• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.53-67
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• 2009

For the last decades, service quality has been studied as one of the most important tools for a service company to compete with the other companies. Based on these past researches, it has been agreed that the service quality is a basic and powerful tool to create the competitive advantage. Due to similar reason, many service marketing practitioners have been also focused on the service quality to retain the existing consumers and collect the new consumers. However, service quality is subjectively perceived by individual consumers. Consumer evaluation of service quality can be different from each other. Especially consumers with one life-style may evaluate the service quality differently from the consumers with the other life-styles. Therefore we need to know whether there are differences in service quality perception on the categories of life-style. Life-style refers to a distinctive mode of living in its aggregate and broadest sense. It embodies the patterns that were developed and emerged from the dynamics of living in a society. Since the concept of life-style and its relationship to marketing was introduced in 1963 by William Lazer, methods of measuring the life-style and their application have been developed. Life-style has been usually used to segment the marketplace because it offers marketers a unique and important view of the market. When Life-style is combined with clustering methods, life-style segmentation can generate identifiable whole persons rather than isolated fragment. Life-style segmentation begins with people instead of products and classifies them into different life-style types, each characterized by a unique style of living based on a wide range of activities, interests, and opinions(Plummer, 1974). In this study we applies the life-style segmentation based on the AIO(Activities, Interests, and Opinions) to the consumers of the large discount stores. In Korea, the large discount store market has entered into maturity stage so that the market differentiation strategy is becoming a more critical issue to the marketing practitioners. One of the most important tools to differentiate from the competitors in large discount store market is continuously to provide service of better quality than competitors. This study tries to find answers about the following questions: 1) How can we categorize the consumer life-styles in the large discount store? 2) What are the characteristics of the categorized groups? 3) Are there any differences in service quality perception among the consumers with different life-styles 4) Are there any differences in consumer behavior among them in the large discount store? For the purpose, we collected survey data from consumers and analyzed the data with the SPSS package where we had $X^2$-test, factor analysis, ANOVA, MANOVA, and cluster analysis. The survey was made during one month in the April of 2008. Among the collected 306 copies of questionnaires, 281 copies were chosen as the effective samples for empirical analysis except 25 copies with wrong responses. To identify the life-style patterns, we used the measures employed by Kim and Kwon(1999), where 44 items on a seven-point scale were used to measure factors of the life-style patterns. The Principal Component Method was used for factor extraction, and the VARIMAX orthogonal factor rotation was employed. The 7 items showing low factor loading were eliminated. The results of the factor analysis suggested that nine factors of the life-style patterns were identified as follows: 1) the equality-of-sexes and pursuit-of-independence tendency 2) self-management tendency 3) sociable tendency 4) self-display tendency 5) degree of a dilettante life 6) pursuit-of-information tendency 7) bargain hunter tendency 8) TV preference tendency 9) pursuit-of-leisure tendency. Next, after the K-means cluster analysis was performed with nine factors of the life-style patterns, the life-styles of the respondents were classified into four groups which are named as the 'progressive practicality-oriented group', 'positive success-oriented group', 'sociable ostentation-oriented group', 'stable conservation-oriented group'. The analysis results for usage behavior between the market segments showed statistically significant differences in the frequency of usage, duration time in the store, consumer satisfaction, and loyalty. Also, we tried to investigate whether the large discount store consumers differently perceive the quality of service based upon the types of life-style. To measure the service quality of large discount store, we adapted several measurement models measuring the service quality such as SERVPERF, BCP, R-SERVPERF, R-BCP. MANOVA and One-Way ANOVA were performed to confirm the difference in service quality perception based on the market segments. The results have also shown significant differences between life-style types in service quality perception. These findings show that the large discount store marketers should consider consumer life-style as one of the most important market segments for marketing and understand the difference in service quality perception between life-style types. Our findings give important implications to marketers of large discount stores as well as life-style researchers. First, this study showed there were significant differences in consumer's service quality perception and usage behavior between the types of life-style. It provides evidence that the life-style approach can be a important basis in segmenting the large discount store market and will make consumers perceive the service quality high. Second, most previous researches on service quality have been in aggregate level. However, our results imply that the future research on service quality have to focus on segment level.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.29 no.12 s.148
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• pp.1571-1581
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• 2005

In a highly competitive marketplace, U.S. retailers are challenged to attract, recruit, and retain a skilled workforce. The purpose of our research was to examine the impact of young retail employees' work experiences on their job performance, job satisfaction, and career intention using a comprehensive approach to model development. The model was developed in three phases over a four-year period using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. During Phase 1, we conducted focus group interviews to guide the development of the questionnaire. Work experience was initially operationalized as role conflict, role ambiguity, supervisory support, and work involvement. Using a student sample(n=470) from U.S. universities, we employed multiple regression to determine the significance of relationships between their work experience, job satisfaction, and retail career intention. During Phase 2, we expanded our investigation to include retail work experiences of teens employed while they were in high school. The teen sample(n=898) was drawn from students enrolled in work-study programs in 16 U.S. high schools, and data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (hereafter SEM). During Phase 3, we expanded our model to include two new variables, job characteristics and job performance. Based on a national sample(n=803) of U.S. university students, we employed SEM to holistically determine if retail employees' work experience impacted their job performance, job satisfaction, and retail career intention. During each phase, job satisfaction consistently was the superior antecedent of retail career intention. Among the work experience variables, supervisory support had a positive impact on job satisfaction, while role conflict, role ambiguity, and work involvement exhibited inconsistent effects on job outcomes. The strong relationship between job satisfaction and retail career intention should make job satisfaction a priority for retailers.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.115-151
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• 2010

Recently Korean universities show very rapid increases in both patents and R&D (research and development) expenditures. During the period from 1970 to 2008, university R&D spending has on the average increased 15.3% annually. Along with steady increases in R&D spending, university's research outputs have also continuously increased. In 1990 Korea as a total published 1,613 SCI-level scientific papers and Korean universities applied 27 patents to Korea patent office. In 2008, Korea published more that 35,000 SCI papers and Korean universities applied about 7,300 patents. The growth of scientific articles had begun from the early 1990s whereas the growth of patent has ignited entering the 2000s. The paper tried to investigate university research through the window of patent. Patents lie between invention and innovation and represent the potential value of invention which will be realized at the marketplace. Since Korean patents do not contain citation information, the paper used US patents-NBER patent database-as the main data. The key empirical question is whether Korean university patents granted from USPTO are characteristically different from other Korean patents granted from USPTO. Previous studies on US and Europe show that corporate patents are more stylized in appropriablity of invention, whereas university patents basicness. In case of Korea, the paper confirmed the appropriability characteristic of corporate patents; but the Korean unversity patents are not distinguishable in terms of basicness. The paper estimated the citation frequency function-an empirical model which was firstly developed by Caballero and Jaffe (1993) and later articulated by Jaffe and Trajtenberg (1996, 2002). The model is specified mainly composed of two interacting parts-diffusion effect and obsolescence effect of new ideas or innovations. Estimation results show that differences in forward citations between university and corporate patents are not statistically significant, after controlling self-citation. Since forward citations represent the quality of patents, this estimation result implies that there are no statistically significant quality differences between university and corporate patents. Prior research results, based on the same model of citation frequency function, about US and some European cases show that, in terms of forward citations, university patents are generally superior to corporate patents -for the case of US- or, the former not inferior to the latter-for the case of most of Europe. It is argued that some important and significant policy changes caused the rapid rise of university patents in Korea. Policy changes include the revision of technology transfer act allowing the ownership of publicly-funded research results to researchers and the changes in faculty/professor evaluation which gives more credit to the number of patents. These policy changes have triggered the rapid growth of the number of university patents. The results of the empirical analysis in this paper indicated that Korea now needs to make further efforts to enhance the quality of university patents, not just to produce more numbers of patents.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.39-48
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• 2019

Based on the bidding data of the national marketplace for public procurement service from 2003 to 2015, this study investigated and analyzed the bidding trends of the landscape management public consignment service by analyzing total bidding, type, client, region, license. The results are as follows. First, the total number of bids for civilian consignment services in landscape management increased by 1,112 cases, corresponding to a 487.7% increase over 10 years, and the total bidding amount increased by 144,504 million won, corresponding to a 382.5% increase. Second, in 10 years, the proportion of landscape management in landscaping works increased by 10%, and the bidding amount increased by 3%. Third, in the analysis of bidding trends by type, green areas showed the greatest growth in the number of bids, while the greenery of buildings showed the highest increase in the bid amount. Fourth, local autonomous entities, Gyeonggi province, and the landscaping planting construction industry showed the highest increase in the number of bids and the amount in each field such as client, region, and license. In summary, the number of cases and the bidding amount is increasing year by year. Considering the increasing number of users and demands thereof, the number of bids and the amount of consignment service for landscape management will continue to increase. The purpose of this study is to investigate and systematically analyze the tendency of bidding for 10 years for the private consignment service of landscape management in the current situation, where the importance of landscape management is increasingly emphasized. Another purpose of this study is to discern the necessity of the landscape management business and to provide the basis for incorporating the landscape management business into the professional construction industry in the future, thus providing opportunities for widening the expertise and diversity of the landscaping field. For the following study, the legal basis of landscape management, qualification, equipment standards, calculation of management cost per unit, and the appropriateness of the management cost should be considered.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.65-96
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• 2012

Brand has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume product or services, they are exposed to a lot of brand related stimuli. These contain brand personality, brand experience, brand identity, brand communications and so on. A special kind of new crisis occasionally confronting companies' brand management today is the brand related rumor. An important influence on consumers' purchase decision making is the word-of-mouth spread by other consumers and most decisions are influenced by other's recommendations. In light of this influence, firms have reasonable reason to study and understand consumer-to-consumer communication such as brand rumor. The importance of brand rumor to marketers is increasing as the number of internet user and SNS(social network service) site grows. Due to the development of internet technology, people can spread rumors without the limitation of time, space and place. However relatively few studies have been published in marketing journals and little is known about brand rumors in the marketplace. The study of rumor has a long history in all major social science. But very few studies have dealt with the antecedents and consequences of any kind of brand rumor. Rumor has been generally described as a story or statement in general circulation without proper confirmation or certainty as to fact. And it also can be defined as an unconfirmed proposition, passed along from people to people. Rosnow(1991) claimed that rumors were transmitted because people needed to explain ambiguous and uncertain events and talking about them reduced associated anxiety. Especially negative rumors are believed to have the potential to devastate a company's reputation and relations with customers. From the perspective of marketer, negative rumors are considered harmful and extremely difficult to control in general. It is becoming a threat to a company's sustainability and sometimes leads to negative brand image and loss of customers. Thus there is a growing concern that these negative rumors can damage brands' reputations and lead them to financial disaster too. In this study we aimed to distinguish antecedents of brand rumor transmission and investigate the effects of brand rumor characteristics on rumor spread intention. We also found key components in personal acceptance of brand rumor. In contextualist perspective, we tried to unify the traditional psychological and sociological views. In this unified research approach we defined brand rumor's characteristics based on five major variables that had been found to influence the process of rumor spread intention. The five factors of usefulness, source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness, encompass multi level elements of brand rumor. We also selected product involvement as a control variable. To perform the empirical research, imaginary Korean 'Kimch' brand and related contamination rumor was created and proposed. Questionnaires were collected from 178 Korean samples. Data were collected from college students who have been experienced the focal product. College students were regarded as good subjects because they have a tendency to express their opinions in detail. PLS(partial least square) method was adopted to analyze the relations between variables in the equation model. The most widely adopted causal modeling method is LISREL. However it is poorly suited to deal with relatively small data samples and can yield not proper solutions in some cases. PLS has been developed to avoid some of these limitations and provide more reliable results. To test the reliability using SPSS 16 s/w, Cronbach alpha was examined and all the values were appropriate showing alpha values between .802 and .953. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted successfully. And structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the research model using smartPLS(ver. 2.0) s/w. Overall, R² of adoption of rumor is .476 and R² of intention of rumor transmission is .218. The overall model showed a satisfactory fit. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. According to the results, the variables of brand rumor characteristic such as source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness affect argument strength of rumor. And argument strength of rumor also affects rumor intention. On the other hand, the relationship between perceived usefulness and argument strength of rumor is not significant. The moderating effect of product involvement on the relations between argument strength of rumor and rumor W.O.M intention is not supported neither. Consequently this study suggests some managerial and academic implications. We consider some implications for corporate crisis management planning, PR and brand management. This results show marketers that rumor is a critical factor for managing strong brand assets. Also for researchers, brand rumor should become an important thesis of their interests to understand the relationship between consumer and brand. Recently many brand managers and marketers have focused on the short-term view. They just focused on strengthen the positive brand image. According to this study we suggested that effective brand management requires managing negative brand rumors with a long-term view of marketing decisions.