Development of financial performance of food retailers as an attribute behind the increase of food insecurity in selected Central and Eastern European Countries

  • Received May 29, 2023;
    Accepted December 3, 2023;
    Published December 15, 2023
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/imfi.20(4).2023.33
  • Article Info
    Volume 20 2023, Issue #4, pp. 416-433
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Food insecurity is not a new phenomenon even in leading European economies, but this complex problem area is facing new global challenges. This article traces the research gap in addressing food insecurity by focusing on the role of food retail chains in the former “Eastern Bloc” in light of unprecedented food price inflation and the resulting scale of demand for the services of food banks. Through empirical analysis of secondary financial corporate data, a low level of their profitability in the period of 2011–2019 was revealed, which preceded the synchronicity of two unexpected global economic downturns. Specifically, Return on Sales for food retailers located in the Czech Republic and Hungary was generally below 2%, offset by higher Total Asset Turnover figures, consistent with the need to extend the volume of goods for sale. Development in profitability in selected newer EU member states is just as significantly similar to the situation in Ukraine. The mutual interaction of factors of economic size and the country of residence of business was analyzed regarding a possible influence on their financial performance. This study concluded that the presence of unresolved market distortions can both lead to increased food insecurity and, paradoxically, contribute to increased food waste.

Acknowledgment
The authors are thankful to the Internal Grant Agency of Mendel University in Brno for financial support to carry out this research as the partial output of the project No. IGA-PEF-TP-23-015 “Zajišťování výživových potřeb obyvatelstva vzhledem k aktuálním výzvám v oblasti regenerativních přístupů při vykonávání hospodářských činností podniků agropotravinářského komplexu se zaměřením na roli tuzemských potravinových bank”.

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    • Figure 1. Dynamic breakdown of indicator ROE according to the economic size of food retailers in selected countries in 2011–2019
    • Figure 2. Dynamic breakdown of the ROA indicator according to the economic size of food retailers in selected countries in 2011–2019
    • Figure 3. Two-way ANOVA interaction plot regarding the studied factors – size and country of the basement for the indicator ROE (subch. 3A) and its breakdown components ROS (subch. 3B) and TAT (subch. 3C) in the sample of businesses based in Visegrad 4 me
    • Figure 4. Two-way ANOVA interaction plot regarding the studied factors; size and country of the basement for the indicator ROE (subch. 4A), and its breakdown components ROS (subch. 4B), and TAT (subch. 4C) in the sample of businesses based in Czechia, Hun
    • Figure 5. Factorial ANOVA results using categorical predictors for the indicator ROE (5A) and its decomponents ROS (5B), TAT (5C) for food retailers in selected Visegrad 4 and Baltic countries in 2011–2019
    • Table 1. Number of enterprises in the sample for categories of economic size of observed active food retailers in 2019
    • Table 2. Results of testing effects of all intended factors on indicators ROE, ROS and TAT for a group of countries: Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland
    • Table 3. Results of the post hoc Scheffe test regarding the country effect for homogenous group identification within observed values of indicators ROE, ROS and TAT among selected Visegrad 4 member countries
    • Table 4. Results of the post hoc Scheffe test of the economic size effect for homogenous groups within observed values of the indicator TAT and the size effect
    • Table 5. Results of testing effects of all intended factors on indicators ROE, ROS and TAT for a group of countries: Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland
    • Table 6. Results of the post hoc Scheffe test regarding the country effect for homogenous group identification within observed values of indicators ROE, ROS, and TAT in the sample of countries: Czechia, Hungary, and Ukraine
    • Table 7. Results of the post hoc Scheffe test for homogenous groups within observed values of indicator TAT and the size effect among samples in Czechia, Hungary, and Ukraine
    • Table 8. Results of testing effects of all intended factors for countries Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania regarding the observed indicators ROE, ROS, and TAT
    • Table 9. Results of the post hoc Scheffe test for homogenous groups within the observed values of the ROE indicator and the country effect regarding the samples of Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
    • Table 10. Results of the post hoc Scheffe test for homogenous groups within observed values of the ROS indicator and the country effect regarding the sample of Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
    • Table 11. Results of the post hoc Scheffe test for homogenous groups within the observed values of the indicator TAT and the country effect regarding sample of Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
    • Conceptualization
      Oksana Dubanych, Jan Vavřina, Josef Polák
    • Formal Analysis
      Oksana Dubanych, Josef Polák
    • Funding acquisition
      Oksana Dubanych, Jan Vavřina
    • Methodology
      Oksana Dubanych, Jan Vavřina
    • Resources
      Oksana Dubanych, Josef Polák
    • Software
      Oksana Dubanych, Jan Vavřina
    • Writing – original draft
      Oksana Dubanych, Jan Vavřina, Josef Polák
    • Writing – review & editing
      Oksana Dubanych, Jan Vavřina, Josef Polák
    • Project administration
      Jan Vavřina
    • Supervision
      Jan Vavřina