Price Transparency Measures in the Food Retailing Sector

In the course of the general price increase originally induced by energy prices, food prices in Austria also rose sharply. Due to the highly concentrated market structure of the food trade, there were also very soon calls for competition-activating measures. One way to stimulate competition is to increase price transparency in markets. In a digitalised economy, Internet-based price comparison portals operated for this purpose have become established for a wide range of products. The goal of any government intervention to increase price transparency must be to strengthen competition, which is why the potential and risks of measures to increase price transparency in the food trade have to be weighed against each other carefully so as not to achieve the opposite effect of restricting competition.