures describe scale. Range describes kind, and kind is what this grouping records.

Which stores belong in this grouping?

The following kinds of work are described in ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, as part of this grouping: supermarkets and hypermarkets, where food and many other goods sit under one roof; department stores with many product departments, where the departments themselves signal breadth; general stores selling a broad household range, where everyday needs are met together; non specialised stores with food predominating or not, where food may lead the mix or may simply sit alongside other families; and other general retail stores with a wide mix, where no single family defines the shop. Read that list as orientation, not as a complete code list, because the full class description in the Rev. 5 publication prevails where a case is unclear, and the national institute should be consulted for a formal record.

How does this grouping sit inside the wider Rev. 5 tree?

The wider structure of ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, helps a reader place this grouping in context. The revision contains 22 sections from A to V, 87 divisions, 258 groups, and 463 classes, and each grouping sits inside that tree. A broad section tells you the field, while the levels below it tell you the market, the store type, and the precise activity. That nesting is why two activities that look similar at section level can sit far apart once the full code is read, and why a general store and a specialised store, both inside retail trade, still need different descriptions. One sells across families. The other sells within one family. The tree keeps that difference visible instead of collapsing both into a single retail label.

All code statements on retail sale in non specialised stores in this guide trace back to the UN Statistics Division classification detail and the ISIC Rev. 5 publication in the frontmatter.

This is background on one statistical grouping only. It does not decide your code, your principal activity, or your registration, and those questions belong with the national statistical institute or business register that holds your record.