Current practices of slotting fees, i.e. the payment by manufactures of fees to retailers to display and sell their products, are morally problematic.
Slotting fees if they are to be justified must accurately reflect the retailer's cost and risk in displaying a product.
There is strong evidence this is not the case.
Therefore slotting fees are morally problematic.
Objections Considered
Retailers must assume the risk of allocating limited shelf space to a new product.
Retailers must absorb the cost of warehousing a product, accounting for it in inventory, bar-coding it and stocking the shelves with it.
In some cases, the retailer must also incur the cost of promoting the product.
down over time, even if a product sells well. Neither do these considerations explain why slotting fees are non-uniform and why they are not typically reported on retailers' books as revenues offset by inventory costs, advertising costs, and warehousing fees. "Because slotting fees are non-uniform and even non-universal, it is impossible to understand how the fee structure works, how much the fees should be, and whether the fees are actually related to the costs incurred by retailers in getting a new product to the shelf. ...Market entry rights are unclear, fees change, not everyone is permitted to buy into the system and the use and declaration of revenues is unknown."
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