Supermarket Expansion in Latin America and Asia: Implications for Food Marketing Systems

Thomas Reardon, C. Peter Timmer and Julio A. Berdegué

Economic growth and consumer demand have allured supermarkets to developing countries, where they are replacing traditional food retail outlets and dramatically transforming existing food supply chains.

In the past decade, the number of supermarkets increased in the two developing regions that are growing the most rapidly-Latin America and East/Southeast Asia. These two regions are home to 3 billion consumers, including about 700 million middle-class consumers, and are registering the fastest growth in food demand in the world. Rising consumption of fruits and vegetables is a key component of this growth due to factors accounted for in Bennett's Law (Bennett, 1941), which states that the food share of starchy staples declines as incomes increase.