• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1-32
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• 2014

The purpose of this paper is to investigate upon a diversification strategy through market creation of CJ Group, which has contributed in positioning of the firm as one of the leading conglomerates in South Korea. With such objective, the background of CJ Group, followed by its business diversification strategies were explored, with reference to several case studies. The history of CJ Group began with establishment of CheilJedang Industrial Corporation in 1953, as the first domestic sugar producer and exporter of South Korea. The corporation gradually expanded its business ever since at both national and global level, to include the fields of food production, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and life chemicals. Later, CheilJedang (CJ) Group was established as an affiliate of CheilJedang Industrial Corporation. With such independence, extension of business has been witnessed across the industries of media, entertainment, finance, information technology and distribution. Thus, the current CJ Group pursues to define itself as a progressive global living culture company with four major business categories from food and food service, biotechnology, entertainment and media, and logistics. Despite its success in today's market, CJ Group underwent hardships in its business diversification in 1990s due to indiscreet management, along with the Asian financial crisis. Here, many firms overcame the financial difficulties by taking advantage of the exchange rate for overseas expansion. Though, CJ Group tried to differentiate itself by focusing on the domestic market by creating something out of nothing. Hence, CJ Group takes a unique position among many cases of business diversification and their categorization. In an effort to identify and classify the types of growth experienced by the top 30 companies in South Korea, the firms were categorized into four groups according to their diversification strategies adapted after the Asian financial crisis. Based on the mode and time of entry, corporations were identified either as the 'Explorer', 'Invader', 'Venture Capitalist', or 'Assimilator'. Here, the majority of the firms showed the qualities of Invader, entering mature markets through large-scaled mergers and acquisitions. However, CJ Group was the only firm that was categorized as an Explorer, for its focus on the newly emerging service sector in culture-contents industry. This diversification strategy through market creation is worth examining, due to its contribution in generating simultaneous growth between the market and the company itself. Diverse brands of CJ Group have been referred to as case studies in this regard, from 'Hatban', 'Cine de Chef', 'VIPS' to 'CJ GLS'. These four businesses, each to represent processed food, film, restaurant service, and logistics industries respectively, show CJ Group's effectiveness in creating a whole new category of goods and services that are innovative. In fact, such businesses not only contributed in advancement of consumers' wellbeing, but toward generating additional value and employment. It is true that the diversification strategy of CJ Group requires long-term capital investment with high risk, compared to the other strategies mentioned in the paper. However, this model does create high employment and additional values that are positive to both the society and the firm itself. Therefore, the paper comes to a conclusion that the diversification strategy through market creation conveys the most positive impact relative to the others.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.12
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• pp.552-560
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• 2018

Since 1960's, the large conglomerates of South Korea have grown due to the corporate-centered, fast-paced growth drive, while the small and medium-sized businesses supported the country's economy as the subordinate structure of these conglomerates. Due to the globalization of the business environments, the focus of competition shifted from competitions between individual companies to one between networks of companies. Therefore, more emphasis is now put on the capabilities of the cooperation networks between companies rather than the capabilities of individual companies. Therefore, in this study, the author examined the influence of the win-win growth strategy elements through cooperation with small and medium-sized businesses upon corporate performance. This study was conducted with the workers of small and medium-sized businesses that have previous cooperation experiences with South Korean conglomerates over the period from March 2 to May 17, 2018. For this, a total of 515 questionnaires were retrieves to obtain the data for analysis. The analysis was conducted using SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 18.0. The analytical processes that were taken included exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, confidence analysis, correlation analysis, and structural equation analysis model. The results of the analysis showed that, first of all, the win-win growth strategy factors that affected the strategic performance, which is a part of cooperate performance were, respectively, harmonization with the goals, production technical support, and quality system. Second, the win-win growth strategy factors that affected the financial performance, which is a part of corporate performance, turned out to be harmonization with the goals, quality system, and incentive. With the results of this study, it was shown that the elements such as harmonization with the goals, production technical support, quality systems, and incentives were key infrastructural factors that affected the corporate performance directly. On the other hand, its implication is that informative or knowledge-related factors, such as joint knowledge creation, do not have their own added values, while they are not too much likely to affect corporate performances for the moment.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.52
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• pp.119-135
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• 2011

Korea's trading volume is expected to surpass USD 1 trillion in 2011. Korean economy achieves this largely due to its dependence on export and enhanced technological capacity and product quality. Improved recognition of Korean enterprises in the global arena also helped. However, the largest reason behind theses could be found in exporters' ceaseless marketing endeavors and continued government supports. Today, more and more people become to rely on trade exhibitions to boost export effectively. Trade exhibitions are employed as a useful tool to attract buyers and enter a market. This is because such exhibitions' marketing effect and professional aspects. South Korean export relies on large conglomerates for most part. However, 95% of the country's entire industry are small and medium-sized companies. This means that SMEs' export has a huge impact on the national economy. Therefore, as a way to improve SME export and minimize their losses, we need to use trade exhibitions more actively. The overseas policy insures only promotional activities regarding foreign exhibition and fair (including international events held in Korea), foreign distributor, shopping mall, home shopping, etc. and does not include air fare, traffic cost in the local place, accommodation cost and dining expenditures as costs to be excluded mentioned above. It is not easy for them to take part in events abroad if they have to pay for such expenses. If full financial support is difficult, the Korea trade insurance corporation still may give a certain level of aid for successful exporters to engage in marketing activities abroad more actively and further stimulate SMEs' export.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.72-82
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to find out how any organizational response or dispute-related consulting has a significant impact on management performance before or during a dispute over a construction subcontract dispute. In this study, multiple regression models were used to analyze the impact on consulting performance. According to the result of the analysis, the positive effects on the overall external consulting effect is influenced by five variables such as financial values, increase of the number of disputes, construction of response system by contents, construction of response system in each period, dispute response external response system. The original business operators were also more likely to be affected by internal activities of conflict response companies and the extent to which external response systems were established. This means that the supply and demand service provider's business environment is relatively poor, forcing it to be lower than the internal and external activities and influences of the original business operators of the conglomerates.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.1-26
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• 2018

This study estimates the technical efficiency and total factor productivity(TFP) of and analyzes the relationship between TFP and exports for Korean manufacturing companies from 2000 to 2016. Specially, TFP is decomposed into Technical Change(TC), Technical Efficiency Change (TEC), and Sale Effect(SE), and compared between large and small enterprises. First, in the case of technical efficiency, the Korean economy has been very vulnerable to external shocks, such as the sharp decline following the 2008 financial crisis. The efficiency of the electronics, automobile, and machinery sectors is low and needs to be improved. In addition, the technological efficiency of large enterprises is higher than that of SMEs in most manufacturing sub-sectors except for non-ferrous metals. In the case of TFP, most changes are due to TC, and the effective combination of labor, capital and the effect of scale have little effect, suggesting that improvement of internal structure is urgent. In addition, volatility due to the impact of the financial crisis in 2008 was much larger in SMEs than in large companies, so external economic impacts are more greater for SMEs than large enterprises. The relationship between TFP decomposition factors and exports shows that TC has a positive effect only on exports of SMEs. Therefore, in order to increase exports, in the case of SMEs, R&D support to promote technological development is needed. In the case of large companies, it is necessary to establish differentiated strategies for each export market, competitor company, and item to link efficiency and scale effect of exports.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.3-36
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• 1992

"Corporate control by owners" characterizes the current structure of ownership, control and management of big business groups in Korea. It has become an ever more serious obstacle for the Korean economy to end its distinctive "personal capitalism" and to transform the current system into people's capitalism. The current issue, the deconcentration of ownership, through the course of heated debates should be treated from an integrated perspective. That is, the debate should center on the concentration of economic power and it effects on national economy, instead of sticking to the issue of ownership-control issue per se. This paper, by referring to the historical experiences and development paths which advanced countries have already traveled, analyzes the respective aspects of the concentration issue in a rather descriptive and taxonomist manner - market concentration, business diversification, ownership concentration, integrated management of conglomerates, i.e., managing in groups' unit, and the roles of financial institutions. The government policies against the concentration of economic power have so far focused on the size of big business groups and their diversification activities. The two major policy measures are restrictions on cross-ownership and excess capital investment by big business groups, and controls on their credit deals. This paper strongly suggests that the government should change its current priorities in targeting its policies against concentration. The government should reduce the regulations on size and diversification, and focus its policies on substantial dispersion of corporate ownership. The efficacy of government intervention in the management and control of business enterprises seems quite dubious and even anachronistic given the extent of maturity of Korean firms. Therefore, it should be noted that the current regulation-oriented stance taken by the government against the management style of big business groups should be suppressed, as it has assumed some a priori and typical pattern in advance in directing big business groups, such as independent and specialized management in respective firms' unit. This paper, also, raises the need for introducing new regulations on inter-sectoral diversifications between finance, industry and the press.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.1-31
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• 2008

Various opinions have been suggested to explain the slump in equipment investment, such as increased government regulations, shareholder-oriented management by expanded foreign equity investment, response against M&A threats, conservative investment trends seen after a series of bankruptcy of large conglomerates (amidst crumbling myth of "Too Big to Fail"), and financial restructuring. Some also argued that the increased uncertainty in business environment is mainly responsible for conservative management, though there are few domestic studies made regarding the situation. But, in other countries, including the U.S., studies have shown that more volatility is seen now surrounding stock prices, profitability, and sales growth rate reflecting business performance. Also, there are other studies showing such expanded volatility have led to conservative management by businesses. In this regard, this study reviews the volatility conditions of business performance of Korean companies based on profitability, and then attempts to analyze the impact on investment brought on by increased volatility. Each company's profitability volatility used here is from the standard deviation of companies for the past five years. As a profitability indicator, the ROA (= operating profit/total asset) is used. According to the analysis, profitability volatility has remarkably increased from the mid 3% in 1994 to low 5% in 2005. Profitability volatility of the Korean companies has expanded to a great extent since the financial crisis. The crisis might have served to raise the volatility in the macroeconomic conditions. If increased volatility observed during the economic crisis had gradually declined after the crisis, the situation could be interpreted as a temporary phenomenon, not to be too concerned over. But, this was not the case for Korea. The volatility level, after the crisis, has not dropped back to its pre-crisis level. Hence, in the Korea's case, high volatility cannot be explained by the impact of financial crisis. Not only that, the fact that such expansion is seen in every industrial sector indicates that this phenomenon cannot be explained by the composition change of industries alone. An undergoing study shows that with a rapid spread of globalization, industries fiercely competing with China experience more volatility. Such increased volatility tends to contract investment, and since the crisis the impact of volatility on investment has slightly increased. It is noteworthy that this study only includes a part of 'uncertainty' that could be measured statistically. For instance, the profitability volatility indicator used in this study is unable to reflect all the effects that the tacit reduction of protection by the government or regulations might have made. So, the result here also indicates that other 'uncertain' factors not mentioned in this study may have served to contract investment sentiment. It would be impossible for policies to completely remove uncertainties measured by profitability volatility, but at least it is necessary to put effort to reduce the macroeconomic volatility in the future economic management. Stabilized macroeconomic management may not be enough to diminish all volatility that occurs within each company, but it would make a meaningful contribution in encouraging investment.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.51-73
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• 2011

Because of the slowdown in economic growth of developed countries, emerging countries are appearing as the new global market. Each country is paying attention to the BOP market of emerging countries to substitute for the markets of import demand of advanced countries due to the global financial crisis. Europe and Japanese corporations are set on taking over the BOP markets, highly appreciating the potential of BOP market. Now it is high time that Korea should recognize the possibility of BOP market and analyze emerging countries and set up strategic planning to react to them. China and India have the highest latent ability as emerging countries in Asia. Korea is well positioned within the market thanks to the conclusion of CEPA with India. Therefore, the government and leading conglomerates need to establish an effective model with which to advance their existing market entry strategy to approach the BOP market of India in the mid to long term. That is, they have to set up a TMB model which fits India such as marketing competence, an on-site adaptability, quick decision making, and constructing a close and customized strategy for all the social stratum of India's population. Establishing a TMB model in India will be the bridgehead to advancing the BOP market to neighboring countries which will allow us to extend our reach to other countries in South Asia and the world BOP market hereafter.