• Title/Summary/Keyword: Product Design Marketing

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A Study on Difference between Korea and China Consumers in importance of Attributes, Shopping Value and Loyalty in Social Commerce (한국과 중국소비자의 소셜커머스 속성의 중요도, 쇼핑가치 및 충성도 차이에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Moon-Jung
    • Journal of Distribution Science
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    • v.13 no.1
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    • pp.47-55
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    • 2015
  • Purpose - The objective of this study is to verify whether there are differences between Korean and Chinese consumers in the importance of the attributes such as shopping value and loyalty in social commerce. With the purpose of finding out these differences, the following questions are set up as research questions. First, will there be a difference between Korea and China in the importance of attributes of social commerce? Second, will there be a difference between Korean and Chinese consumers in shopping value? Third, will there be a difference between Korean and Chinese consumers in their loyalty? Research design, data, and methodology - The researchers collected data through self-administered questionnaires from Korean and Chinese consumers who had used social commerce within the past six months before answering the questionnaire. First, for social commerce users in Korea, comprising male and female university students in Chungcheong, a questionnaire was circulated. For social commerce users in China, university students within Beijing were surveyed. Responses to 336 questionnaires were used, excluding those with no answers or unreliable answers. Data coding and data cleaning were used. SPSS 18.0 was used. First, exploratory factor analysis is done to verify the validity of testing tools, and Cronbach's α coefficient is used to verify credibility. For factor analysis, the Varimax method is used. To verify the internal consistency reliability of each factor, the Cronbach's α coefficient is used to verify the credibility. Second, a T-test is done to verify differences between Korean and Chinese consumers for the importance of attributes. Third, ANOVA (Analysis of variance) is done to verify differences between Korean and Chinese consumers in shopping value and loyalty. Results - When Korean and Chinese consumers use social commerce, first, the importance of the attributes of social commerce is affected by four factors; playfulness and economic factors are more important to Korean consumers than Chinese consumers. As for informativeness factors, including product information and quality, and buyer comments, there was no confirmed difference between Korean and Chinese consumers. The convenience factor is more important to Chinese consumers than Korean consumers. Second, the factors affecting shopping value for Korean and Chinese consumers were hedonic shopping value and rational shopping value. To see the difference between Korean and Chinese consumers in shopping value factors, a t-test is conducted. As a result, in the rational shopping value factors of social commerce, Korean consumers scored higher than did Chinese consumers. These results were verified to be meaningful through statistics. In the hedonic shopping value factor of social commerce, Korean consumers scored higher than Chinese consumers. These results showed a significant difference. Third, loyalty in social commerce is higher for Chinese consumers than for Korean consumers. However, there is no difference in loyalty depending on sex. Conclusion - These results will hopefully be valuable and used in the future by Korean companies that wish to enter the Chinese social commerce market.

Lessons from Haitai Distribution Inc's experience in Korea

  • Cho, Young-Sang
    • 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.

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The Impacts of the Service Quality of Coffee Shop Adapting the CoffeeSERV on Customer's Perceived Value, Customer Satisfaction, Behavioral Intention: Focusing on Regulatory Focus Theory (CoffeeSERV측정모형을 활용한 커피전문점 서비스품질의 가치지각, 고객만족, 행동의도의 영향관계 연구: 조절초점동기의 조절효과를 중심으로)

  • KANG, Hwa-Seok
    • The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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    • v.10 no.3
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    • pp.37-52
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    • 2019
  • Purpose - This study examined the relationship between service quality, perceived value, customer satisfaction and behavioral intention of coffee shop using CoffeeSERV scale. In this model, CoffeeSERV scale consists of fundamental characteristics, physical environment, confidence, beverage characteristics, and representation factors. In particular, this study tried to demonstrate the moderating effect of customer's regulatory focus orientation among in the relationships between service quality, perceived value, customer satisfaction and behavioral intention. Research design, data, and methodology - This study intends to expand the existing service quality research by using the coffee shop service quality measurement tool developed by domestic researchers. I wanted to find some implications for the trend. In particular, this study applied the regulatory focus theory to identify individual differences of customers regulatory focusing motivation. In order to verify several hypotheses, the data were 227 college students and analyzed with SPSS/PC 21.0 and SmartPLS 3 program. The moderating role of customer's regulatory focusing motivation was tested using multi-group analysis with SmartPLS 3 program. Results - The resutls are as follows. First, the fundamental characteristic factors only had a significant influence on the utilitarian value perception, but in the hedonic value perception, all other service factors except for the beverage characteristic had a statistically significant effect. Second, utilitarian and hedonic value had significant effects on customer satisfaction. Third, customer satisfaction had a significant effect on behavioral intention. Finally, the regulatory focus orientation played a moderating role in the relationship between beverage characteristic - utilitarian value, representation - utilitarian value, fundamental characteristic - hedonic value, physical environment - hedonic value, confidence - hedonic value, and utilitarian value - behavioral intention. Conclusions - The results of this study show that the various service quality factors that make up the CoffeeSERV scale have different effects on utilitarian and hedonic value. This means that perceived benefits from product and service experience have different impacts on the customer's experience. Therefore, marketers should identify the impacts of service quality dimension that customers who use coffee shops consider important, understand the impact process of these quality factors on experience value, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intention, and allocate limited marketing budget. The results also show that it is possible to establish differentiatied response strategies using customer's regulatory focus orientation to find ways to enhance utlitarian and hedonic value, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intention using various Coffeeshop service quality factors. At the end of this paper, some limitations and future research directions were suggested.

Impacts of Perceived Innovativeness of Convenience Store on Consumer Brand Engagement and Store Loyalty (편의점의 혁신성이 인지적 인게지먼트와 정서적 인게이지먼트, 그리고 점포충성도에 미치는 영향)

  • LEE, Young-Eun;LEE, Yong-Ki
    • The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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    • v.13 no.1
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    • pp.35-46
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    • 2022
  • Purpose: With the rapid changes in the technical development and the trend of consumption trend, the convenience store industry is facing an unprecedented competitive situation in the consumption environment where the boundary between online and offline is broken due to the stagnation of offline distribution channels and the spread of online shopping. The biggest innovation strategy of the major convenience store brands in recent years are introducing the O2O (Online to Offline) platform and presenting new products and services beyond the boundaries of online and offline to transform themselves into Omni Channel stores. The study is designed to analyze the effect of innovativeness of convenience store as a stimulus in O2O platform which customers perceive on store loyalty, the final response to external stimuli, through customer engagement with convenience store brands. Specifically, the innovativeness of convenience stores was divided into types of core activities in corporate marketing and focused on innovations in services, products(proposals), promotions and experiences. Research design, data, and methodology: Various hypotheses have been developed to achieve this research purpose. The data were collected from 1,128 questionnaires the age between 15 and 60 who had experience using retail store apps and delivery apps and were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 and SmartPLS 3.3.7 program. Measurement model analysis was carried out to assess convergent and discriminant validity. Also, common method bias was tested using the values of VIF (variance inflation factor). The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling with SmartPLS 3.3.7 program. Results: First, service innovation has a positive effect on cognitive engagement. Second, product, promotion and experience innovation have a positive effect on cognitive and affective engagement. Third, cognitive influences affective engagement. Finally, both cognitive and affective engagement affect store loyalty, but affective engagement has a stronger effect on store loyalty than cognitive engagement. Conclusions: All four types of innovation and cognitive engagement have a positive effect on emotional engagement, which has a stronger effect on store loyalty than cognitive engagement. Thus, while innovation can build loyalty through emotional engagement, innovation strategies must be designed and pursued with caution in terms of impact through cognitive engagement may not achieve the planned goals.

The Relationship between Characteristics of the University Student Crowdfunding Team and Team Performance: Focus on Functional Diversity and Shared-leadership (대학생 크라우드펀딩팀 특성이 팀성과에 미치는 영향: 기능적 배경 다양성과 공유리더십을 중심으로)

  • Lee, Sun-Hee;Lee, Sang-Youn
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.99-114
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    • 2022
  • Crowdfunding is one of new financing alternatives and is innovative and creative. In order to proceed with crowdfunding, various functions are required, such as design for screen composition, marketing and promotion for the public, accounting to manage the collected funds, and product production and purchase for reward. In addition, since it is a project that must be completed in a short period of time, cooperation between team members is important. This paper studied how the characteristics of the team conducting crowdfunding affect the team performance in crowdfunding. In this study, we set functional background diversity and shared leadership necessary for crowdfunding as team characteristic variables and crowdfunding amount, completion of work and team innovation as team performance variables. This study tests the hypotheses from 220 university students in 79 teams. The findings suggest that functional diversity and shared leadership are positively related to the completion of work and team innovation but not related to crowdfunding amount. To date, few studies have studied the relationship between characteristics of the crowdfunding team and performance. Therefore, the study on functional diversity and shared leadership in crowdfunding can expand existing crowdfunding study area.

Analysis on elements of policy changes in character industry (캐릭터산업의 정책변인연구)

  • Han, Chang-Wan
    • Cartoon and Animation Studies
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    • s.33
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    • pp.597-616
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    • 2013
  • Character industry is not only knowledge-based industry chiefly with copyrights but also motive power for creative economy to take a role functionally over the fields of industries because it has industrial characteristic as complement product to promote sale value in manufacturing industry and service industry and increase profit on sales. Since 2003, the national policy related to character has aimed to maximize effect among connected industries, extend its business abroad, enforce copyrights through the improvement of marketing system, develop industrial infrastructure through raising quality of character products. With the result of this policy, the successful cases of connected contents have been crystallized and domestic character industry has stepped up methodically since 2007. It is needed to reset the scales of character industry and industrial stats because there are more know-how of self industry promotion and more related characters through strategy of market departmentalization starting with cartoon, animation, games, novels, movies and musicals. Especially, The Korea government set our target for 'Global Top Five Character Power' since 2009 and has started to carry out to find global star characters, support to establish network among connected industries, diversify promotion channels, and develop licensing business. Particularly, since 2013, There have been prospered the indoor character theme park with time management just like character experimental marketing or Kids cafes using characters, the demand market of digital character focusing on SNS emoticon, and the performance market for character musical consistently. Moreover, The domestic and foreign illegal black markets on off-line have been enlarged, so we need another policy alternative. To prepare for the era of exploding character demand market and diversifying platform, it is needed to set up a solid strategy that is required the elements of policy changes in character industry to vitalize character industry and support new character design and connected contents. the following shows that the elements of policy changes related to the existing policy, the current position of market. Nowadays, the elements of policy changes in domestic character industry are that variety of consumers in the digital character market according to platform diversification, Convergence contents of character goods for the Korean waves, legalization of the illegal black contents market, and controling the tendency of consumers in departmentalized market. This can help find the policy issue entirely deferent with the existing character powers like US, Japan or Europe. In its final analysis, the alternatives are the promotion of models with contract copyrights of domestic and foreign connected contents, the diversification of profit models of platform economy, the additive development of target market related to enlarging the Korean waves, and the strategy of character market for the age-specific tendency according to developing character demand market.

Mediating Effect of Ease of Use and Customer Satisfaction in the Relationship between Mobile Shopping Mall of Service Quality and Repurchase Intention of University Student consumer (모바일쇼핑몰 서비스품질과 대학생 고객의 재구매의도 관계에서 사용용이성과 고객만족도의 매개효과)

  • Kim, Sun-A;Park, Ji-Eun;Park, Song-Choon
    • Management & Information Systems Review
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    • v.38 no.1
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    • pp.201-223
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    • 2019
  • The purpose of this study is to verify empirically the causal relationship between service quality, ease of use, customer satisfaction, and repurchase intention of mobile shopping mall. And this study is to investigate the ease of use and customer satisfaction mediating effect of between service quality and repurchase intention. Therefore, 323 university students in Jeonnam area were surveyed and the structural equation model was derived based on previous research. Service quality of mobile shopping mall make a significant effect on using easiness, purchasing satisfaction and repurchase intention. However, among service quality of mobile shopping mall, service scape like mobile interface and site design made a positive effect on purchasing satisfaction, but did not any effect on repurchase intention. In other words, service quality factors that make positive effects on customer's pleasant using and repurchase intention make a positive effect on repurchase intention when providing and using the service customer wants faithfully rather than external part of the site and mutually influencing attitude or behavior well. The implications suggested by this study are as follows. First, service quality of mobile shopping mall makes a significant effect on repurchase intention, so it's necessary to improve CS service system so as to treat customers' inquiries or inconveniences actively during mobile shopping and return and refund of defective products quickly and conveniently. And, in addition to the finally used factors in analysis process, benefits using customers' grade by number of purchases, such as various events, coupons, reserve, etc. and active contents marketing strategies providing more various pleasures and values of shopping are necessary. Second, satisfaction of mobile shopping mall makes a positive effect on repurchase intention, so visiting of site and repurchasing of product are continuously done as customers' satisfaction on shopping mall is increasing. Therefore, shopping mall site requires differentiation of contents, exact plan and practice of service, marketing, etc. so that customers can feel more satisfaction. This study is significant as it systematically analyzed concepts of components that service quality of mobile shopping mall makes an effect on using easiness, purchasing satisfaction, and repurchase intention, verified the relations, systematized it by theoretical structure, and widened the understanding of effects making an effect on repurchase intention.

Effects of Storytelling in Advertising on Consumers' Empathy

  • Park, Myungjin;Lee, Doo-Hee
    • Asia Marketing Journal
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    • v.15 no.4
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    • pp.103-129
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    • 2014
  • Differentiated positioning becomes increasingly difficult when brand salience weakens. Also, the daily increase in new media use and information load has led to a social climate that regards advertising stimuli as spamming. For these reasons, the focus of advertisement-related communication is shifting from persuading consumers through the direct delivery of information to an emphasis on appealing to their emotions using matching stimuli to enhance persuasion effects. Recently, both academia and industry have increasingly shown an interest in storytelling methods that can generate positive emotional responses and attitude changes by arousing consumers' narrative processing. The purpose of storytelling is to elicit consumers' emotional experience to meet the objectives of advertisement producers. Therefore, the most important requirement for storytelling in advertising is that it evokes consumers' sympathy for the main character in the advertisement. This does not involve advertisements directly persuading consumers, but rather, consumers themselves finding an answer through the advertisement's story. Thus, consumers have an indirect experience regarding the product features and usage through empathy with the advertisement's main character. In this study, we took the results of a precedent study as the starting point, according to which consumers' emotional response can be altered depending on the storytelling methods adopted for storytelling ads. Previous studies have reported that drama-type and vignette-type storytelling methods have a considerably different impact on the emotional responses of advertising audiences, due to their different structural characteristics. Thus, this study aims to verify that emotional response aroused by different types of advertisement storytelling (drama ads vs. vignette ads) can be controlled by the socio-psychological gender difference of advertising audiences and that the interaction effects between the socio-psychological gender differences of the audience and the gender stereotype of emotions to which advertisements appeal can exert an influence on emotional responses to types of storytelling in advertising. To achieve this, an experiment was conducted employing a between-group design consisting of 2 (storytelling type: drama ads vs. vignette ads) × 2 (socio-psychological gender of the audience: masculinity vs. femininity) × 2 (advertising appeal emotion type: male stereotype emotion vs. female stereotype emotion). The experiment revealed that the femininity group displayed a strong and consistent empathy for drama ads regardless of whether the ads appealed to masculine or feminine emotions, whereas the masculinity group displayed a stronger empathy for drama ads appealing to the emotional types matching its own gender as well as for vignette ads. The theoretical contribution of this study is significant in that it sheds light on the controllability of the audiences' emotional responses to advertisement storytelling depending on their socio-psychological gender and gender stereotype of emotions appealed to through advertising. Specifically, its considerable practical contribution consists in easing unnecessary creative constraints by comprehensively analyzing essential advertising strategic factors such as the target consumers' gender and the objective of the advertisement, in contrast to the oversimplified view of previous studies that considered emotional responses to storytelling ads were determined by the different types of production techniques used. This study revealed that emotional response to advertisement storytelling varies depending on the target gender of and emotion type appealed to by the advertisement. This suggests that an understanding of the targeted gender is necessary prior to producing an advertisement and that in deciding on an advertisement storytelling type, strategic attention should be directed to the advertisement's appeal concept or emotion type. Thus, it is safe to use drama-type storytelling that expresses masculine emotions (ex. fun, happy, encouraged) when the advertisement target, like Bacchus, includes both men and women. For brands and advertisements targeting only women (ex. female clothes), it is more effective to use a drama-type storytelling method that expresses feminine emotions (lovely, romantic, sad). The drama method can be still more effective than the vignette when women are the main target and a masculine concept-based creative is to be produced. However, when male consumers are targeted and the brand concept or advertisement concept is focused on feminine emotions (ex. romantic), vignette ads can more effectively induce empathy than drama ads.

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Forecasting Substitution and Competition among Previous and New products using Choice-based Diffusion Model with Switching Cost: Focusing on Substitution and Competition among Previous and New Fixed Charged Broadcasting Services (전환 비용이 반영된 선택 기반 확산 모형을 통한 신.구 상품간 대체 및 경쟁 예측: 신.구 유료 방송서비스간 대체 및 경쟁 사례를 중심으로)

  • Koh, Dae-Young;Hwang, Jun-Seok;Oh, Hyun-Seok;Lee, Jong-Su
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.2
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    • pp.223-252
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    • 2008
  • In this study, we attempt to propose a choice-based diffusion model with switching cost, which can be used to forecast the dynamic substitution and competition among previous and new products at both individual-level and aggregate level, especially when market data for new products is insufficient. Additionally, we apply the proposed model to the empirical case of substitution and competition among Analog Cable TV that represents previous fixed charged broadcasting service and Digital Cable TV and Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) that are new ones, verify the validities of our proposed model, and finally derive related empirical implications. For empirical application, we obtained data from survey conducted as follows. Survey was administered by Dongseo Research to 1,000 adults aging from 20 to 60 living in Seoul, Korea, in May of 2007, under the title of 'Demand analysis of next generation fixed interactive broadcasting services'. Conjoint survey modified as follows, was used. First, as the traditional approach in conjoint analysis, we extracted 16 hypothetical alternative cards from the orthogonal design using important attributes and levels of next generation interactive broadcasting services which were determined by previous literature review and experts' comments. Again, we divided 16 conjoint cards into 4 groups, and thus composed 4 choice sets with 4 alternatives each. Therefore, each respondent faces 4 different hypothetical choice situations. In addition to this, we added two ways of modification. First, we asked the respondents to include the status-quo broadcasting services they subscribe to, as another alternative in each choice set. As a result, respondents choose the most preferred alternative among 5 alternatives consisting of 1 alternative with current subscription and 4 hypothetical alternatives in 4 choice sets. Modification of traditional conjoint survey in this way enabled us to estimate the factors related to switching cost or switching threshold in addition to the effects of attributes. Also, by using both revealed preference data(1 alternative with current subscription) and stated preference data (4 hypothetical alternatives), additional advantages in terms of the estimation properties and more conservative and realistic forecast, can be achieved. Second, we asked the respondents to choose the most preferred alternative while considering their expected adoption timing or switching timing. Respondents are asked to report their expected adoption or switching timing among 14 half-year points after the introduction of next generation broadcasting services. As a result, for each respondent, 14 observations with 5 alternatives for each period, are obtained, which results in panel-type data. Finally, this panel-type data consisting of $4{\ast}14{\ast}1000=56000$observations is used for estimation of the individual-level consumer adoption model. From the results obtained by empirical application, in case of forecasting the demand of new products without considering existence of previous product(s) and(or) switching cost factors, it is found that overestimated speed of diffusion at introductory stage or distorted predictions can be obtained, and as such, validities of our proposed model in which both existence of previous products and switching cost factors are properly considered, are verified. Also, it is found that proposed model can produce flexible patterns of market evolution depending on the degree of the effects of consumer preferences for the attributes of the alternatives on individual-level state transition, rather than following S-shaped curve assumed a priori. Empirically, it is found that in various scenarios with diverse combinations of prices, IPTV is more likely to take advantageous positions over Digital Cable TV in obtaining subscribers. Meanwhile, despite inferiorities in many technological attributes, Analog Cable TV, which is regarded as previous product in our analysis, is likely to be substituted by new services gradually rather than abruptly thanks to the advantage in low service charge and existence of high switching cost in fixed charged broadcasting service market.

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A Study on the Brand Characteristics According to Trends in the Children's Apparel Market

  • Han, Gyung-Hee
    • 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.