Supplier-retailer relationships in the food industry vary markedly from one subsector to another. This paper aims to explain the diversity in governance structures encountered in three sectors of food products (dairy products, wine and counterseason fruit), with a model grounded in the New Institutional Economics. The model emphasizes consumers' preferences and information issues, which play a key role in the supplier-retailer transactions environment. The basic NIE model is specified and applied to the French retail food industry, using the three products mentioned above. In this context, we use the model to explore in more detail the factors that play a key role in NIE analysis (uncertainty, asset specificity), discuss what the appropriate unit of analysis should be, and analyze the principles guiding the choice of governance structures. This application also allows us to incorporate into the model the critical importance of quality conventions and of technical progress in dealing with information to the choice of specific assets and governance structures in the different subsectors. The paper is primarily programmatic.
