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Food retail market structure and produce purchases in the United States
Author(s) -
Cai Xiaowei,
Volpe Richard,
Schroeter Christiane,
Mancino Lisa
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
agribusiness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.57
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1520-6297
pISSN - 0742-4477
DOI - 10.1002/agr.21552
Subject(s) - econlit , liberian dollar , business , food market , market concentration , food marketing , club , market structure , agricultural economics , marketing , commerce , economics , industrial organization , agriculture , finance , geography , medicine , medline , archaeology , anatomy , political science , law
Market concentration is associated with food prices, but little is known about the other potential economic consequences of market structure in food retailing. We create a novel dataset by merging IRI household‐level purchase records with Nielsen TDLinx data on store location and USDA Food Environment Atlas data to study the food market structure and produce purchases. Treating zip codes as markets, we find that increased market concentration is associated with decreased produce expenditures. This impact is larger in rural markets than in urban areas. In addition, the presence of most nontraditional store formats such as convenience stores and dollar stores is associated with decreased produce purchases. However, the opposite is true for club stores and natural/gourmet supermarkets. The estimated effects of market entry are small, supporting the literature on supermarket intervention studies. [EconLit citations: L1, D1, D4, R2].