this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Grocery stores are pretty much the definition of a perfectly competitive industry. The profit margins are always between 1 and 3%. The only reason they raise prices is because they have to.
Thay was true once. It hasn't been for decades.
Name a grocery store with a higher margin than 3%
I wasnt disputing your margins report but that it makes for perfect competition. Why are you assuming low margins necessarily lead to better competition? With low margins, volume dictates the winning business in the unregulated marketplace. Big businesses monopolize and then one day have more leverage over their margins than the marketplace itself. Not a problem when antitrust laws are enforced but those laws have had their teeth pulled for the last 30 years.
So what hasn’t been true for decades then?
Your question isn’t a bad question though so I’m gonna answer it in good faith. Basically when regulators look at whether industries are competitive a huge factor they look at is whether firms have pricing power and their market share. There are a couple other things they look too like purchasing power with suppliers.
If you look at a firm like Facebook (META) it has both high margins (>30%)and between Google has 80% market share in online advertising. That’s an industry that is oligopolistic and possibly a case for antitrust measures.
In a nut-shell the question is “how much of the pie is consumer surplus vs producer surplus.”
If you look at grocery you’ll see the market share is really broken up so yeah they’re doing a lot of volume but you have a lot of choice. Volume itself doesn’t really tell us anything about competitiveness.
As you’re thinking about this ask and still disagree ask “what would a good objective measure be for competitiveness?” We need some actual quantifiable metric, so what would your counter-proposal be then?
Whole Foods has to be. The few times I have been there I was disgusted by the prices. Mother fuckers, I just want some apples. I don't need certified that some old hippy said they were all natural.
Briefly was at 4% in 2013 declining to around 2% in 2017 before being acquired by Amazon.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/delisted/WFM/whole-foods-market/net-profit-margin
How!?
I haven’t specifically looked at While Foods but I’m guessing the higher-priced premium products cost more at wholesale and therefore don’t produce better margins.
How!?
So why are the major chains making billions more the last few years?
Which chain?