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Introduction
The industrial concentration of the retail sector is one of the main events in the study about food chains. One of the outcomes of this industrial concentration is the increase of requirements (such as traceability and certificates) and suppliers have to make investments in order to meet those ([21] Reardon et al. , 2003). It is well argue that retail suppliers are spread over different countries ([22] Ruben et al. , 2007; [10] Fulponi, 2006; [15] Jaffee and Masakure, 2005; [11] Garcia and Poole, 2004) and consequently the strategies of the retail sector have been leading primary agricultural producers investments in many places in the world, mainly in developing countries. In general, the supermarkets literature tends to generalise the strategies of retailers focusing on differentiation and preferred suppliers ([3] Dolan and Humphrey, 2000; [14] Humphrey, 2007). From this point some questions arise: Is it only differentiation that matters? How do governance mechanisms differ along different transactions characteristics? With this in mind, the objective is to characterise the transactions between European buyers and Brazilian mango and grape producers and how the governance structures can differ.
This paper is divided into four further sections. Section 2 discusses the theoretical background, the transaction costs analysis (TCA). Section 3 presents the method, multiple case studies, and explains the structure of the Brazilian mango and grape supply chains in its exports activities to Europe. Section 4 considers insights from theoretical background in analysing the research subject. Finally, the conclusion is presented.
Theoretical background: transaction costs approach (TCA)
The TCA is a micro analytical approach, which is used to analyse the features of transactions. In this paper the aim is to analyse transactions between two stages in the Brazilian mango and grape supply chains, the producers located in Brazil and the buyers in Europe. The use of TCA for explaining the relations between different stages in supply chain is pointed out by [12] Halldorsson et al. (2007). According to [30] Williamson (1985) transaction costs can be divided into costs of information, of negotiation and of monitoring (enforcement). To sum up, they are the costs of driving the economic system. The TCA presupposes that a transaction involves risks, and the parties try to protect themselves creating mechanisms and governing structures...