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Beschreibung:
The diffusion of supermarkets in developing countries has profound implications – not only for existing retail stores and informal vendors but also for millions of producers and intermediary traders in the respective supply chains, and for consumers in these countries. Overall, societies are likely to gain from retail modernisation, given that it implies the use of new technologies and exploitation of economies of scale, and thus results in higher productivity, increased convenience and lower consumer prices. However, the fast roll-out of large foreign retail chains in poor countries with very traditional and low-productivity production and retail structures has the potential to destroy the livelihoods of thousands or even millions who currently earn a decent living through traditional farming or intermediary trading or sales. Moreover, manifold trade-offs need to be taken into account: what benefits certain producer or consumer groups may harm others. Developing countries and their international development partners therefore see the challenge ahead as one of managing this transformation in such a way that the harsh effects of structural change are mitigated and local stakeholders have sufficient time and opportunity to adapt to the new business environment. Ignoring retail modernisation and trying to keep modern retailers out of national markets is neither desirable (because the productivity effects will fail to be realised) nor feasible in the long term (due to the prevailing overall trend towards trade and foreign direct investment liberalisation). Delaying the inevitable adaptation of local retail systems to international best practices may imply higher adaptation costs in the future. The challenge is to proactively shape the way national systems adapt to the global retail revolution. Despite the far-reaching impact of the supermarket revolution, this challenge has so far hardly been debated in development policy circles. This omission is possibly due to the cross-cutting nature of the topic: managing the ...