{"title":"The effect of price and assortment of local products on store performance: An agent-based modelling approach","authors":"Houtian Ge, Miguel I. Gómez, Timothy J. Richards","doi":"10.1111/1477-9552.12612","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Retail distribution is essential for the growth of markets for local food. While online direct-to-consumer and local food hubs are becoming more sophisticated, the largest market for local foods remains the traditional intermediation (retailing) sector. We develop an agent-based model to simulate the expansion, growth and profitability of retailers offering local foods across a landscape populated by consumers and competing retailers. We design a series of experiments to examine how changes in prices and assortment that include local and non-local options in the fresh produce category impact store market share and profitability. We validate the model, and conduct our experiments, using household fresh produce expenditures data from a retail food-delivery business in the Mid-Atlantic region of the US. We find that retailers offering a larger assortment of local foods are able to sustain higher basket-average retail prices and exhibit higher long-run profits in comparison to retailers that do not carry local options. These results underscore the importance of local foods in a food retailer's price and assortment strategy. The key implication is that retailers need to be conscious not only of the breadth but also of the quality of their assortment in their pricing strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":14994,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agricultural Economics","volume":"75 3","pages":"981-1003"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1477-9552.12612","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Agricultural Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1477-9552.12612","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS & POLICY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Retail distribution is essential for the growth of markets for local food. While online direct-to-consumer and local food hubs are becoming more sophisticated, the largest market for local foods remains the traditional intermediation (retailing) sector. We develop an agent-based model to simulate the expansion, growth and profitability of retailers offering local foods across a landscape populated by consumers and competing retailers. We design a series of experiments to examine how changes in prices and assortment that include local and non-local options in the fresh produce category impact store market share and profitability. We validate the model, and conduct our experiments, using household fresh produce expenditures data from a retail food-delivery business in the Mid-Atlantic region of the US. We find that retailers offering a larger assortment of local foods are able to sustain higher basket-average retail prices and exhibit higher long-run profits in comparison to retailers that do not carry local options. These results underscore the importance of local foods in a food retailer's price and assortment strategy. The key implication is that retailers need to be conscious not only of the breadth but also of the quality of their assortment in their pricing strategies.
期刊介绍:
Published on behalf of the Agricultural Economics Society, the Journal of Agricultural Economics is a leading international professional journal, providing a forum for research into agricultural economics and related disciplines such as statistics, marketing, business management, politics, history and sociology, and their application to issues in the agricultural, food, and related industries; rural communities, and the environment.
Each issue of the JAE contains articles, notes and book reviews as well as information relating to the Agricultural Economics Society. Published 3 times a year, it is received by members and institutional subscribers in 69 countries. With contributions from leading international scholars, the JAE is a leading citation for agricultural economics and policy. Published articles either deal with new developments in research and methods of analysis, or apply existing methods and techniques to new problems and situations which are of general interest to the Journal’s international readership.