• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.47-58
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• 2009

The marketing environment has become competitive to an extent that requires firms to target their products at markets that span national boundaries. However, competitive clout cannot be achieved in global consumer markets unless firms thoroughly understand and adequately respond to the core values and needs of those consumers. Brand equity is one of the most important assets to a company. Especially in sportswear markets, brand equity is the crucial value added to a product by its brand name. Factors such as country of origin also influence customer's attitude towards brand equity. Therefore, this paper discusses the relationship between country of origin effect and brand equity, and how they influence consumers' loyalty for respective brands. This paper focused on the sports shoes market, because it is an increasing area of opportunity for world manufacturers. The objectives of this study were the following. (1) Test the effect of country of origin on brand equity. (2) Test how brand equity influences consumers' brand loyalty. (3) Find whether there are differences in the effects of country of origin and brand equity among the three countries. (4) Find whether there are differences in the effects of country of origin and brand equity among the different lifestyles. Based on the review of literature results, the hypotheses are concluded as the following: H1-a: Country image has positive influence on country of origin. H1-b: Product perception has positive influence on country of origin. H2-a: Perceived quality has positive effect on brand equity. H2-b: Perceived price has positive effect on brand equity. H3: Country of origin has positive effect on brand equity. H4: Brand equity has a positive impact on brand loyalty. Research model was constructed (see Fig. 1). After data analysis, the following results were concluded: sports shoes purchase behavior showed significant differences among Korean, Chinese, and American consumers for favorite brand, purchased brand, purchased place, information usage, and favorite sports games. The results of this study also extend the research of the relationship among country of origin, brand equity and brand loyalty to the sports shoes market. Brand equity was proven to have a significant relationship with brand loyalty for all countries. The factors which can influence brand equity are different for different countries. The third finding of this paper is that we identified different three lifestyles, adventurer, follower, and laggard, for Korean, Chinese and American consumers. Without the nationality boundary, seeing the emergence of a new group of consumers who have similar preferences and buy similar brands is more important. All of the consumers consider brand equity to keep their brand loyalty. Perceived price is the only factor which can influence brand equity for adventurers; brand is more important for them. The laggards were not influenced by any factor. All of the factors expect perceived price are important for the followers. Marketing managers should consider brand equity when introducing their brand into a new market. Also localization is the basic strategy that all the sports shoes companies should understand. But as a global brand, understanding the same characteristics for each country is more important to build global strategy.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.160-174
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• 2005

Despite the decrease in the number of children due to low birth rate, the domestic children's apparel market has been achieving steady growth as family income is rising thanks to more opportunities for working women, parents spend more on their children, and they prefer brand products that make their children look special. In addition, the market is suffering from hard competition as large enterprises have joined the race. The present study purposed to survey the children's apparel market in Korea, which is in a transitional period, and to contribute to the development of the market with Korean brands. For this purpose, we analyzed the characteristics of children's apparel brands in the 21st century based on the current state of the domestic children's apparel market and, based on the findings, forecasted the future trend of children's apparel brands, suggested improvements for expected problems, proposed standards for coping with changes such as diversification, high quality and differentiation in the children's apparel market, and provided consumers with information on how to purchase products. According to the result of analyzing the characteristics of children's apparel brands in the 21st century, brands are categorized largely into four types - life cultural brands, functional product brands, character brands and brands advancing to China. Life cultural brands equipped with all necessities for children are expanding, and with the deepening social problems of environmental pollution and the reduction of the child population, functional products made of environment-friendly materials are spreading widely, targeting infants and children. Furthermore, for extending age targets and diversifying products, children's apparel is using characters. The use of characters is expected to have a considerable effect on the growth of brands because children are more subjective as consumers than before and they are more easily persuaded with characters. Domestic children's apparel brands advancing to China have a high expectation of success in overcoming the limitation of the local market that has reached its peak and growing into global brands. Korean apparel makers are struggling to overcome the depressed domestic market, to recover consumers' consumption, to cope with market opening, to pursue high value of sensibility and to expand the seniors' market, etc. In this situation, future trends of children's apparel brands will be the expansion of family brands, brand totalization, quality price, niche market (pre-teen market), etc. In response to these trends, we made the following suggestions for improvement. 1. Children's apparel brands are evolving into family brands as well as into total brands through voluming. Today, however, apparel makers are advancing to the children's apparel market with the concept of adults' apparel and, as a result, children's apparel is merely adults' apparel of reduced size, having problems in design, color and materials. Thus, apparel makers must develop design considering the wide range of size and the characteristics of children's apparel, strengthen sourcing abilities to create revenues, and make thorough survey of customers to find common denominators between adults' apparel and children's apparel considering that characteristic that the target class is different from the buyer class. Furthermore, they must make active investments in human resources, develop outstanding products through advanced planning and design, and support marketing techniques and management systems to stores. 2. As the declining birth rate will continue to have a negative effect on the market, it may be difficult to expand the market size but there is still a margin for growth through high-sensibility and high-quality products. The competitiveness of brands is determined by their market shares. Accordingly, concepts should be specialized according to lifestyle, customers' diverse needs should be satisfied, and cross-coordination should be achieved within a brand. 3. Considering Korean parents who do not spare investment in their children despite shrinking consumption, functional products must be high value-added goods that can enhance efficiency. However, in the current situation of the infants' apparel industry where a textile manufacturer supply its products to multiple brands, it is difficult to develop unique products only based on materials. Thus, it is considered urgent to appeal to consumers not by relying on materials only but by finding methods of applying their own characters to children's dress.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.160-177
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• 2019

In this study, we examined the distribution of dealers and the repair parts management system of a Japanese car manufacturer in the Chinese market in looking at the case of Toyota. We conducted our research by obtaining information from a GAC Toyota dealer about the current distribution of dealers and locations of warehouses throughout China, as well as the status of stocks and the distribution system for repair and maintenance parts. The results of our investigation showed that although GAC Toyota has 437 dealers throughout the country, there is an imbalance in distribution towards the coastal areas, after the population ratios and other measurements are factored in. Therefore, it can be said expansion towards the inland regions, where demand for automobiles has increased in recent years, has been stunted. On the other hand, there is a high correlation between gross GDP by region and the number of stores, and it can be pointed out that the company prioritizes the sale of high-priced vehicles in major coastal areas where the economy is large, rather than selling low-priced vehicles for inland consumers with a relatively small economic scale. The company also has difficulty in securing dealers that can provide sufficient after-sales service. According to the regulations of GAC Toyota, the company require dealers to have at least 1,500 repair and maintenance parts in stock. Also, when exchanging maintenance parts, GAC Toyota's emphasis is on increasing customer satisfaction by giving sufficient explanations for customers and obtaining consent from them. As a result, the company's dealers need financial resources to continue their business from a long-term perspective. However, it can be pointed out that such dealers are limited, and it is difficult to distribute profits among manufacturers and dealers.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.141-151
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• 2020

This research aimed at studying the role of self-enhancing imagery and self goal-achievement emotion in the effect of characteristics perceived at advertisements using multisensory cues on purchase intention. Sports shoes advertisement was selected as an empirical research object. Questionnaire survey method was used to collect data. 'WenJuanXing' site was used to make the questionnaire in Chinese, and it was loaded on WeChat and QQ. 260 participants from different regions of China participated in online questionnaire survey. The results of testing the hypotheses by structural equation model in Amos 21.0 program are summarized as followings. The congruency between multisensory cues and self-discrepancy awareness positively evoked the self-enhancing imagery and the self goal-achievement emotion. The object relevance between the consumer and the product advertised did not induce the emotion, but evoked the self-enhancing imagery. Both of the self-enhancing imagery and the self goal-achievement emotion had positive effects on the product purchase intention. When developing advertisement, marketers should focus on multisensory cues' characteristics to enhance the self-enhancing imageries as well as to help feel the goal-achievement emotion. They should pay attention to the ways by which the multisensory cues' characteristics used to develop advertisement can be perceived to be congruent with each other by consumers.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.17-28
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• 2017

Purpose - Considering the environmental issues in corporate management is now a necessity, not an option. In addition, consumers' interest in health and environment has increased rapidly. This study aims to investigate how the management style that pursues environmental protection affects the various outcomes at each management process such as planning, producing and supervising process. Research design, data, and methodology - We surveyed 319 manufacturing companies from April 1 to April 30, 2016. Green purchasing, environmental technology management and management support are selected as independent variables and firm performances as dependent variables. Three analyses including factor, regression and moderating were conducted. Results - Regression analysis was performed to set up hypotheses. Consequently, the total six hypotheses were adopted and then innovative management style showed moderating effect. Conclusions - Companies should consider environmental factors to improve the financial performance in the long term. Especially the cooperative style enhances financial performance by implementing eco-friendly design in cooperation with customers. Also, eco-friendly activities with suppliers could have direct environmental protection effects. Therefore, a manufacturer needs to cooperate with both suppliers and customers to maximize the protection effect. The production of eco-friendly products and implementing eco-friendly design with customers positively affect product quality.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.15-22
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• 2015

Purpose - Transparency, seller reputation, and website security are considered to be important factors that influence online customer purchasing decisions in China. This paper empirically examines the relative influence of Taobao.com on customers' online purchasing decisions. Research design, data, and methodology - We perform structural equation analysis, with a sample of 306 observations. The data comes from consumers' real transaction experiences from a specific website. This gives the results of our study more generalizability than studies using subjects who are not asked to engage in real transactions. Results - The results of this study reveal that perceived security and perceived reputation are critical factors affecting consumer trust and perceived transparency is most closely associated with purchase intention. Conclusions - The findings suggest that perceived transparency plays a significant role in increasing online consumer's purchase intention. The knowledge of the relative impacts of these factors and their roles in the customer transaction experience will be useful in developing customized sales strategies. The results of this study reveal that perceived transparency exerts a stronger effect than perceived reputation on consumer purchase intentions.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.127-146
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• 2017

The convergence of e-commerce and social media have given rise to a social commerce of online group-buying. Social commerce of online group-buying is a subset of B2C (Business to Consumer) and uses social media for marketing to facilitate online buying of products and services. The social commerce of online group-buying offers new and popular products or services every day, and uses social media to bring together separated consumers. In these backgrounds, we think that personality trait associated with seeking new and popular products or services, and social influence from social media are likely to be related to intention to use in social commerce of online group-buying. This study aims to examine and analyze novelty seeking and social influence that influence intention to use in social commerce of online group-buying in China. Our research model, which included novelty seeking and social influence, was developed based on the technology acceptance model. A questionnaire survey was carried out for empirical analysis. The results of empirical analysis based on a sample of 218 users showed that novelty seeking has a significant positive impact on intention to use, and social influence has a significant positive impact on perceived usefulness. We suggested academic implications and practical implications based on our empirical research.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.176-183
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• 2019

This study examined the state of awareness, consumption, and purchasing behavior of Kimchi among Chinese adults in Beijing and Shanghai. Two-hundred Chinese individuals in Beijing and Shanghai were included as study subjects. The subjects selected "good Kimchi for Chinese taste" as excellent Kimchi; however, only 13% of the subjects selected "Kimchi from Korea is excellent." The first sites of Kimchi consumption in China included "home" (59.0%) and "restaurants" (40.0%) in Beijing and "restaurants" (57.0%) and "home" (32.0%) in Shanghai. Chinese people primarily purchase 400g pouches of Kimchi more than once a month, and the average price of Kimchi is RMB 12.59 in Beijing and RMB 18.32 in Shanghai. These results suggest that the interest in Kimchi varieties and the countries producing it differ among Chinese consumers depending on the region. Therefore, a sensory evaluation of Kimchi is essential to determine the preferred flavor of Kimchi among Chinese individuals and to promote the consumption of traditional Korean Kimchi.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.65-75
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• 2021

Purpose: During the pandemic, a large number of orders forced online retailers of fresh produce to quickly change their emergency logistics capabilities to meet the needs of ordinary consumers during the pandemic. Our research aims to help online retailers establish an emergency physical distribution framework for fresh produce during disasters to meet consumer needs. Research design and methodology: 160 effective responses were collected from the online response team in Wuhan, China, and exploratory factor analysis was used to determine the emergency logistics capability framework. Twelve experts were invited online to collect their scoring opinions and use the entropy method to determine the importance of emergency logistics capabilities. Results: Our results have identified a total of 17 emergency logistics factors for online retailers, and we found that Transportation route planning and reconstruction capabilities, Emergency plan planning ability, and Supply chain real-time information sharing capability are the most important in the overall framework. Conclusions: This research completely established the physical distribution framework of fresh agricultural products online retailer in emergency situations. It enriches academic resources in the field of emergency distribution and provides a scientific basis for corporate managers to improve their physical distribution capabilities in emergency situations.

• The Journal of Economics, Marketing and Management
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.1-10
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• 2023

Purpose: This study investigated the relationship between product characteristics and customer purchase intention in live-streaming commerce. Research design, data and methodology: Six independent factors namely, scarcity, customization, discount, experimentalism, novelty, and informativeness were identified to analyze their effects on customer purchase intention in live-streaming commerce. The perceived value was accepted as a mediator between independent and dependent variables. Data were gathered from 643 respondents who experienced purchases in live-streaming commerce in China. Results: The results show that product characteristics strongly affect customer purchase intention, and perceived value plays an important mediating role in live-streaming commerce. Therefore, when developing a sales strategy in live-streaming commerce, product characteristics. Such as customization, discount, experimentalism, novelty, and information must be considered. Conclusions: The majority of live-streaming commerce research has focused on platform interactions and consumers. This study is meaningful in that it dealt with product characteristics and confirmed the mediating roles of perceived value in live-streaming commerce. The findings of this study have significant implications and offer valuable insights and practical guidance for both the academic community and practitioners engaged in the field of live-streaming commerce.