Market Competition and Consumer Behaviour in the European Grocery Retail Market

Kadiri, dhanunjaya reddy (2021) Market Competition and Consumer Behaviour in the European Grocery Retail Market. Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

Executive summary

Introduction/Aim: The rising competition has caused to the retail sector and the way the behaviour of the consumers is changing with time. The level of management differs across organization and implemented as a part of their competitive strategy. Thus, the researcher aims to analyse and study the current market competition in the grocery retail sector of Europe and the impact it has on the change in consumer behaviour. The investigation inspects the competitive effect in the grocery retail market from a wider perspective by including all kinds of competitive actions taken by grocery firms and the way it is having a competitive effect on the behaviour of the consumers.

Literature Review: Competition determines the position of a company in the market and among its customers. Grocery retail sectors that has experienced drastic changes in their market competition. The rising competition has developed more challenges for the grocery retail firms to categorize pricing and map the competitive effect on their business. The rising competition in grocery sector has negatively impacted consumer behaviour because there have been huge fluctuations in the purchase decisions where the consumers shift their purchase behaviour and preferences easily from one grocery selling format to another.

Methodology: The current study utilized structured interview method to collect information from the managers of the grocery retail companies. The researcher made use of qualitative research design and inductive approach to collect information. moreover, a thematic analysis is utilized to analyze the information based on different themes.

Findings: Competition has brought new opportunities to the grocery retailers such as improvement in store image, expansion of online services, pricing strategies, and others. Most of them seemed to believe that competition brings huge need for being more attentive to deal with complexities such as rearranging pricing strategy, changes in consumers preferences, adapting new technology and change in business models (Hyper market, E commerce etc). For example, in a competitive situation non-discounter find it difficult and hard to cope the competitive pressure exerted by discounters and need to rearrange their pricing strategies continuously according to the competitors. If the player do not act quickly there is a possibility of loosing their loyal customers.

Even though market competition has bought change in the consumer behaviour, it is also observed in our research that changes in the consumer behaviour has brought some changes in the retail players and in turn it affected the market competition. For example, consumers have become more adapted to technology and it has become part of their lifestyle, which made the key market players to adapt the technology faster and serve the customer.

Conclusion and Limitations: The research faced limitations in sample, time, budget and choice of participants.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Competition; grocery retail; retail; challenges; opportunities; benefits; performance; competitive strategies
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D901 Europe (General) H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management > Competition H Social Sciences > HF Commerce > Marketing > Consumer Behaviour H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > Specific Industries > Retail Industry
Divisions:	School of Business > Master of Science in Management
Depositing User:	Clara Chan
Date Deposited:	14 Feb 2022 15:01
Last Modified:	14 Feb 2022 15:01
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/5432

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