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Abstract
A ‘supermarket revolution’ has occurred in developing
countries in the past two decades. We focus on three
specific issues that reflect the impact of this revolution,
particularly in Asia: continuity in transformation,
innovation in transformation, and unique development
strategies. First, the record shows that the rapid growth
observed in the early 2000s in China, Indonesia, Malaysia,
and Thailand has continued, and the ‘newcomers’ —
India and Vietnam — have grown even faster. Although
foreign direct investment has been important, the roles
of domestic conglomerates and even state investment
have been significant and unique. Second, Asia’s
supermarket revolution has exhibited unique pathways of retail diffusion
and procurement system change. There has been ‘precocious’ penetration
of rural towns by rural supermarkets and rural business hubs, emergence
of penetration of fresh produce retail that took much longer to initiate
in other regions, and emergence of Asian retail developing-country multinational
chains. In procurement, a symbiosis between modern retail and the
emerging and consolidating modern food processing and logistics sectors
has arisen. Third, several approaches are being tried to link small farmers to
supermarkets. Some are unique to Asia, for example assembling into a ‘hub’
or ‘platform’ or ‘park’ the various companies and services that link farmers
to modern markets. Other approaches relatively new to Asia are found
elsewhere, especially in Latin America, including ‘bringing modern markets
to farmers’ by establishing collection centres and multi-pronged collection
cum service provision arrangements, and forming market cooperatives and
farmer companies to help small farmers access supermarkets.