Progress Reports The Besieged Body: Geographies of Retailing and

I Governance, regulation and retailing My writing of this second report coincides with the publication in the UK of two influential and long-awaited reports which both directly address issues of retailing and consumption, and underscore the close connections between academic debate and public policy. The first of these, the Competition Commission’s (2000) report into possible spatial monopoly in the supermarket sector, reveals the power of local market concentration in the retail sector and the implications which this has for consumer food choice1 (see also Bowlby, 2000; Crewe and Davenport, 1992; Humphrey, 1998; Wrigley, 1999, 2000a, 2000b). Following a 16-month enquiry, the Commission found evidence of both entry and sunk cost exit barriers and also of three pricing practices by the leading UK food retailers that distorted competition and gave rise to complex monopoly situations (Competition Commission, 2000; see also Doherty 1999; Wrigley, 2001). Although the Commission was broadly of the opinion that the retail industry is competitive and that ‘overall, excessive prices are not being charged, nor excessive profits earned ’ (Competition Commission, 2000: vol. 1, 7), it nonetheless found evidence of effective local monopoly situations in some local areas and acknowledged that significant local concentration was a cause for concern and should not be allowed to deteriorate (vol. 1, 154, quoted in Wrigley, 2001). Significantly, too, the Commission argued that competition and consumer choice issues cannot be effectively addressed within the current regulatory regime. The picture becomes even more muddied when recent reports from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) pointing to the negative effect of out-of-town superstores are taken into account. The result, then, seems to be growing public concern over the power an