Volume 3, Issue 1 - Retailer Strategies in the Food Marketing Chain

A good understanding of the current evolution in the retail sector is important for both stakeholders in the food chains and governments who have to design policies regulating competition and supplier-buyer relationships. The papers grouped in this special issue provide insights about three questions raised by that evolution: the impact of private label expansion on national brand prices, retailers’ pricing strategies, and retailers’ buying strategies and their impact on upstream producers.

This article investigates the impacts of private labels (PLs) on fluid milk prices and price differentials using 2,759 supermarket-level observations from 10 cities. Non-parametric results reveal that although PL milk prices decrease as PL milk shares expand, eventually the effect is to increase the prices of manufacturers’ brands as well as the price gap between private labels and manufacturers’ brands. Econometric results further reveal that supermarkets exert some degree of price discrimination through controlling the brands of milk sold.

We study the price response of national brands to the development of private labels. Using monthly data from a consumer survey, we show that prices of national brands increase with the development of private labels. However, we also show that the price increase in national brand products is explained by a strategy of product differentiation. Finally, price reaction of national brands differs with the type of private labels they are facing.

The theoretical and empirical macroeconomic literature suggests that price rigidity in industrialized countries is substantial and its causes are manifold. This article provides empirical evidence on the importance of price rigidity in the grocery-retailing sector and on the role of some major determinants of food price rigidity. The analysis is based on a comprehensive weekly dataset of 20 branded foods in German food stores. The statistical analysis shows that food price rigidity is strong in spite of the widespread use of retail sales. Moreover, the importance of psychological pricing in grocery retailing is overwhelming. Econometric results indicate that food prices get more sticky as the number of price actions declines and as psychological pricing becomes more concentrated on a few important price barriers. Firms’ pricing strategies are crucial for food price rigidity, too.

This paper explores the indirect inflationary mechanism allowed by loss-leaders banning laws. In a model where a monopolist producer sells his product through vertically separated and differentiated retailers, we show that the ban of loss-leading can be used strategically by the producer to increase his wholesale price and pay the retailers through negotiated listing fees, thus raising his profit. The ban turns wholesale prices into floor prices, thus increasing resale price and lessening consumers’ welfare. These results are robust if the listing fees are two-part tariff.

This study examines supermarket retailer behavior in the procurement of iceberg lettuce from California and Arizona, vine-ripe and mature-green tomatoes from California, and mature-green tomatoes from Florida. The analysis relies upon both a reduced-form specification of farm-retail price spreads and a structural model of procurement for a perishable commodity with inelastic supply. The evidence supports a conclusion that buyers have been able to exercise oligopsony power in procuring iceberg lettuce from grower-shippers in California and Arizona. The evidence regarding buyer market power is more mixed for fresh tomatoes. The apparent success of the Florida mature-green tomato industry in enforcing a price floor and capturing a significant share of the surplus in excess of the price floor demonstrates the potential benefits to producers from coordinated behavior.

In recent years, European retailers have modified the market segmentation in the meat and the fresh produce sectors by implementing new private labels which aim to guarantee higher quality and food safety. As a result, retailers impose more demanding production requirements and rely on contractual relationships with upstream producers. Meat and vegetables shelve spaces are now composed of generic products supplied from competitive spot markets, and premium private labels based on long term supply contracts. In this paper we propose a model of vertical relationships between producers and retailers in order to analyze the consequences of such strategies. In particular, we analyze the interest of producers to commit to these new private labels, their effects on spot market prices, and the resulting market segmentation between the spot market and supply contracts.