Thai Rice Competitiveness Development in Anticipating Export Market to Chinese

Abstract

Up to now Thailand is still the main player on the rice export market. However, others competitors thrive to gain the advantage in rice export to Chinese export market. Therefore, the main objectives of this study is to reveal the competitiveness advantage of Thai rice export, particularly to find path way of its development base on the exporter and regulator perspectives. The qualitative method was applied to address the research objectives. There were three participants involved in this study, namely 2 participants from rice exporter and one participant from government. The thematic analysis was employed to analyze the in-depth interview result.

This study found that several problems emerge on Thai rice production, such as cost, payment and rice distribution at destination country. At the destination country, Thai rice has been mix with the low quality local rice, in this way the original quality is corrupted. In addition, the weak contribution from government may also give impact to Thai rice export. On the contrary, the competitiveness of Thai rice includes technology, production capacity and high quality of rice production. The major competitiveness of Thai rice is brand loyalty, Thai rice has well known as high quality rice up to now, thus premium segment should be a target for Thai rice export market.