Production Network and Commodity Chain of Piano Manufacturing Cluster in Rural China-- Case Study of Luoshe, Zhejiang Province
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
Ho, Yu
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Under the context of globalization of piano production, China is now the world’s biggest piano producer in the 21st century, producing 340,000 pianos in the world (70 % of the world share) in 2009. Luoshe, a rural township under the Huzhou city of Zhejiang Province with no any piano industry background before the 1980s, has produced its first piano in 1985 and nowadays has 46 piano manufacturers (30 % China in total) together making makes 65,000 pianos in 2009. The case of Luoshe is quite different from the typical western model of piano production which has existed since the 18th century. In the west, pianos are mainly manufactured by musical craftsmen or related family business, who also generally control the piano consumption market. However, Luoshe becomes the piano cluster without any craftsmen tradition nor power of controlling the market, making the rise of Luoshe deserves our scholarly attention than it has received. This thesis pays attention to the gap and asks why and how and under what circumstance the cluster has been formatted and transformed over the past decades.
The case of Luoshe is empirically examined by two dimensions. On the one hand, from the production side, there is a very complex production network that is consisted of three kinds of piano factories in terms production size- the mega one (producing 30,000 pianos a year), the larger one (3,000-5,000 production a year) and the medium and small one (300-500 output a year). The only mega one, which produces nearly half of piano output in Luoshe, was jointly established by a local woodcutting company and a state-owned piano company in Guangdong. The production network of the mega one is relatively independent by itself without interacting with local suppliers. On the contrary, the larger ones and the medium and small ones have closer connections with other local production networks as there are certain traded/ untraded dependence relationships between different piano producers and component suppliers.
On the other hand, in terms of consumption side, more than 90% pianos produced in Luoshe are sold domestically to the increasing demands of so-called Chinese middle-class families. Increasing numbers of various types of newly established piano shops play a role between those buyers who like to buy pianos at homes and piano producers in Luoshe. These piano shops (especially small piano ones) become very crucial in the piano marketing channel as they predominantly manage the information and process of introducing what brands of pianos to consumers. Therefore, the piano market in Luoshe is instead dominated by piano shops rather than producers, which is very different from the west.
Subjects
Luoshe Township
piano manufacturing industry
rural industrialization
industrial cluster
commodity chain
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