Research On The Competitive Advantage Of Chinese Dairy Enterprises In The Perspective Of The Whole Industry Chain

The outbreak of killing cows and pouring milk during late 2014 to early 2015 throws China's dairy industry into the center of public opinions.The small-and-medium scale farms have quit under great pressure and the international capitals take the opportunity to enter this industry.Meanwhile,Chinese consumers lost their confidence in China's dairy enterprises,leading to the decline of consumption in dairy market.On the surface,the outbreak of killing cows and pouring milk is a result of the over-plus of raw milk and the income lagging behind the cost.In fact,the real reason is the out-of-control and acquiescence of the illegal use of industrial constituted milk in the production.At the time when the domestic dairy industry has not got rid of the crisis of confidence brought about by the Melamine Incident in 2008,the domestic dairy enterprises take advantage of consumers,intending not to print on the boxes the indicator to remind consumers of the use of industrial constituted milk,which is requested by the government.To some extent,the use of industrial constituted milk contributes to the popularity of the overseas milk in China's market.Some insiders deem that industrial constituted milk will give rise to the next Melamine Incident.The pressure at home and from abroad forces China's dairy industry to upgrade,however,the upgrade needs to be conducted on the basis of a powerful competitive advantage,which is a complex system of multi-stage,multi-agent and multiple intermediate variables.In this system,the main factors that influence the competitive advantage of dairy enterprises are related to each other,directly or indirectly.In the indirect relations,there are regulating variables and mediating variables.In some situation,the mediating variables are more than one.Thus,the dairy enterprise competitive advantage is a regulating system with multiple intermediaries and a structural equation model capable of dealing with complicated relations.But most of existing researches only build a simple structural relation and the models are too simple and too abstract for study the competitive advantage of dairy enterprises and lack depth in the study of the relation between the variables.From the perspective of the whole industry chain,this article,taking China's major dairy companies as samples,aims to study the enhancement of the competitive advantage of China's dairy companies from the aspects of the soft power,the hard power and their interaction mechanism.First,the current background of dairy industry and the competition would be explained to clarify the inevitability of the whole industry chain innovation of China's dairy enterprises.Second,the theories about whole industry chain,competitive advantage,corporate soft power and corporate hard power would be introduced in this article.Third,this article would study the relationships among corporate soft power,corporate hard power and the enhancement of competitive advantage of the dairy enterprises.Fourth,this article would build a three-stage model of industrial chain to analyze the competitive advantage of dairy enterprises based on corporate soft power and corporate hard power,and put forward assumptions.Fifth,a questionnaire would be conducted with 17 measured variables and 45 questions,which are designed according to characteristics of dairy enterprises and researches of some scholars.Sixth,after analyzing the reliability and the validity of collected questionnaires and examining the relationships between variables in the model,the following conclusions can be drew according to the results of the empirical research:(1)Environmental factor and previous soft power in the first stage and soft power,hard power and resource factor in the second stage,have a direct positive influence on the competitive advantage of China's dairy companies(2)Soft power,hard power and resource factor in the second stage as mediating variables have a indirect influence on the competitive advantage(3)The influence of a single variable would become complicated when taking into consideration the other variables,which demonstrates the complexity of the internal structure of competitive advantage of the dairy enterprises.(4)In order to illustrate clearly and vividly the systematicness of competitive advantage of the dairy enterprises,the competitive advantage spiral system should be set up from inside and outside the dairy enterprises to give a certain theoretical and practical significance to the enhancement of the competitive advantage of China's dairy companies.