A Glimpse Into the Chain Store Debate in the UK
This article reports about new research into the impact of chain stores on small shops in the UK. It is highly critical of supermarket and chain store growth and consolidation. Ian Clarke, the author of the study, frames the issue as one of the goals of competition policy.
The major supermarket operators … tell us they need to expand to be ‘more competitive’. They are putting the corner shop at risk under the guise of ‘giving the customer what they want’. Supermarket chains … compete among themselves for the benefit of the consumer - by bringing down prices and expanding choice. But, if they are also pushing independent local shops out of business you have to ask if that is really in consumers’ best interests. Competition authorities need to review what competition is really for. If it is to increase choice, then let’s start evaluating choice at the really local level as the UK Competition Commission suggested in its report on supermarkets in 2000 – the level at which we live our lives. The type of question we need to be asking is: does having several stores in a given locality, all owned by the same chain mean adequate choice for the consumer? Or does it mean having all the major supermarket chains accessible? Or having large stores and a healthy variety of smaller stores?Competition or competitors, consumer welfare or decentralization, that is the question. Clarke answers it the way that the Brown Shoe court did.
Technorati Tags: chain stores, goals of competition, consumer welfare
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