Structure of the UK Supermarket Industry - Term Paper Example

Structure of the UK Supermarket Industry Introduction The supermarket industry of the United Kingdom is an extremely profitable and lucrative industry. The industry is mainly dominated by four major players, Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys and Morrisons (merged with Safeaway) which account for almost 75 percent of the market share (Grocery probe eyes local markets, 2007). Also there are other firms which play a comparatively smaller role and operate as discounters or high level specialty stores. The worth of UK’s grocery retail industry, which operates through almost 96000 stores, is evaluated to be around 135 billion pounds. According to the UK Retail Food Sector Market Brief, supermarkets made up for about 6400 stores with an estimated value of 98 billion pounds in 2008 (Sainsburys And Waitrose UK Supermarkets Porters 5 Forces Competitive Advantage, 2009). Market Share The UK grocery market has increased to 133.3 billion pound in 2007, which accounts for a 4 percent increase from that of 2006 (Nicholson, 2008, p. 3-4). The major supermarkets that occupy the bulk of the market share (almost 75 percent) are Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda (owned by American retailer Wal-Mart) and Morrison’s. These are commonly known as the “Big Four”. The other retail chains include Marks and Spencer (UK’s biggest clothing marketer), Waitrose, Somerfield, Budgens, Netto Iceland, Aldi, and Lidl. Tesco is the largest non-food market chain in the UK which includes outlets like Extra, Homeplus, Metro and others. Each of these retailers focuses on some particular market section. Tesco for instance, marks the middle market offering economy as well as expensive products. Compared to Tesco, Sainsbury’s targets a little up-market while, Asda, a Wal-Mart chain and Morrison’s focus a little down-market. Even Somerfield operate at the same level as Asda and the others namely, Budgens, Iceland, Aldi, Netto and Lidl are all price-focused retailers. Waitrose, a John Lewis Partnership, is however the most up-market retailer among all. Discount retailing has become a growing division of the grocery retailing in UK and Tesco ad Asda contest a strong competition in this field. Among them, the top position is occupied by Tesco, with a market share of 31.4 percent which is quite ahead of the other retail chains. Second to Tesco is Asda with a market share of 17.1 percent followed by Sainsbury’s occupying the third position. It covers 15.7 percent of the total market. Morrison’s rank last among the four with a market share of 11.2 percent (Nicholson, 2008, p. 6-7). Existing market Structure The market structure exhibited by the supermarket industry in UK is oligopolistic in nature. This is characterized by the dominance of few firms (the big four supermarkets) and the firms produce highly differentiated products (branded products). 99 percent of Marks and Spencer sales comprise of own label goods (Nicholson, 2008, p. 7-10). Another feature is that there are high barriers to entry. Firms are highly interdependent, the actions of one firm always has an unforeseen effect on the other firms. Competitors have a strong desire to collude and to form cartels. The degree of concentration in the market is quite high under oligopoly. The four firm concentration ratio is frequently used and this primarily corresponds to UK’s big four supermarkets’ concentration ratio which equals to 75 percent of the total market share (Market Structure, n.d.). All of the major retailers benefit from economies of scale, resulting in an absolute as well as relative cost advantage over the new companies. They use the technique of predatory pricing where the take advantage of the size of their economies of scale to pull the price down and compel small firms to move out of the market (Barriers to entry, n.d.).Barriers to entry in the superstore industry are extremely high, primarily due to the enormous market share of the four major UK supermarkets. Incentives from the government like, tax benefit or grants can aid the small retailers to grow but the very act of these small firms to compete with the leaders would face a lot of impediments because of different other factors (Government Intervention in the UK Supermarket Industry, 2007). UK supermarket industry mainly follows a non-price competition (advertising and marketing) to capture the market. The UK supermarket chains have started to set up stores that are near or beside gas stations. For instance, Tesco with Esso and Sainsbury’s with Shell. To inhibit the progress of the supermarket franchises to the convenience sector, the amount of convenience stores joining a symbol group is increasing rapidly. Symbol and buying groups provide small retailers a variety of benefits comprising of powerful marketing and branding, broader product ranges and sophisticated supply chain schemes (Nicholson, 2008, p. 7-10). Determination of Price and Output The oligoplistic market is often characterized by the Kinked demand Curve which shows that if an oligopolist increases its price, its rival will not match its price, since keeping their prices unvarying will increase their market share. The firm that raised its price will face a decrease in revenue by a significantly large amount, making that portion of the demand curve relatively elastic or flatter. Again, if the firm reduces its price, all the firms along with it will follow suit (leading to a price war) and hence the lower portion of the demand curve becomes steeper or more elastic. The kinked demand curve hence will have two different marginal cost curves for each of the slopes of the kinked demand curve. This is why oligopoly markets lack a price competition and has more or less stable prices (Barriers to entry, n.d, Ferguson and Gould, 1996). This is the famous Sweezy model with a kinked demand curve. The pricing theory of an oligopoly firm, like Tesco, is assumed to follow the Sweezy theory. On the basis of this, the stages of price-output determination are depicted below. (Kinked demand curve under Oligopoly, n.d.) (Tisdell and Hartley, 2008, p.225) (Kinked demand curve under Oligopoly, n.d.) Recession, Credit Crunch and Effect on Supermarkets Recession is a phenomenon that occurs due to a contraction in the business cycle. The economic activity of any nation varies from year to year. Sometimes the economy faces an increase in production mainly due to increase in the workforce, stock of capital and technological improvements. Then again, there are times when there is fall in the economy’s output. This happens due to the fact that the firms are not able to sell the entire amount of goods and services produced y them and hence, reduce their production. The fall in production is coupled with a decrease in the employment rate, real GDP and income. This period is defined as recession, which is characterized by a decrease in income and an increase in unemployment (Mankiw, 2008, p. 435). A credit crunch on the other hand is defined as a sudden fall in the availability of credit in the market. It occurs due to the fact that lenders become wary of giving loans and hence reduce the volume of credit for a given interest rate. Ina supply-demand analysis, this crunch is characterized by a leftward shift of the credit supply curve. It generally occurs during a recession (Gisdakis and Felsenheimer, 2008, p. 205). Generally during a recession or economic crisis, supermarkets do better than others, since food is an indispensable good rather than a luxury commodity which individuals would curtail. Nevertheless, most of the supermarkets have started to feel the loss as strapped for cash consumers prefer price-saving budget stores to help them reduce their food bills. Up to now, the retailer chain, Aldi has come out to be the biggest winner, as said by the 2008 TNS World panel market share numbers. A report showed that the sales figure of Aldis sales has grown up by 22.1 percent over a period of three months from August to September 2008, resulting in a 3 per cent market share. Lidl, Iceland and Farm Foods have also performed well, whereas Morrisons and Asda have stuck to their individual performances and market shares. The supermarket sector is still rising strongly but customers seem to be dealing down to less expensive stores and Waitrose and Marks and Spencer face a less-than-average growth in sales (Credit crisis: Now here comes the recession, 2008). On the other hand, growths at Tesco and Sainsburys, which are alleged to be more expensive, have lagged behind in the market. However, the maximum loss has been suffered by Waitrose, the most up-market retailer among all, with a fall of 3.8 per cent in the market share (Credit crisis: Now here comes the recession, 2008). Tesco has slashed the price of more than forty commodities and its advertisements even detail out the price difference between Asda’s goods and theirs by showing the individual cut in in price. Also, Sainsburys has reduced the price of a number of its summer groceries (Poulter, 2008). The supermarket chains have been charging rising food prices to customers until recently, their promotions point to a change of tactics. There is a p[probability of further price cuts as the major stores recognize that there would be no short-term relief from the international pressures on food and oil prices. They are required to act if they want the customers already troubled by the adversities of the credit crunch to stick to them (Poulter, 2008). Tesco is the leading market chain with a significantly huge market hare which makes it a leader in the supermarket industry Tesco has to a lot extent countered the effects of the credit crunch mainly owing to its size and product diversification. Owing to its marketing strategies, mainly advertising, it has increased its scope of business wider. It has worked out its strategies to a diverse array, even its online sales have alone contributed to more than one billion pound at Christmas, 2008. Tesco is giving the best it could in such a tough markets, reacting to the changing needs of consumers, therefore making significant progress in this period of recession (Brown, 2008). Sainsbury’s, the next in line with Tesco, has also given a good performance. It has spent a lot on its marketing, which has been around 30 percent of its total offer, a 5 percent increase from last year. It has experienced a rise in selling of its food takeaway boxes, as customers prefer preparing food at home rather than visiting any restaurants or taking the service of takeaways. It has also seen a rise in its Christmas sales by 4.5 percent (Stiff, 2009; Leroux, 2009). Competition Policy Competition policies are undertaken by a country’s government to increase the economic efficiency and welfare of a country by enhancing the performance of the market. The objectives of the competition policy in the UK are to promote competition, induce the market to work better and add to the efficiency and welfare of the economy. The competition policy works to ensure a wide range of choice in markets for goods and services for the customers, technological improvement which gives rise to benefits in dynamic efficiency, efficient price competition among suppliers and investigation of accusations of anti-competitive activities within markets that might affect the consumer welfare adversely. The UK competition policy usually looks after four types of anti-competition behavior. These are mainly preventing or eliminating agreements that try to restrict competition like, price-fixing contracts, or cartels and other abusive practices by firms that take a dominant position in any market. The second is to follow policies that would liberalize the market and bring in new competition by lowering the barriers to entry particularly prevalent in the supermarket and telecommunication industries. Competition policy also looks after state aid measures by Member State governments to make sure that those measures do not artificially interfere with competition in the market. The forth measure involves the investigation of mergers and acquisitions between two or more firms which would increase their dominance in the market. There are cases of mergers and acquisitions even in the Supermarket industry. Morrison’s and Safeway, two relatively powerful supermarkets went into a merger, which resulted in their greater dominance in the industry. Again, take-over of Asda by US-based company, Wal-Mart, in 1999 is an example of acquisition. The main reason behind this takeover is that UK is a relatively open economy and the government intervention is quite limited with respect to mergers and takeovers in the supermarket sector. Due to this deficiency in the restriction policies by the UK government, Wal-Mart has been able to pump Asda with financial assistance to make it strong enough to give competition to the other market heads. If the UK government would have imposed stricter restrictions on foreign buyers and mergers, then there would have been practically two big players in the UK supermarket, mainly Tesco and Sainsbury’s Government Intervention in the UK Supermarket Industry, 2007; Competition Policy, 2002). It is quite apparent that the buying power of the dominant supermarkets could distort competition. A BBC News report highlighted that in a span of seven years the Competition Commission has investigated the dominance of the UK big four supermarkets three times (Supermarkets in Competition Probe, 2006). The UK supermarket sector has come again drawn the attention of the Competition Commission because the UKs major supermarket companies have been alleged to have driven away local and small convenience stores from the High Street. There were approximately 7400 independent retailers who went out of business between the year 2000 and 2004 (Supermarkets in Competition Probe, 2006). The Office of Fair Trading has gathered evidence against the supermarkets on the trade practices. These were mainly the high barriers to trade imposed by them, which restricted the entry to a few firms and the huge amount of their land holdings to block competition. These markets were also accused of using restrictive agreements and practicing anti-competitive behavior like predatory pricing and below-cost selling or price flexing which are obvious to distort competition. An investigation carried out by Channel 4 Dispatches on supermarkets of fifteen thousand square feet or more (for one-stop stores) pointed out Tesco as the largest one in twenty one areas where an individual owner had 40 per cent or more of the active one-stop grocery shopping place. Sainsbury’s made up six such areas and Asda for one. In addition, Tesco had control of sites that would permit it to build a market as large as all of its competitors taken together could build. On the other hand, Asda made up for something like 25 per cent of new space and Sainsbury and Morrison individually accounted for something less than 10 per cent. Another report by Friends of the Earth regarding two hundred planning issues across the country showed that the dominant supermarkets put a lot of pressure on the local councils to sanction their planning applications. Moreover, these supermarkets have uncared for the planning norms while working for their development plans and in most of the cases have circumvented the planning system by going for separate legal pacts with the local councils. The report found out evidence of violent price-cutting practices, which are quite probable outcomes while operating within a competitive framework. The Competition Commission has recommended a code of practice that asks the market players with a market share of 8 percent or more to address the problems raised by the complainants. The case for stricter regulation of supermarkets through competition policy and land-use planning has become an outstanding issue for policy makers and communities (Supermarkets under scrutiny: Competition Policy inaction?, n.d.). Impact of Oil Prices It is obvious that the change in price of any commodity is an outcome of the interaction between its demand and supply curves. According to many analysts the oil price shocks or the increase in the global oil price is attributed to the increase in demand of oil from the Asian countries. On the other hand, the economic theories prove that the actual effect of an increase in the oil price depends on its basic fundamentals. The rise in the price may arise from a change in the supply conditions like the cases involving the first Gulf war and the tightening of policies by OPEC. In such cases, the resultant price increase depresses economic activity, since energy inputs become more expensive. However if the increase in the oil prices shoot from a rise in demand from emerging economies, production in other economies like the US or UK is exposed to a negative effect (because of the higher price of energy) as well as a to a positive effect arising from the greater demand for the developed countries’ goods and services by the developing emerging economies. With respect to this idea, the rise in the oil prices in the recent years including 2007-2009 reveals oil demand shocks, while the instances in the 1970s and 1980s is attributed to the oil supply shocks (Lippi, 2008). Since 2003 the increase in oil prices and the consequent increase in other goods have been directed by a strong growth in demand in recently industrialized nations and for gasoline by the US. Energy import prices rose at the same pace in all the major regions and were followed by price inflation of other raw materials. The main reasons for an increase in oil price are the surfacing of Asian and other growing economies, production shortage of oil and transportation capacities, and collusive behavior of the chief oil producers (The Impact of Sustained High Oil Prices on Trade Flows, 2007, p. 7-10). The oil price shock has obviously affected the UK supermarkets adversely. The supermarket leader, Tesco has countered a 9 million pound hike in its cost of carrier bags. Carrier bags are manufactured by using oil and hence, their hike (Townsend, 2005). Morrisons, another leading supermarket retailer had started an oil price war in the midst of rising resentment over the hike in the cost of petrol. Morrisons said that it would be arresting the price of gas and diesel for the time being although Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda declined to go with it. The supermarket, Morrison is presently charging 103.7 pence per liter for unleaded petrol and 103.9 pence for diesel. Sainsbury’s, on the other hand, claimed that its prices were low from before, while Tesco is banking on its decision to increase the number of loyalty points that customers receive by more than two-fold (Martin, 2009). Conclusion The Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG), which is an industry organization that calculates the extent of Internet sales, released a study on May 18, 2007 that showed that Internet sales in UK are expected to increase to 42 Billion pound as against 100 Million pound in 1995. The RNCOS report “UK Supermarket Analysis (2007-2010)”, showed that online retailing will surface as a critical mode of market chain. Supermarkets that have famous brands and are trusted chains would be the primary preference for the customers for online shopping. Also for the store chains, the space will not continue to be a constraint and hence, they can offer an extensive range of products (UK Supermarket Analysis 2007-2010, 2007). The Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) has estimated that the retail supermarket of UK will grow at an average rate of 2.9 percent over the coming five years. 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