Private eco-brands and sustainable market development: towards new forms of SCP governance in food retailing

Författare

Olga Chkanikova
Matthias Lehner

Summary, in English

This paper explores the issue of private retail governance to deliver SCP. In particular it focuses on the role of private retail eco-brands to promote sustainability both upstream and downstream in the food supply chain. The analysis and discussion centers around the question whether private retail eco-brands are better fitted to introduce sustainability into the food supply-chain than 3rd party eco-labels. Our analysis of collected empirical evidence from European food retailers, with particular focus on Sweden, reveals that while development of private eco-brands appears to benefit the implementation of both supply chain sustainability and green market development, there are a number of challenges associated with development and use of private eco-brands. From a retailer’s perspective, these challenges are rooted in the complexity of global supply-chains that encounter liability risks and increased transaction costs. The analysis of our empirical findings suggests that retail brand will play a more dominant role in SCP in the future. However, we argue that the continuous value of third-party certification in supporting the implementation of SCP in the food supply chain should not be underestimated

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