Food waste reduction practices: an analysis from the perspective of resource based view

Abstract

Food waste is a very important issue of sustainability and can be found throughout the supply chain, from production to consumption. Retailing is a special case because when it seeks to reduce its own waste, it ultimately transfers costs to the whole chain, transferring, for example, to suppliers and consumers. This is due to strict quality standards, return policies and poorly designed promotions that can be solved to reduce waste in the chain. The discussion of how to reduce retail waste is still fragmented in the literature and although it presents some practices to reduce it, there is still no clear evidence on which and how some facilitators / barriers influence the implementation of these practices in the context of FLV distribution (fruits, vegetables and greens) in Brazil. This research project aims to analyze the facilitators/barriers that influence the implementation of food waste reduction practices in the dyad formed between supplier and supermarket chain. To do so, the theoretical RBV (Resourced Based View) lens will be used to understand what internal resources can be used by retail to put into practice waste reduction. In addition to a review of the main constructs of RBV, a content analysis will be done with the QDA Miner qualitative software for intracase and cross-case analysis of the dyad interviews, already collected in a broader Research Grant project funded by FAPESP. The research hopes to contribute to the enrichment of literature, identifying through internal resources of the RBV, the barriers and facilitators to implementing practices to reduce waste in the context of the Brazilian retail.