The Locational Patterns of Branch Offices of Multi-Locational Enterprises in the San-in Region, Western Japan

Abstract

In Japan, the agglomeration of branch offices of large enterprises has been recognized as one of the most important elements for the growh of main provincial cities since the mid 1960s. Urban geographers have early studied it especially in the relation to the hierarchy of cities under the post-industrialization. However, the theoretical explanation for the locations of branch offices have been little presented. So, the author tried to make an explanation for the locations of branch offices from the point of view of the economic location theory and presented the following four principles ruling the locations of branch offices. 1) Territoriality of branch office, 2) the threshold of demand for locating a branch office, 3) the minimization of travelling cost for marketing activities and 4) the orientation to the site with the largest agglomeration of demand. Furthermore, the author presented the following hypothesis. The optimal locations of branch offcies change when their territories are differently established. Many enterprises, however, establish territories of their branch offices on the administrative regionalization. As a result of this, the common territories of branch offices among many enterprises become to emerge. In this way, many branch offices of enterprises become to concentrate in particular cities.This paper is to examine the locational patterns of branch offices in the San-in region in order to confirm the above hypothesis. As the result of examination, the following findings were obtained.1) In this study, the San-in region was conveniently defined to the area of two prefectures, Shimane and Tottori. In this region there are three main cities with the similar size in population and retailing sales: Matsue, Tottori and Yonago. For instance, the populations of the three cities in 1985 are 140, 005 in Matsue, 137, 060 in Tottori and 131, 792 in Yonago, respectively. Other cities in this region are smaller ones with fifty thousand people and/or less, excluding Izumo with eighty thousand people. Matsue and Tottori are the prefectural capitals. Yonago, belonging to the Tottori prefecture, is the nodal point in traffic networks in this region. Most of branch offices established in the region by nationwide enterprises are located in some ones of the three cities. However, there are a large difference in the number of branch offices between Matsue, Tottori and Yonago; Matsue has the largest number of branch offices among the three cities.2) A large number of branch offices of nationwide enterprises in the San-in region have territories covering the San-in region or one prefecture. Most of branch offices with territory covering the whole region are located in Matsue or Yonago, owing to the principle of minimization of travelling cost. That is, the two cities are situated in the central area of San-in region. On the contrary, Tottori is situated in the east end of the region, so that such branch offices are not located in the city. As a result of this, the number of branch offices in Tottori are smaller, compared with that in Matsue although each of the two cities is a prefectural capital.3) On the other hand, branch offices with the territory covering a prefectural area tend to be located in Matsue in the Shimane prefecture and Tottori in the Tottori one. So, Yonago has a smaller number of this type of branch offices. Yonago is competetive with Tottori city for locations of the above branch offices in Tottori prefecture. Yonago and Tottori are situated at the west and east end of Tottori prefecture, respectively. However, in the travelling cost for selling within the territory, Yoango is second to Tottori. In this way, the total number of branch offices in Yonago is smaller than that in Matsue, although Yonago has a lot of branch offices with the territory covering the San-in region as well as Matsue.