Competitive Advantages in Sourcing and Marketing Local Foods by Food Cooperatives

Ani Katchova and Timothy A. Woods

Journal of Agribusiness, 2016, vol. 34, issue 2

Abstract: This study examines whether food co-ops have competitive advantages or disadvantages in sourcing and promoting local foods using survey data from general managers of food co-ops in the United States. A principal component analysis was used to extract four factors: merchandising, farmer assistance, price/quality negotiations, and farmer development. A cluster analysis assigned food co-ops into three areas based on their competitive advantages. Results show that food co-ops assigned to the cluster with slight competitive disadvantages tend to be smaller, while food co-ops assigned to the two clusters with competitive advantages tend to be larger and more likely to be located in the Midwest. Food co-ops have slight competitive advantages when sourcing and promoting local foods when compared to other supermarkets.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Institutional and Behavioral Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/296924/files/FoodCoops.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:jloagb:296924

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.296924

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Agribusiness from Agricultural Economics Association of Georgia Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().