青果物市況情報伝達の費用分析

抄録

The purpose of this article is to determine the least cost communication terminal and network for farmers' marketing groups to collect information about vegetables and fruits marketing originating daily from many wholesale markets. The costs for a large scale farmers' marketing group and a small scale one sampled from the same prefecture to communicate with respective wholesale markets are compared among using of telephones, facsimilies and computers. Then the same costs for two large scale groups of different locations are compared among using public telephone network, packet switched network by packet terminal and packet switched network by no-packet terminal. The results from the analysis are as follows.
1) A large scale group as well as a small scale one uses telephones to collect information about vegetables' and fruits' marketing from the respective market. They show scale economies in collecting information.
2) The least cost communication terminal for a large scale group is a computer which disperses its fixed cost over a large amount of information, whereas it for a small scale group is telephone which has to spread its fixed cost over a small amount of information.
3) A large scale group which uses a computer to communicate with markets can process and analyze daily marketing data, differentiating its marketing function from that of the small scale group.
4) The least cost communication network using a computer is public telephone network for a large scale group located near the main market, from where marketing information about most kinds of vegetables and fruits is originated, and packet switched network by packet terminal for the same group lacated remote from the main market.