Large Food Retailers Research Articles

Breaking new ground in food regime theory: corporate environmentalism, ecological feedbacks and the ‘food from somewhere’ regime?

Early food regimes literature tended to concentrate on the global scale analysis of implicitly negative trends in global food relations. In recent years, early food regimes authors like Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael have begun to consider the sites of resistance, difference and opportunity that have been emerging around, and into contestation with, new food regime relations. This paper examines the emerging global-scale governance mechanism of environmental food auditing—particularly those being promoted by supermarkets and other large food retailers—as an important new dynamic in our understanding of the politics and potentials of food regimes. Commencing with an examination of Friedmann’s corporate environmental food regime, two key dynamics are identified as being pivotal in the rise and decline of global-scale regimes: securing social legitimacy for food relations and the importance of ecological dynamics in global food relations. By extending McMichael’s notion of ‘Food from Nowhere’ versus ‘Food from Somewhere’, the paper interrogates the emergence of a cluster of relations that comprise ‘Food from Somewhere’ and examines whether this cluster of relations has the potential to change some of the constituent ecological dynamics of food regimes. These ecological dynamics have historically been problematic, amply demonstrating Marx’s metabolic rift as the early food regimes solidified relationships between ‘ecologies at a distance’. By using socio-ecological resilience theory, ‘Food from Somewhere’ is characterized as having denser ecological feedbacks and a more complex information flow in comparison to the invisibility and distanciation characterizing earlier regimes as well as contemporary ‘Food from Nowhere’. The conclusion of this article is that while ‘Food from Somewhere’ does provide one site of opportunity for changing some key food relations and ecologies, the social legitimacy of this new form of food relations does rely on the ongoing existence of the opposite, more regressive, pole of world food relations. The key question for resolving this tension appears to be whether new food relations can open up spaces for future, more ecologically connected, global-scale food relations.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Marketing Communications Within Stores: A Case Study of U.K. Food Retailers

ABSTRACT The U.K. Government has argued that more transparency in the ways that companies address and manage environmental, economic, and social issues can help improve relationships with employees, customers, and other stakeholders and U.K.'s large food retailers are increasingly keen to report their commitment to CSR. This paper offers a preliminary examination of the extent to which the U.K.'s major food retailers currently use CSR as a means of communicating with customers within their stores.

Europe's Enron: Royal Ahold, N.V.

Royal Ahold, N.V., is a large multinational company based in The Netherlands that was founded in 1887 by Albert Heijn. Three generations of the Heijn family oversaw the company's retail grocery business. In 1989, the company hired a professional management team. The new management team expanded Royal Ahold's operations by purchasing grocery chains around the globe, resulting in the company becoming the third largest food retailer in the world. In 2000, the company diversified into the wholesaling segment of the huge food industry when it purchased U.S. Foodservice, a large food wholesaler based in Columbia, Maryland. Royal Ahold's professional management team established aggressive earnings and revenue goals for the company each year and pressured their subordinates to achieve those goals. An incentive compensation plan awarded large year-end bonuses to managers of operating units that met or surpassed their financial goals. Royal Ahold's decentralized operations, when coupled with the strong incentives to achieve unrealistic earnings and revenue goals, created an environment in which fraud often flourishes. In early 2003, Royal Ahold's independent auditors suspended their fiscal 2002 audit of the company when they discovered numerous potential irregularities in the company's accounting records. Subsequent investigations documented that the company had improperly included the operating results of foreign joint ventures in its consolidated financial statements, had accounted improperly for initial acquisition costs related to several of those joint ventures, and had materially overstated “promotional allowances” due from company vendors. The disclosure of the massive accounting fraud resulted in criminal and civil lawsuits being filed against the company and its top executives in both Europe and the United States. This case examines accounting, auditing, and control issues pertinent to multinational companies. In addition, the case examines recent controversies arising between and among international regulatory agencies and rule-making bodies within the accounting and auditing disciplines. Finally, the case illustrates important risk factors commonly associated with financial statement fraud.

Enabling and inhibiting factors in adoption of Electronic-Reverse auctions: A longitudinal case study in grocery retailing

The paper aims to explore the factors that enable or inhibit the use of Electronic-Reverse Auctions (E-RAs) in the buying process of a large food retail organization, through a category management perspective. Using a case-study analysis based on in-depth interviews, examination of internal documents, simulation and direct observation of some E-RAs, we studied the experience of an Italian-based retailer conducting E-RAs during a two-year period. This approach enabled us to propose an E-RAs development model in retail buying groups, discussing enabling and inhibiting factors such as product, market, organizational and strategic factors. Propositions are developed to stimulate thought and provide guidance for future research.

Internationalization of Retail Strategies

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the internationalization of retail strategies. A sample of 25 large international food retailers was used. Four groups of actors are identified according to the strategies used (franchising, acquisition of foreign subsidiaries, joint ventures and opportunity-seeking strategies). An analysis of these groups emphasizes continental or regional strategy adaptations, as well as a variety of other strategies used by international retailers.

Private Label Development: The Large Food Retailer Faced with the Supplier's Opportunism

For the last 20 years, large food retailers have had an important place in fast-moving consumer good sales. This article describes their buying strategies, focusing on supplier selection in the case of private label contracts. It introduces the concept of opportunism to explain recent and probably irreversible developments in retail buying organisations, integrating a growing number of technologists and scientists. New businesses, with close relationships to industrial purchasing, have appeared in the retailing industry. In the end, they will require a new ‘species’ of managers, able to simultaneously monitor logistical, technical and commercial interfaces between large food retailers and their private label producers.

Healthy Cities: The Impact of Food Retail-led Regeneration on Food Access, Choice and Retail Structure

The health, social and planning policy agendas which have focused on the issue of food deserts, food access and food choice provide the context for this study of the outcomes of a large scale food retail intervention in Springburn, Glasgow. Through an analysis of changing retail structure and foodscape health impacts on food provision, food choice and physical and economic accessibility. This is set within the regeneration context of the Tesco St Rollox Partnership. Conclusions are reached on the potential for such schemes to deliver a range of diet, health, social, regeneration and planning policy goals.

Corporate social responsibility as a means of marketing to and communicating with customers within stores: A case study of UK food retailers

In making the case for Corporate Social Responsibility the UK Government has argued that more transparency in the ways that companies address and manage environmental, economic and social issues can help improve relationships with employees, customers, and other stake holders (Department of Trade and Industry, 2004). The UK’s large food retailers are increasingly keen to report their commitment to CSR (Jones, et al., 2005) and while such reports can be accessed by various stake holders (Snider, et al., 2003) they are generally directed at share holders, investors, consumer pressure groups and policy makers rather than individual customers. This article offers a preliminary examination of the extent to which the UK’s major food retailers currently use CSR as a means of marketing to, and communicating with, customers whilst they are within their stores.

Metro Inc

AbstractRetail ‐ Food & Beverage (MIC: 5.3 SIC: 5141 NAIC:424410)Metro is a major Canadian food retailer and distributor with operations concentrated in Quebec and Ontario. Co. is the second largest food retailer in Quebec, where it also holds a substantial position in the food services industry. In addition, Co. is active in the distribution of pharmaceutical products and as the franchisor of Brunet drugstores and Clini‐Plus pharmacies. In Ontario, with its Loeb and Super C banners, Co. ranks second in the supermarket segment in Ottawa and northeastern regions of the Province. In 2003, the floor space of Co.'s food retail network totalled more than 9.6 million square feet.

Metro Inc

AbstractRetail ‐ Food & Beverage (MIC: 5.3 SIC: 5141 NAIC:424410)Metro is a major Canadian food retailer and distributor with operations concentrated in Québec and Ontario. Co. is the second largest food retailer in Québec, where it also holds a substantial position in the food services industry. In addition, Co. is active in the distribution of pharmaceutical products and as the franchisor of Brunet drugstores and Clini‐Plus pharmacies. In Ontario, with its Loeb and Super C banners, Co. ranks second in the supermarket segment in Ottawa and northeastern regions of the Province. In 2003, the floor space of Co.'s food retail network totalled more than 9.6 million square feet.

Metro Inc

AbstractRetail ‐ Food &Beverage (MIC: 5.3 SIC: 5141 NAIC:424410)Metro is a major Canadian food retailer and distributor with operations concentrated in Quebec and Ontario. Co. is the second largest food retailer in Quebec, where it also holds a substantial position in the food services industry. In addition, Co. is active in the distribution of pharmaceutical products and as the franchisor of Brunet drugstores and Clini‐Plus pharmacies. In Ontario, with its Loeb and Super C banners, Co. ranks second in the supermarket segment in Ottawa and northeastern regions of the Province. In 2003, the floor space of Co.'s food retail network totalled more than 9.6 million square feet.

Food retailers and financial services in the UK: a co‐opetitive perspective

The financial services sector operates in a turbulent environment. The availability of financial services for customers has grown considerably, with providers encompassing retailers through to specialists. Food retailers in particular are the non‐financial sector key movers in the market change underway. Within this context, this paper aims to provide a framework to consider the operational, strategic and relational issues concerned with the entry of British food retailers into the financial services sector. It explores in particular the service provision relationships between large food retailers and financial institutions, suggesting that this is a case of co‐opetition, a concept which refers to the concomitant presence of competition and co‐operation in a relationship. Promoters and inhibitors leading to a co‐opetitive relationship involvement are examined.

Authority, power and value in contemporary industrial food systems.

Within agro-food studies there is a growing appreciation that power is not limited to the interplay between actors engaged in production and consumption. Belatedly, actors in the spheres of distribution and exchange are being acknowledged, as is their role in the processes being enacted to constantly recommodify foods through reconceptualizing their values. The mobilisation of product branding and other “intangible assets”, including a corporate persona as authoritative, helps to explain the restructuring of contemporary industrial food systems. An examination of the Australian chicken meat commodity complex reveals how large food retail chains are positioning themselves as authority figures. The study confirms the emergence of a new form of authority in relation to food, i.e. market-mediated authority. The argument pivots around the activities of an ‘intermediary sector of the economy’, comprising experts and professionals who contribute to the setting of cultural standards around what is legitimate in food systems. This particular class fraction undertakes three activities in support of market-based authorities. First, it provides corporations with third party associations with more traditional authorities, especially health authorities; second, it mobilises symbolic capital to renew corporate charisma; and third, it brokers producer-consumer relations through providing expertise. The paper concludes that consumer authority is fleeting within a context of the corporate manipulation of intangible assets.

Growth by acquisition and the performance of large food retailers

AbstractThe latter 1990s witnessed rapid growth among the largest retail food chain companies, much of it through acquisitions. An explanatory motive is that grocery chains could achieve greater scale economies and operating efficiencies, and increase their bargaining power with packaged food manufacturer‐suppliers. This article begins to examine whether the largest retailers are realizing the promised financial rewards associated with this growth trend. We examine the performance of the three largest U.S. food retailers, Albertson's, Inc., The Kroger Company, and Safeway Inc., over 7 fiscal years beginning in calendar year 1993 and ending in fiscal year 1999, a period that covers the recent increase in acquisition activity. Overall, we find only modest evidence that the financial returns to the rapid growth strategies of the three largest food retailers have begun to be realized through fiscal year 1999. [EconLit citations: G390, G340, Q130] © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The determinants of the price mark‐up for organic fruit and vegetable products in the European Union

This paper investigates the marketing and pricing policies for traditional and organic fruit and vegetable products of large food retailers in four European countries by means of a survey of 47 stores, including all major food retail chains. Data have been analysed to investigate what determines the presence of organic products, the extent to which the price mark‐up between traditional and organic products depends on the inherent quality of organic products rather than on the amount of extra service and information often associated with these products, and the importance of country location within the single European market in determining the characteristics of the retail outlets. The results of the econometric analysis indicate that the size, location and overall quality of the outlet, and the degree of product information and customer service are the variables which best predict the choice to sell organic products. Also, the results indicate that almost half of the price mark‐up between traditional and organic products is explained by store characteristics and the amount of extra service and information provided with these products.

Exploring growth in vertical inter‐firm relationships: small‐medium firms supplying multiple food retailers

This paper presents new insights into the growth of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) engaged in vertical inter‐firm relationships. It adopts a processual and resource‐based perspective and focuses on the experiences of fresh produce businesses which have achieved high rates of growth while supplying the UK’s large multiple food retailers. The context in which these suppliers operate is shown to be a complex and dynamic supply chain, characterised by increasing structural concentration and close vertical linkages. The primary research investigates how certain SMEs have prospered in an apparently “hostile” environment. It includes a programme of matched‐depth interviews, conducted across the retailer‐supplier dyad. Content analysis of transcripts reveals six factors which appear to be strongly associated with the formation of “successful” relationships. In subsequent interactions, securing “developmental” supplier status appears to open the way to a self‐reinforcing cycle of Penrosian learning and reinvestment. This cycle contributes to growth in the supplier firm. The authors argue that, with certain crucial caveats, growth‐oriented SMEs can develop mutually beneficial relationships with much larger “customer” firms. The paper concludes by drawing out wider policy implications and indicating how this contextualised approach might be used in other contexts.

Using farm assurance schemes to signal food safety to multiple food retailers in the U.K.

It is argued that privately run farm assurance schemes in the U.K. have been developed predominantly to signal the presence of desired levels of food safety (and other credence) attributes to domestic multiple food retailers. It is hypothesised that these food retailers will only buy ‘farm assured’ meat from abattoirs, therefore abattoirs must buy and process ‘farm assured’ livestock. Other factors, including abattoir size, procurement policy, level of processing and hygiene levels, are also hypothesised to affect the probability of an abattoir selling meat to large multiple retailers. The hypotheses are tested through a survey of abattoirs in the United Kingdom and a logistic regression is used to assess significance. It is found that buying farm assured livestock is a highly significant positive factor in selling meat to large multiple retailers; in addition, the procurement policy of abattoirs (affecting traceability of product) and abattoir size are also found to be significant determinants of the probability of this trade. The empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that industry-led farm assurance schemes are indeed used by large multiple food retailers as a credible signal of food safety (and other credence) attributes.

Strategic market behaviour in the internationalization of food retailing – Interpreting the third wave of Sainsbury’s US diversification

A two‐component framework for strategic marketing research, focused on the corporate level and the business‐unit level, to structure an interpretation of the strategic dimensions of the acquisition in November 1998 of Star Markets, a Boston, USA‐based food retail chain, by J. Sainsbury plc the UK’s second largest food retailer. Set within a broader context of the wave of acquisition‐driven consolidation rapidly transforming the US food retail industry during the late 1990s, the paper considers the extent to which the acquisition of Star Markets represented a strategic fit with Sainsbury’s existing US business, the alternative strategies available to the company at the time of the acquisition, and the resulting strategic centrality of the US business to Sainsbury’s corporate future. Focuses on the highly contested nature of the retail internationalization process and issues of sustaining international expansion during periods of retrenchment and strategic reassessment. Highlights the tensions which can be created within the portfolio of business units of a large multidivisional firm during the internationalization process, and the stresses in the relationship between management and the capital markets which can develop if the internationalization process is perceived, correctly or incorrectly, to threaten the strategic credibility of the firm.

10.3917/dm.102.0167

10.3917/dm.102.0167

The Evolving Organization: An Interview with Jo Colruyt

This interview explores the story behind Colruyt, a Belgian company that over a twenty-five year period evolved from a one-store-enterprise into Belgium's third largest food retail chain. The company is unique on several dimensions -- its managerial structures and business processes were organized from the very start with information technology in mind. Mr. Jo Colruyt, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of NV Colruyt, presided over the evolution of his original one-store enterprise into a highly profitable food retail chain currently comprising some one hundred twenty stores located throughout Belgium. During this interview Mr. Colruyt, Chairman of the company's Supervisory Board, returns time and again to a single dominant idea - the use of information-technology-based communication to create new possibilities, new organizational structures, new relationships among the firm, and its employees, customers, and suppliers, and to bridge culture differences. The company's success is particularly noteworthy considering local business conditions - stringent and wide-ranging governmental regulations, domination of the retailing industry by well-established large food retailers, paper-thin profit margins, strict hierarchical managerial structures, and worker representation by unions of diverging ideological persuasions with extensive influence at the local and national levels of government. The interview should be of interest to managers and academics who practice or study global business and business process reengineering. The interview was conducted in Mr. Colruyt's office at Colruyt's headquarters in Halle, Belgium by Marius Janson and Tharsi Taillieu. Janson: As you contrast the N.V. Colruyt with other companies, what stands out? How does the N.V. Colruyt differ from other companies? Colruyt: Well, first of all, we opened the first discount store in 1965 with the deliberate adoption of information technology. Our thinking - the eventual arrival of large computers is a certainty and we therefore should organize the entire sales function around the computer. Using information technology in all business aspects required corporate structures that were based on a totally new business rationale and this made us different from our competitors who inserted information technology into already existing organizational structures where it then met with serious resistance if not outright hostility. Information technology in 1965 meant an IBM 360-20 in our headquarters and a tabulating machine in the store. Yet, even this primitive technology had important business consequences on employee selection, customer service, and product assortment. First, the employee we needed did not fit the mold of the traditional lady at the store's checkout because that person would be unable to work with the computer. Second, the tabulating machine at the checkout station made it possible to provide the customer a unique service - a detailed description of his or her purchases. Third, relying on information technology excluded certain products from our assortment - even today we do not sell items to which we cannot affix a bar code. Well, again, we were and still are different from our competition because we organized our business around information technology right from the start. Taillieu: We observed [that stores] post unit price information on an item-by-item-basis. The advantage [of informatization] was that Colruyt could post unit pricing some twenty years ahead of the competition. Was this a fortuitous byproduct of informatization? Colruyt: A fortuitous byproduct? Certainly not, it was a deliberate choice! Colruyt has an information-technology-supported contract with the customer - to be less expensive than our competition, under any and all circumstances and on each and every sales item. We maintain a centrally located data base on the pricing policies and promotional campaigns of every competitor located within a twenty-mile radius of each of the one hundred twenty Colruyt stores. …