Redes de empresas de pequeno porte do setor supermercadista do Rio Grande do Sul : a cooperação empresarial e reflexos no mercado consumidor.

Abstract

The supermarket business sector in Brazil is characterized by a high and growing tax of market concentration owned by large enterprises (in 2004, around 40% of the market was owned by the five largest chains). In Rio Grande do Sul we witness this tendency of management by the big corporative chains, to a larger extent as of december,2005 with the purchase of “Sonae do Brazil”, which was run in the south region of Brazil by Wal- Mart, a worldwide company which, in 1998 was responsible for 30% of supermarket sales throughout the globe.In this competitive scenario,very small (micro) and small and medium size local businessess (named throughout this study “small-sized enterprises”) of the food retail sector have adopted the practice of interorganizational cooperation as a means of strenghthening themselves managerially and mercadologically, thus creating enterprise networks. The current paper details the use of interorganizational associativism as an alternative to boost small businesses, based on different models of interorganizational arrangements, within which the supermarket enterprises can be found, taking into consideration the kinds of organization, performance, market and competition. Aiming at understanding the dynamics of small-sized supermarket networks, we have identified the interfaces of relations existing between associate enterprises in the state of Rio Grande do Sul as well as the outcome of the association of small supermarket businesses among the consumers of Santa Cruz do Sul/RS. By resorting to interviews with the presidents of the networks which act in the gaucho market, inquiries with consumers of enterprises associated to networks and the following of product prices in supermarkets we were able to verify that, in spite of the existing difficulties for the formation and maintenance of the networks, whenever they acted conjointly in strategically defined aspects, the small-sized supermarkets gained meaningful advantages and could enhance their participation in the market. The associative practice has also shown itself positive in relation to the consumers, since they can benefit from the enterprises associated to the networks, thus improving the relations between the enterprises and their clientele, with regard to the shops, their services and product assortment, let alone promotions and sales of products with reduced prices when compared to both same size enterprises acting solely and/or larger ones.