Price determination and discovery in a ‘de-regulated’ milk market: perspectives on the price of UK milk
Abstract The de-regulation of the UK milk market, in November 1994, saw the end of sixty years of monopoly control by the Milk Marketing Boards, yet milk prices are currently higher than at any time in the history of the MMB. This paper examines the factors which are likely to determine the price of UK milk in the longer term, both at the aggregate market level and for specific transactions. In the future, all milk users in the UK will have an incentive to increase their capacity utilization and add value to raw milk, to justify a higher milk price. The option of importing liquid milk from the continent will become increasingly attractive as cross-channel links improve and transfer costs fall. The price-fixing mechanism adopted by Milk Marque has resulted in a short-term increase in UK milk prices. In the long run, prices will fluctuate within a band, with intervention prices for butter and skimmed milk powder determining the floor and the cost of transfering milk from the continent determining the ceiling.
Reregulating the UK Dairy Industry: The Changing Nature of Competitive Space
In November 1994 the statutory Milk Marketing Board within England and Wales was disbanded, ending over sixty years of structured formal involvement by the state in the operation of the dairy market. This paper examines the changing form and function of regulation in the UK dairy sector as actors, both new and old, renegotiate internal and external sectoral relations. The process of reregulation is set within the context of a food system in which producer-dominated corporatism has been challenged by retailer-based regulation through the supply chain. Through studying this example of agri-food restructuring, the paper investigates how new state/market configurations are being played out, and how new ideological approaches to agricultural and economic policy may in turn impact on rural space. Viewing rural space as an area of contest and challenge within which reregulation occurs, the role of food quality in driving new processes of differentiation is seen as particularly important. 
 
 
 
Im November 1994 wurde der offizielle Milchmarkt-Ausschus in England und Wales aufgelost. Damit gingen 60 Jahre formeller Beteiligung des Staates an der Gestaltung des Milchmarktes zuende. In dem Artikel wird untersucht, wie sich Form und Funktion der Regulierung des Milchsektors in Grosbritannien verandern, wenn die Akteure von gestern und heute die internen und externen sektoralen Beziehungen neu aushandeln. Der Reregulationsprozes findet im Rahmen eines Nahrungsmittelsystems statt, innerhalb dessen ein erzeugerzentrierter Korporatismus durch eine einzelhandelsorientierte Regulation via Versorgungskette herausgefordert wurde. Anhand dieses Beispiels einer Restrukturierung im Bereich landwirtschaftlicher Nahrungsmittel untersucht der Artikel, wie sich neue Konstellationen von Staat und Markt darstellen und wie stattdessen neue ideologische Ansatze in der Landwirtschafts- und Wirtschaftpolitik Einflus auf den landlichen Raum gewinnen. Indem wir den landlichen Raum als Sphare fur Wettbewerb und Herausforderung betrachten, in der Reregulierungen stattfinden, wird der Lebensmittelqualitat fur den Anstos zu neuen Differenzierungsprozessen besondere Bedeutung zugewiesen.
Building Knowledge about the Consumer: The Emergence of Market Research in the Motion Picture Industry
The way film companies obtained knowledge about the consumer resembled that of fashion industries. Initially, intermediaries analysed sales and observed customers while they consumed the service. As the film industry developed between the 1890s and the 1940s, however, its gathering of information increasingly began to resemble the market research of mass-distribution industries. Technological and contractual changes, as well as a rise in sunk costs, affected the way market research was done. By the late 1930s, film companies' increasing need for market information quickly made them adopt the newly available market research techniques. This essay traces this evolution showing how market research techniques were systematised and developed. The surveys by the British Granada Theatres cinema chain stood on the threshold of the era of modern market research, while the work of George Gallup's Audience Research of the US marked its advent.