War in the Aisles: Monopolies across the grocery supply chain squeeze consumers and small-business owners alike.

[Celerity]

Big Data will only entrench those dynamics further.



https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-12-war-in-the-aisles/



You’ve grabbed a shopping cart, walked through the sliding doors, and checked your list for the week. Keep it simple—Monday, spaghetti and meatballs. Tuesday, of course, is for tacos. Wednesday, how about a stew. Can’t forget the cold cuts, bread, and Cheez-Its for lunch this week. Thursday? Oh yeah, the dinner plans. On Friday, salmon, asparagus, and potatoes. Down the snacks aisle, you were tempted and grabbed more than what was on your list. Next, you head to the dairy section for cheese, milk, and Greek yogurt. A couple rows over, you take a look at coffee and drinks. Then it’s time to head to checkout.

It’s a quietly amazing experience. No other time in human history has delivered as many food options to the masses as the supermarket has. A great logistical project involving hundreds of thousands if not millions of people from numerous countries on nearly every continent on Earth has brought this abundance to your little town, a panoply of tastes and combinations previous generations could only dream of. But then you remember that time when contaminated wheat gluten at a single manufacturing plant in Wangdien, China, caused a recall of almost 100 pet food brands, including 17 of the top 20 sold. Or a few years ago, when a strike of just 1,400 Kellogg’s workers at four plants led to a national cereal shortage, with footage of empty shelves across the country.

Moments like these reveal the truth about the seemingly endless set of options. Your supermarket choices actually narrow to a handful of suppliers making different brands whose prices are tightly coordinated. Step deeper inside the supply chain, and you find that the ingredients that make your food so addictive derive from an even smaller circle of titans. What you end up learning, if you take the time, is that the supermarket, this tribute to human ingenuity, is actually a battlefield, a war between some of the biggest companies on the planet. And you are the guinea pig for their experiments. In the grocery business, nothing is accidental. Every product’s placement, every advertisement, every coupon is a function of marketing wizardry and hardball tactics, in a bid for the eyes and wallets of consumers.



Because everybody needs food to survive, retailers and manufacturers are willing to try every pricing strategy known to man. The grocery store is where all facets of this new era of pricing come together, where attempts to squeeze more from shoppers are tested, analyzed, and put into action. It started with traditional marketing like coupons and loyalty programs, hooking consumers by giving them a reason to come back. But more insidious schemes lurk inside the grocery store: price-fixing, product shrinkage, electronic shelf tags that change on a whim, and skirmishes between grocers and food producers, or even grocers and other grocers.

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[crickets]

1. Good grief, there are so many things wrong with this picture.

The data mining angle to this is infuriating. Personal data privacy is a huge issue that has been ignored far too long. As for the monopolistic and predatory behavior of the major food suppliers and grocery chains: the FTC has made a start with their investigation and report. Now they need to get Congress to act on it.

Inflation? Ha. Excellent, though depressing, read on the corporate greed on display up and down every grocery aisle.

[applegrove]

2. They have algorithms that in a dynamic way

talk to their competitors to change prices too.