We have the pleasure to announce Roxana Fernandez (ENSAE, Crest) as the next speaker in our CERNA Research Seminar.

The ALUR law and the opening of Drives in the French grocery retail sector

(with Bonnet, C., Bouamra, Z., Chambolle, C.)

 

Over the last decade, online grocery shopping has experienced a rapid expansion. To overcome the lack of success of delivery services, many retailers have introduced Click-and-collect services, allowing shoppers to buy online and later pick up their baskets at a chosen place and time. The provision of Click-and-collect services usually entails the construction of new facilities by either expanding stores or by building stand-alone pick-up points. In France, this Click-and-collect service is called Drive and, in 2018, Drive represented 81% of online grocery sales against 19% of home delivery (Nielsen (2018)). The upsurge in the opening of Drives raised concerns to French policy-makers and pushed for a new regulation in 2014.  This paper assesses the impact of the ALUR law that constrains the opening of Drives with warehouses in France. We run difference-in-differences analyses over the period 2009-2017 and show that the law had a large and heterogeneous negative effect on the opening of Drive warehouses. Furthermore, we analyze the effect on revenues and find that the ALUR law had a negative effect on revenue growth.