• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.10 no.8
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• pp.45-53
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• 2019

Purpose - The purpose of this study was to clarify the factors to make an exclusive importation contract between foreign fashion brands and local retailers for successful business in Korea. Even though imported fashion brand market shows stead increasing in terms of sales amount, the number of store related study was very rare in fact. Meanwhile, as long as this business is glowing a lot of brands are suffering from bad business performance or getting in ruins thus these problems result in foreign currency loss. The local marketers therefore, strongly expect to know the solution for this matter. Research design, data, and methodology - For the qualitative research, 10 experts who are operating foreign brands with an exclusive contract at a department store or at duty free shop now and who had at least over 10 years of related working experience were included. The factors for the exclusive importation contract with foreign brands were drawn up through the one-to-one in-depth interview method from September 3, 2017 to January 15, 2018. The expert group for the validity analysis includes 2 professors and 5 postgraduate students. Results - As a result of qualitative study on the factors for imported fashion brand's launching with the exclusive importation contract, it turned out that there were 5 factors - safety, profitability, reliability, speed and global retailing. Safety, profitability, and reliability have been mentioned in most related surveys but some details are added and speed and global retailing have been newly highlighted and many unknown legal issues that it was not easy to get form common academic research are included. Speed simply means quick lead time and global retailing means stores where located in other countries. Conclusions - The reason that qualitative research should be done before the quantitative research is due to the scant theoretical background for this matter. Because the market of an imported fashion brand is steadily increasing, determining the factors to make exclusive importation contract is very meaningful from the point of academic and business. After this study, many marketers may get basic conditions to apply for real business and I hope the following quantitative research will give more effective results. The next study also will have extended range concerning industry area, product and distribution channel.