Abstract

Home Meal Replacement (HMR) products are ready-to-eat or pre-cooked food products that are consumed at daily home. HMR market has grown rapidly due to societal changes: increases in female social activities, silver population, and one-person households. Consumption channels of HMR can be classified into take-out, delivery, and retail. In Korean HMR market, retail sector is largely growing, but companies are focusing their business on the home delivery sector. Moreover, franchise companies are expanding their areal coverage in the HMR market based on their multi-unit strategy. However, more research on the HMR market is needed as existing studies are limited in conceptualization, classification, and processed food from malls or home-shopping channels. Therefore, we conducted the efficiency analysis on Gukseonsaeng, one of franchises that applied the take-out channel, using DEA method. According to the research on 29 franchisees of Gukseonsaeng, 77.9% of input appeared inefficient for technical efficiency, while 53.3% of input appeared inefficient for scale efficiency. Thus, we found that franchises of Gukseonsaeng are structured in increasing returns to scale (IRS), so enhancing efficiency by expanding scales need to be implemented.