Sustainability to sustain competitive advantage
Product development in the frozen bakery industry
Author: Tim Olde Dubbelink Student number: S4185501
Email: t.j.r.olde.dubbelink@student.rug.nl Supervisor: P.J. Marques Morgado
Faculty of Economics and Business University of Groningen
Duisenberg Building, Nettelbosje 2, 9747 AE Groningen, The Netherlands P.O. Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands
http://www.rug.nl/feb
TABLE OF CONTENT
TABLE OF CONTENT ... 2
ABSTRACT ... 3
1. INTRODUCTION ... 4
2. LITERATURE REVIEW ... 6
2.1 Frozen bakery industry ... 6
2.1.1 Main players in the frozen bakery industry ... 7
2.2 Product development ... 8
2.3 Sustainability ... 10
2.3.1 Sustainability in the frozen bakery industry ... 12
2.4 Market-based view ... 14
2.5 Resource-based view ... 15
3. RESEARCH DESIGN ... 17
4. ANALYSIS ... 19
4.1 Product development & sustainability ... 19
4.2 Sustainability & the market and resource-based view ... 20
5. CONCEPTUAL MODEL ... 22
6. CONCLUSION ... 23
6.1 Limitations ... 24
6.2 Future research ... 24
ABSTRACT
The frozen bakery industry is challenged by a sustainable way of looking at the world and the environment. People are changing their lifestyles into healthier ones. They criticize the food they eat and try to have a more environmentally friendly life. Increasing population and economic development, hectic life’s and the acceptance of convenient food have increased demand for dough-based products. Firms have to meet consumer preferences, be sustainable, competitive and sustain competitive advantage at the same time. Therefore, product development has an important play. Sustainability in combination with product development affects the competitive position of firms. This paper focuses on the way sustainability affects product development of businesses in order to sustain competitive advantage within the frozen bakery industry. The central research question of this paper is: “How does sustainability affect the product development of firms in the frozen bakery industry to sustain competitive advantage?” Theories that contributed are the market-based and resource-based view. Results show that the business strategy is influenced by ecological pressure of activities and depletion of natural capital. Furthermore, environmental measures during the product development process reduce the carbon footprint.
1. INTRODUCTION
This paper focuses on the way sustainability is affecting the product development of firms in order to sustain competitive advantage within the frozen bakery industry. The frozen bakery industry accounts for 31 billion USD globally in 2017. Europe is the market’s largest region with a value of 34,5% (Pulidindi & Chakraborty, 2018). However, this paper does not focus on a specific region. Products in the frozen bakery industry are dough based and range from bread, croissants, pizza’s, donuts, cookies, pastries to cakes. Products are distributed via supermarkets, convenience stores, bakery stores and online stores.
Increasing population and economic development in developed and emerging markets stimulates the demand for dough-based products. Furthermore, busy and fast paced lifestyles force people to accept convenient food and products that are ready to eat.
Although frozen bakery products are more accepted nowadays, there is a trend going on of people criticizing the food they eat and the development of it. People want to live healthier and therefore change their lifestyles. This trend influences the way products are developed. Therefore, the highlighted activity within frozen bakery firms is product development.
An active topic in today’s world is sustainability. From a business perspective, this means that firms have to try to organise their activities in such a way, that the negative impact on the local/global environment and the economy is minimal or positive. To be sustainable as a firm is costly, but realisation of a sustainable business is beneficial to the competitive position of firm.
Sustainability in the frozen bakery industry is an important topic that needs to be addressed. This is due to a change in the behaviour of consumers. A trend in the industry is that consumers are thinking about the world and the well-being of it more than ever. Nowadays, it occurs more often that they want Co2 Neutral produced and developed products, containing a carbon footprint as low as possible and as little food miles as possible. Furthermore, more people are aware of what they actually eat and how and where it is developed.
the environment and still be profitable and competitive at the same time. Therefore, the gap that is tried to be captured in this research is the way firms can sustain competitive advantage in a market that is changing, due to healthier lifestyles and the growing importance of sustainability. As of this, product development can play a crucial part in whether a company can sustain competitive advantage or not, due to the fact that this activity has to deal with consumer preferences, regulations etcetera. On the other hand, sustainability can be used to maintain customers or even attract new customers and therefore create sustainable competitive advantage.
Theory perspectives that will be addressed in the research are the market-based view and the resource-based view. Firms have to deal with market trends, consumer and customer preferences in a right way. Furthermore, they need to have the resources and be able to organise their activities in a way they meet demand and consumer preferences. Following from these thoughts, the central research question is formulated as follows: “How does sustainability affect the product development of firms in the frozen bakery industry to sustain competitive advantage?”
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Frozen bakery industry
The frozen dough industry has risen from the science around the traditional making of fresh bread. The making of bread is one of the oldest technologies in the world. Studies found that long before Christ, the people from Greece, Rome and Egypt used bread for their diets. Nowadays, bread is still one of the most important products in relation to the nutrition of human beings. Quality of fresh bread is often measured in terms of its crust, like thickness, colour, taste, crispiness and in terms of the structure of the crumb, like the softness of its texture and flavour (Ribotta, León, & Añón, 2006).
However, fresh bread is a product containing a short shelf life. This is due to a process called staling. This process causes a loss in freshness, aroma’s and crispiness. On the contrary, it increases the firmness and rigidity of the crumb. The result is staled taste of the bread. Next to this occurring problem, the demand of bread in the market increased. Both challenges have led to innovation and the development of frozen dough technologies. One technology stood out, which is the inclusion of low temperature. This made it possible to produce semi-baked products, which cannot be eaten yet. The first technologies were developed in the United states around 1950. It made its way to Europe in the 70s (Ribotta et al., 2006). According to Rosell and Gómez (2007) this was due to the necessary steps in R&D. Around 1985, the new technology started to be commercialized, leading to a big increase in sales during the 90s. This eventually resulted in the frozen bakery industry.
2.1.1 Main players in the frozen bakery industry
All of the above mentioned products are sold worldwide and the global market had a value of 31 billion US dollars in 2017 (Pulidindi & Chakraborty, 2018). The forecasted market value is 40 billion US dollars for the year 2024. This shows that the market will grow significantly in the coming years. The following companies are the major manufacturers around the world that are active in the industry: Grupo Bimbo, Europastry, Pan Pa Ya Ltda, General Mills, Rich Products Corporation, Comapan S.A., Don Maiz SAS, Vandermoortele, Patagonia Artisan Bakers, Aryzta, Canada Bread Company, Kellogg Company, BredenMaster S.A., Conagra Brands, Associated British Foods, Dr. Oetker, CSM Bakery Solutions and Weston Foods. Figure 1 shows an overview of the global frozen bakery industry (Pulidindi & Chakraborty, 2018).
FIGURE 1
Snapshot Global Frozen Bakery Market
2.2 Product development
The starting principle of product development is capturing the needs of the customers and buyers, and from there develop a product that meets those needs. Food businesses and their management need to possess the skill of managing innovation. The reason for this is that growth and survival depend on the introduction of new products that meet the needs of their customers (Earle, Earle, & Anderson, 2001).
The activity product development is an important one. Products contain life cycles and if they are not profitable anymore, they should be substituted, improved or reinvented. New products can also create new business opportunities or the business could enter new markets and therefore increase growth. Also, customers can demand businesses to develop new products, as they have new or different needs. Another reason is that markets change and new technologies are being developed that could take over your business and customers. Another external reason is that the legislation for the industry changes, which could create new business opportunities (Fuller, 2011).
Within the food industry, including the frozen bakery industry, businesses are challenged to innovate their products to sustain competitive advantage. In order to have a successful new product development, businesses need to master three different stages. The first one, is the optimization of the cycle time of product development. Secondly, they need to increase the innovation in product development and third, they should reuse the company’s knowledge assets. Additionally, businesses have to look at the drivers of innovation, which are people, knowledge and systems (Pinna et al., 2018).
New products occur in different types. Businesses can introduce line extensions, existing products can be repositioned or reformulated, new packages can be developed, innovative products (modified products) and the last type is creative products. Creative products are the most innovative type of new products. In this, products are totally new and never seen before. An often-occurring problem is that when the product is finally launched, imitators will follow shortly (Fuller, 2011).
Management of product development within firms takes place at three stages, which are the business strategy, the product development programme and the product development project. The success or failure of products can be measured at an individual level, a product development project level and at the programme level. At an individual level, success factors include sales volume, profits, market share, quality and consumer acceptance. At the project level, measures are efficiency in terms of time and costs. And at the programme level, success factors are the equation of new versus old products, the amount of new introduced products in a certain time and how much sales, growth or profit is related to new products (Earle et al., 2001).
When organising the product development project, aspects like communication, objectives, constraints, quality assurance and evaluation need to be determined. Within the process of product development, businesses should select success measures, so evaluation is possible. The measures should be quantitively and relate to the business strategy and to the skills and knowledge of the company. After completion, all selected measures need to be communicated through the business (Earle et al., 2001).
marketing plan is developed to successfully launch the product and the entire process of development is evaluated. After each stage, there is an evaluation moment to make sure the process continues according to plan. Figure 2 below shows the process of product development (Earle et al., 2001).
FIGURE 2
Product Development Process
In order to have a successful and efficient product development, businesses should integrate the business strategy with product development, they need to have a systematic process, the product should be related to the consumer and to marketing, they need to possess knowledge and skills and on-going evaluation is of importance (Earle et al., 2001). Another point that needs to be taken into account is the way the new product or adjusted product impacts the other players in the chain, like suppliers, retailers, customers and consumers. This could imply that there need be changes at the organisation of other players (Earle et al., 2001).
2.3 Sustainability
Sustainability became popular, due to problems like the extinction of natural resources, pollution of the environment, bad recycling, poor reuse of simple resources and the concern of the quality of life of future generations. These issues made consumers think more about the choices they make (Marques Morgado, 2014).
(2017) measures taken to protect the environment and fight depletion, also need support from the social society.
Sustainability is also closely linked to sustainable development. This was introduced by the Brundtland commission and it was described as “the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. A more practical addition to this, came from Robert Slow. He stressed that we should not overconsume our stock of capital, so that future generations still have possibilities (Laurent, 2018). This is accompanied by Schlottmann et al., (2017), arguing that we need to keep in mind that the decisions we make today, also impact the conditions under which future generations live.
According to Szeman et al. (2017) sustainability consists of three pillars, which are the social, economic and environmental pillars. These three are seen as the inputs on which the capital life is based. It comprises the total amount on questions regarding how much can be extracted before the social, economic and environmental pillars fall.
The social sustainability pillar refers to the capital and that we are obliged to control the depletion of it within the boundaries of liveability. The environmental sustainability pillar refers to the ecological pressure from economic activity by humans and businesses to the non-human world. It argues that resources are used to increase capital instead of increasing the health of the world’s ecosystems. The economic sustainability pillar can be seen as a basis for the social and environmental pillars, because continuing profits will not be possible if the inputs for the other pillars cannot be copied over time. Furthermore, if the outputs by economic activity harm social and environmental pillars, like climate change, the circumstances for increasing economies could be changed (Szeman, Wenzel, & Yaeger, 2017).
be reinvented as the creators of a new world, containing a better future (Fisk, 2010). According to Marques Morgado (2014) sustainability needs to be a part in the development of the firm’s strategy and that it requires long-term investments. Figure 3 shows the People, Planet and Profit model.
FIGURE 3
People, Planet and Profit model
The definition of sustainability that is opt in this paper is the one from Fisk (2010) about People, Planet and Profit. This definition is used, because it states that social and environmental impacts should be at the centre of the business, which ensures differentiation. Nowadays, firms have to be more responsible for their activities and therefore they need to take the society and environment into account. Furthermore, they need to profitable at the same time. This aligns with the innovation, profitable growth and competitive advantage aspects of the model.
2.3.1 Sustainability in the frozen bakery industry
The production of sustainable food is part of a sustainable supply chain and a sustainable supply chain is an element of sustainable development (Neves, Drohomeretski, Gouvea Da Costa, & De Lima, 2014). Businesses already have made improvements in terms of fighting pollution of the environment, like recycling, circular economies, cradle to cradle and being as efficient as possible within production processes and value creation (Melissen & Moratis, 2016).
Businesses in the food industry, including the frozen bakery industry take measures to improve their environmental performance. Measures to improve environmental performance are often also linked to economic factors, because the measures can reduce costs and therefore lead to financial gains. Measures taken to improve the environmental performance are reducing the amount of packaging by reuse or recycling, reducing food waste by optimizing the use of inputs and reusing materials that derive from the process, reducing the water and energy consumption, improving energy and transport efficiency, using renewable energy like wind or solar energy, use natural ingredients and reduce additives, reducing the use of palm oil, implementing clean technologies and repairing degraded areas. These measures contribute to lowering the carbon footprint of final products and the carbon footprint of businesses in general (Neves et al., 2014).
Measures taken to improve social performance are the use of local raw materials, monitor labour standards and implementing hazard analysis critical control point systems (HACCP). These measures take place internally and in the entire supply chain. Monitor systems are developed to assess the sustainable performance. The indicators that are used are the total generation of greenhouse gasses, amount of packaging waste, amount of pesticides used, amount of water used, total use of renewable energy, total carbon footprint, total land use and life-cycle assessments (Neves et al., 2014). Overall, most measures are concerned with the reduction of water and energy waste, natural resources and greenhouse gas emissions.
to Neves et al. (2014) businesses try to improve the acceptance by focusing on the nutritional value and healthiness of the product.
2.4 Market-based view
According to Marques Morgado (2014) sustained competitiveness refers to the capacity, despite changes in the market and independent of time frames, to hold competitive advantage. Businesses with competitive advantage have a better position in the market opposed to the competition, resulting in higher margins and a better financial performance.
The first ideas around the market-based view were developed by Mason and Bain in 1950, they determined the success of businesses based on the structure of the industry. They described factors of success with regard to the entry barriers, the number of firms in the market and the demand elasticity. This framework was called the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) paradigm and was dominant until the 1980s. The structure part refers to the structure of the market, the conduct part refers to the behaviour of the business and the performance part refers to the outcome in terms of efficiency (Lee, 2007). In the 1980s, Michael Porter’s book ‘Competitive Strategy’ was published. In this book, he elaborated on the SCP framework and described that the strategy businesses should relate to the firm’s environment (Ankli, 1992). Eventually, this resulted in the market-based view.
complementors. This force was about the reasoning behind strategic alliances (Marques Morgado, 2014). However, various authors state that the five forces model is static and does not account for time. Therefore, higher dynamic competitive markets are not very suited for this model. It does not take the changing competitive environment into account, and therefore it is not able to guarantee sustained competitive advantage. Besides, it also does not take into account the resources and capabilities, which is necessary to determine the business’s total performance (Marques Morgado, 2014).
In addition to the five forces framework, is the demand-based perspective. This moves from competition between businesses to consumer demand. He states that understanding what consumers value, creating value and managing the value are essential for achieving success (Adner & Zemsky, 2006). The reason for this is that if businesses do not have the knowledge of what consumers value and need, it is impossible for them to create a suitable value proposition that meets the needs of the consumers. Overall, it stresses that businesses should study consumer preferences and align this with strategies (Zhou, Brown, & Dev, 2009).
2.5 Resource-based view
The resource-based view originates by the theory of David Ricardo in 1809 stressing the influence of resources on the business’s performance. This was measured in terms of land as a resource and rent as the incentive. This view was further developed by Edith Penrose in 1959, stating that businesses consist of a bundle of resources. Other scholars complemented the view, with distinctive competencies within departments like marketing or production, which means that businesses can perform better than rivals and be more efficient and effective. This means that competitive advantage results from internal performance (Solesvik, 2018).
The view distinguishes two aspects of resources in order for it to contribute to the competitive advantage. These are heterogeneity and immobility. Heterogeneity means that a resource is not possessed by competitors, if this is not the case, there is no heterogeneity. Therefore, it does not contribute to competitive advantage. If a resource is immobile, then competitors will have to make a lot of costs and take time to develop and use the resource in order to really obtain it. Therefore, businesses need immobility of resources for sustained competitive advantage (Rivard et al., 2006).
3. RESEARCH DESIGN
Philosophy options of the research are interpretivism, pragmatism, realism and positivism. This research makes use of the interpretivist philosophy, which goal is to create new, and richer understanding of contexts. This philosophy is chosen, because this research tries to create a new theory around the effect of sustainability on the product development process of frozen bakery businesses and whether this generates sustained competitive advantage.
Approach options of the research are the inductive and deductive approach. The deductive approach is not chosen, because there is no hypothesis formulated in the beginning of the research and then being tested. Therefore, the primary approach in this paper is the inductive approach. According to Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill (2009) the aim is to generate a new theories or conceptual models. With the use of this approach, literature around the frozen bakery industry, product development and sustainability are collected. Furthermore, market-based and resource-based views are discussed. The findings in the literature are connected, resulting in hypotheses and visualised in a conceptual model. This approach is used, because the inductive approach is about building a theory based on the findings in the literature.
Strategy options within the inductive approach are ethnography, grounded theory, case studies and archival research. Ethnography and ground theory are not chosen, because they require observations, which is not necessary for this research. Case studies are also not chosen, because they require interviews, which is very much time consuming. For these reasons, the main strategy of this research is archival research. This means that the research is grounded on existing data and theories around the frozen bakery industry, product development and sustainability. This type of data is referred to as secondary data (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2009). Due to little time and resources, there has been chosen for this research strategy. However, triangulation of data is used to check other theories or references to strength the research.
the literature provides enough information regarding sustainability, product development and competitive advantage theories.
The time horizon of the research is longitudinal instead of cross-sectional. The research is longitudinal, because the research tends to provide a trend instead of a snapshot. The data is sourced from secondary sources. The duration of the research holds February till June 2020.
Search engines like Google Scholar, Jstor, EBSCO and Sciencedirect are used to source journals, articles and books. More information about trends and shares in the market and the frozen bakery industry are gathered via websites of marketing firms.
4. ANALYSIS
4.1 Product development & sustainability
The literature stresses that in order to be competitive and sustain competitive advantage, Businesses in the food industry, including the frozen bakery industry need to introduce new products. Besides, they have to be able to manage innovation in their activities, especially in product development. New products can be introduced in different ways like an entire new product or just a new label or package. Before a new product is brought to the market, the process of product development takes place.
The literature describes the process as follows. Product strategy development – Product design and process development – Product commercialisation – Product launch and evaluation. This process is influenced by the overall business strategy. Sustainability influences the overall business strategy of the business. In terms of environmental and social impact, the ecological pressure of activities and the depletion of natural capital needs to be at the core of the business, which means the strategy. Hypothesis 1 derives from this.
Hypothesis 1: Ecological pressure of activities and the depletion of natural capital influence the business strategy.
The first stage of the product development process, which is product strategy development, is influenced by the business strategy and sustainable consumer preferences, which are organic, fair trade and animal friendly products that have better taste, freshness, quality and are perceived to be safer. These preferences influence the product specifications in this stage. The formulated strategy should be in the direction of a developed product that has a low as possible carbon footprint and makes use of natural local ingredients. Hypothesis 2 derives from this.
Hypothesis 2: Sustainable consumer preferences influence product specifications during the product development strategy.
environment and have optimized their carbon footprint. The product should also get a recyclable environmentally friendly package.
In order to develop a sustainable product, the production process of it, which takes place in the product commercialisation stage, should be performed with as less possible impact on the environment as possible. Therefore, measures are taken like optimizing waste, using renewable solar or wind energy for production, reducing water consumption and transport the product efficiently. These measures help to reduce the carbon footprint of the final product and the footprint of business in general. Hypothesis 3 derives from this.
Hypothesis 3: Environmental measures reduce the carbon footprint in the production part of the commercialisation stage.
After production, the final product arrives at the launch and evaluation stage. In this stage, a marketing plan will be developed. It is important for businesses to focus on the nutrional value and the healthiness of the new product, which results in better acceptance of consumers. Additionally, it is important that the entire supply chain takes measures to reduce their social and environmental impacts in order to develop and produce sustainable products that bring value.
4.2 Sustainability & the market and resource-based view
The market-based view stresses that the current position of businesses is determined by analysing the external forces to them. Results are used when formulating the business strategy. This can be connected to sustainability, because consumers think more about what they buy. They wish to have fair trade, organic and animal friendly products that do not harm the environment. The market-based view argues that consumer preferences should be studied and aligned with the business strategy, but regarding product development process, these preferences are used in the product strategy development stage.
competitive advantage. This is complemented by the resource-based view, which argues that better internal performance than competitors lead to competitive advantage. The theory stressed that when resources are heterogenic and immobile, this leads to sustained competitive advantage.
When businesses are able to develop new products sustainably without harming the environment, this resource is heterogenic, because there are no examples in the literature which illustrate frozen bakery firms that have a fully sustainable product development. Furthermore, when businesses have implemented the measures in their operations and in the supply chain, then these are not likely to be copied. The measures that are taken in building a sustainable product development, mentioned in the previous paragraph take time to implement and are costly. Therefore, being able to develop sustainable products that do not harm the environment is immobile and therefore leading to sustained competitive advantage.
Assessing the development of sustainable products against the VRIO framework, the resource is valuable, because a growing demand for sustainable frozen dough-based products can be satisfied. Since, the literature does not provide examples of businesses that can offer such products, it can be classified as rare. As explained, the resource is not easy to copy, but eventually it is imitable. Therefore, this part of the framework is not entirely satisfied. Businesses being able to deliver sustainable products have proofed to be able to organise it. To conclude, the development of sustainable products satisfies almost every part of the VRIO framework, meaning that it leads to sustained competitive advantage. Hypothesis 4 derives from this.
5. CONCEPTUAL MODEL
This section provides a visual of the analysis in the previous section in the form of a conceptual model. Figure 4 below shows the conceptual model.
FIGURE 4 Conceptual Model
Hypothesis 1: Ecological pressure of activities and the depletion of natural capital influence the business strategy.
Hypothesis 2: Sustainable consumer preferences influence product specifications during the product development strategy.
Hypothesis 3: Environmental measures reduce the carbon footprint in the production part of the commercialisation stage.
Hypothesis 4: Developing sustainable frozen dough-based products lead to sustained competitive advantage.
Sustainable competitive advantage
H2 +
Product Design & Process Development Product Strategy
Development
Product Commercialisation
Product Launch & Evaluation Business Strategy
Ecological Pressure of Activities & Depletion of Natural Capital
6. CONCLUSION
The frozen bakery industry faces an increasing demand for dough-based products. In combination with changing consumer preferences towards sustainable dough-based products, the businesses are challenged to develop sustainable products that do not harm the environment. This trend resulted in the following central research question: “How does sustainability affect the product development of firms in the frozen bakery industry to sustain competitive advantage?”
To provide an answer to how sustainability affects product development to sustain competitive advantage, it starts with the business strategy. The process of product development should be in line with the overall business strategy. The business strategy is linked to the first stage of the product development process, which is the product strategy development. Businesses in the food industry, including the frozen bakery industry need to develop products conform the business strategy. Since, ecological pressure of activities and the depletion of natural capital influence the business strategy, the view of developing new products changes automatically. Therefore, the core of the business strategy is of great importance. For this reason, hypothesis 1 is selected as part of the answer to the central question.
The production of the new product takes place at the commercialisation stage of the process. In order to produce sustainable products, the carbon footprint of the final product should be as low as possible. Therefore, measures that are good for the environment and reduce the carbon footprint in the production part are of great importance. Furthermore, these measures reduce the ecological pressure, which is in line with the strategy. For these reasons, hypothesis 3 is selected as the second part of the answer. Hypothesis 1 and 3 are stated below.
Hypothesis 1: Ecological pressure of activities and the depletion of natural capital influence the business strategy.
Hypothesis 3: Environmental measures reduce the carbon footprint in the production part of the commercialisation stage.
customers. This is recommended, because via this, the entire supply chain becomes sustainable. This is important when businesses want to develop products that have no carbon footprint, thus not harm the environment. Furthermore, it is recommended to assist suppliers and customers in achieving environmentally friendly business activities.
Regarding the market-based view, the theory stressed that external forces should be assessed and these determine the current position. Results like consumer preferences should be aligned with the business strategy, but this already happens in the product strategy development stage of the process, because these preferences influence this stage. In case of this aspect, the market-based view did not contribute much. The resource-market-based view contributed in assessing whether developing sustainable products by integrating sustainability into the product development process lead to sustained competitive advantage. Assessing integrating sustainability and developing sustainable frozen dough-based products with heterogeneity, immobility and the VRIO framework showed that it leads to sustained competitive advantage. Therefore, the resource-based view contributed positively.
6.1 Limitations
The limitation of this research is that there was little literature available that paid specific attention to the businesses in the frozen bakery industry. This limitation derived from the choice of performing archival research. There were no case studies available in the literature providing information about the social and environmental measures taken specifically in the frozen bakery industry. Especially, there is a lack of social measures. The literature described measures that were taken in the food industry in general. So, archival research caused a lack of frozen bakery specific information.
6.2 Future research
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