International retail buying groups and consumer prices
Abstract
The aim of the research described in this paper is to investigate the effect of international retail buying groups on consumer prices. The study focuses on EDEKA, the leading grocery retailer in Germany, and its membership in AgeCore, the largest European international retail buying group. The empirical analysis is based on an extensive EDEKA scanner dataset, including over 6 million observations of monthly consumer prices for 138,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) across 20 food categories, over a six-year period. The analysis shows that EDEKA’s membership in AgeCore led to reduced prices for its customers. These findings are consistent with recent studies on the influence of retail buying groups on consumer prices and contribute to an increasing body of evidence that international retail buying groups reduce consumer prices. The paper shows that international buying groups are a force for the good, as they contribute to reduce consumer prices while simultaneously offering a cost-efficient mechanism for retailers to create scale to obtain competitive buying conditions.
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Author's Biography
Marcel Corstjens is Emeritus Unilever Chaired Professor of Marketing at INSEAD, an international business school located in Fontainebleau, France. After his studies in Belgium, Marcel received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, where his doctoral dissertation won first prize from the American Marketing Association. He taught at Berkeley before joining INSEAD in 1978, and has since also been visiting professor at Cornell, Stanford and CEIBS (China). Marcel has developed his research in business strategy and marketing strategy with a particular focus on innovation, customer insight and distribution channels. He has co-authored a number of pedagogical computer simulations and decision support systems. He has authored two books on the pharma industry: Marketing Strategies in the Pharmaceutical Industry and Good Pharma. He has co-authored with his wife, Judith Corstjens, Store Wars: The Battle for Mindspace and Shelfspace on strategies in the consumer goods industry. The latter book has been translated into seven languages and is considered to be a reference in its field. Recently Marcel published a second book on the FMCG industry: Penetration: The New Battle for Mind Space and Shelf Space. Aside from his books, Marcel has published more than 50 articles in leading academic journals (including Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Business) and his research has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times and The Economist.
Citation
Corstjens, Marcel (2024, March 1). International retail buying groups and consumer prices. In the Journal of Supply Chain Management, Logistics and Procurement, Volume 6, Issue 3. https://doi.org/10.69554/EORP2605.
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