Measuring Distributive and Procedural Justice: An Exploratory Investigation of the Fairness of Retailer-supplier Relationships in the UK Food Industry

A review of the Supermarkets’ Code of Practice by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in 2004 noted the continuing dissatisfaction with, and lack of evidence regarding, the impact of the Code on retailer-supplier relationships. This paper reports the findings of a survey sent to supermarket suppliers five months after the supermarkets’ Code of Practice was introduced in March 2002. to gain their views of the integrity and fairness of their trading relationships with the UK supermarkets. The results were used to compare and rank supermarkets’ performance in their terms of trade with suppliers as part of a 5 year project co-ordinated by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), designed to benchmark and track comparative supermarket performance. The results provide evidence that some retailers operate with integrity and fairness and do not abuse their position of market power in their relationships with suppliers, but show that for others, there is considerable room for improvement. They also show that since the introduction of the Code of Practice there has been no change or improvement in buying practices providing evidence that the code is ineffective.