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Sustainable Assortment Policy: Possibilities of Differentiation and Profiling for the Food Sector

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Building New Bridges Between Business and Society

Part of the book series: CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance ((CSEG))

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Abstract

The food retail industry in Germany as the most important sales channel for food achieved an overall turnover of approx. 175 billion euros (only food) in 2012 (TradeDimensions 2013). The sector is marked by few great actors. The four key players (Edeka, REWE, Schwarz Gruppe, Aldi) unite a sales portion of about 85% (Federal Cartel Authority 2014, p. 10) and, moreover, realise the determining sales increases in the market. This structure leads to an intensive competition amongst the traders, as well as to a relatively low prize level for food and therefore to a pressure on the margins of the food industry. Due to the tension, trading companies are looking for possibilities of differentiation which will have a positive effect on the results.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CBS Cologne Business School, Köln, Germany

    Christoph Willers & Victoria Aydin

Authors
  1. Christoph Willers
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  2. Victoria Aydin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christoph Willers .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sino-German Research Institute for Sustainable Development, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

    Hualiang Lu

  2. Cologne Business School, Cologne, Germany

    René Schmidpeter

  3. College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

    Nicholas Capaldi

  4. International Training Centre of the IL, International Labor Organization, Turin, Italy

    Liangrong Zu

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Willers, C., Aydin, V. (2018). Sustainable Assortment Policy: Possibilities of Differentiation and Profiling for the Food Sector. In: Lu, H., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L. (eds) Building New Bridges Between Business and Society. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63561-3_5

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