Industrial agglomeration and product quality improvement of food enterprises: empirical analysis based on data from Chinese enterprises

Abstract

This study utilized data on dairy enterprises, which are representative of China's food industry, to investigate the relationships and mechanisms between industrial agglomeration and the product quality of food enterprises. The results show that industrial agglomeration significantly improves the product quality of Chinese food enterprises. In general, the economic effect of China's food industry agglomeration is greater than that of excessive competition. The heterogeneity analysis showed that industrial agglomeration plays a more important role in promoting the product quality of non-state-owned enterprises and food enterprises in the eastern region than in state-owned enterprises and the central and western regions. Further mechanistic analysis showed that industrial agglomeration promotes food quality improvement by improving enterprise productivity and fixed cost input efficiency. Therefore, this study confirms that industrial agglomeration can be used as an external driving force for China's food quality improvement. On the basis of market mechanisms, through the guidance of the macro policy of industrial agglomeration, the external economies of the scale effect of agglomeration are of great significance for helping the food industry become high quality and high end.

Does High-Tech Industry Agglomeration Promote Its Export Product Upgrading?—Based on the Perspective of Innovation and Openness

“…In the test of impact mechanism, the mediating effect of innovation ability and openness are also significantly positive, which further verifies the hypothesis H2. The purpose of high-tech industry agglomeration is to improve product quality and promote product upgrading by improving industry technology [45,46]. The direct way to improve product quality and promote product upgrading is technological innovation, and industry agglomeration has a significant role in promoting technological innovation to a large extent [47,48].…”