Food risk management quality (FRMQ) of government and the private firms: Consumers’ perspectives in China and Korea

Globalization brought increased market access to Agri-food traders and exporters and consumers are more exposed to products from foreign sources. This trend is expected to continue further as major trading countries are joining regional trade agreement to establish greater trading bloc and to expand export markets. Korea and China are major trading partners of agri-food products and have initiated Korea-China FTA talk late 2012. Korea-China FTA is expected to integrate agri-food markets of the two countries. Consumers in these countries are increasingly concerned about safety of food products both from domestic and foreign sources. To enable sustainable and efficient food supply chain between the two countries, it is critical that both governments ensure development of food risk management system which takes into consideration of major stakeholders in each country. In particular, consumers’ perception on the quality of food risk management which is run by the public and the private sectors may have significant impact on how consumers accept the current food supply system. The private sector of Agri-food industry increasingly implements private food risk management as part of marketing strategies. By examining how consumers differentiate the FRMQ of the public and the private sector, this paper attempts to address important guideline which may provide directions for future development of the private and the public FRMQ system in China and Korea. Findings suggest that consumers in the two countries show different expectation and evaluation on the FRMQ system.