Impact of Food retail chains on Producers, Consumers and Retailers

India’s retail trade is largely in the hands of unorganized sector. Large super markets, malls and departmental stores are only a recent phenomenon. Rapid urbanization leading to increase in urban population, rising consumer income and expenditure are the major factors that led to rapid expansion of food retail chains in India. Even without the FDI drive, Indian organized retail sector is expanding at a faster rate. The oligopolistic competition among food retail chains has had an influence on the nearly perfectly competitive neighbourhood stores, making them competitive to emulate sale of cleaned, packed and good quality products in addition to branded products. Regarding the supermarkets effort in terms of backward integration to link with farmers is limited, only few retail chains have organized backward integration for fruits and vegetables and offering better price to farmers but for quality produce. Hence, the scope for expansion of food retailing in India is enormous. This book, therefore, provides an insight in to procurement practices of food retail chains and their economic impact on producers, consumers and traditional retailers.