Embeddedness of Producer Services and Agricultural Cluster Competitiveness : A Case Study of China’s Shihe Tea Industry Cluster

Abstract

K E Y W O RDS : agricultural cluster; producer services; embeddness; Xingyang Maojian The agricultural clusters play an important role in agricultural competitiveness and economic growth. Embeddness of producer services will significantly enhance the competitiveness of the agricultural clusters, with lowering transaction costs, gathering advanced resources, fostering differentiated products and branding. We study the Shihe tea industry cluster in Henan province of China, and finds that, technology, finance, training, industrial group, conferences and exhibitions, and other producer services has a strong embeddness, and had a greater impact on enhancing the development of tea industry in Shihe. However, for producer services in Shihe develop too late, too dependent on government, and lack of knowledgeintensive services promoting the cluster brand image, which limits their supports on upgrading of the tea industry cluster, and need to be further improved.