Tma02 Outline Who Are the Winners and Losers in a Consumer Society

Cleaning up down South: supermarkets, ethical trade and African horticulture is a piece by Susanne Freidberg published in Social and Cultural Geography journal in 2003 (Freidberg, 2003). Susanne Friedberg holds PhD from UC Berkely and is a Professor of Geography in Darmouth College, New Hampshire (“Susanne Freidberg,” n.d.). In the article the author argues that the ethical standards have become fetishised. The UK supermarkets compliance with such standards edges on paranoia. It does not mean that the supermarkets care about these standards from moral point of view but that the compliance is driven by fear of bad

The world continues to face a wide-scale food crisis. The effects of this crisis reach from the farmers who grow and raise the food to the very system of laws that are in place to govern the system itself. Food giants are reaching deep into their pockets for lobbying in order to take advantage of both the producers and the consumer all in the name of profit. Moreover, farmers are being driven to suicide, and the ecosystem’s livelihood is treading a fine line. Both Michael Pollan and Raj Patel bring to light these problems and offer suggestions to help lessen their severity. Though there are many philosophies on which they both agree, they both have their own ideas to fight back. Pollan seeks to challenge the consumer as an individual while

Product offerings by these contenders are similar as Tesco’s to a huge degree. This procedure helps Tesco to ensure its commercial center by expanding competition. A large portion of the contenders of the Tesco have an equivalent or a bigger market share in the store business. By industry investigators, Tesco PLC has a twenty nine per cent of shares the grocery store industry.

Trader Joe's faces several threats to its business, as competitors try to invade the company’s niche and attempt to imitate the company’s core strategies. The supermarket industry itself faces a major threat, as larger chains such as grocery retailers Wal-Mart and Tesco have begun to open small-format stores that mimic the Trader Joe's approach. This invasion results in additional cost pressure for incumbents like Trader Joe’s, which had to let go employees in order to become more cost competitive.

The UK supermarket industry is a very competitive and profitable industry. It is made up of four main players with significant share of the market, and then various smaller companies who focus on smaller niches in the market such as the bottom of the market discounters and the top of the line speciality stores. It is an interesting market and this report evaluates the attractiveness of the industry using Porter’s five forces model with an insight into how market nicher Waitrose sustains a competitive advantage. Next this report looks at how major player Sainsbury’s successfully competes against its rivals using differentiation strategies, and analyses current consumer trends and problems can effect this industry.

order to ascertain whether or not the roles of these concepts do help us to

When we consume a commodity we often do not realize that not only are we engaging in a relationship with that particular commodity, but inadvertently, we become entrenched in a series of social, economic, and geographical relationships around the globe. These relationships can be traced backwards from the point of consumption to a marketing agency, a supplier, a producer, an exporter,

Anti-supermarket campaigners have a counterclaim that the big four abuse their dominant position in the marketplace and restrict

Grocery industry is a highly competitive market with thin profit margins. Super markets are dominant players in the grocery industry. They use grocery offerings to drive traffic to their higher profit margin retail items. With its operations efficiency, Walmart, the largest grocery retailer has been able to offer significant price drops. This also forces other grocery stores to drop prices which keeps the profit margin thin. Even with all the advantages of operational efficiency and economies of scale, Walmart’s share in grocery sales was down at 51% in 2011.

Is consumerism good? Anyone living in modern day society may think so. We can easily look around and witness all of the conveniences that consumerism grants us. Appliances help to alleviate our work load, electronics nullify any dull moments with instant entertainment, and the latest fashion trends of strictly the top brands allow us to be the envy of our peers. So, is consumerism good? That’s the central question addressed within the essays The Happiness Conspiracy, Needing the Unnecessary, and The Grill-Buying Guide.

I divided my literature review based on the research question. First is about challenges of the shopping power. While the second question examines the relation between production and the consumption, the final question focus on relationship between social status and the environmental awareness.

This change in socio-economic structure has given rise to a new breed of middle-class who are willing to spend their higher disposable income in supermarkets rather than wet markets in pursuit of convenience and social status.

The UK supermarket industry resembles an oligopolistic industry, with several characteristics. Oligopolistic markets tend to be characterised by high concentration ratios, barriers to entry and…Since the turn of the century, the industry has been scrutinised by both the Office of Fair Trading and has been referred to the Competition Commission on two occasions. (Seely, 2012)

To her, places like Dundee are typical of the changes that have taken place. Back in the 1960s, there were 10 bakers, now only 2 remain, out of 8 butchers, one remains, and out of half a dozen grocers, only one remains. In the present day, Dundee now hosts 6 Tesco 's, 3 of which are Metro or Express stores. One Asda, one Morrisons, one Sainsbury 's and a number of other low priced outlets. According to Blythman, there is a correlation between the closure of independent stores and the presence of big supermarkets in Dundee, and it seems that they have benefited at the expense of the small independent stores. (Allen, p163) To back this up, a survey of small grocery retailers was conducted in 2011, and they identified the main obstacle to their business was competition from the big supermarket chains. (ResPublica, 2011) This amounts to a zero sum game (Wrong, 1997) where the Supermarkets gain is the small stores loss.

There are 92,796 grocery stores in the UK and the market value increase by 19.5% in the last 5 years and according to IGD forecast the UK grocery market should reach £203bn by 2019. But what we can see in the figure 1 that from 2009 to 2014 annual grow in the grocery market start decreasing from 4.9% in 2009 to 2.8% in 2014. One of the reason for this is difficult economic conditions which had an effect for consumer spending. Consumers choose to spend less money on food by buying less food or by looking for cheaper places. Retail market is diversified into three main sectors: Hypermarket and superstores which accounts for 42.3% of retail market, convenience stores 21.4% and small supermarkets 20.3% (Figure 3). So about 84% of sales are done in these three sectors. The biggest 4 retail chains in UK are: Tesco which takes 28.7% market share, Asda has 17.3%, Sainsbury’s 16.6% and Morrison’s 11%. (Figure 2) So, if we will sum up 4 biggest retail market chains we will have about ¾ of market share. Finally, a strong characteristic of this sector is competition with price wars and a