Competition and Vertical Relationships in Food Retail Markets - A French-German Comparative Analysis

1.5. 这个项目的目的是为了更好地理解农业食品链中零售商和制造商之间的垂直关系，以及消费者的偏好和彼此的战略决策如何影响提供给消费者的产品的价格水平、品种和特征。鉴于研究结果可能取决于价值链不同层次的特定市场结构，我们的目标是分析德国和法国市场的一些食品类别。这些市场特别合适，因为它们的特点是零售部门的几个结构差异（折扣店的市场份额、自有品牌渗透、制造商和零售商方面的竞争强度），但有其他共同的市场特征（购买力、市场规模）。我们将集中讨论跨国家和跨类别分析中的两个具体问题。首先，我们将评估零售业的结构如何影响制造商和零售商之间的相对议价能力。然后，我们将强调议价能力（WP1）的主要因素。其次，我们将研究制造商和零售商的战略定价决策与零售商的战略品种决策之间的联系，使用一个新的农业食品链纵向互动的实证模型，整合零售层面的品种决策。然后，我们将能够评估垂直合同或消费者偏好的变化如何影响零售商的品种决策（WP2）。这些分析将使用结构计量经济学方法来模拟德国和法国食品连锁市场的市场结构、竞争和垂直关系。这种结构计量经济学方法由两个主要步骤组成。第一部分是通过对需求模型的估计，评估消费者对每个产品类别和每个市场的替代模式。第二部分是供给侧的建模，以评估每个参与者的市场力量和零售商相对于制造商的议价能力。我们将表明，市场力量和议价能力将取决于第一步，即需求估计。考虑到消费者、制造商和零售商的行为，我们将能够实施反事实分析，改变集中度、消费者偏好、合同性质和其他市场特征，并评估它们对价格、提供的品种、利润和消费者福利的影响。为了实施这一计量经济学分析，我们将分别使用GfK panel Services和Kantar WorldPanel提供的德国和法国消费者面板数据。这些数据描述了某些产品类别的所有购买情况。

1.5. Summary and Motivation The objective of this project is to better understand the vertical relationships between retailers and manufacturers in agro food chains and how consumer preferences and the strategic decisions of each other s affect the level of price, variety and characteristics of the products offered to consumers. Given that the findings may depend on the particular market structure in the different levels of the value chain, we aim in analyzing some food product categories in the German and the French markets. Those markets are particular suitable, because they are characterized by several structural differences in the retail sector (market share of discounters, private label penetration, competition intensity at the manufacturer and retailer side), but have other market characteristics in common (purchasing power, market size). We will focus on two specific questions in cross-country and cross-category analyses. First, we will assess how the structure of the retailing industry affects the relative bargaining power between manufacturers and retailers. We will then highlight the main factors of the bargaining power (WP1). Second, we will investigate the link between the strategic pricing decision of manufacturers and retailers and the strategic variety decision of retailers using the development of a new empirical model of the vertical interactions in the agro food chains integrating the variety decision at the retail level. We will then be able to assess how changes in vertical contracts or in consumers preferences affect the variety decision of retailers (WP2). Those analyses will use a structural econometric approach to model the market structure, the competition and the vertical relationships in German and French food chain markets. This structural econometric approach is composed of two main steps. The first one is the assessment of consumers substitution patterns for each product category and each market through the estimation of the demand models. The second one is the modeling of the supply side to evaluate the market power of each actor and the relative bargaining power of retailers with respect to manufacturers. We will show that market power and bargaining power will depend on the first step that is on the demand estimates. Given the consumers, manufacturers and retailers behavior, we will then be able to implement counterfactual analyses changing the level of concentration, the preferences of consumers, the nature of contracts and other market characteristics and assess their impact on prices, variety offered, profits, and consumers welfare. To implement this econometric analysis, we will use German and French consumer panel data respectively provided by GfK Panel Services and Kantar WorldPanel. Those data describe all purchases of some product categories.