The Small Producer in the French Food Distribution Channel
研究了法国食品零售业中大型零售商如何选择供应商，以及小生产者因缺乏营销预算而难以进入供应商组合的现象，基于十家公司的证据讨论了这一普遍观点。
As in many European countries, the food retailing industry in France is dominated today by a few powerful companies who impose their terms of purchase on the other members of the distribution channel, and more specifically, on manufacturers. A supplier hoping to be selected by the central purchasing office of a mass merchandiser must comply with a number of complex assessment procedures whose outcome is necessarily unpredictable. In most cases, the manufacturers who end up getting chosen are the ones who have demonstrated their ability to keep up with the rapid growth of sales volume, usually because they have a large marketing budget. According to certain specialists, this is what accounts for the decreasing number of small producers in the French food retailer's portfolio of suppliers. Small producers of food and non-food branded products lack the financial resources needed to implement a sufficiently ambitious commercial strategy. This research note is aimed at examining the generally accepted idea that small producers are scarce or even totally lacking in the supplier portfolios of mass merchandisers in France. The general principles used by food retailers to select manufacturers are summarized, and evidence from ten companies is discussed. Setting Up a Supplier Portfolio: The French Way Choosing one's suppliers is considered (and rightly so) to be a crucial step in a distribution firm's buying process. It is a determining factor not only in the firm's competitiveness (purchases represent an average of 80 percent of sales), but also in its corporate image. Indeed, customers often judge a retailer by the assortment of products and brands it offers. Many empirical studies conducted in the United States, Canada, and Europe have noted a large consensus among retailers in supplier selection procedures. A standard set of evaluation criteria (or attributes) is applied, including the terms of payment, after-sale service, product quality, and on-time delivery (Shipley 1985). However, the high degree of rivalry in the distribution channel is gradually leading French mass merchandisers away from the use of these standard attributes. Price rather than service has been the prevailing competitive factor in the French food retailing industry for approximately fifteen years (Pariente 1994). Consequently, price wars have exerted substantial and continuous pressure on profit margins, so that in order to maintain an acceptable level of return, companies have been forced to compensate by increasing their sales volume. This state of affairs has had a significant impact on the way suppliers are chosen. In the French food distribution channel, producers of branded products advertise directly to customers but sell to retailers. Retailers prefer to purchase from those suppliers capable of launching large advertising campaigns on radio and television and contributing regularly to sales promotion programs in the stores (premium offers, bargain packs, contests, etc.). These seem to be the necessary conditions for the retailer to sell large quantities of branded products to customers. As a result the supplier incurs extra cost, accounting for as much as 40 percent of sales at certain times of the year (Colombat and Gillet 1995). Since the ability to guarantee stock turnover depends on marketing resources and skills, French mass merchandisers concentrate primarily on assessing the potential commercial performance of the various manufacturers. In other words, the size of the marketing budget is now a major evaluation criterion, on a par with the terms of payment or on-time delivery. An obvious conclusion: because they do not spend as much on sales promotion programs and advertising campaigns, small producers have a hard time competing with larger producers in making sales in the distribution channel. One might wonder why small producers continue to exist given the considerable marketing advantages of larger producers. …