Structural Changes in the UK Grocery Retail Market

In “A Structural Analysis of the UK Grocery Retail Market”, Robert Duke used Michael E. Porter′s framework for the structural analysis of industries to analyse the UK grocery retail market. Since this article was published in 1989, many potentially significant changes and developments have happened in this market,making an update of Duke′s 1989 analysis of interest. Sources of even greater power over suppliers enjoyed by retailers can be traced to implementations of new technologies in grocery retailing, and to the growth of pan‐European concentrations of buying power, while the threat posed by price‐cutting new entrants will force incumbents to use more of this power. Competition in the market itself will be influenced by superstore saturation, the emergence of a “Big Three” of retailers, and by potentially significant new entrants, able to defeat the market′s barriers to entry. This will create a more complex competitive structure.