Analysis of Vertical Integration in Taiwan Frozen Prepared Food Industry

隨著近年來國民所得大幅提高，速食產業及簡便餐飲量興起，外食人口急遽增加，國人在飲食方面愈來愈要求便利、精緻、快速和多樣化，因此，兼具衛生、美味、實用及簡便等特性之冷凍調理食品，亦愈來愈受消費者青睞。冷凍調理食品產業之原料來源主要是農、漁、畜產品。通常原料成本總總成本的比重很高，因此，原料供給與價格之安定性對冷凍調理食品業的影響很大。 隨著外在環境的變遷與消費型態的轉變，特別是經濟逐漸開放，市場競爭日趨激烈的情況下，冷凍調理食品產業結構也逐漸在調整中，不僅僅廠商規模擴大，而且在生產的垂直階段中，正逐漸朝向垂直整合或協調的型態發展中，值得重視。 為瞭解上述產業的垂直整合現象，本研究首先說明交易成本理論，並回顧國內外文獻作為理論基礎。所謂交易成本理論係指交易雙方因進行交易所發生的資源耗費，包括交易前之資訊搜尋成本、契約關係建立中之議價成本，及交易發生後之監督成本、突發事件成本與契約執行成本等。當廠商透過市場交易之邊際成本高於內部交易之邊際成本時，廠商會進行整，合以將各種長期直接購料或契約方式內部化。 本研究針對台灣地區冷凍調理食品廠商進行調查，有效樣本觀察值共80個，根據交易成本理論分析台灣泠凍調理食品產業向後垂直整合之發展。實證結果顯示歸納出影響冷凍調理食品廠商採行契約購料之垂直整合策略的因素，分別為監督成本、契約執行成本、直接購買合作期間、契約執行滿意度以及具明顯季節性之原料（蔬菜）等五項，呈現顯著的相關。這充分說明了交易成本的節省，是廠商採行契約垂直整台主要原因。The frozen prepared food industry is ongoing its structure, and developing its product items in recent years for reacting to the external environmental changes and the intensified market competition. Based on strategic consideration, most firms adopted vertical integration or coordination, especially backward integration. What are the factors affect the degree of backward integration in the forzen prepared food industry? Were the high transaction costs an important factor contribution to this backward integration? According to the concept of transaction cost theory, a transaction could incur several cost items more or less, such as searching costs, bargaining costs, monitoring costs, enforcing costs and costs of contingency. There costs will affect the willing of integration. To answer above questions, a transaction cost model has being tested and verified by the Probit analysis method with 80 observations to demonstrate that the adoption of backward integration strategy is due to the high transaction costs. The empirical results indicate that transaction cost theory is useful to explain the behavior of backward integration in frozen prepared food industry