Food Donations, Retail Operations, and Retail Pricing

Abstract

Problem definition: For grocery retailers, managing perishable food that is nearing expiry is a major challenge. Donating food to food banks is socially responsible, as it improves local communities and reduces waste generation. It also diverts food to a secondary, quality-differentiated market. Academic/practical relevance: In this paper, we quantify the economic impacts of this secondary market for food by examining donation and pricing behaviors for competing retailers. Methodology: We use a structural model of price-discriminating oligopoly retailers to study the effect of food donations on store and category-level demand and equilibrium prices. Empirically, we estimate the food donation effect using a unique data set of food donations and sales for several categories of perishable foods across two major retail chains that compete in the same market. Results: The competitive effects of food donations follow from the price-discrimination logic. First, food donations create a direct demand effect. Donations raise the average quality of products on display, shifting demand curves inward and rotating them clockwise (e.g., more inelastic). Second, food donations create a market enhancement effect, softening price competition and raising equilibrium prices among competing retailers. Managerial implications: Food donations increase food prices and store profits, tying the socially responsible option to an economic benefit. This study contributes a new type of reuse operation to the literature on closed-loop supply chains. Funding: Funding from the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (National Institute for Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture) [Grant 2020-67021-31377] is acknowledged. Supplemental Material: The online supplement is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.1185 .