Strategies of differentiation by quality on beef meat : what is the place for Limousine meat in modern retail food distribution ?

Abstract

Confronted with a major sanitary crisis, the French beef meat market has experienced important changes since 1996. Thus, breeders, processors and retailers have been involved in steps of differentiation by quality: this increased segmentation of the offer is based on the geographical origin of the animals, their racial type (beef breed vs dairy races) and largely uses quality brands guaranteed by the public authorities. In the Limousine Region, the use of official brands of quality has progressed since the 1970’s in retail butcher shops and the stakeholders of this area intend to exploit the current context to diversify their sales of the Limousine breed meat towards hyper-markets and supermarkets.

The study was based on talks of people in charge of the central purchasing department of major French retailers and also uses the results of a telephone inquiry of 100 professionals in charge of fresh meat stores. Its objective was to establish the competitive position (forces/weaknesses) of the Limousine meat in hyper-markets and supermarkets and to propose axes of work to increase its diffusion in this channel. The authors showed that the weak penetration of the Limousine beef meat (approximately 25 000 tonnes carcass equivalent in 1999) is not due to a negative appreciation of the quality of the product but it rather results from the high price and especially from the absence of a co-ordinated policy on behalf of offerers (atomisation of the collecting structures, multiplicity of the identification steps). This, in turn, does not enable them to fulfil the requirements of the multiple retailer groups in an optimal way.