Business concept as a relational message: supermarket vs independent grocery as competitors for sustainability

Minna Mikkola

No 206208, 2015 International European Forum (144th EAAE Seminar), February 9-13, 2015, Innsbruck-Igls, Austria from International European Forum on System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks

Abstract: The paper deals with a new competition situation between a large consumer co-operative and a very small local food shop as its rival. While both businesses are selling food, their business concepts look very different. These concepts are analysed as ideology, identity and shopkeeper/retailer speech. The results show the deep cutting change in trade introduced by the small food shop as concern for sustainable food system and social relations as resources for new community building, suggesting conditional possibilities for further business growth. The large retailer has problems in answering the challenge as its concept seems to exclude concern for food system, the trade includes economic interests and rather negligible social relations. In principle, the small contester could succeed in expanding its business model through staying small and proliferating, supporting small farms’ economic viability. The large retailer could succeed by investing in launching more local and organic produce and thereby developing both primary production and processing capacity in a lagging rural region. The study shows the importance of the business concept as a condition and limitation for further growth.

Keywords: Agribusiness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 6
Date: 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-cse
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/206208/files/0 ... elationalMessage.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iefi15:206208

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.206208

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2015 International European Forum (144th EAAE Seminar), February 9-13, 2015, Innsbruck-Igls, Austria from International European Forum on System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().