The study suggests that most of these changes are a response to increasingly hectic lifestyles, for example, we base our shopping around work and other commitments.

Choice?

The study calls into question the way choice is viewed by retailers, regulators and planners. At a retail regulatory level choice is always discussed as it occurs between stores, but the customers interviewed were as interested in the choice that exists within stores. It also points out that regulators often fail to take into account local circumstances sufficiently when they consider 'choice'.

The study suggests that those people with limited consumer choices are not confined to what policy-makers have called 'food deserts' – places where there is an absence of grocery outlets within a short distance - people living in more affluent areas can also have problems accessing stores.

For example, two people living next door to each other can have very different perceptions of the retail choices available, depending on their circumstances, their support network and level of mobility. Possession of a car, a relative with a car, the resources to afford a taxi, a large family and so on can dramatically alter the number of stores that are perceived to be accessible. In other words, no single idea of choice fits all individuals in a particular locality.

Implications for retailers and regulators

Professor Ian Clarke of Lancaster University Management School, who led the 3-year project, says: "Despite the huge explosion in retail provision and improvements in living standards over the last two decades, people just don't have the retailing choices available that planners and policy-makers think they do – irrespective of their social standing."

"People almost seem too busy to do their food shopping – they are not so much 'making choices' as struggling to fit their food shopping in and around increasingly busy work commitments and lifestyles."

The team concludes, "If we are going to take consumer choice more seriously, then there are two key challenges. First, retailers need to understand households much better than they do at the moment, since there are big market opportunities at stake and because they need to work harder to 'stand out' in the marketplace. Second, policy-makers will need to develop ways in which to represent what having 'adequate choice' really means at the local level for different types of consumers, and to regulate and plan accordingly."