Food commerce upshots with their former locus in the economy with respect to the pandemic 2020 - a drawback or an aid in South Kolkata, West Bengal

Background: The Food Commerce industry has flourished massively during the past decade in South Kolkata in West Bengal, with new outlets opening every now and then, so much so that this region is known as 'Food Street'. Regardless of their scale of operations, each of these outlets had well established themselves, catering to their respective target markets and earning decent amount of revenue over the years. However, this growth suffered a setback owing to the origin of novel Coronavirus SARS-n-CoV-2. The growth rate declined to a great extent over the span of two years, with recent studies showing an overall stunted growth rate. Even though online marketing of these outlets and selling the food through delivery apps have aided the entrepreneurs, the cost to revenue ratio is not at par with that of the times before the pandemic hit. Overall, the pandemic has impacted the eateries in more way than initially imagined. Objectives: (a) To reveal the various problems and scenarios of managing food business during the Covid-19 pandemic in South Kolkata region;(b) To compare the present scenario of the food industry with how things were before prior to the pandemic to understand the nature of change during this time frame;and, (c) To describe the challenges and methods implemented by the food retail business entrepreneurs and managers of the randomly selected establishments to hold a steady business flow during the Covid-19 pandemic. Methodology: The study follows a descriptive research design. Therefore, the research will describe the characteristics of the sample under study. The food outlets of South Kolkata have been chosen as the study location. 100 respondents were selected. The respondents are those who consume food from these outlets such that they represent the wider target market of the 'Food Street'. Both Primary Data and Secondary Data were used. Primary Data was collected through sample survey. Random Sampling technique was used to choose the respondents. The study used quantitative data, therefore, only Quantitative analysis was performed. Results: The Research was able to depict the comparison between the present scenario and the situation prior to the pandemic. The study was able to reveal the challenges and problems that the food outlets had to suffer from. Also, the methods or strategies taken up by the entrepreneurs of these outlets to overcome the pandemic were discovered. 46% of the respondents opted for "Mobile Food Delivery" as their strategy to revive from losses. Conclusion: With COVID-19 having altered - and still in the process of altering - the definition of "normal" across the world, most industries are still scrambling to adjust. The effect on the restaurant industry has been particularly dramatic. With restaurants and pubs closed for sit-down service, many establishments are struggling to keep their heads above water. The food outlets located in South Kolkata shares the same fate and the research is able to highlight this effectively.

Digital marketing for youth of India: current status and future opportunities

Now days Digital Marketing is a booming career options today in India. With striking features like cost-effectiveness, instant response, flexibility, convenience, effectiveness digital marketing is making a strong impact in the world of marketing and advertising. According to data available, total advertising industry is worth 7.94 billion dollar in India. Out of which 1.78 Billion dollar is getting spend on digital marketing including mobile advertisements. It was continue to increase at a growth rate of 26% in 2019 and now Indian advertising industry is continue to increase about 33.5 percent at present. People are spending a lot of time on mobiles and social media. By the current year data issurprising with over 20 lakh jobs opportunities are providedby the industry in the digital marketing domain. The internet industry in India is likely to reach 250 billion dollar by 2020 with the 7.5 per cent contribution in GDP in service sector. The number of internet users in India is expected to reach 900 million by 2025. Since India's cost competitiveness in providing digital services, it is approximately 3-4 times cheaper than the United States of America (SA). India has come out on top with the highest proportion of digital talent in the country at 76 per cent compared to the global average of 56 per cent. The role of digital marketing amid the COVID-19 pendemichas become more and more important all the time. As a result there is rising interest and investment it digital marketing that span the globes we have never seen this much profound respect and understanding digital marketing before. The future of digital marketing looks brighter than ever and it only continues to gain more and more momentum as times goes on. A study done by eMarketer in February 2019 and found that online spend had officially exceeded that of offline for the first time and now accounted for half of all global ad spend. The same study predicted that by 2023 digital ad spend will account for two third of global media spend, a market estimated to be worth $333.25. Given that at the turn of the 21st century digital accounted for just 3% of global spend its clear to see that the shift we have been observing is ramping up in pace. Lockdown has not just seen changes in the internet used for communication through. The retail sales index time series (DRSI) published a dataset showing internet sales as the percentage of total retail sales ratio in percent in June 2021. The uptick in online sales shown from spring 2020 is remarkable that the value of internet sales as the percentage of total retail sales went from 18.9% in February 2020 to 32.8% in May 2020 with no stallin site going in to the summer. Interestingly Hermes, the delivery and logistics company, specialized in delivering on line purchases', has announce that they will be recruiting more than 10000 new team members in a direct response to the increase in online shopping during lockdown. To see the importance of digitization. The Digital Indian programme was launched over a year ago in 2015. The program has now moved from the planning phase towards execution. Due to Digital India programme the IT industry will get tremendous growth in coming years and also Indian digital industry is expected to grow to US 350 billion dollar by 2025. It will provide approximately 5-8 lak hs digital jobs in marketing and content development continuously by 2030.

The impact of temporary COVID-19 legislative moves on the ability of food enterprises to pivot in Arizona. (Special Issue: The impact of the covid-19 pandemic and the foodservice industries.)

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted shortfalls in the U.S. food system, exposing how regulatory processes shape access to the market. This paper builds on ongoing research following the impact of shut-down orders on alcohol retail via small restaurants and breweries in Arizona and examines the impacts of regulatory shifts on the ability of these food enterprises to pivot. We highlight how the concept of the pivot creates expectations of individual businesses ability to be resilient to shocks. Responses within Arizona to COVID-19 induced systemic failures, demonstrate that bottom-up pivots from small businesses can creatively and quickly meet local community needs. However, those efforts were stymied by state government and top-down approaches that proved incapable of pivoting to meet local needs. Through this case study, we highlight the need and opportunity for further examination of the interplay between regulatory agencies and small businesses in times of crisis. We invite others into the work of creating guidelines for pivoting that facilitate bottom-up and top-down collaboration while ensuring the voice and agency of different players.

We Are All in This Together! Instore-Interactions in a Shopping Environment Disrupted by Covid-19: An Abstract

Shopping in stores has always been and will always remain a social activity. The shopping experience is influenced by the mere social presence of other people in the store (e.g. by crowded aisles and queuing at the checkout), as well as by social encounters with shoppers and retail personnel (Argo et al., 2005;Dahm et al., 2018;Parker & Ward, 2000). In an exploratory study, 76 consumers were invited to share their experiences while shopping in brick and mortar stores during the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the critical incident technique, participants were specifically prompted to report positive and negative interactions with other shoppers. The results indicate that shopping in times of COVID-19 is rich in both verbal and non-verbal social interactions. Most of the shoppers miss the pre-pandemic situation and feel at least to some extent uneasy or uncomfortable. New social norms were established quickly and provide a feeling of safety for many customers. Shoppers expect others to comply with the new rules, but in a more tense and hectic social environment incidents of consumer misbehavior occur frequently. The authors could identify several categories of consumer misbehavior: (1) mask sloppiness, (2) not keeping a safe distance, (3) contamination by touching, (4) hoarding and (5) policing or lecturing others. The most surprising of these categories was confronting others about their misconduct, i.e. one type of misbehavior sparking another one. While consumers blame other shoppers for their misbehavior they still deem the retailer responsible for recovering the situation. They expect retail employees to interfere and restore order. Besides this role of a referee (1) in customer-to-customer interactions, three other roles of the sales staff were found in the research: (2) enforcer of COVID-rules, (3) role model for good practice behavior, and (4) friendly face giving comfort. Results of this study hint at a complex relationship between customer-to-customer and customer-to-personnel interactions. This calls for more research on the role of retail employees as moderators of encounters between shoppers. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

29th Annual Conference SIEA 2021, Verona, Italy, 30 September-1 October 2021

Four studies from the 29th Annual Conference of the Italian Association of Agri-Food Economics are presented. These studies analyse the Italian agri-food system from four different angles: the circular economy, retailer supply of sustainable food, food consumer preferences, and transaction costs. They are complementary in dealing with sustainability and the COVID-19 impact on the agri-food supply chain, and offer interesting new perspectives on these topics.

Modelling retail inventory pricing policies under service level and promotional efforts during COVID-19.

Most supply chain and production systems faced multiple manufacturing and delivery challenges during COVID-19 and transformed their supply chain for improved customer service. These challenges are mostly related to stocking and managing the inventory flow throughout the supply chain (from manufacturer to end consumer). Due to the COVID-19 travel and movement restrictions, inventory reorganisation is necessary for fulfilling consumer demand with adequate service facilities. The safety and serviceability of inventory consumption is the primary concern of many retail grocery stores and consumers. Maintaining the supply of groceries items during and post COVID-19 time without disruption is a real operational and policy challenge. Therefore, this research tries to solve an inventory pricing mechanism and retailer's profit under the optimal service level and retailers' promotional efforts. The proposed optimisation model is validated in the grocery retail sector. The grocery retail market situation is modelled when the demand for the grocery product (which may be essential items) and selling price depending on the investment in item promotional effort and consumer serviceability. The retail grocery store's investment in the product promotional efforts, such as awareness of the item availability and no-contact delivery which, may attract consumers. Therefore, the proposed inventory consumption is modelled with an optimisation problem to maximise the store profit with the optimal investment in promotional activities and service facilities to the consumers and maintain an optimal replenishment cycle. The optimisation model is tested with three different cases (no investment in promotional efforts, no investment in service facility, and investment in both) of investment to maximise the retailer's profit and stock availability. The optimality results depicted that investment in promotional efforts and service facility givens higher profit to the retailer. The proposed optimisation model's policy implications would help grocery retail store managers to develop operational strategies for maximising profit with the optimal service level and promotional efforts.

Making the most of competitive socialising

This article indicates that the massive impact of COVID-19 on the retail sector presents opportunities to reimagine the design, branding and operations of leisure spaces. The rise of social entertainment centres and competitive socialising is highlighted.

Analysis on the extent of obstacles faced by retailers during COVID lockdown period

In India, this pandemic has begun out touching stores from the last week of March 2020 to date. The lockdown introduced through the authorities has created all of the stores' face degrowth of their commercial enterprise. Indian selling is dynamic in nature and it's to stand the adjustments obligatory through the environment. Retailers worry the revival might conjointly additionally get similarly hit withinside the next few weeks because of stricter curbs consisting of early closures, weekend lockdowns, and department stores being advised to are trying for Covid-bad reports. Still, manufacturers stated overall commercial enterprise is but to experience the warmth on the grounds that eCommerce has surged in those markets, compensating for the loss. Bharat noticed the world's second-biggest Covid-19 the outbreak, necessitating again-to-again lockdowns and nearby shutdowns, that hit trade. Retailers still grapple with low footfalls in high-street stores and malls despite the ultimate easing of curbs. Retailers predict an impact on client footfalls in their stores however aforementioned they're observation the stocks, and have additionally advised to the govt. to manage the case with the assistance of technology and knowledge instead of discretional lockdowns. Either the result is positive or negative this COVID-19 has been a crucial issue for the retail business to possess new facets.

Marketing skills and sanitary status of retail meat shops in relation to butchers' educational background in Maharashtra

In India meat production is an unorganized business, although, ideally the butchers should possess basic education along sound understanding of sanitary practices and have standard infrastructure promoting meat business. A study was carried out in year 2021 to study the impact of butchers' education on marketing skills and sanitary status of retail meat shops. The data was collected on 118 butchers' shop through interview method. The study revealed that 42.37 per cent of the respondents had completed their secondary education with average age between 25-35 years. The study showed that 67.80 percent respondents running butchery as family business without undergoing any professional training. Butcher shops (42.37%) sales both chicken and mutton of which 68.64 and 80.51 per cent shops had registration with FSSAI and local body, respectively. COVID-19 has not affected meat business as compare to various religious festivals. Respondents (65.25%) believed that online marketing by corporate companies may not affect local meat business. Majority of butchers (85.59%) were unaware about modern slaughtering equipments. Considering the findings, a comprehensive skill development programme may be initiated on hygienic meat.

COVID-19 and the U.S. meat and poultry supply chains

This paper uses data from a variety of sources to describe the changes to meat and poultry supply chains in 2020. At the beginning of 2020, cattle and hog slaughter rates were higher than in 2019, but they began to decline in April, reaching a low the week ending May 2, 2020, when slaughter for cattle and hogs was only 65 percent of that week's 2019 slaughter. Slaughter rates rebounded by June, although a backlog of animals still needed to be processed. From mid-April to mid-June 2020, the fall in slaughter rates combined with an increase in retail demand drove a large margin between wholesale meat and livestock prices. Retail purchases of meat at grocery stores surged the week ending March 15, 2020, to 75 percent above that week's 2019 meat sales. At the same time, food purchases at restaurants and other food-service establishments plummeted. High cold storage stocks of meat in early 2020 may have helped grocery retailers maintain high levels of sales during the supply disruptions in April and May 2020. Retail purchases remained higher for most remaining weeks of 2020 compared to 2019.

Distributional impacts of retail vaccine availability

As countries transition from facing COVID-19 vaccine supply shortfalls to requiring novel strategies to facilitate vaccination, modern retail chains-often designed and located to target particular demographic groups-are a potential vaccine delivery vehicle. Using geospatial data, we quantify the proximity to vaccines created by a U.S. federal program that distributes vaccines to commercial retail pharmacies. We then quantify the impact of a proposal to provide vaccines at Dollar General, a low-priced general merchandise retailer. We show that adding Dollar General to the federal program would substantially decrease the distance to vaccine sites for low-income and minority U.S. households.

Dairy value chains during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ethiopia: evidence from cascading value chain surveys before and during the pandemic

The researchers combine in-person survey data collected in February 2018 with phone survey data collected in June and September 2021 to study how dairy value chains in Ethiopia have coped with the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on the major dairy value chain connecting farmers in North and West Shewa as well as peri-urban and urban producers in and around Addis Ababa to consumers in Addis Ababa, the researchers applied a cascading survey approach in which the researchers collected data at all levels of the value chain: dairy farmers, rural wholesalers, and urban retailers. In June and September 2021, the researchers see little evidence that the pandemic is exerting a negative effect on the dairy value chain actors. Nine percent of the dairy farmers exited the business between February 2018 and June 2021, but these exits were not caused by the pandemic. Milk yields have increased considerably between 2018 and 2021, particularly among cross-bred cow types. Meanwhile, sales patterns and sales destinations among farmers have remained similar since 2018. In 2021, farmers are processing more and the decision to process or not seems to be formed by the changes in the relative prices of liquid milk and processed dairy products. The researchers see suggestive evidence of a decline in credit availability and access to extension services. Same is true for the availability of daily workers, though not many farmers hire external help. Among farmers, by far the main concern relate to surging feed prices that increased since the onset of the pandemic and June 2021 by 80 to 100 percent. As a result, farmers report purchasing less feed and this is reducing milk yields, and thus farmer incomes. Rural traders also seem unaffected by the pandemic. The turnover among liquid milk traders is high with 36 percent of the milk wholesalers interviewed in February 2018 reported to have stopped trading dairy products by September 2021. However, only few reported that the pandemic was a factor in their decision to quit the business. The turnover among butter traders was smaller with 4 out of 30 traders quitting between February 2018 and September 2021. The researchers see no dramatic changes in procurement and sales destinations between 2018 and 2021. Traders report that the competition in their sector has increased since February 2020. Meanwhile, the availability of labor at the midstream segment of the value chain has remained the same over time. The main concern among at this segment of the value chain relates to limited supply of milk and butter from rural areas. The impact of the pandemic seems also minimal at the retail level. About 29 percent of the retail traders had quit the business since February 2018, mostly because their business was no longer profitable. Eight out of the 49 retailers that exited the sector attributed their exit, at least partly, to the pandemic. Comparison of the data collected in 2018 and 2021 reveals that the traded quantities have increased in the dairy retail sector. However, when asked to compare to the situation just before the pandemic was declared, most traders report selling less and having fewer clients now. The researchers see little change in labor use at the retail level across the survey years. Shortage of dairy coming into Addis Ababa was highlighted as the main concern among retail traders. In line with the high general inflation in Ethiopia over the past years, prices of liquid milk have increased considerably in the last three years. However, when expressed in USD terms, prices of milk have remained surprisingly stable (0.92 USD/liter in 2018 and 0.91 USD/liter in 2021). Comparing the farmgate and retail prices reveal that farm share (i.e., the share of the final retail price that is received by the farmer) increased slightly between 2018 and 2021. Finally, the researchers see no evidence that increases in post-harvest losses. The physical quantities wasted seem very low, which is in line with the more careful analysis conducted by Minten, Tamru, and Reardon (2020). If anything, these losses at the