Environmental changes in the aspect of society, culture and economy resulted in structural changes of food consumption in Korea. With recent growing interest in environmental friendliness and wellbeing, more and more fruits have been consumed. By expanding and disseminating cold storages facilities, it is possible to harvest autumn fruits in September and to supply them until next May in Korea. On the other hand, imported fruits, e.g., bananas, are supplied all the year round, and oranges are supplied from January to May in Korea due to the seasonal reason in the export countries.
After classifying the major Sales Period of autumn fruits into peak period and non-peak period in Korea, is to identify the mutual effect of major autumn fruit prices of Korea and imported tropical fruit prices or vice versa in each period, the effect of each item on income. Therefore, Rotterdam Model was selected to estimate parameters.
The fruits analyzed were set to include apples, pears, citrus, and sweet persimmons for fruits produced in Korea, oranges and bananas for imported fruits. The items were set to include the fruits produced, harvested and sold in the same period.
For the analysis, the period was divided into a period when Korean autumn fruits are intensively sold and consumed (September to February) and a period when Korean fruits compete with imported fruits (March to May).
The result of analysis shows that Korean fruits led the demand from September to February next year, and the demand for tropical fruits was highly affected by the price of pears particularly. In addition, mutual competition was shown among autumn fruits of Korea. It is regarded that such a result was contributed by the effect of festive days, e.g., Chooseok and new year's day between September and February.
In the result of estimate from March to May, it is seen that the demand for Korean fruits was declined, but tropical fruits, e.g., oranges, dominated the fruit market instead. It was shown that imported oranges and bananas competed with apples, sweet persimmons and pears, the autumn fruits of Korea. It was analyzed that the demand for imported fruits responded sensitively to income during the period.
Comparing the own-price elasticity with the absolute value in each period, it is seen that the movement of demand for fruits produced in Korea was stable because of consumers' preference for fruits in season from September to February.