A commodity chain is a process used by firms to gather resources, transform them into goods or commodities and, finally, distribute them to consumers. It is a series of links connecting the many places of production and distribution and resulting in a commodity that is then exchanged on the world market. In short, it is the connected path from which a good travels from producers to consumers. Commodity chains can be unique depending on the product types or the types of markets. Different stages of a commodity chain can also involve different economic sectors or be handled by the same business.
A number of commentators have remarked that in the Internet age commodity chains are becoming increasingly more transparent. The Wikichains.com project has adopted the same wiki technology used by Wikipedia in order to help make commodity chains more transparent. "They are a network of labour and production processes whose end result is a finished commodity". William Jones Esq.
Famous quotes containing the words commodity and/or chain:
“A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)