Importance-Performance Analysis of Operation of Specialized Complexes for Horticultural Production (원예전문생산단지 운영에 대한 중요도-만족도 분석)
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- Current Research on Agriculture and Life Sciences
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- v.33 no.1
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- pp.25-31
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- 2015
This study investigated the operation criteria of specialized complexes for horticultural production reflecting the farmers' preferences. First, the analysis of the communal activity included six factors: the group purchase of consumables for common activity, group purchase of the greenhouse apparatus, cooperative seed raising, use of a common air conditioning and heating system, cooperative shipping, and soil examination and certification system. The results of the Importance-Performance analysis can be summarized as follows. The factors requiring good management included the group purchase of consumables for common activity, group purchase of the greenhouse apparatus, and cooperative shipping. The factors with a lower priority included cooperative seed raising and the use of a common air conditioning and heating system. While the importance of the soil examination and certification system was low, the satisfaction was high, so this factor needs to be managed to avoid overkill. Second, the analysis of information exchange and education included six factors: production technique information, greenhouse facility management information, distribution-related information, production technique education, greenhouse facility management education, and distribution-related education. The results of the Importance-Performance analysis can be summarized as follows. The factor of production technique education was the most important determinant, plus the factors requiring good management included production technique information, greenhouse facility management information, and distribution-related information. The factors with a lower priority included greenhouse facility management education and distribution-related education. Therefore, to enhance productivity through facility modernization, the scaling up and creation of more specialized horticulture complexes are recommended as policy measures to gain export competitiveness. As the Korean government is expected to expand the scale of specialized horticulture complexes, the results of this paper can be widely utilized.
Purpose - The Garak agricultural wholesale market ('Garak Market') plays a central role in the distribution of agricultural products in Korea and is important in connecting consumers with producers. However, problems regarding inefficiencies and the high-cost structure of the wholesale market's distribution/logistical system are being raised in relation to severe competition among retailers. Furthermore, the service needs of retailers and market users are not being fulfilled due to the inconsistency of the wholesale market's functions and facilities, thus reducing the competitiveness of the market. In this regard, innovative changes are being requested of the agricultural wholesale market according to changes in the agricultural product distribution environment. In particular, the lack of unloading facilities and the outdated unloading system of the wholesale market must be improved to enhance system efficiency. Research design, data, and methodology - This study observed the problems of the unloading system of the agricultural wholesale market in order to present relevant measures for improvement. The need for unloading auctions was also researched in this study. The survey of 70 forwarders belonging to the producing district distributor association of the Garak market was conducted by post. Additionally, 20 auction dealers and 59 shippers and transporters were individually interviewed. The survey on the need for unloading auctions used five-point Likert Scales. The statistical analysis was conducted with SPSS WIN 12.0 software. Results - First, the wholesale market must employ members of the unloading labor union to allow these employees to directly manage the unloading process. Second, it is crucial to revise regulations to ensure that the principal agent pays the unloading cost according to the standard unloading cost system. Third, the vehicle auction carried out for certain vegetable products must be converted to the unloaded auction system. According to the related interviews with the wholesale market's distribution agents, whereas shippers and transporters recognized the need for unloaded auctions, auction dealers tend to have a negative view of this system. Furthermore, the stated reasons in favor of unloaded cabbage, radish, and other vegetable auctions were prevention of constraint, creation of transparent trade conditions, and reduction of corrected seller tickets. Many of the respondents answered that the transport cost reduction rate in unloaded auctions must be below 20%. Fourth, the unloading system must be mechanized and a detailed, reasonable plan must be provided to settle the existing conflict with the unloading labor union. Conclusions - The proposals in this study are expected to play an important role in improving the cargo handling system of the wholesale agricultural product market in the future. Improving the system is expected to help shore up the competitiveness of the industry. If all the related bodies closely cooperate with each other and work harder, taking advantage of the synergies created by the facility modernization project, the Garak market will play a pivotal role in the distribution of agricultural products.
The traditional market is foremost a regionally positioned place, wherein the market directly represents regional and cultural centered traits while it plays an important role in the circulation of facilities through reciprocal, informative and cultural exchanges while sewing to form local communities. The traditional market in Korea is one of representative retail businesses and premodern marketing techniques by family owned business of less than five members such as product management, purchase method, and marketing patterns etc. Since the 1990s, the appearance of new circulation-type businesses and large discount convenience stores escalated the loss of traditional competitiveness, increased the living standard of customers, changed purchasing patterns, and expanded the ubiquity of the Internet. All of these changes in external circulation circumstances have led the traditional markets to lose their place in the economy. The traditional market should revive on a regional site basis through the formation of a community of regional neighbors and through knowledge-sharing that leads to the creation of wealth. For the purpose of creating a wealth in a place, the following components are necessary: 1) a facility suitable for the spatial place of the present, 2)trust built through exchanges within the changing market environment, which would simultaneously satisfy customer's desires, 3) international bench marking on cases such as regionally centered TCM (England), BID (USA), and TMO (Japan) so that the market unit of store placement transfers from a spot policy to a line policy, 4)conversion of communicative conception through a surface policy approach centered around a macro-region perspective. The budget of the traditional market funding policy was operational between 2001 and 2004, serving as a counter move to solve the problem of the old traditional market through government intervention in regional economies to promote national economic strength. This national treasury funding project was centered on environmental improvement, research corps, and business modernization through the expenditure of 3,853 hundred million won (Korean currency). However, the effectiveness of this project has yet to be to proven through investigation. Furthermore, in promoting this funding support project, a lack of professionalism among merchants in the market led to constant limitations in comprehensive striving strategies, reduced capabilities in middle-and long-term plan setup, and created reductions in voluntary merchant agreement solutions. The traditional market should go beyond mere physical place and ordinary products creative site strategies employing the communicative approach must accompany these strategies to make the market a new regional and spatial living place. Thus, regarding recent paradigm changes and the introduction of region-based site functions into the traditional market, acquiring a conversion of direction into the newly developed project is essential to reinvestigate the traditional market composed of cultural and economic meanings, for the purpose of the research. Excavating social policy demands through the comparative analysis of domestic and international cases as well as innovative and expert management leadership development for NPO or NGO civil entrepreneurs through advanced case research on present promotion methods is extremely important. Discovering the seeds of the cultural contents industry cored around regional resource usages, commercializing regionally reknowned products, and constructing complex cultural living places for regional networks are especially important. In order to accelerate these solutions, a comprehensive and systemized approach research operated within a mentor academy system is required, as research will reveal distinctive traits of the traditional market in the aging society.
Recently concerns have been raised due to the unbalanced supply of crops: the price of crops has been unstable and at one point the price went up so high that the word Agflation(agriculture+ inflation) was coined. Korea, in particular, is a small-sized country and needs to secure the stable supply of crops by investing in the produce importation at a national level. Investment in foreign produce importation is becoming more important as a measure for sufficient supply of crops, limited supply of domestic crops, weakened farming conditions worldwide, as well as recent changes in the use of crops due to the development of bio-fuels, influence of carbon emission on crops, the price increase in crops, and influx of foreign hot money. However, there are many problems with investing in foreign produce importation: lack of support from the government; lack of farming information and technology; difficulty in securing the capital; no immediate pay-off from the investment and insufficient management. Although foreign produce is originally more price-competitive than domestic produce, it loses its competiveness in the process of importation (due to high tariffs) and poor distribution system, which makes it difficult to sell in Korea. Therefore, investment in foreign produce importation is being questioned for feasibility; to make it possible, foreign produce must maintain the price-competitiveness. Especially, harvest of agricultural products depends on natural and geographical conditions of each country and those products have indigenous properties, so distribution system according to import and export of agricultural products should be treated more carefully than that of other industries. Distribution costs are differentiated into each item and include cost of sorting and wrapping, cost of wrapping materials, cost of domestic transport, cost of international transport and cost of clearing customs for import and export. So transporting and storing agricultural products generates considerable costs compared with other products. Also, due to upgrade of dietary life, needs for stability, taste and visible quality toward food including agricultural products are being raised and wrong way of storage causes decomposition of food and loss of freshness, making the storage more difficult than that in room temperature, so storage and transport in distribution of agricultural products needs specialty. In addition, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. However, existing distribution system of agricultural products is exposed to various problems including problems in distribution channel, making distribution and strategy for distribution and those problems are as follows. First, in case of investment in overseas agricultural industry, stable supply of the products is difficult because areas of production are dispersed widely and influenced by outer factors due to including overseas distribution channels. Also, at the aspect of quality, standardization of products is difficult, distribution system is quite complicated and unreasonable due to long distribution channels according to international trade and financial and institutional support is not enough. Especially, there are quite a lot of ineffective factors including multi level distribution process, dramatic gap between production cost and customer's cost, lack of physical distribution facilities and difficulties in storage and transport due to lack of wrapping containers. Besides, because import and export of agricultural products has been manages under the company's own distribution according to transaction contract between manufacturers and exporting company, efficiency is low due to excessive investment in fixed costs and lack of specialty in dealing with agricultural products causes fall of value of products, showing the limit to lose price-competitiveness. Especially, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. Second, among tangible and intangible services which promote the efficiency of the whole distribution, a function building distribution environment which includes distribution information, system for standard and inspection, distribution finance, system for diversification of risks, education and training, distribution administration and tax system is wanted. In general, such a function building distribution environment is difficult to be changed and supplement innovatively because its effect compared with investment does not appear immediately despite of its necessity. Especially, in case of distribution of agricultural products, as a function of collecting and distributing is performed individually through various channels, the importance of distribution information and standardization is getting more focus due to the problem of repetition of work and lack of specialty. Also, efficient management of distribution is quite difficult due to lack of professionals in distribution, so support to professional education is needed. Third, though effort to keep self-sufficiency ratio of staple food, rice is regarded as important at the government level, level of dependency on overseas of others crops is high. Therefore, plan for stable securing food resources aside from staple food is also necessary. Especially, governmental organizations of agricultural products distribution in Korea are production-centered and have unreasonable structure whose function at the aspect of distribution and consumption is quite insufficient. And development of new distribution channels which can deal with changes in distribution environment and they do not achieve actual results of strategy for distribution due to non-positive strategy for price distribution. That is, it implies the possibility that base for supply will become vulnerable because it does not mediate appropriate interests on total distribution channels such as manufacturers, wholesale dealers and vendors by emphasizing consumer protection excessively in the distribution of agricultural products. Therefore, this study examined fundamental concept and actual situation for our investment to overseas agriculture, drew necessities, considerations, problems, etc. of overseas agricultural investment and suggested improvements at the level of distribution for price competitiveness of agricultural products cultivated in overseas under five aspects; government's indirect support, distribution's modernization and distribution information function's strengthening, government's political support for distribution facility, transportation route, load and unloading works' improvement, price competitiveness' securing, professional manpower's cultivation by education and training, etc. Here are some suggestions for foreign produce importation. First, the government should conduct a survey on the current distribution channels and analyze the situation to establish a measure for long-term development plans. By providing each agricultural area with a guideline for planning appropriate production of crops, the government can help farmers be ready for importation, and prevent them from producing same crops all at the same time. Government can sign an MOU with the foreign government and promote the importation so that the development of agricultural resources can be stable and steady. Second, the government can establish a strategy for an effective distribution system by providing farmers and agriculture-related workers with the distribution information such as price, production, demand, market structure and location, feature of each crop, and etc. In order for such distribution system to become feasible, the government needs to reconstruct the current distribution system, designate a public organization for providing distribution information and set the criteria for level of produce quality, trade units, and package units. Third, the government should provide financial support and a policy to seek an efficient distribution channel for foreign produce to be delivered fresh: the government should expand distribution facilities (for selecting, packaging, storing, and processing) and transportation vehicles while modernizing old facilities. There should be another policy to improve the efficiency of unloading, and to lower the cost of distribution. Fourth, it is necessary to enact a new law covering exceptional cases for importing produce in order to maintain the price competitiveness; currently the high tariffs is keeping the imported produce from being distributed domestically. However, the new adjustment should be made carefully within the WTO regulations since it can create a problem from giving preferential tariffs. The government can also simplify the distribution channels in order to reduce the cost in the distribution process. Fifth, the government should educate distributors to raise the efficiency and to modernize the distribution system. It is necessary to develop human resources by educating people regarding the foreign agricultural environment, the produce quality, management skills, and by introducing some successful cases in advanced countries.