Revisiting the US Food Retail Consolidation Wave: Regulation, Market Power and Spatial Outcomes

This paper revisits Neil Wrigley’s influential research that explored the corporate restructuring of the US food retail sector, which was characterised by a focus on the spatial implications of merger activity, market concentration and competition regulation. It assesses the importance of this scholarship in a contemporary context, tracking these competitive and regulatory trends from a decade ago to the present. This is of particular interest given the continued concentration of market power and related competitive shake-out; the innovative experimentation with new store formats; anti-trust rulings concerning market definition by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC); and the challenges faced by European entrants to the market.