What it is
The Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture; authors Zeballos, Dong and Islamaj, published January 2023.
Economic Research Report 314 measures market concentration in food retail from 1990 to 2019 at four geographic levels. The Herfindahl-Hirschman index in 2019 was 593 nationally, 1,332 by state, 1,881 by metropolitan area and 3,737 by county. By county type it was 2,758 in metro counties, 2,794 in large non-metro counties, 4,053 in small non-metro counties and 5,584 in rural ones.
National concentration rose 458% over the period; county-level concentration rose 94%. The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission treat an index above 2,500 as highly concentrated, which county and rural markets exceed and the national market does not.
What the commerce leader should take from it
- The shopper does not buy groceries nationally. In the county, and above all in the rural county, the choice of store is small and getting smaller.
- The store in the county with one supermarket is the one the SNAP finding describes: it carries the households the online channel leaves out.
- The data are from 2019, before the pandemic and before the largest recent merger attempt.
Where to start
Read with finding 2.2. Where a county has one supermarket, the households that cannot pay online drive in for the smallest carts at the busiest hours; the concentration figures say how many counties that is.
Keep in mind
Data to 2019. County and rural indexes exceed the regulators’ threshold; the national index does not, which is the point of the study and the reason a national market share is a poor guide to a shopper’s choice.
Where the report uses it
Read during the report design; not cited in a finding or a perspective yet.