IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/umrfwp/14317.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Growing Natural Foods Market: Opportunities And Obstacles For Mass Market Supermarkets

Author

Listed:
  • Richman, Nessa J.

Abstract

Seven serious obstacles hinder the success of mass market grocery stores that try to succeed in the natural foods market. Finding timely and complete market information, linking with natural foods suppliers, and pricing and marketing natural foods are the three most important. Uncertainty about future standards for natural foods is the only major obstacle for natural foods stores. The problems facing mass market stores trying to succeed in the natural foods market are related to the market structure for natural food, to compatibility between standard operating procedures in the mass market and natural foods market, and to inadequate data collection about prices and other market characteristics. The problem for natural food stores is due to policy, primarily the lack of strong standards for natural foods. In the survey that forms the basis for these conclusions, almost half of mass market retailers had increased the scale of their natural foods operations and diversified their natural foods offerings. But few were satisfied with the degree of success of this approach. More successful strategies included developing labels (i.e. brands) for natural foods and hiring special staff for natural foods. These strategies are uncommon among mass market stores. Natural foods retailers tried them more often. Both mass market and natural foods retailers considered these strategies to be successful. How can mass market retailers overcome the obstacles they face and take advantage of the opportunities that the natural foods market provides? One key requirement for a healthy market is consumer confidence. There are two steps that mass market retailers can take to bolster consumer confidence. First, they can work to ensure that the natural foods in their stores are consistent with the standards that natural foods consumers demand. Second, they can make the effort to incorporate the concepts behind the natural foods movement into their strategic planning (e.g. adding organic product promotions to advertising plans, and by taking account of the environmental implications of their own operations). In addition, by working in concert with other retailers, trade organizations and appropriate non-profit organizations and governmental agencies, mass market retailers can help create a healthy business environment for natural foods in the long term.

Suggested Citation

  • Richman, Nessa J., 2000. "The Growing Natural Foods Market: Opportunities And Obstacles For Mass Market Supermarkets," Working Papers 14317, University of Minnesota, The Food Industry Center.
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:umrfwp:14317
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.14317
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/14317/files/tr00-02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.14317?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thilmany, Dawn D. & Grannis, Jennifer L. & Sparling, Edward, 2001. "Shopping For Meat: Empirical Demand Estimation For Natural Beef Across Store Choices," 2001 Annual Meeting, July 8-11, 2001, Logan, Utah 36157, Western Agricultural Economics Association.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:umrfwp:14317. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rfumnus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.