2000 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Research on the trend of oligopoly, concentration of capital and multi-nationalization in Japanese food industry
| Project/Area Number |
10460104
|
|---|
| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B).
|
| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
|---|
| Section | 一般 |
|---|
| Research Field |
Agro-economics
|
|---|
| Research Institution | Waseda University |
|---|
Principal Investigator |
HORIGUCHI Kenji Waseda University, School of Political Science and Economics, Professor, 政治経済学部, 教授 (80041705)
|
|---|
| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
TERAMOTO Chinao Senshu University, Hokkaido College, Professor, 経済科, 教授 (40258710)
KAI Satoshi Kyushu University, School of Agriculture, Professor, 大学院・農学研究院, 教授 (70038313)
TOYODA Takashi Tokyo University of Agriculture and Industry, School of Agriculture, Professor, 大学院・農学研究科, 教授 (00142836)
KASE Yoshiaki Meiji University, College of Agriculture, Associate Professor, 農学部, 助教授 (00204412)
IIZAWA Riichiro Hokkaido University, School of Agriculture, Associate Professor, 大学院・農学研究科, 助教授 (60184339)
|
|---|
| Project Period (FY) |
1998 – 2000
|
| Keywords | agribusiness / food industry / food processing / pre-cooked / convenient shop / restaurant industry |
|---|
| Research Abstract |
The agribusiness, especially cooked food supply firms and food service firms like the restaurants are increasing shares in the food economy and increasingly expanding the "keiretsu or franchised "(concentration and centralization of capital or organized many and small shops by contracts of supply of same brand items and collection of sale information) system. The process-industry type of food processing, featuring equipment-oriented investment, has grown in Japan after the Second World War by taking advantage of imported ingredients like equal quality grain at large volume unit of transportation and labor productivity.
Today the labor-intensive type of food industry is also expanding along with the trend of more precooked food consumption. The convenient shops which developed around Japan so dramatically are selling cooked food like the boxed lunch and "rice balls " as the main items. Restaurants have recently grown more quickly than the processing industry. This industry was regarded as a typical industry with small business, but now it is not really true. Big firms including the multi-national corporations are now keeping the relatively large market share while maintaining big sales value although the number of their shops and stores is still small. Expansion of big firms into the restaurant industry brings more import of various foods like fruits, vegetables, meat, semi-processed food and processed food which require less labor-intensive processing, because big firms tend to take the scale merit of production into consideration by using the centralized supply system for distribution of limited numbers of homogeneous pre-cooked foods. This trend is also found in the strategy of the convenient shops developed in Japan quickly. Under the condition of high price of land, strategy success of the convenient shops and restaurants is to rent in the facilities and stores built by the owners just on the builders own land.
|
