Vegetariska alternativ till kött i svenska livsmedelsbutiker : En fallstudie om utbud, hinder och drivkrafter

Sammanfattning: A study of European households found that Food and drink causes a fourth of the total various environmental impacts. Globally does the food sector account for 22 % of all the greenhouse gas emissions. The climate impact from different foods do however vary significantly, and meat products does generally cause higher greenhouse gas emissions than plant-based foods. A reduction of the meat consumption is suggested by many researchers as one of the most important measures in order to move towards a more sustainable food consumption and production. The grocery retailers have an important role as gatekeepers between the consumer and the products, and the aim of this thesis is to study a transition towards a larger range and increased sales of plant-based protein alternatives to meat from the retailers’ perspective. It does so by attempting to identify drivers and barriers from their point of view. Data was collected through interviews with representatives for the largest retailer groups (n=3) and interviews with store managers (n=8) as well as by examining the product range in the stores (n=10). Grocery stores were located in two different cities; the district Södermalm in central Stockholm and Östersund, a mid-sized town in the Northern parts of Sweden. The results from the interviews showed an increase in the range as well as the sales of vegetarian products at all the participating retailers and stores, and all the interviewees believed that this will continue to increase even further in the future. Flexitarians and young people stands out as the main groups of consumers who buy these products and thus lies behind this increase. What drives the consumers has been identified as an increased awareness, an improved product range and media attention. From the retailers’ perspective it is also now considered a competitive advantage to offer an attractive range of these products. Price has been identified as one of the main barriers for a future expansion of the sales these vegetarian alternatives, but several of the participants also believed that a lot of people are not at all interested in lowering their meat consumption which would be a central obstacle to overcome to get a wide spread in society as a whole. Even if the products have improved recently they may still not be attractive enough to be considered as an alternative for all consumers. The findings also indicate that there is a relatively small difference between the two participating cities, with the main exception that the stores at Södermalm in general offers more perishable vegetarian alternatives than the stores in Östersund does. The most significant differences, regarding product range, was found within ICA (Sweden’s largest food retailer) where the stores are privately owned and the store managers can choose assortment which differs from the other two large retailers Axfood and Coop where it is centrally controlled. The representatives from the retailer groups had rather different views on their ownrole in the development of the vegetarian alternatives but also on what future measures they believed are needed for a future development and impact. This has consequences for the consumers as the range differs to a large degree, to some extent between the different retailer groups, but mainly within the largest one (ICA). The results from this study cannot be generalised, but may provide new insights to a perspective that seems to not have been studied before and might constitute a point of departure for future research.