The Effects of Marketing Organisation on the Delivery of Added Value: A Historical Comparison of Australia's Beef and Chicken Meat Marketing Systems

Abstract

This thesis examines how the organisation of marketing activities in Australia’s beef and chicken meat segments shaped the major forms of value exchanged in these two meat marketing systems. Separate contributions from agribusiness, marketing, and business history on the effects of marketing organisation on the delivery of value are reviewed and integrated. This review demonstrates that research has attempted to keep pace with changes in the configuration of agri-food value chains to understand shifting demand patterns and associated value orientations. But, in focusing on a limited number of links in these value chains for limited periods of time, insights from previous studies do not fully account for the observed changes in Australia’s two major meat marketing systems. Inadequacy of existing descriptive accounts and frameworks also relate to their production-focused notion of value. Analysing the forms of value exchanged in terms of the benefits and sacrifices considered by consumers in consuming meat redresses the preoccupation with high volume and low price as the dominant type of value embodied in meat. The food marketing systems perspective adopted permits identification of four interrelated coordination mechanisms that comprise the marketing infrastructure. These mechanisms connect participants in meat value chains to direct and support the flow of resources between them. Despite a few cross-sectional studies examining their role, understanding of how they shape value delivery in Australia’s meat marketing systems has been disjointed and incomplete. The research question at the centre of this study concerns the following gap in knowledge: how does the configuration and control of coordination mechanisms influence the delivery of value in a meat marketing system over time? A comparative historical methodology is applied to identify patterns of value delivery across the two cases. Synthesis of the findings reveals four distinct modes of value delivery. Two factors are decisive in explaining the observed patterns. The locus of control over marketing organisation, whether external or internal, is one decisive factor. The other defining factor is the responsiveness to product market conditions. Responsiveness is categorised as either passive or active and depends on the role of coordination mechanisms in detecting changes in the marketing environment and responding to them in order to deliver value. From the interplay of these two factors four different modes of value delivery are identified - inactive, reactive, submissive, and proactive. These four modes are aligned with different forms of value exchanged in meat marketing systems - commodity goods, generic products, value added products, and added value brands respectively. The profiles fit distinct phases of the configuration and reconfiguration of Australia’s beef and chicken meat marketing systems.