Volume 21, Issue 2

This paper examines food courts, where vendors are competing with each other for a fixed number of consumers. This case may arise when consumers are traveling and patronize a food court, or if the destination is a food court. A contest success function is used to describe consumers’ choices, as well as vendor investment and profitability. Using a contest success function allows for varying degrees of substitution between the vendors. Substitution can be a function of location or product space. The model analyzes revenue sharing and changes in product differentiation when aggregate demand for the food court is fixed. The model is also examined if the food court has a collective reputation that depends upon the average investments of each vendor.

Driven by external developments like industry consolidation and price volatility, organized farm producers seek opportunities to generate rent in the value-added segment of the agri-food industry. Given inherent constraints with cost efficiency and product quality, farm producer organizations (FPOs) may use branding to pursue differentiation. An opportunity is facilitated by the farmer-owned label, which constitutes an ownership signal to consumers. However, empirical evidence of the economic viability of the farmer-owned label is limited. Following a choice experiment with 296 cheese consumers in the United States, we specify a random parameter logit model and find a positive willingness-to-pay for the farmer-owned label which is in excess of private and corporate brands in the same product category. In the final model, the mean willingness-to-pay is estimated at $1.74. While the farmer-owned label is proven to be economically viable in a competitive product category, consumer preferences are heterogeneous. Also, there is no compatibility between the farmer-owned label and indicators of family ownership and product origin.

Discrimination in tipping creates concerns of inequity in service quality for restaurant operators (Brewster 2017). We use the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey data to conduct one of the very few nationally representative examinations of tipping behavior at US restaurants. We focus on differences in tipping behavior between groups with identifiable characteristics and investigate whether tipping differences between groups are robust to inclusion of a variety of controls. We investigate tipping at the extensive and intensive margins. In contrast to earlier studies, we find little evidence that tipping varies by race and gender.

During the last two decades several studies were developed to understand the attributes able to affect consumer vegetable choice over the world. Focusing on fresh and processed tomato product, this study proposes a systematic literature review to systematize and critically apprise the current body of knowledge in this research field. In order to discover suggestions useful to enhance market strategies and policies about vegetable intake, the discovered tomato attributes were categorized, according the Search Experience and Credence logic, into: price, product features, packaging, convenience, brand, sensory properties, sustainability, origin, safety and health, production processes. By synthesizing the review findings, a multi-dimensional integrative content framework was conceived with the aim to maps the extant literature with multiple levels of analysis: antecedent, phenomenon and consequences. As part of the review, a future research agenda, theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Public school food procurement has been identified as a key lever in the transition towards sustainable food systems. In this study, we assess the nutritional quality and the carbon footprint of 2020 school menus served in 101 municipalities in the inner suburbs of Paris. In this sample, school canteens menus meet an average 8.2/15 (min = 4, max = 14) adequacy score to the regulatory nutritional quality frequency criteria and their carbon footprint averages at 1.9 (min = 1.2, max = 2.6) kgCO 2 e/day. The nutritional and environmental qualities of canteen menus were not correlated with each other. In-house canteens have a significantly higher nutritional quality – 0.7 more points – and so do larger canteens. The carbon footprint significantly decreases with an increasing education level of the population and, for in-house canteens, it also decreases by 0.16 kgCO 2 e/day with a ten-fold increase in canteen size and by 0.0035 kgCO 2 e/day per percent of left-wing vote, breaking even with delegated canteens above 3500 enrolled children and 53% of left-wing vote respectively. The frequency of certified food (mean = 18%, min = 0%, max = 51%), a cornerstone of the 2018 national law aiming at more sustainable institutional catering, has no impact on our indicators of nutritional quality and carbon footprint. The substantial variations between canteens in both nutritional and environmental qualities suggests that there is room for improvement on both ends.

This paper studies the competition between private labels and the role of private labels in determining the bargaining outcomes between retailers and manufacturers as well as retailer profitability in the fluid milk market. We differentiate private labels from different retailers and develop a structural model of demand and a Nash-in-Nash vertical bargaining model of supply. Using 2004–2011 Nielsen Homescan data at monthly-county level, we estimated the average bargaining power of retailers and how various factors influence their bargaining power with a random-coefficient discrete choice model of demand. With the full bargaining model specification, this paper then conducts simulations to isolate the role of private label in bargaining and retailer profitability, comparing the effectiveness of alternative private label strategies. Results indicate private label milk from different retailers are close competitors and retailers have more bargaining power than manufacturers. Further, factors such as the manufacturer size, private label share, and their private label position can significantly affect retailers’ bargaining power. Moreover, the counterfactual analysis shows that lowering private label prices and other private label strategies such as private label program expansion and retailer advertising could not only increase their profitability but also allow retailers to benefit from the bargaining with manufacturers.