Supply and Demand

Supply and Demand

Supply and Demand

Introduction

Supply and demand is perhaps one of the most fundamental concepts of economics and it is the backbone of a market economy. Demand refers to how much (quantity) of a product or service is desired by buyers. The quantity demanded is the amount of a product people are willing to buy at a certain price; the relationship between price and quantity demanded is known as the demand relationship. Supply represents how much the market can offer. The quantity supplied refers to the amount of a certain good producers are willing to supply when receiving a certain price. The correlation between price and how much of a good or service is supplied to the market is known as the supply relationship (Alan 1992 117-136). Price, therefore, is a reflection of supply and demand.

Part 1:

Convenience foods (sold in food shops and supermarkets)

Introduction

This lack of time is especially felt by working mothers and wives who still assume the bulk of domestic responsibility. In the UK we have one of the highest levels of working women, accounting for over 46 per cent of the labour force who are prime targets for convenience products (Feedback, 1999 pp.25-30). The average home cooked meal is estimated to take about 30 minutes to prepare, a figure that has dropped by 30 per cent over the last decade and it is set to drop even further over the next decade (The Grocer, 1999a). It seems that food cannot be on the table quickly enough and cooking times are emblazoned on the pack.

Time

In the UK, consumers today are even more pressed for time, purchasing more convenience products and are spending less time than ever in the kitchen preparing meals. Food manufacturers are having to address the requirements of this fast moving, time starved generation by producing both branded and own label products that suit the changing lifestyle of the modern family.

The "meals made easy range" from Asda had a little clock on the packaging indicating how long the product took to cook and Tesco's produced a range of frozen ethnic dishes that could be ready in ten minutes, from digging it out of the freezer. In the ambient sector, Sharwoods have also displayed the time taken to produce the meal with their latest range of cooking sauces. For example, their "sweet and sour" sauce when used with vegetables was ready in only ten minutes (Alan 1992 pp.70-80).

The changes in lifestyle of the whole family have had an impact on the development and the growth in demand for convenience and semi-prepared products. For example:

There has been an increasing importance in how we spend our leisure time which has left little time for preparing food.

Today, fewer families eat together as they have flexible working patterns, longer working hours and different food preferences.

Children are leading ever more complicated lives with an increase in the number of out of school activities which encourages a pattern of eating whenever is ...