Assessing Efficiency In Marketing : The Case For An Analysis Of The Performance Of The South African Beef And Cattle Market Opened

Recent developments within the marketing system for cattle and beef in South Africa imply major structural changes. In view of the high level of state intervention, these changes thus point to possible policy evaluation, which in turn gives rise to a broader question, namely what the effects of organising the market in a different manner would be. Usually such proposed changes are based on ideological bias instead of economic analyses of the advantages of costs involved. In South Africa there are two basic schools of thought on the appropriate level of official involvement in the beef and cattle market. These two viewpoints are contradictory which make it necessary to evaluate the performance of the existing marketing system in the first place. Market performance should then be judged by the criterion of what the community expects of a market. In this evaluation of the performance of a market a diagnostic framework should be developed within which a set of performance objectives and indicators, representing selected objectives, together with quantifiable measures are specified. The specified objectives and indicators are then shown as replacements for the method proposed for the empirical evaluation of the marketing system for cattle and beef.