Supermarket vs wet market

    I taught a general education course in the first semester of 2008. Students collected data and information, and presented their projects in class. I would need to evaluate their works and give some comments. These projects were rather interesting. I learned a lot from them. I stopped teaching general education since 2013 until this year I will teach a similar course again. I look forward to a fruitful experience from this course and my new students. 
   My experience in 2008 is indeed very fruitful. I also wrote several articles at that time, my students in that course gave me different inspirations. I knew more about what laymen thought about social issues and I used my economics knowledge to add a perspective to these issues. At that time, I did not have a blog. Now, I have and would like to share with you my thoughts at that time. If my teaching experience this year gives me further inspirations, I may continue to write some more in relation to this general-education course. 
   One topic that often appeared in the course was supermarket. Students wanted to explain why supermarkets are increasingly popular. Their explanations are good and I just want to point out there are some factors behind the factors that they identified.

   Why supermarkets are taking over the role of traditional wet markets? Some factors are identified by my students. Longer business period is one of them. Clearly it is more convenient to shop in supermarkets offering a more flexible time for customers. Wet markets are notorious for its limited business time. Shopping after 7:00pm is almost impossible. Students went on to discuss the pros and cons of wet markets. Wet markets are selling fresh food and so they need to make sure foods are sold out everyday. Stores won't acquire too many fresh foods therefore. No wonder business will stop because housewives have bought all the fresh foods well before 7. Although wet markets are not convenient, they have their advantages. Personal relationships between store owners and housewives are better. In contrast, in supermarkets, you never know the salespersons.

   It is a rather standard method in doing a project by listing the pros and cons independently. My economics instinct (or bias), however, always prompts me to, and suggests students to, think things behind. Firstly, longer business hours are an advantage to customers. But it is costly to the businessmen, including supermarket operators. If there is no corresponding demand for it, profit-seeking firms won't offer this opportunity to its customers. Think of a society where all customers are full-time housewives who have flexible time for shopping. Shopping after 7 generates some more convenience to housewives but late shopping is not a necessity for them. As people are usually having their dinners at 6 to 7, they shop well before 7. After 7 is surely a low time for business. So, why should supermarkets provide fresh food after 7? The answer is that demand after 7 exists (and not all customers are full-time housewives). There are now lots more working females (and also working males) who still need to shop and prepare dinners for their families. Their time for shopping is not flexible and can only be conducted after work. Furthermore, people's working hours are becoming longer over time, which means time for shopping extends further beyond 7.

   Secondly, if a good personal relationship between store owners and clients is an advantage of wet markets, why the market share of wet markets is still declining? The answer is that this advantage is not as important as before. Again, some social changes explain things behind. One relevant change is that products are increasingly standardized while quality assurances are provided at different levels. For example, the government will check the quality of food through various channels. In the old days where qualities are not assured and products are not standardized, having a good relationship with those who know the quality is important. Store owners are such experts. Not only customers want the store owners to give them good advice or even retain a good-quality product for them. Store owners also want their customers to believe in their advice. If customers don't believe in them, they will shop at other stores. When you can't easily tell which one is the good businessman, you believe in those who maintain good and long-term relationship with you. So, wet-market personal relationship is important when quality assurance and standardization is not popular. But this is not as important as before when things have changed.

   Therefore, my advice to my students is that you can try to think of the reasons behind the pros and cons of supermarkets versus wet markets. There might be some forces governing the positive and negative factors that you have identified. And the forces are a result of changes in the whole society (increase in working females, longer working hours, standardization, etc.). But I won't require them to accept the substance of my analyses offered above.

   Economists have a “bad” habit. They always want to think things behind. Sometimes it simply destroys the romantic elements in things (such as the warm personal relationship between store owners and housewives). And they are sometimes biased and always think there are some cost-pushed and demand-pulled factors behind any everyday life issues. Even so, I think economics is still useful in offering one (different) perspective in interpreting issues although I don't think everything should only be interpreted from a single (economic) perspective.