Retailers' supply chain, product differentiation and quality standards

by Éric Giraud-Héraud and Louis-Georges Soler

Chapter 6 in  Quantifying the Agri-Food Supply Chain. Proceedings of the Frontis Workshop on Quantifying the agri-food supply chain, Wageningen, The Netherlands, 22-24 October 2004. Editors: Christien J.M. Ondersteijn, Jo H.M. Wijnands, Ruud B.M. Huirne and  Olaf van Kooten. Wageningen UR Frontis Series, available from Springer Science+Business Media.

Abstract

The growth of Private Label brands in the sector of fresh agricultural products is a recent occurrence closely related to the food and food-safety crises of recent years. While the public authorities were creating new control and health-monitoring procedures, tightening regulatory production standards and enhancing regulations related to official marks of quality, some retailers were adopting new segmentation strategies for demand. How have these strategies changed the demand for food? To what extent have they altered retailer-producer relationships and under what conditions would it be beneficial for the involved parties to make a commitment? How do these strategies interact with those of the public authorities?

Available for download at http://library.wur.nl/frontis/quantifying_supply_chain/06_soler.pdf