Social change and fresh-food marketing in Singapore

Since the turn of the 1980s, accelerated social change and government planning have resulted in changes in the patterns of food consumption, marketing behaviour, fresh food supplies and their distributing systems in singapore. Continued growing affluence, shrinking of agricultural land and in the face of planned urbanisation, urban renewal, and successful resettlement of the street hawkers are among the major factors contributing to the changes. The purpose of this paper is threefold: (a) to analyse how these factors have affected the changes; (b) to examine the major elements of the fresh-food distributing systems; and (c) to outline the problems of spatial conflict between the formal and informal sectors in fresh-food retailing and the planning implications with particular reference to markets which have hitherto been the major institutions for marketing fresh foods.