Food Marketing in Denmark: Developments, Prospects for 1980, Significance for U.S. Exports

Sustained economic growth is modernizing Danish food marketing. This development offers U.S. exporters many opportunities and challenges to expand U.S. agricultural exports—$293 million in 1969—in the years ahead. The Danish retail food market may grow 22 percent in the 1970-79 decade and sales of convenience foods will increase much faster. The increasingly affluent Danes are upgrading their diets. They are buying autos and refrigerators, which are essential to supermarket retailing—the keystone of a modem mass distribution system. Auto density rose from only 50 cars per 1,000 Danes in 1956 to an estimated 220 in January 1971. About 90 percent of all Danish families have a refrigerator and 44 percent own food freezers. Nearly half of all married women are gainfully employed. Supermarkets are replacing small foodstores. Denmark had 38,155 foodstores, most of them small, in 1958 but only 28,000 in 1970. By 1980, there may be only 13,000. Nearly all will be larger self-service stores. About 12.5 percent will be supermarkets, compared with 2.5 percent in 1970, but they will make the major share of retail food sales. Also by 1980, only 10 to 12 big retailing organizations may control 75 to 80 percent of Denmark's food trade. Equally rapid and drastic structural changes are going on in Danish food wholesaling and manufacturing.