A Theory of Grocery Shopping: Food, Choice and Conflict [Hardcover]

Grocery shopping is an often ignored part of the story of how food ultimately gets to our pantry shelves and tables.

A Theory of Grocery Shoppingexplores the social organization of grocery shopping by linking the lived experience of grocery shoppers and retail managers in the US with information transmitted by nutritionists, government employees, financial advisors, journalists, health care providers and marketers, who influence the way we think about and perform the work of shopping for a household's food.

The author provides insight into the contradictory messages that shape how consumers provision their households, and details how consumers respond to these messages. The book challenges the consumer choice model that places responsibility on the shopper for making the right choice at the grocery store, thereby ignoring the larger social forces at work, which determine what products are available and how they get to the shelves.

Tackling a neglected part of the story of how food reaches our tables,A Theory of Grocery Shoppinglinks the lived experience of shoppers and retail managers with information from nutritionists, governments, journalists and marketers to provide new insights into the contradictory messages shaping the way we shop for food.Shelley L. Kochis Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology and Assistant Director of the Masters of Arts program in Community and Organizational Leadership at Emory & Henry College in Emory, Virginia, USA.

This book dramatically illustrates the work and significance of food provisioning. Scholars wishing to identify problems in the food system or offer prescriptions for change would do well to read this text. Tracey Deutsch, Department of History, University of Minnesota

This work represents a much-needed link to books focusing on aspects of the US food chain from production through consumption. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduate studlc$