Well before COVID-19 struck, industry watchers saw the importance of online grocery shopping, with many pundits predicting slow but steady growth. However, COVID-19 promoted a rather dramatic expansion of online grocery shopping. Supporting this growth was the expansion of the online grocery pilots of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), with nearly 90% of SNAP households now having access to these pilot programs. While the widespread availability and use of online grocery shopping is a benefit to many consumers in terms of convenience and safety, online shopping platforms are curated environments. The potential of tools like dynamic pricing or online nudges could have substantial implications for consumers and producers.
C-FARE has assembled a panel of experts to discuss the economic and policy issues related to online food retail.
Dr. Norbert Wilson will lead off the panel with an overview of the potential implications of the evolving online shopping environment and the societal implications of these platforms. Dr. Sean Cash will then describe the failure of online food retailers to consistently provide nutrition information that is otherwise required and expected in conventional environments and discuss possible repercussions of these incongruencies. Prof. Jennifer Pomeranz will continue to describe the legal challenges to, and possible remedies for, addressing the current deficits in the information available to online food shoppers.
Meet the panelists
Norbert Wilson is a Professor of Food, Economics, and Community at the Duke Divinity School with a secondary appointment in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He is the president-elect of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA). Norbert’s research touches on several food issues, such as access, choice, and food waste.
Sean B. Cash is a C-FARE Board member, and the Bergstrom Foundation Professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. He is an economist who studies issues of consumer behavior around food and nutrition, as well as economic aspects of the food - environment interface.
Jennifer L. Pomeranz, JD, MPH, is a public health lawyer and Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health Policy and Management at the School of Global Public Health at New York University. She authored dozens of articles related to food and nutrition policy and a book, Food Law for Public Health, published by Oxford University Press in 2016.
Join us for Economic and Policy Issues in Online Food Retail on January 24th at 12 pm (ET).
This program is supported in part by the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, and the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Those who register but cannot attend the webinar can view a recording of it later at the council’s YouTube channel.