Economic determinants of differences in the composition of seemingly identical branded food products in the EU

This report provides an econometric estimation of the economic determinants of differences in the composition of seemingly identical branded food products (DC-SIP) in the European Union. The analyses of this report is based on the results from the EU wide testing campaign (European Commission, 2019) in combination with economic data collected from different statistical sources (e.g. Eurostat, Eurobarometer, World Bank, Global Dietary Database). Econometric estimation — probit estimator — is performed on these combined dataset to quantitatively identify drivers of DC-SIP. The estimated results show that the difference in income levels between two Member States has a statistically significant positive effect on the probability of the two MS having a different version of seemingly identical branded food products. The estimation of this report also show that other factors—such as heterogeneous consumer preferences across MS, distance, company size, price level and product complexity—also contribute to a firm’s incentive to offer different versions of seemingly identical branded food products in different MS. Further, specific characteristics of different product categories and country-specific factors are also found to impact the presence of DC-SIP between MS.