Abstract

In the last decades the growth of singles and couples without children has brought about deep change in the structure of the italian households, in particular in the Northern regions. The paper first examines the effects of this change on the consumer behaviour and the purchase decisions; a specific attention is dedicated to grocery retailing impacts, the increasing dual market (North- South) and the main consequences in terms of network planning. It then suggests an initial framework for investigating how large retailers could differentiate the development of new distributive formats.