The Survival of Food Platforms : the Crucial Role of Alliance Strategies in Supply Control for French platforms
Résumé
This research focuses on the survival of a new actor in food systems: e-commerce platforms. They are confronted with the instability of supply by farmers. We mobilize the theory of resource dependence to understand what strategies they use to cope with this uncertainty. To this end, we conduct a survey of 103 platforms in France, a country where food e-commerce is well developed. Our results show that the platforms with the best survival rate are those that have reached a sufficient size and that manage their relationships with farmers in the form of an alliance, while controlling the quantity and quality of supply.