• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.10
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• pp.67-74
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• 2014

Purpose - This study analyzed how image affects customer trust and satisfaction in the online shopping mall market, which is becoming more competitive; future implications for customer management in online shopping malls were presented. Consumers visit and prefer a few shopping mall sites instead of many sites. Consumers do not visit sites that cannot provide trust and satisfaction. Therefore, establishing trust and satisfaction with differentiated image is essential for survival and growth. Specifically analyzing company image, shop image, and brand image, I studied how symbolic image, functional image, and empirical image affect satisfaction mediated by trust in the online shopping malls of hypermarket retailers. Research design, data, and methodology - To investigate the relationship between image and satisfaction of big box retailers' shopping malls in the online market, the study is based on analyzed data from questionnaires involving advanced research. From May 1st to 20th in the year 2014, a questionnaire survey targeting university students using big box retailers' shopping malls in Seoul was conducted. A total of 282 questionnaires were conducted, and 276 questionnaires were used for empirical analysis, excluding invalid data. Using the SPSS 21.0 statistics package, factor analysis and regression analysis were implemented, and effects of image on trust and satisfaction were presented. Results - First, symbolic image can affect satisfaction with only trust. Among 3 image factors, symbolic image exerts the most influence on trust; trust is important in coupling the medium to satisfaction. Second, functional image and empirical image affect satisfaction directly and indirectly with trust. Conclusions - As I classified the image of hyper market retailers' online shopping malls into symbolic, functional, and empirical image, I analyzed the effects of image on trust and satisfaction empirically. The results of the study and strategic implications are as follows. First, symbolic image can affect satisfaction with only trust. Among 3 image factors, symbolic image exerts the most influence on trust; trust is important in coupling the medium to satisfaction. The establishment of a distinctive symbolic image, such as the online shopping mall's loyalty, level of awareness, and special service, is needed. With the establishment of symbolic image, trust and satisfaction could be improved. Second, functional image and empirical image affect satisfaction directly and indirectly with trust. Especially, as functional image affects trust more than empirical image, setting and implementing a strategy for empirical image based on the right price, service, and convenience could raise trust and satisfaction. Empirical image affects trust and satisfaction substantially. Even though empirical image's influence on trust is lower than that of other three image factors, empirical image's influence on satisfaction is higher than symbolic image. Therefore, it requires a strategy for providing joyful use, and information research functions and distinctive use experience are important to improve satisfaction. This study analyzed image characteristics of hyper-market retailers' online shopping malls in the fast-growing online market; future strategic implications were presented.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.25-36
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• 2011

Owing to the rapid growth of hypermarket/discount store formats since 1996, Korean retailing has suddenly attracted the significant attention from researchers. Before the emergence of large scale retailers such as E-Mart, Lotte Mart and Tesco Korea, there were the two retail formats who led the Korean retailing in the modern retailing history: department store and supermarket formats. Nevertheless, there has been little literature concerned about the two retail formats as a case study, while some authors have paid their attention to hypermarket/discount store formats. In addition, when mentioning the development process of retailing history, it is less likely that authors have made an effort to illustrate supermarket retailing history. In order to regard supermarket retailing as part of the Korean retailing, it is interesting to look at a representative supermarket retailer, Haitai, who was one of the subsidiaries of Haitai chaebol. Based on supermarket retailing, the company which was established as a joint venture in 1974 led a supermarket retailing in the Korean modernised retailing history. Before analysing whether Haitai failed or not, the definition of failure should be illustrated. With regard to the term, failure, in the academic world, authors have interchangeably used the following terms: failure, divestment, closure, organisational restructuring, and exit. To collect research data as a case study, the author adopted an in-depth interview method. The research is based on research interviews with 13 ex-staff who left after Haitai went bankruptcy, from store management department to merchandise department. By investigating Haitai's experiences through field interviews, the research found that Haitai restructured organisational decision-making process at the early stage when companies started to modernise organisational charts, benchmarking sophisticated retailing knowledge through the strategic alliance with a Japanese retailer. In respect of buying system, the company established firmly buying functions by adopting central buying system, and further, outstandingly allocated considerable marketing resources to the development of retailer brands with the dedicated team of retailer brand development. In the grocery retailing, abandoning a 'no-frill' packaging concept, the introduction of retailer brand packaging equal to, or better than national brand packaging design, encouraged other retailers to change their retailer brand development strategies. In product sourcing ways, Haitai organised for the first time the overseas sourcing team with the aim of improving the profit margins of foreign products and providing exotic products for customers, followed by other retailers. Regarding distribution system, the company introduced the innovative idea which delivered products ordered by stores directly to each store withboth its own vehicles and its own warehouse in which could deal with dry foods, chilly foods, frozen food, and non-foods, and even, process produce. In addition, Haitai developed many promotional methods to attract more customers like 'the guarantee of the lowest price', and expanded its own business to US in 1996, although withdrew, because of bankruptcy in 1997. Together with POS introduction in 1994, Haitai made a significant contribution to the development of the Korean retailing, influencing other retailers in many aspects. As a case study, the study has provided a number of lessons from Haitai's experiences for academicians and practitioners, suggesting that its history should be involved in the Korean modernised retailing.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.5-12
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• 2016

Purpose - The present study examines the interrelationship between various components constituting shopping experience in the context of the Indian shopping malls. Research design, data, and methodology - Extracting components of shopping experience from the literature review, the study used Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) to propose a conceptual model. The study adopted a mixed methods research involving theoretical constructs from past research, qualitative assessment of relationship between the constructs and imposing definite order and direction to qualitative relations based on mathematical computations. Results - Proposed model indicates that the five components of shopping experience (ambience, physical infrastructure, convenience, marketing focus and safety and security) do not converge directly into shopping experience. Rather, they operate following a hierarchy of influences in which marketing focus plays the role of the initiator. Conclusions - This model points at the order of preference of different components of shopping experience and can be a useful guide for retail industry, especially mall developers and supermarket/hypermarket, may use the findings in key decisions about development of physical infrastructure, which are based on marketing focus.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.2099-2107
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• 2011

Despite the PB diffusion introduced as a strategic competitive factor from the change of a retailing business, the study of PB perceived quality in a customer aspect is poor. Therefore, this study led the influential factors to retailer attribute and product attribute through overall analysis. Also, the study found the influential attributes affecting the perceived quality and analysed the influential power linking to customer satisfaction and preference through the perceived quality. The examined results of the study have known that each attribute links to customer satisfaction via the only perceived quality. The strategic PB sales advantage should be achieved as giving customers the overall perceived quality, and has shown that it can increase the customer preference for PB.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.85-90
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• 2014

Turbo chiller is widely used for the air conditioner and uses hydrochlorofluorocarbon 123 (HCFC-123) as a refrigerant. HCFC-123 is one of the chemicals being considered as a replacement for the chlorofluorocarbons. High concentrations of HCFC-123 cause a deficiency of oxygen with the risk of unconsciousness or death, the vapour is heavier than air and may accumulate in low ceiling spaces causing deficiency of oxygen. In this study, the concentration distribution of oxygen indoor was investigated by using computational fluid dynamics(CFD) as four workers were killed in HCFC-123 gas leaks at machine room of hypermarket in 2011.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.177-186
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• 2014

Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a systematic approach for identifying potential failures before they occur, with the intent to minimize the risk associated with them. It has been widely used in the various manufacturing industries as a solution to reliability problems. As the importance of the service sector is increasing, however, it has been recently extended to some applications in services. Despite these attempts, FMEA cannot be directly applied to the reliability problems in a service industry. Due to the heterogeneity and customer participation in service process, we cannot perfectly prevent service failures. For this reason, we suggest a new risk priority number with three input parameters that consist of severity, probability of occurrence, and recoverability. In this paper, we propose an approach for assessing service risk and service reliability using the service-oriented risk priority number (S-RPN). An example regarding a hypermarket service process is used to demonstrate the proposed approach.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.23-35
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• 2009

A hypermarket as the one of the most globally standardized retailing format is also the type of store among various types of stores that the most active in expanding into other foreign markets. Recently, as several Korean retailing companies start to penetrate into Chinese market they differentiate themselves with modern facilities and customers service oriented high-end concept. China and Korea as Far East Asian countries share many common values, however precise and careful analysis should be carried out since there may also be critical differences in socio-economic aspects as well as in consumption patterns due to the level of development stages of retail industry among two countries. Even though precise and careful study is crucial on Chinese retailing market and consumers, none of researches and studies on 'how the quality of service dimensional structure is different between Korea and China', and 'what will be the most important and influential service dimensional factors for Chinese consuers compared to the hypermarkets customers in Korea' in order to improve the level of Chinese consumers satisfaction' have been fulfilled At this point of view, this study uses KD-SQS (Rho Eun Jung & Sir Yong Gu, 2008) which is a measure of Korean hypermarkets service quality to set up a hypothesis on Korean and Chinese consumers, and an empirical analysis is conducted. We try to get the answers about how the comparative importance of Service quality dimensions which decides the level of customer satisfaction is different depending on the cultural dimensions and socio-economic factors among two countries, Korea and China. Based upon the results, we try to give a valuable suggestion of what service dimensional factors should be reinforced to improve the level of CS in Chinese retailing market. Hypotheses for this study are as follows : H1. Each dimension of Service Quality significantly affects the level of CS H2. The effect of 'Basic Benefit' in service quality dimensions on the level of CS is greater in China than in Korea H3. The effect of 'Promotion' in service quality dimensions on the level of CS is greater in China than in Korea H4. The effect of 'Physical Aspects'in service quality dimensions on the level of CS is greater in Korea than in China. H5. The effect of 'Personal Interaction' in service quality dimensions on the level of CS is greater in China than in Korea H6. The effect of 'Policy' in service quality dimensions on the level of CS will be greater in Korean than in China H7. The effect of additional convenience in service quality dimensions on the level of CS will be greater in Korean than in China. More than 1,100 data were collected directly from the surveys of Chinese and Korean consumers in order to verify the hypotheses above. In Korea, stores which have floor space of over $9,000m^2$and opened later than year 2000 were selected for the samples, and thus Gayang, Wolgye, Sangbong, Eunpyeong, Suh-Suwon, Gojan stores and their customers were surveyed. In China, notable differences in the income levels and consumer behaviors between cities and regions were considered, and thus the research area was limited to the stores only in Shanghai. 6 stores which have the size of over $6,000m^2$ and opened later than 2000, such as Ruihong, Intu, Mudanjang, Sanrin, Raosimon, and Ranchao stores were selected for the survey. SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 7.0 were used as statistical tools, and exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and multi-group analysis were conducted. In order to carry out a multi group analysis that decides whether the structure variables which shows the different effects of 6 service dimensions in Korean and Chinese groups is statistically valid, configural invariance, metric invariance, and structural invariance are tested in order. At the results of the tests, 3 out of 7 hypotheses were supported and other 4 hypotheses were denied. According to the study, 4 dimensions (Basic Benefit, Physical Environment, Policy, and additional convenience) were positively correlated with CS in Korea, and 3 dimensions (i.e. basic benefit, policy, additional convenience) were significant in China. However, the significance of the service-dimensions was turned out to be partially different in Korea and China. The Basic Benefit is more influential in deciding the level of CS in china than Korea, however Physical Aspect is more important factor in Korea. 'Policy dimension' did not make significant difference between two countries. In the 'additional convenience dimension', the differences in 'socio-economic factors' than in'cultural background' were considered as more important in Chinese consumers than Korean. Overall, the improvement of Service quality will be crucial factors to increase the level of CS in Chinese market same as Korean market. In addition, more emphases need to be placed on the service qualities of 'Basic Benefit' and 'additional convenience' dimensions in China. In particular, 'low price' and 'product diversity' that constitute 'Basic Benefit' are proved to be comparatively disadvantageous and weak points of Korean companies compared to global players, and thus the prompt strengthening those dimensions would be urgent for Korean retailers. Moreover, additional conveniences such as various tenants and complex service and entertaining area will be more important in China than in Korea. Besides, Applying advanced Korean Hypermaret`s customer policy to Chinese consumers will help to get higher reliability and to differentiate themselves to other competitors. However, as personal interaction, physical aspect, promotions were proved as not significant for the level of CS in China, Korean companies need to reconsider the priority order of resource allocations when they tap into Chinese market.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.1-25
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• 2008

Ⅰ. Introduction Retailers in the 21st century are being told that future retailers are those who can execute seamless multi-channel access. The reason is that retailers should be where shoppers want them, when they want them anytime, anywhere and in multiple formats. Multi-channel access is considered one of the top 10 trends of all business in the next decade (Patricia T. Warrington, et al., 2007) And most firms use both direct and indirect channels in their markets. Given this trend, we need to evaluate a channel equity more systematically than before as this issue is expected to get more attention to consumers as well as to brand managers. Consumers are becoming very much confused concerning the choice of place where they shop for durable goods as there are at least 6-7 retail options. On the other hand, manufacturers have to deal with category killers, their dealers network, Internet shopping malls, and other avenue of distribution channels and they hope their retail channel behave like extensions of their own companies. They would like their products to be foremost in the retailer's mind-the first to be proposed and effectively communicated to potential customers. To enable this hope to come reality, they should know each channel's advantages and disadvantages from consumer perspectives. In addition, customer satisfaction is the key determinant of retail customer loyalty. However, there are only a few researches regarding the effects of shopping satisfaction and perceptions on consumers' channel choices and channels. The purpose of this study was to assess Korean consumers' channel choice and satisfaction towards channels they prefer to use in the case of electronic goods shopping. Korean electronic goods retail market is one of good example of multi-channel shopping environments. As the Korea retail market has been undergoing significant structural changes since it had opened to global retailers in 1996, new formats such as hypermarkets, Internet shopping malls and category killers have arrived for the last decade. Korean electronic goods shoppers have seven major channels : (1)category killers (2) hypermarket (3) manufacturer dealer shop (4) Internet shopping malls (5) department store (6) TV home-shopping (7) speciality shopping arcade. Korean retail sector has been modernized with amazing speed for the last decade. Overall summary of major retail channels is as follows: Hypermarket has been number 1 retailer type in sales volume from 2003 ; non-store retailing has been number 2 from 2007 ; department store is now number 3 ; small scale category killers are growing rapidly in the area of electronics and office products in particular. We try to evaluate each channel's equity using a consumer survey. The survey was done by telephone interview with 1000 housewife who lives nationwide. Sampling was done according to 2005 national census and average interview time was 10 to 15 minutes. Ⅱ. Research Summary We have found that seven major retail channels compete with each other within Korean consumers' minds in terms of price and service. Each channel seem to have its unique selling points. Department stores were perceived as the best electronic goods shopping destinations due to after service. Internet shopping malls were perceived as the convenient channel owing to price checking. Category killers and hypermarkets were more attractive in both price merits and location conveniences. On the other hand, manufacturers dealer networks were pulling customers mainly by location and after service. Category killers and hypermarkets were most beloved retail channel for Korean consumers. However category killers compete mainly with department stores and shopping arcades while hypermarkets tend to compete with Internet and TV home shopping channels. Regarding channel satisfaction, the top 3 channels were service-driven retailers: department stores (4.27); dealer shop (4.21); and Internet shopping malls (4.21). Speciality shopping arcade(3.98) were the least satisfied channels among Korean consumers. Ⅲ. Implications We try to identify the whole picture of multi-channel retail shopping environments and its implications in the context of Korean electronic goods. From manufacturers' perspectives, multi-channel may cause channel conflicts. Furthermore, inter-channel competition draws much more attention as hypermarkets and category killers have grown rapidly in recent years. At the same time, from consumers' perspectives, 'buy where' is becoming an important buying decision as it would decide the level of shopping satisfaction. We need to develop the concept of 'channel equity' to manage multi-channel distribution effectively. Firms should measure and monitor their prime channel equity in regular basis to maximize their channel potentials. Prototype channel equity positioning map has been developed as follows. We expect more studies to develop the concept of 'channel equity' in the future.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-30
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to investigate the direct and indirect modes of influences environmental dynamism exerts on opportunism, one of important relationship factors. This study particularly delves into the indirect modes of influence in terms of control strategy (control mechanism) and control structure (bureaucratic structuring). To this end, a survey research has been conducted of 200 suppliers in business relationships with Korean hypermarket retailers. An analysis of the collected data indicates that while environmental dynamism has a positive influence on the control mechanisms such as monitoring and incentives, it does not have a negative influence on the control structure such as participation. And then it has a positive influence on the opportunism of suppliers. In addition, participation has a negative influence on the opportunism, but monitoring and incentives do not have a negative influence on it. This study discusses how both retailers and their suppliers should respond to the domestic retail business environment with highly dynamic characteristics, in order to achieve a long-term win-win partnership with one another. It also presents ideas to retailers with regard to what kinds of management strategies and management efforts required to effectively control the opportunism of suppliers.

• Proceedings of the Korean DIstribution Association Conference
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• 2007.08a
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• pp.159-186
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• 2007

In today's world, the ability to adapt to the rapidly changing environment is fundamental to the survival and success of any organizations. This is particularly true for the Korean retailing industry which is in the throe of sweeping developments. Against the backdrop of an increasing importance of the environmental factors, it is imperative to look into what efforts are required of corporate enterprises in order to achieve successful long-term partnerships between and among the parties involved in the retail value chain. In spite of the critical importance of the need to understand the environmental factors and their influences on the retail value chain, a serious theoretical and empirical study into this subject has never been conducted. Moreover, previous research has overlooked the various mechanisms influencing the value chain in terms of ,control strategy' and 'control structure'. The purpose of this study is to investigate the direct and indirect modes of influences environmental dynamism exerts on opportunism, one of important relationship factors. This study particularly delves into the indirect modes of influence in terms of control strategy (control mechanism) and control structure (bureaucratic structuring). To this end, a survey research has been conducted of 200 suppliers in business relationships with Korean hypermarket retailers. The survey results show that environmental dynamism has a positive correlation with the opportunism of suppliers. In addition, the control mechanisms such as monitoring and incentives employed by retailers, in turn, have an indirect influence on the opportunism of suppliers. In other words, the monitoring of retailers has a positive correlation with the opportunism of suppliers, while the use of bureaucratic structuring has a negative correlation with opportunism. This study discusses how both retailers and their suppliers should respond to the domestic retail business environment with highly dynamic characteristics, in order to achieve a long-term win-win partnership with one another. It also presents ideas to retailers with regard to what kinds of management strategies and management efforts required to effectively control the opportunism of suppliers.