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Abstract
This paper focuses on agro- food chains and agro- food consumer prices in Slovenia
considering its European Union (EU) membership. As the Slovenian agro- food markets were
distorted prior to the EU accession with some agro- food prices that were greater than comparable
EU prices, the empirical results confirm that with the EU membership Slovenian real agro- food
consumer prices have largely downward adjusted. Besides policy changes, internalization of
retailing and distribution chains by entries of supermarket s and hypermarket s have had impacts
on market structures and rationalization of marketing activities. Supermarket s and hypermarket s
are taking over a substantial proportion of retail trade in agro- food products with implications on
increasing food chains efficiency by squeezing structures in consumer prices, including for
farmers, processors and marketing margins for main agro- food staples. After the greater price
adjustment changes that occurred by the EU membership, some stabilizations in agro- food
markets are occurring, but at different levels of real consumer and producer prices and marketing
margins. This imply that agro- food markets in the new EU member states are becoming much
more integrated into internationally competitive markets, where pricing and sales promotion
issues and branding are taking important role in market segmentation of agro- food products.