Retailing, regulation, and food consumption: The public interest in a privatized world?

✍ Scribed by Terry Marsden; Andrew Flynn; Michelle Harrison

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 236 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0742-4477
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6297(199703/04)13:2<211::aid-agr9>3.0.co;2-5

✦ Synopsis

Corporate retailing in food provision is in ascendancy in most parts of the advanced world; and despite its largely nationally based character, it has an increasing influence on food production and supply in both the South and the North. The paper examines contemporary trends in the retail sector, relating these to changing regulatory domains in which it is both located and attempts to shape. Retail power in Britain is examined and questions asked concerning the uneven development of this model elsewhere. The emphasis is placed on the ways in which retailing needs to create and maintain forms of regulatory, social and political embeddedness. The supply and consumption of foods is increasingly mediated through sets of retailing and state interests. This combines and reconstructs public and private interests in new ways, establishing the competitive spaces within which retailers operate.