경남지역은 수도권에 이어 우리나라 최대의 화훼류 생산지역이다. 경남지역에서 화훼류가 재배되기 시작한 것은 1960년대 중반으로 우리나라에서 화훼 재배가 가장 먼저 도입된 지역이기도 하다. 경남지역은 2006년에 전국 화훼 재배면적의 16.2%를 차지하고 있으며 판매액으로는 14.3%를 차지하고 있다. 경남지역 화훼류 생산의 가장 큰 특징은 절화류에 특화되어 있다는 점인데, 경남지역 화훼 재배면적 가운데 절화류는 77.6%를 차지하고 있다. 또 다른 특징은 도시 확장과 함께 부산지역을 포함하여 경남지역의 화훼산업이 지속적으로 위축되고 있다는 점이다. 또한, 일본시장에서 중국산 화훼류와의 경쟁도 강화되고 있다. 따라서 장기적으로 경남지역 화훼산업이 지속적으로 성장하기 위해서는 대외적으로 품질 및 가격 경쟁력을 갖추는 것이 무엇보다 시급하며, 대내적으로 가용한 토지를 확보가 시급한 문제라 할 수 있다.

The purpose of this paper investigates the operational efficiency of nationwide flower chain based on survey data in Korea. Three problems in the operational efficiencyappear: first, the main office does not match the amount of order with that of delivery, and there are competitors of the same chain in the same district second, the quality of flower delivered is not standardized third, the main office and the chain store in the nationwide flower chain does not achieve the incentive compatibility in making and sharing the joint profit. Hence the key point to succeed in the small flower shop is to create its own customers in the district and the nationwide chain only provides the complementary market to local flower store.

The following is the summary to promote the efficiency of distribution structure in the flower business. First, considering the fact that off-line sale is still the major part of flower businesses, we should make a greater effort to activate e-business which is the combination of off-line and on-line businesses. Second, the sale sizes, when we do not consider those who did not give an answer to the survey, appear polarized into 2 million and 8 million Won. It means that we should develop a new distribution structure through which small local flower shops can also have their own shares in the nationwide flower market. Running a nationwide chain can be one way to resolve that polarization problem, but there are still some issues that need to be addressed. For example, there already exist more than 10 companies that have nationwide chains, but the reality that the bigger chains tend to attract bigger number of people shows that network externality is an important factor for the success of the flower business. Further studies, therefore, are needed to find out an answer to this critical issue on what is the minimum number of members which can create the necessary network externalities.