Taking advantage of the gluten-free opportunity: Assortment as the key driver for modern grocery retailers

Abstract

Over recent years, gluten-free products have shown a significant increase in consumption internationally. Retailers from the modern grocery distribution have the opportunity to take advantage of this positive trend, thus benefitting remarkably in terms of sales and store patronage. The present work is based on the analysis of Italian IRI sell-out data from 2015 to 2019 and aims to verify the role of assortment as an effective retail marketing lever in stimulating gluten-free products sales share compared to that of gluten-containing counterparts. Applying different panel data techniques, we obtained that increasing their assortment share can significantly stimulate gluten-free products sales in general and, within this segment, private label sales in particular.