• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.153-172
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• 1997

The distribution sector is affected by a wide range of regulations. Many of these are related to health and safety, others are related to urban planning and environmental issues, whereas some mainly have an economic basis. But, regulations many be unduly restrictive, in which case they can drive up costs and ultimately prices, or they may, in some cases, reduce consumer choice. Unduly restrictive regulations could also increase costs indirectly, by reducing competition and thus lead to lower productivity growth. In the past few years, distribution sector has gone through drastic changes due to deregulation and market opening. Implementation of regulatory reforms served as an opportunity to change laws and systems which had been an obstacle to development of distribution sector. Market opening of distribution sector became a turning point to promote competition among domestic and foreign firms. However, for small and medium scale of the typical retail enterprises which were in no position to compete in terms of prices, additional facilities, and services, faced a threat of diminished trading area, and even of their existence. Because, large firms may have greater market power than small firms, as they can more easily extract favorable terms when procuring goods, and may also be able to deter entry by advertising outlays or access to the best sites. In addition, larger chain stores armied with sufficient capital dominated trading area and reduced customer's welfare by abusing their monopoly power when competing with other shops, and are often cited as an example of adverse effects of local monopoly. In order to minimize such adverse effects and to foster competition, regulatory reforms in distribution sector should set its goal to promote sound and stable distribution activities through market principle and restoring competition principle, and ultimately to boost customers welfare. Therefore, deregulation in distribution sector should be implemented in a way to promote customers welfare, eliminate entry barriers, and expand competition principle such as productivity and efficiency competition. However, it should be also recognized that deregulation of system alone is not enough to develop the distribution sector. To compete in a increasingly concentrated industry, small enterprises increasingly engage in co-operative arrangements, such as buying groups, strategic alliances or franchise agreements.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2016.05a
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• pp.734-736
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• 2016

Doors are in various buildings, such as large retail stores, hospitals, restaurants, government offices and is used as a door to provide convenience for customers, the convenience of security to control doors and exterior access Castle, etc. In the case of housing door facilities It has been used widely. However, the conventional automatic door controller Although the primary use of the PID control, the contact size and weight depending on the location to cause an instability in the system controller or the like, and disturbance of parameter variation and uncertain dynamics because of the wide variations. In this paper, we design a robust controller to compensate for uncertainties and to compensate for the disturbance.

• The Journal of Information Technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.69-86
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• 2004

In this paper, a conceptual framework describing the dynamics of click and mortar businesses is provided. It directs our attention to the many potential sources of synergy that are available to firms that choose to integrate e-commerce with their existing traditional forms of business. It further emphasizes the many actions that firms can take to minimize channel conflicts and help achieve the benefits of synergy. Finally, it describes four categories of synergy-related benefits from the integration of e-commerce with traditional businesses, including potential cost saving, gains due to enhanced differentiation, improved trust, and potential extensions into new markets. The utility of the framework was demonstrated using the case of an electronics retailer that has chosen to tightly integrate its large chain of retail stores with its Web-based electronic store. The framework was also used to develop a series of propositions that can guide future empirical research. The discussion points to the need to develop new types of metrics to better judge the contributions of e-commerce channels, and provides some guidance for future empirical research that can test whether, and under what conditions, integrated click and mortar business models work well. Thus, the purpose of this study is to present the combining physical and virtual presence in e-commerce.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.65-73
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• 2016

Purpose - Recently, the management conditions of small independent retailers are getting worse everyday as large-scale marts and franchised convenience stores are increasing. The objective of this research is to find out the antecedents and consequences of cooperation in voluntary chain in order to enhance small independent retailer's competitiveness. Voluntary chains, also called affiliation or symbol groups, or allied group represent a high market shared in some European countries like Italy, France, and Germany. Nevertheless, there are still limitations in this research from academic fields. Drawing from network theory, the author investigates the relationship between antecedent factors in voluntary chain cooperation, such as participation benefits, justice of compensation, and autonomy in voluntary chain, and relationship specific asset. The author also attempts to examine the relationship between the relationship specific asset and cooperation of voluntary chain member shop and cooperation and consequence factors of voluntary chain cooperation, such as efficiency, group cohesiveness, and long-term relationship. Research design, data, and methodology - The author presented conceptual framework integrating the major antecedents and consequences of voluntary chain cooperation. The data were collected from 174 independent small retailers who joined K-voluntary chain. K-voluntary chain consists of small independent retailers. In accordance with their status, each entrepreneur associated with the voluntary group can own one or more outlets and can be a part of the life and the decision-making process of the group. This participation is not based on company turnover or on the number of outlets, but based on a one member, one vote system. To verify the research model and test hypotheses, the author carefully investigated the reliability, content validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of the proposed model. The data were analyzed by using SPSS 18.0 and AMOS structural equation modeling program. Results - The results of this study are as follows. First, as antecedent variables, participation benefits and justice of compensation have positive effect on the relationship specific assets of voluntary chain members. Second, voluntary chain members' relationship specific asset also directly related to the level of its cooperation to chain headquarter. Third, cooperation of voluntary chain member shop facilitates efficiency, group cohesiveness, and long-term relationship. Unexpectedly, there are no effect autonomy in voluntary chain to relationship specific asset. Conclusions - This research shows several theoretical and practical implications to both marketing scholars and marketers. In terms of theoretical implications, this study applies to network theory and network theory variables to explain the antecedent and consequence factors of cooperation in voluntary chain. From the point of view from business management, most of all, this study shows the way how to reinforce competitiveness of voluntary chain. Specifically, it is necessary for voluntary chain headquarter to give higher level of participation benefit and justice of compensation to its members. Second, the results also indicate what the consequence factors of cooperation in voluntary chain. In other words, to increase the level of marketing efficiency, group cohesiveness, long-term orientation in retail voluntary chain, and chain headquarter need to facilitate participants' cooperation.

• 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.123-133
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• 2016

Purpose - Understanding how service convenience drives shopping performance is imperative for retailers such as department and large discount stores. Retailers have to enhance shopping productivity by reducing the costs of shopping, as convenience triggers customers' perceived shopping value, leading to customer satisfaction, and ultimately patronage behavior. Consumers, generally considering time as a scarce resource, are more sensitive to the time costs of tasks in regard to shopping trip, differently from forming perceptions of convenience in time orientation. Therefore, this study attempts to examine the moderating effects of consumers' time orientation on the relationships among service convenience of retailers and shopping performances such as shopping value and service performances. Research design, data, and methodology - The department and discount store chains were chosen as the point of analysis in this study. Data were collected from a survey of real-life consumers and all respondents were screened to ensure only those who had visited in the department and discount store chains within past six month prior to the day of data collection. Out of 600 self-reported surveys that were distributed, a total of 530 responses were returned and after excluding 20 incomplete responses, the final sample size was 510. The three hypotheses were proposed and tested in this study. The one hypothesis was on the moderating effects of time orientation for the effects of service convenience on shopping value (hedonic and utilitarian shopping value). The other two hypotheses were on the comparisons between high and low time-oriented customers with the effects in shopping value from service performance. Hierarchical moderated regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Results - The results suggest that the effect of service convenience on utilitarian shopping value and the positive effect of utilitarian shopping value on customer satisfaction are greater in low time orientation than high time orientation customers. Conversely, when customers are highly oriented toward time, the effects of hedonic shopping value on customer satisfaction and revisit intention are greater than for customers who are lowly oriented toward time. Conclusions - This study has two-fold significance. First, this study contributes to the consumer behavior and services marketing literature by incorporating customers' time orientation into the service convenience-shopping performance. Although the effect of service convenience on shopping performance might differ from customers' perceptions concerning shopping, there has been little investigation or comparison between customers' perception on time. This study is a first attempt to consider how the effects of service convenience on shopping value and service performance vary with differing levels of customers' time orientation. This study advances prior studies by showing that the service convenience-shopping value and service convenience-service performance relationships vary across different combinations of the customer's time orientation. The findings of this study suggest that the retailers need to enhance the experiential aspects of the stores for their high time-oriented customers. Conversely, for the low time-oriented customers, the retailers should boost the visual distinctiveness and ease of store navigation.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.1682-1694
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• 2007

There are a lot of factors working to facilitate the decline of Korea's traditional markets including large-scale discount stores, convenience stores, businesses of new types such as non-store retailing, and fiercer competitions among retail shops. The changes to the business environment are never favorable to them, either; the consumers have developed more diverse tastes and altered their purchasing styles; and the trading areas around traditional markets have withdrawn in size and power as new towns attract more businesses. In a word, every factor and situation seems to push traditional markets down the slope. Reacting to the problems, the Korean government enacted and enforced the "Special Law for the Promotion of Traditional Markets and Shopping Streets" to provide proper financial and management support. The shop owners of traditional markets formed merchants and prosperity associations and took various initiatives to increase the competitive edge of their traditional markets. All those efforts on the part of the government and the merchants, however, do not seem to be enough to revive traditional markets. This study set out to compare and analyze the management of shop owners of traditional markets based on the support projects by the government, to conduct an empirical research and analysis of their management conditions, and to suggest a better policy model by making improvements for the government's support system and making revisions to the current directions.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.77-110
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• 2017

Recently, the diversification and individualization of consumption patterns through the web and mobile devices based on the Internet have been rapid. As this happens, the efficient operation of the offline store, which is a traditional distribution channel, has become more important. In order to raise both the sales and profits of stores, stores need to supply and sell the most attractive products to consumers in a timely manner. However, there is a lack of research on which SKUs, out of many products, can increase sales probability and reduce inventory costs. In particular, if a company sells products through multiple in-store stores across multiple locations, it would be helpful to increase sales and profitability of stores if SKUs appealing to customers are recommended. In this study, the recommender system (recommender system such as collaborative filtering and hybrid filtering), which has been used for personalization recommendation, is suggested by SKU recommendation method of a store unit of a distribution company that handles a homogeneous brand through a plurality of sales stores by country and region. We calculated the similarity of each store by using the purchase data of each store's handling items, filtering the collaboration according to the sales history of each store by each SKU, and finally recommending the individual SKU to the store. In addition, the store is classified into four clusters through PCA (Principal Component Analysis) and cluster analysis (Clustering) using the store profile data. The recommendation system is implemented by the hybrid filtering method that applies the collaborative filtering in each cluster and measured the performance of both methods based on actual sales data. Most of the existing recommendation systems have been studied by recommending items such as movies and music to the users. In practice, industrial applications have also become popular. In the meantime, there has been little research on recommending SKUs for each store by applying these recommendation systems, which have been mainly dealt with in the field of personalization services, to the store units of distributors handling similar brands. If the recommendation method of the existing recommendation methodology was 'the individual field', this study expanded the scope of the store beyond the individual domain through a plurality of sales stores by country and region and dealt with the store unit of the distribution company handling the same brand SKU while suggesting a recommendation method. In addition, if the existing recommendation system is limited to online, it is recommended to apply the data mining technique to develop an algorithm suitable for expanding to the store area rather than expanding the utilization range offline and analyzing based on the existing individual. The significance of the results of this study is that the personalization recommendation algorithm is applied to a plurality of sales outlets handling the same brand. A meaningful result is derived and a concrete methodology that can be constructed and used as a system for actual companies is proposed. It is also meaningful that this is the first attempt to expand the research area of the academic field related to the existing recommendation system, which was focused on the personalization domain, to a sales store of a company handling the same brand. From 05 to 03 in 2014, the number of stores' sales volume of the top 100 SKUs are limited to 52 SKUs by collaborative filtering and the hybrid filtering method SKU recommended. We compared the performance of the two recommendation methods by totaling the sales results. The reason for comparing the two recommendation methods is that the recommendation method of this study is defined as the reference model in which offline collaborative filtering is applied to demonstrate higher performance than the existing recommendation method. The results of this model are compared with the Hybrid filtering method, which is a model that reflects the characteristics of the offline store view. The proposed method showed a higher performance than the existing recommendation method. The proposed method was proved by using actual sales data of large Korean apparel companies. In this study, we propose a method to extend the recommendation system of the individual level to the group level and to efficiently approach it. In addition to the theoretical framework, which is of great value.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.95-104
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• 2015

Purpose - This is a comparative study of the market development and characteristics of Ulsan in South Korea, Fukuoka in Japan, and Yanji in China, which are major East Sea Rim cities with adjacent areas of similar natural characteristics of the sea and the country. Particularly, it considers these aspects while focusing on the evolution of networks that appear in the distribution system and at the same time examining the institutions of market activation and regulations that are handled by the central and the local government and the changing logistics due to the development of transportation and the concern of food safety, using a meso-analysis approach. Research design, data, and methodology - The study used a historical and comparative approach with a focus on case studies. It made use of various materials such as local newspaper articles, reports, literature, interviews with experts, discussions with local merchants, discussions with customers, and so forth. Results - In the case of Fukuoka, from the 1960s, due to the entry of supermarkets, supermarkets expanded and they have now come to a dominant market position in the current market. They offer a convenient and comfortable environment while providing a large mall offering a variety of educational and cultural activities for customers to meet the customers' needs, such as the preferences of Korean tourists, who appear to prefer Japanese foods. The Fukuoka City Central Wholesale Market has been exporting fruits and vegetables as well as seafood products to Korea, China, and so forth. In the case of Ulsan, as in the early 2000s, due to the expansion of supermarkets, the traditional markets have been shrinking and further, the modernization of traditional markets was conducted under the auspices of the Small Business Administration. In addition to the large discount malls, the expansion of SSM is expected to further drive the small trader bay. Shopping malls, department stores, and traditional markets contend with each other in Yanji, China, but a large number of citizens appear to prefer traditional markets and imported milk in the supermarket after the melamine scandal in China. Recently, the WanYuan (萬源) wholesale market has been partially completed and made an attempt to become a logistics hub in Northeast Asia. Conclusions - For the development of Korea's retail industry, it is important to offer the government with proposals regarding desired regulation. On the other hand, in order to enable the business of traditional markets, it requires an association for cultural tourism. At present, it would be better to provide a venture fund for the youth rather than infrastructure support. This study emphasizes the importance of institutions and policy to develop networks in the East Sea Rim. Future studies should conduct a survey on customers, managers, and merchants more carefully and systematically to understand the market situation while considering the size of the city and its evolution of markets, as well as policies and institutions.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.73-83
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• 2015

Purpose - Recently, many large retailers have been frequently purchasing commercial brands. Not only the quality of products purchased but also the brand images are of concern in this process. Based on this rising trend, commercial brands have become an important issue in the retail business world, along with increasing general interest as well. Thus, this study focuses on the factors affecting commercial brand images and clarifies the impact of the resulting factors as well. First, store images and familiarity, price sensitiveness, and knowledge are presented as the effect factors for commercial brands. Second, the study tries to clarify the effect of commercial brand image on the reliability and loyalty of customers. Research design, data, and methodology - To conduct the study methodology, 250 questionnaires were distributed to retailers who have used large discount stores located in Busan to purchase a commercial brand a total of 234 valid questionnaires were used in the final analysis. To verify the hypotheses, a structure equation formula using Amos 20.0 was calculated. First, prior to the verification of hypotheses, the reliability and feasibility of the questions were tested, and as a result, the value of Cronbach's alpha was higher than 0.7, thereby showing reliability. Additionally, for the verification of the feasibility of the questions, a confirmation factor analysis was implemented. Results - First, variances such as store images, familiarity, price sensitivity, and knowledge were presented as the factors of effect on commercial brands. As a result of the hypotheses verification, all the effect factors presented in this study were confirmed as important variables of commercial brand images. The hypotheses were drawn based on the studies relating to existing commercial brands, and thereby, a result similar to previous studies was produced. However, the effect factors of the commercial brand image presented in this study shaped a new study model based on the previous studies. Second, it was found that commercial brand images had positive effects on the reliability and loyalty of customers. This study presented reliability and loyalty as the resulting factors of commercial brand image because they are the most important factors in relation to customer behavior and variables that can suggest marketing points for distribution businesses. Conclusions - This study focused on clarifying the factors that are important effect factors for commercial brand images. As a result, all the hypotheses were confirmed in this study, indicating a meaningful result, and thereby suggesting many points that can be presented to distribution businesses. First, the proper strategies should be developed based on the hypothesis that a store image, the familiarity of customers with brands, and the price sensitiveness and knowledge level of customers have an important effect on the choice of commercial brands. Additionally, the formation of such favorable images will have positive effects not only in terms of customer trust in the commercial brands but also in terms of their loyalty.