Essays on e-commerce in the food retail industry

E-commerce is booming, and the food sector is no exception. My research focuses on e-commerce in the food sector. The two first chapters analyze the impact of the online distribution channel on French grocery shopping. In Chapter 1, using purchase data, I develop a structural econometric model to estimate the effect of the emergence of online distribution channels on consumer surplus, retail competition, and profit sharing between retailers and manufacturers in the soft drink sector. In Chapter 2, I use a store choice model to estimate consumer preferences for stores and not for brands to study the impact of the online distribution channel in retail competition, not on a single market like in the first chapter but on the whole French retail food industry. The results of the first chapter suggest that e-commerce is profitable to manufacturers due to an increase in wholesale margins. The two first chapters show that e-commerce leads to increased consumer surplus, and the effect on retailers' profits is correlated with their online strategy. Chapter 3 focuses on consumer behavior in traditional stores versus online. I find lower own-price elasticities offline than online and that households are more loyal to a retail group online than offline.