Local food has not escaped the attention of academia. In early 2010, Choices Magazine had an entire theme focused on Local Food - Perceptions, Prospects, and Policies. In one of the articles, Local Food Consumers: How Motivations and Perceptions Translate to Buying Behavior, Yuko Onozaka, Gretchen Nurse, and Dawn Thilmany McFadden delve into why consumers purchase local food and in which venue they choose to shop. The authors found that more people (82%) said they had bought locally grown produce than had bought organic produce (50%). While local food has no formal definition, over 70% of survey respondents considered food grown within a 50-mile radius to be local.

The first part of the study focused on what consumers think of local food. The authors found the highest percentage of consumers assigned importance to 'proven health benefits' when shopping for local foods. The next 3 most important factors were 'supporting the local economy,' 'farmers receiving fair share of economic returns,' and 'maintaining local farmland.' They also found that most consumers felt local produce was superior in terms of 'freshness,' 'eating quality,' and 'nutritional value.' In addition, consumers perceived that local food helped the local economy more and provided fairer returns to farmers than its non-local counterpart.

In the second part of the study, the authors looked at whether consumer perceptions motivated where people shopped and if consumers believed their actions had an effect on the food system. The study found shoppers who want to support their local community, purchase food through farmers markets and direct farm purchases, while those concerned with environmental impact and pesticide use shop, at natural food stores. Perhaps one of the most interesting findings from the study is people who shop at farmers markets and through direct farm purchases, report a stronger belief their actions matter. They also report the opinion of the people in their life matters more in their purchasing decisions. Those that shopped at natural food stores believed their actions mattered more than those who shopped at supermarkets, but less than those who shopped at direct markets. The authors close by saying that since local and direct food buyers have a relatively high concern for the environment, "policies to support local and direct markets seem complementary to efforts to preserve farmland and reinvigorate local economies."

Drawing on a body of literature in marketing and agricultural economics, Volpe sets up an empirical model to test supermarket performance using variables that relate to market structure, consumer demographics, and advertising and pricing strategies. Volpe found both expected and unexpected results. Consistent with the literature, Volpe found that being in direct competition with a hypermarket had a negative effect on supermarket performance. However, this negative effect was smaller for larger supermarkets than for small supermarkets. While the body of literature comparing everyday low pricing (EDLP) and high-low pricing (HLP) is largely inconclusive, the results of this research found there is some evidence that supermarkets using EDLP had higher sales per square foot than those using HLP. In addition, using EDLP strategies when in direct competition with a hypermarket (whose strategy is usually EDLP) can mitigate some of the negative performance effects.

Contrary to the literature, Volpe found that increased private label product sales do not increase store performance. He states that the recent increase in private labels is good for consumers and private label manufacturers, but not retailers. The literature also shows that increased private label sales results in higher food prices overall. For these reasons, Volpe predicts that private label growth will slow down. He also states that use of technology had a significant effect on performance and more research is needed to study how it can improve supermarket performance. Since supermarkets who compete directly with hypermarkets have decreased performance relative to those who don't, Volpe argues it is important to understand how different factors influence supermarket performance.

Awada and Yiannaka look at a variety of cases including going from a no COOL to a voluntary COOL regime and a voluntary to a mandatory COOL regime. The study looks at both of these scenarios within vertical and horizontal product differentiation. Vertical product differentiation is when COOL is indicative of the products quality and horizontal product differentiation is when COOL is not indicative of a products quality, but gives information that allows consumers to express support for a particular country's economy. The study showed that both market and welfare effects of COOL were the same regardless of vertical or horizontal product differentiation.

While vertical or horizontal product differentiation didn't matter, the same could not be said moving to a mandatory COOL system from a no COOL or from a voluntary COOL system. The authors found the market effect of a mandatory system depended on relative prices of products and the strength of the general consumers' preference to labeled products. They found the higher the price of the labeled item and the lower the preference for the item, will cause the labeled product to have a smaller market share. Awada and Yiannaka also found that when moving from a no COOL to a mandatory COOL regime, there are welfare losses and gains. Consumers with strong preferences for COOL saw welfare gains due to new information, while those with little to no preference saw welfare losses due to increased prices and lack of an unlabeled product. However, when moving from voluntary to mandatory COOL there were undisputed welfare losses as those with a strong preference for COOL saw no welfare change and those with little to no preferences saw higher prices and the disappearance of the unlabeled product. The size of these welfare losses and gains ultimately depends on how much consumers value COOL products.

Graph from UN FAO, 2012

While commodity prices were at historical highs in early 2011, U.S. food price increases paled in comparison to global food price increases. In Will U.S. Food Prices Follow Global Trends? found in the 3rd issue of 2011's The Main Street Economist published by The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Jason Henderson evaluates why the U.S. has been relatively unaffected by these commodity price increases. Henderson explains that consumers in the United States eat more processed and prepared food than the rest of the world so labor markets have a bigger influence on U.S. food prices. He states that only about $0.15 of every retail dollar spent of food in the United States is to pay for farm commodities while labor costs account for about half of every retail dollar spent on food.

Henderson states that since labor costs are the largest contributor to food prices, in the future it is likely that changes in U.S. food prices will follow wages and economic growth more than commodity prices. He speculates that with slow wage growth, the price of food away from home will grow more slowly (2%-3%) than the price of food at home (3%-4%) in 2012. He also states that even if global commodity prices continue to rise, modest wage growth in the U.S. will buffer those effects on U.S. food prices. However, the developing world and even the poor in the United States will feel the effects of higher food prices as the poorest 20% spend about 1/3 of their income on food, and ¾ of their food budget on food at home.