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Illustrates the reasons that have determined the success or failure of the discount retailers on the international scene, through the identification and analysis of the strategic groups, competitive advantages, entry barriers to the sector and barriers to mobility between the groups. Three strategic groups of discount food retailers that have adopted different internationalisation strategies have been defined and a series of key success factors of the different strategic groups has been identified. The winners in the race to international expansion are in particular the leaders of the first group of German hard discount retailers. But important niches in several foreign markets can also enable growth of retailers in the second group, the German soft discount retailers specialised abroad, and of the third group, the French soft discount retailers diversified abroad.

Looks at the marketing of five Kraft Italia food products: Splendid, Sottilette, Milka, Hag and Philadelphia in Italy. Examines the changes in consumption rate and how marketing strategies for these products have developed. States that the lessons to be learned from these case studies could help encourage the development of effective marketing of other brands in Italy.

Since 2016, organized retailers in Colombia have struggled against a new retail format: Hard-discount stores. This sales channel fulfills essential shopping basket products with consistent low prices. To be competitive and preserve their market position, organized retailers must improve their processes and their pricing decisions. Promotions and discounts have been considered as an effective alternative to compete. This study analyzes the impact of joint prices decisions over the individual and global financial key performance indicators when a collaborative strategy is adopted. Our case study comprises a supermarket chain Colombian retailer and a consumer packaged-goods manufacturer to analyze its supply chain performance. The analysis considers different product categories (food, personal care, and cosmetics) and country regions. The results highlight that benefits are unequally distributed along different echelons and supply chain performance is affected when pricing decisions are made independently.

Describes the positioning of a major brand in a niche market in a relatively new retailing environment. Suggests that the use of trend examination, consumer behaviour and product benefits to develop heuristic devices and position the product in this market are essential, and that the analysis of the company and competition were of essence.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on two aspects. First, to analyse the spread of labelled environmental certification in food products, considering both private labels and producer brands with reference to the Italian and German markets. Second, to outline how environmental certification can affect the vertical organisation of food supply chains.

The method used is based on an empirical analysis carried out in two sample cities: Milan for Italy and Bonn for Germany, examining ten and seven retailers, respectively, using the case studies approach, through an ad hoc questionnaire. The authors analysed two cases related to fruit and vegetables and ichthyic products, in order to assess the effect of the standards provided by the sustainability certification on the vertical organisation of the supply chains.

The certifications focus on three main areas: ichthyic products; tropical products; and fruits and vegetables. They are much more widespread on private label items, rather than on the industrial brands. The German market is more “sensitive” to sustainability issues than the Italian market. Environmental certification leads to a reorganisation of the supply chain relationships, determining a higher bilateral dependency among the supply chain agents, a reduction in product uncertainty, and an increased degree of vertical coordination.

The paper analyses, through a new perspective, the environmental issues of food products, quantifying the spread of labelled environmental certification and comparing Italy and Germany. The vertical reorganisation of the supply chains involved the adoption of production rules, connected to environmentally‐friendly practices, and the introduction of a new form of transaction governance.

Argues that convergent trends in environmental evolution have led to convergent swings towards structural changes in the European retailing market. However, substantial differences continue to survive, each country preserving its specificities, the fruits of its history and culture. The single European market is not therefore uniform and, compared with the manufacturing industry, remains localized.

This paper aims to address whether the order of entry yields competitive advantage in the discount grocery industry. More specifically, the paper aims to investigate whether such advantages are based on the effects of entry on consumer perceptions rather than factors such as technological leadership or cost efficiency.

The paper combines perceptual measures of overall preferences and attribute‐level beliefs with objective measures of attribute levels in order to explore whether entry‐based advantages in this industry are due to the relationships between entry and consumer perceptions.

The findings show that early entrants are perceived to be significantly superior to later entrants. This finding also hold true for store attributes documented to be similar across chains.

A number of papers have shown relationships between order of entry and indicators of competitive advantage. This is the first study that rules out “economic performance” based explanations for such advantages, i.e. superior efficiency, technological leadership or the pre‐emption of scarce resources.

An in-depth analysis of management and academic literature regarding sustainable development, on the one hand, and retailers' involvement on the other, has been conducted. Related topics such as responsibility (Barthel, 2006; Binninger, 2008; Lauriol, 2004; Pasquero, 2005; Thierry, 2005), trust (Guibert, 1999; Lapeyre & Bonnefont, 2004; Sireix et al., 2004; Swaen & Chumpitaz, 2008), and consumer resistance (Aouina-Mejri & Benhallam, 2009; Peñaloza & Price, 1993; Roux, 2007) have also been investigated. Furthermore, we studied the theoretical corpus of the frameworks used (Stakeholder Theory and Legitimacy Theories).

Grocery retailing markets are becoming more open and international. Finland is an example of a previously closed and restricted market which has recently opened its borders to foreign food products as well as food retailers. This paper describes the competitive dynamics and actions of the domestic retailers that took place when the first foreign grocery retailer entered the market. The paper concludes that the main competitive moves were related to the price of food products and to changes in product ranges. The domestic retailers imitated the concept of the entrant and added new low‐priced own brands into their product mixes. The roles of the market actors were reversed during the entry process: the domestic market leaders became followers and the small entrant played the role of the market leader.

Seeks to effect a comparison of the pricing strategies followed by hypermarkets, compared with those that discount stores carry out.

Data were collected from the direct observation of the supermarket shelves of nine frequent purchase product categories in several hypermarkets and discount stores. Diverse statistical analyses were applied to these picked up data, such as mean comparisons, ANOVA and correspondence analysis.

The article concludes that the hypermarkets tend to have higher mean prices, and use promotional tools more profusely than the discount stores.

For future research, it would be very important to examine consumer price evaluations based on a theoretical approach in the same formats, and in this way consumer reactions to price changes could be understood. Also, examining the cross‐country differences in retail stores may be quite interesting.

Relationships between hypermarkets and hi‐lo pricing, plus discount stores and EDLP pricing, have been found. Therefore, retail managers of both formats have to know all about these pricing strategies. In this way, the managers of these firms would know the kind of customers that can be attracted and the signals and image that can be projected in the market.

This paper directly compares the pricing and promotional activities of hypermarkets versus discount stores. Researching into whether price and promotional differences exist between the two format retailers will help consumers and managers to know the true price level of each format.