• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2008

For the last few years, the wholesale market system in Japan has been experiencing a lot of changes in the related sectors. The greatest changes in the environments surrounding the wholesale market were enlargement of the producers' cooperatives, increase of fisheries products marketed in the outside of the wholesale market system, and management aggravation of the related businessmen, These changes resulted in the revision of the wholesale Market Law in 1999 to cope with the social needs successfully. Recently, fisheries wholesale markets in Japan have a few problems like declining of earning power, weakening of management constitution, etc. Consequently, Japanese government presents policy for enforcing the competition power through reform laws related with fisheries wholesale markets. Also the fisheries wholesale markets have been trying variety and active countermeasures like undertaking, merger, coalition, etc. to overcome the crisis.

• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.79-93
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• 2014

The Act on Distribution and Price Stabilization of Agricultural and Fisheries Product, which specifies rules and regulations on the trading system of fishery products wholesales markets, has been revised several times, mainly in order to improve the trading system. However, there is still a huge gap between the reality and law when it comes to the trading system of the fishery products wholesale market. This study aims to analyze the problems of the trading system of the fishery products wholesale market and to suggest ways to make improvement. The main problem facing the trading system of the fishery products wholesale market is sales on consignment by intermediate wholesalers, and this paper suggests two alternatives to solve the problem. First, intermediate wholesaler can be converted to market wholesalers, but it also entails other problems. The market wholesaler system has never been successfully adopted in the agricultural and fishery products wholesale market, and it is not clear which system is better between the wholesale market corporation and the market wholesaler system. Second, sales on consignment by intermediate wholesalers can be adopted with a positive view toward it. Negotiation transaction can be carried out for sales on consignment as a transaction method under the current Act on Distribution and Price Stabilization of Agricultural and Fisheries Products. However, since the act cannot provide a solution for listing, it is necessary to introduce Japan's negotiated transaction in advance system as a negotiation transaction method.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.67-86
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• 2009

The Gang-Seo wholesale market is an experimental system in that two different distribution channels co-exist in the same marketplace; the auction system and the consignment system. The government expects the consignment system offers higher and more stable prices to farmers than the auction system. This study tested if that is the case, but the results did not support the hypotheses. The consignment system needs institutional complements and more transparent operations before wide-spreading.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.65-71
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• 2015

Purpose - Domestic cooperatives tend to increase during the establishment of cooperatives and gradually through the basic law of social needs. However, only cooperatives' qualitative grow this secured without blessings, and their quantitative growth through government support is questionable. The purpose of this study is to analyze the agricultural cooperatives established through the Distribution System Cooperatives Basic Law, which was enacted in January 2012. Subsequently, establishing agricultural cooperatives was done briskly. However, cooperatives established rapidly after the founding of the Basic Law encountered problems. Research design, data, and methodology - To assess the performance of selected agricultural cooperatives, data were analyzed using the methodological Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach. The AHP is a set of systematic procedures to hierarchically analyze the elements of any problem. Using a survey on expertise, a series of comparative determinations of each pair is performed to evaluate the relative strengths and the strengths of the impact between elements within the hierarchy. A survey was conducted on 10 small agricultural cooperatives using AHP analysis for the examination. The purpose of such research and analysis is to recommend a direction for future policies aimed at small agricultural cooperatives. Result - This study applied three types of policy evaluation criterion, including market expansions, organizations, and cooperative projects, and 12 types of small agricultural cooperative policy measures. Market expansion policies for agricultural cooperatives are classified into four categories: school meals, direct transactions, shopping malls, and wholesale markets. Organizational policies for agricultural cooperatives are classified into four types: existing sales channel management, education, preventing free riding, and enlarging members. Cooperative project policies in agricultural cooperatives are classified into four policy areas: cooperation between cooperatives, community contribution, joint businesses, and government links. In this paper, the growth priority in agricultural cooperative policies is analyzed by applying policy evaluation criteria on the basis of a survey on expertise. The priorities of the policy program are also analyzed using a decision analytic hierarchy process. The results indicate that market expansion is the most important policy evaluation criterion therefore, improving direct transactions, school meals, management of existing sales channels, and shopping malls are crucial policy measures. In contrast, the cooperation of cooperatives, expansion of union members, and cooperation with the government were found to have low priority. Conclusions - Agricultural cooperatives should develop plans as follows. Small agricultural cooperatives need to secure school meals and direct transactions for market expansion, restructure marketing strategies to manage existing sales channels, and, finally, increase education and training for sustainable organizational development. This study has the following limitations. Because the subject of the investigation is a new cooperative, determining its sustainable growth is difficult. Therefore, through analysis and a continuous study of cooperatives, future research is expected to show that modifying the direction of agriculture cooperatives is necessary.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.26-34
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• 2010

KOGAS, established in 1983 by law to ensure stable gas supply to the public, is responsible for the wholesale distribution to 30 city gas companies that deal with the retail distribution of natural gas in their geographic areas. The gas imported by KOGAS is measured by checking the level difference of LNG shipped in tankers before and after unloading. The analysis of gas composition is essential because the imported gas price is determined by its calorific value. The turbine meter is widely used for measuring the gas sold to city gas companies. Unlike the metering system for power plants, there is no gas chromatograph since the custody transfer of gas to the city gas companies is not billed by calorific value, but by volume basis. The gas quantity that a city gas company has bought from KOGAS is not equal to the quantity that the company sold to its customers. There have been some discrepancies between the wholesale gas meter readouts and retail ones due to some inherent errors of meters and some operational issues of the meters. This paper investigates the controversies regarding the real quantity of gas between distributors and consumers. It will discus and suggest desirable policies, both technically and economically, in order to solve the discrepancies of gas measurement.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.3-33
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• 1991

Since the early 1980's, the Korean government has gradually been widening the Korean market to foreign consumer goods. This, combined with the increased purchasing power of the Korean consumers resulting from the continued economic growth of the country, has sparked a spectacular influx of foreign consumer goods into Korea, ranging from BMW's to chopsticks. Import of foreign consumer goods amounted to more than 6 billion dollars in 1989 and is continuing to grow at a rapid rate. The increased import of foreign consumer goods doubtlessly improved the overall welfare of the Korean consumers by providing them with a wider range of options to choose from, by lowering the prices of some of the consumer goods domestically produced, and also by forcing the producers of some Korean goods to face competition with better foreign goods, thus giving them an incentive to raise the quality of their products. However, it is agreed by most economists that this increase in general welfare has been much smaller than what they had expected at the outset. Consumer prices of most imported consumer goods are easily double the import price, and in some cases, more than treble the import prices. Further, there has not been a noticeable drop in the prices of domestically produced consumer goods. Much of the blame has been attributed to the distribution sector of Korea. The objective of this paper is to analyze the imported consumer goods distribution sector of Korea, focusing on the possible sources of the poor performance of that sector, and to make policy suggestions that could potentially increase the welfare. This paper differs from all the previous research by others on this subject in that it analyzes the imported consumer goods distribution sector of Korea as a vertical structure. The distribution sector of an imported consumer good is a vertical structure since it consists of an international market, an import stage, and domestic wholesale and retail markets, in that order vertically. Our study naturally includes the analysis of the vertical restraints as well as the analysis of the industrial organization of each horizontal stage in the vertical structure. Each horizontal component of the imported consumer goods distribution sector is basically a monopolistically competitive market differentiated by characteristics of goods and by the locations and the services of firms. Further, restrictive dealership and resale price maintenance are found to be widely in use. Our main findings are the follwing; First, most consumer goods are imported monopolistically or oligopolistically through restrictive dealership contracts between foreign producers and domestic importers. Such restrictive dealership gives importers market power in the domestic market and explains many of the large discrepancies betwen the consumer prices and the import prices of many goods. Korean anti - trust law does not cover the issues arising from the market power of an importer resulting from a restrictive dealership contract. Second, some major producers of Korean goods are also importers of foreign goods that are substitutes of their products. The import of substitutes by major domestic producers is anti - competitive because it tends to raise the prices of both domestic goods and foreign goods, and also because it reduces the incentive of the domestic producers to raise the quality of their products. Third, wholesalers and retailers widely use resale price maintenance as a price fixing mechanism, and while this is against the anti- trust law, it seldom gets noticed. Fourth, the high level of rents of real estate for commercial use works as an entry barrier to the distribution sector and results in reduced competition by the firms in that sector. Finally, there are information problems. Consumers have inferior information to firms about the quality of a foreign consumer good that they have not tried before. Such information asymmetry often enables firms to raise prices. In addition, information asymmetry between importers frequently delays the import of cheaper substitutes. In order to alleviate the problems indentified above, we suggest the following policy changes. The government should strengthen the anti - trust law and its enforcement to regulate restrictive import contracts, import of competing goods by major domestic producers, and RPM by wholesalers and retailers that is aimed at price fixing. In addition, the government should loosen its tight real estate policy to encourage investment in the distribution sector. Finally, we suggest that the import price revelation policy that has been in use for some items since 1990 be expanded to most imported consumer goods that are introduced for the first time to give consumer better information and be used only for the period of time needed to inform sufficient number of consumers.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1-24
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• 2012

Franchises have recently emerged as the most rapidly expanding industry positioned to create a large impact in the domestic economic. The Chinese franchise industry developed rapidly in the period prior and subsequent to WTO accession with more than 50% of new franchises brands emerging since 2000. M&A transactions in the Chinese franchise industry have progressed actively. In the period from 2005-2007, due to the wholesale and retail market opening in accordance with the guidelines laid forth within the MOU by the WTO the Chinese franchise market is now the largest market in the world all despite a short history of only 20 years. The amount of franchise market research on China is disproportional to its current size and development potential. Beginning in the 1990s, market research conducted by the International Franchise Association focused on emerging markets in Eastern Europe and China. While the research dealt with the Chinese investment environment, it insufficiently explained the market region and cultural environment. The purpose of this research is (i) to investigate the determinants of the performance of franchise systems in China and (ii) new contract renewals based on performance factors. This study will complement existing research in terms of the franchisee perspective. This study may also prove of the benefit to the franchise companies entering the Chinese franchise market enabling them to develop an effective strategy. This study shows that support, incentives, and system standardization by franchisor yielded a positive effect on management performance. This is consistent with previous studies by Shin (2000) and Kim (2008) targeting Korean franchises. Therefore, in the Chinese market, the franchisor must focus on support, incentives, and system standardization rather than concentrate only on the recruitment of franchisees in order to improve revenue. Hypotheses regarding franchisor control have been dismissed in existing research, in the opinion of this study, due to their complexity and inability to control the merchant as a one-kind-assessment-standard. Our findings show that the franchisees' financial condition, management ability and entrepreneurial spirit, among franchisee's characteristics, have a positive effect on franchisor's business performance and satisfaction for the franchisee. This is consistent with previous studies on headquarters' management performance of Lussier (1996), Heo and Jang (2008), and franchisees' financial condition, management ability and entrepreneurial spirit effect on franchisor's satisfaction of Weaven and Franzer (2007), Kim (2009), Han (2009), and Yoon etc. (2008). Therefore, when permitting a franchisee, financial condition, management ability, entrepreneurship of the franchisee should be carefully considered. Among relational factors between franchisor and franchisee, trust has the positive influence on the management performance of the franchisor while conflict has a negative effect. However, trust, commitment and conflict factors have been shown not to have any impact on the satisfaction of the franchise headquarters. This result is consistent with the previous studies of Pavlou and Ba (2000), Morrison (1999), Weaven and Frazer (2007), Kim and Park (1994), Sohn (2007) which show that trust between franchisor and the franchisees have a positive effect and that conflict has a negative impact on franchisor's management performance. Other factors causing a negative effective on the franchisor's management performance are a rapid environmental changes and uncertainty in the business. This is consistent with Campbell et al (2007), Kim and Kim (2009), Han and Baek (2008). Finally, the high management performance and satisfaction of the franchise headquarters has a positive effect on the intention of franchise renewal. In the case of large markets such as China, the franchisor's strategy and the role is very important. In this study, we also investigated the characteristics of franchisor and franchisee, relationship, and environmental uncertainty affecting on the management performance and satisfaction of franchisor. Recently, Korean franchises are attempting to enter foreign markets through the rise in popularity of Korean culture and entertainment commonly referred to as the Korean wave. This study provides recommendations for Korean franchises intending on entering the Chinese market. First, in order to achieve stable profits, the franchise corporation needs to support the operation of the individual franchisee through incentives and standardization of services. Second, because trust between the franchisor and franchisee has a positive effect on management performance, on-going discussion and cooperation is necessary to reduce the level of conflict.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.17-26
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• 2010

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.