Consumer often 'locked' in supermarket monopoly

One out of every four Dutch consumers needs to travel more than 1 kilometer extra to reach another supermarket and ignore the one closest to his home. This is revealed by research of economists of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Groningen. They published their results in the magazine 'Economisch Statistische Berichten' (ESB).

It is called a 'spatial monopoly', when a consumer needs to spend too much travel costs on a similar product in a competing store that is situated farther away. The economists mapped this phenomena for supermarkets all over the Netherlands. Supermarkets who profit most of spatial monopolies are Albert Heijn and Jumbo.

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