Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/49176

METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) and MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries) are moving forward with efforts to invigorate regional economies by promoting collaboration be-tween the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors and commerce and industry sectors (“Agricultural-Com-mercial-Industrial Collaboration” support policy). The creation of high quality noodles made of rare wheat cultivated in the Ebetsu area as a regional brand was selected as one of the 88 advanced examples and as demonstrating the best 30 practices by METI & MAFF.In order to explore the effect of regional branding, such as brand-name penetration regarding the special wheat,“Ebetsu Komugi”(Ebetsu Wheat) named“Haruyutaka”, we created and carried out a questionnaire survey. The survey showed that the brand name had been well-known inside the city (80%), but less known (only 20%) in the neighboring commercial areas including Sapporo. If any policy is to be premised on a visit to Ebetsu where the eating and enjoying that brand of noodles is involved, promoting it outside the area is ab-solutely necessary. The outside promotion strategy should be the task of the business people in Ebetsu. However, we also note that the branding and promotion process itself creates many side benefits: e.g. culti-vating leadership, fostering problem-solving abilities, improving management capacity, and knowledge creation.