Towards an understanding of European grocery supply chains

Although international retailing has received increased research attention in recent years, there have been few contributions to the academic literature on the supply chain implications of the internationalization process or the variations in logistics networks in different geographical markets. This paper seeks to explore such variations by providing a taxonomy of European grocery distribution networks through the use of cluster analysis on 18 logistics-related variables applied to 10 country markets. The results show that the grocery retail market in Europe continues to exhibit significant differences at the country level. Similarities exist on several variables but there is a high degree of variability between country clusters on the three sub-sets of market structure, trading format and physical/socio-economic infrastructure. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.