• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.129-146
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• 2012

Recently, Korea became the 7th country in the world which has got into the 20-50 clubs that means the population is 50 million and per capital income is $20,000. From the view point of the retail industry, it suggests that Korea should have its own self-sufficient market by itself. With abundant labor and increased disposable income, it made the consumer's needs change. Responding to the change, retail and F&B oriented retail malls are now starting to add culture, art and entertainment facilities in the configurations. Such complexity and variety of the shopping malls became trendy and many shopping complexes are scheduled to open in the near future across the country. Due to above reasons, it became the common trend to develop shopping complex all over the cities now. However, the history of the shopping mall in Korea is much shorter than developed countries such as America and Japan. Thereby, a lot of problems, trial and error have occurred in the process of developing and operating them. If development of shopping complex failed, it would return lots of damages to the stakeholder. Therefore, the corporations should develop the mall properly and government might support positively. In this study, we would like to propose on how all the mall should be developed and well managed and what are the ways for the vitalizing factors of the shopping complex after benchmarking other shopping mall cases. Through the case study, we realized that the most crucial factors for vitalizing shopping complex were interior design, merchandising and how well they operate the mall. In case of the failed shopping mall, developers sell each store to individual proprietors and never take care of them after they get the profit, which make it hard to have integrated marketing strategies. That causes the overall slump of the mall. Corporations developing the mall should operate it as well, so that it could be possible to make the mall consistently well managed and promoted. There is a certificate for the shopping mall expert in The States and Japan. However, we do not have this kind of certificate. In fact, if we judge the capability of a person who is involved in the shopping mall industry, we usually measure how many years they stick to the same industries and that is not equally the same as their competence. Therefore it is necessary to organize "Shopping Mall Associate" and introduce shopping mall license for the mall expert. Due to retail trends, we can easily see a lot of shopping facilities all over the cities but not every mall is able to be successful. We think it's essential that the government should certify the malls which are qualified for the design, merchandising and proficiency of the operation. For the qualified mall, the government could confer a benefit on the company such as reducing corporation taxes. In multi-complex shopping mall it is possible to make convenient for customers. However, if a mall failed to succeed, it would be disaster. To build a shopping complex, developers should invest huge money even take out loan so that many people would be connected to the project, which may affect their whole financial conditions. In addition, only qualified corporation should develop and operate shopping complex and the government must support and aid the developers in order to make a better shopping environment in which customers might be happy during their shopping experience.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.23-38
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• 2006

This study attempts to investigate the spatial characteristics of cultural economies of Bukchon in Seoul, where abundant cultural assets exist. This area has been the administrative-political core locale since 14C, therefore, a lot of traditional- and contemporary-cultural facilities are remains, This area possessed unique place characteristics by coexisting traditional and modern cultures, and thus attracted to culture demanders. Recently many economic activities have increased in this area, and most of them are related with the cultural elements of the region, In particular creative retail shops, which produce goods by flexible-specialized production system, have been agglomerated in this area, The goods are designed, produced, and sold at the shop place. Most of them are uniquely designed hand made products, and produced a few amount. The economic value of these products related with the cultural environment of Bukchon. These creative shops emerged at the front of Samcheongdong street in the beginning, and then have diffused into the inside of Samcheongdong street and Hwagae street. The shops have very unique exteriors related with traditional houses in this area, and located on roadsides where are not many passerby. Most owners of the retail stores are highly educated and studied design, and produce goods by themselves at the shops. The reason that they opened their shops in Bukchon is directly related with the unique cultural environment of this area. They hope that more unique and artistic stores join this area so that developed this area as culture and fashion combined area.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.21-33
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• 2010

The ICT(information & communication technology) led to a dramatic change of floral distribution service, a phase of competition between wholesales and retail stores, and distribution channels in floral industry. It was expected that a role of the intermediaries in this industry would have reduced due to the improvement of transaction process by ICT. However, the ICT made to overcome a regional limit of the floral retail distribution service leading to an increase in sales and enlargement of the stores. And even it made possible to bring out another type of intermediaries such as private associations. This case study focuses on what kinds of efforts the floral wholesale distributors have made to enable a distribution process more smoothly between the wholesale distributors and retail stores through the information system, and what the failure factors in adopting the information system have been. This paper is also to examine how the wholesale distributors have changed themselves to gain dominant positions in distribution channels. As a result of the study, it was found that the intermediaries mostly failed in successfully achieving the distribution channel innovation through the information system because of several main reasons. FLOMARKET Inc. tried to innovate a distribution channel to obtain high quality goods through consolidating a wholesale distribution market in that segregated both floral joint market from free markets. after implementing the information system with consideration of the failure factors, FLOMARKET Inc. was able to minimize goods in stock and make a major purchase of various goods. In addition, it made a possible pre-ordering process and an exact calculation of purchasing goods so they could provide their products with market price in real time, which helped for the company to gain credits from their customers. Also, FLOMARKET Inc. established the information system which well suited to its business stage in order to deal with a rapidly changing distribution environment. It's so obvious that the transaction processing system of FLOMARKET Inc. definitely helped to share information among traders more seamlessly and smoothly in realtime, standardize goods, and make a transaction process clearer. Besides, the transaction information helped the wholesale distributors and retail stores to make more strategic decisions in their business because through the system they enabled to gather the marketing intelligence information more easily and convenient. If we understand that the floral distribution market is characterized by the low IT- based industry, it's worth to examine a case study proving that the information system actually increases the productivity of the transaction process in the floral industry.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.41-50
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• 2017

Purpose - Online product review has become a crucial part of the online retailer's market performance for a wide range of products. This research aims to investigate how an individual reviewer's review frequency and timing affect her/his average attitude toward products. Research design, data, and methodology - To conduct reviewer-level analysis, this study uses 42,172 posted online review messages generated by 6,941 identified reviewers for 59 movies released in the South Korea from July 2015 to December 2015. This study adopts Tobit model specification to take into account the censored nature and the selection bias arising from the nature of J-shaped distribution of movie rating. Results - Our estimation results support that the negative impact of review frequency and timing on valence. Furthermore, review timing has an inverted-U relationship with the user's average valence and enhance the negative effect of review frequency. Conclusions - This study contributes to the growing literature on the understanding how eWOM is generated at the individual consumer level. On the basis of the main empirical findings, this study provides insights into building a recommendation system in online retail store based on the consumer's review history data - frequency, timing, and valence.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.13 no.3 s.56
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• pp.452-468
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• 2005

The major aim of this study was to find factors that effectively improve the satisfaction of apparel firms' employees who are the internal customer and how these factors affect customer satisfaction. The subjects of the study was salespeople working at major women's apparel retail outlets and their customers located in Seoul. A data from 192 questionnaire were used for the final analysis. Descriptive statistics, factorial analysis, Cronbach's a, Person's correlation coefficient, and multiple regression were conducted. The results indicated that factors influenced by internal marketing were recruitmenteducation training, power endorsement, internal communication, CEO's management style and human resource management Regression analysis results indicated that recruitmenteducation training and power endorsement significantly influenced internal performance of the organization (employee's commitment to and satisfaction with the organization). Employee's commitment significantly influenced external performance of the organization, consumer satisfaction where as employees' satisfaction with the organization did not have significant effect.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.666-680
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• 2019

Prevalent usage of mobile devices among consumers has been well recognized and this is especially imperative among young adult consumers. The mobile phone became the gateway of their communication, media consumption, retail transaction, education, and (virtual) social life. However, there is little empirical research explaining the dynamics behind the psychological underpinning of young adult consumers, specifically Generation Y, to understand their usages and dependency on mobile phones. This study, therefore, aims to unveil antecedents and consequences of Gen Y consumers' mobile phone dependency from a media psychological perspective. We developed a conceptual model based on theory of self-monitoring (Snyder 1974, 1987), extended self-concept (Belk, 1988), and media dependency theory (Ball-Rokeach & Defluer, 1976). Four hundred ninety-eight students in the U.S. provided usable responses to our pencil-and-paper survey. Causal modeling analysis results demonstrated that both ability to modify one's behavior and sensitivity to cues for social appropriate behavior dimensions of the self-monitoring tendency positively predicted one's level of fashion involvement, which in turn positively predicted his/her mobile phone dependency. Individual's mobile phone dependency, fashion involvement and self-monitoring's ability dimension exhibited positive and direct impact on one's perception of the salience of mobile phone case product attributes. Based on the findings, we provided pragmatic and theoretical implications for the industry and academia.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.97-106
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• 2010

Can eBay.com's fee structure coordinate the channel? It's a critical strategic problem in e-commerce operations and an interesting research hypothesis as well. eBay's fees include three parts: monthly subscription fee, insertion fee, and final value fee (i.e., a revenue sharing portion), which represent a generic form of revenue sharing fee structure between the retailer and the vendor in a supply chain. This research deals with such a channel consisting of a price-setting vendor who sells products through eBay's marketplace exclusively to the end customers. The up- and down-stream channel relationship is consignment-based revenue sharing. We use a game-theoretic approach with assumption of the retailer (i.e., eBay.com) being a Stackelberg-leader and the vendor being a follower. The Stackelberg-leader decides on the terms of revenue sharing contract (i.e., fee structure), and the follower (vendor) decides on how many units to sell and the items' selling price. This study formulates several profit-maximization models by considering the effects of the retail price on the demand function. Under such settings, we show that eBay's fee structure can improve the channel efficiency; yet it cannot coordinate the channel optimally.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.87-98
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• 2020

HANSSEM is a furniture company that leads the market of residential space in Korea. The goal of this case study is to focus on how HANSSEM copes with IKEA, the world's largest furniture retailer after entering the Korean market in December 2014. IKEA's entry into Korea is possible to destroy the existing orders in the retail industry and reduce the profit of incumbent local players by realigning industry relationships. However, HANSSEM achieved rapid growth with the largest market share in the furniture market through its internal capabilities. The authors propose the main success factors in three ways: (1) residents-database including apartment floorplans in Korea, (2) high-quality human services provided by construction and A/S (After-sales Service), (3) channel diversification that provides comprehensive consultations (e.g., flagship stores, home shopping channels, stores in marts, and interior dealers). Especially, there have been various consumer needs in Korean market, such as creating their own stylish space economically. HANSSEM meets customer's needs by reinforcing the space-package (complete-interior is provided to customer in a package rather than combining individual piece of furniture) and opening showrooms, which makes customers freely experience the products and receive detailed consultations on interior designs by alleviating customers' difficulties in decorating their homes. Based on HANSSEM's outstanding activities and new investments, we look forward to seeing that HANSSEM will achieve its ultimate goal of maintaining the position of number one furniture company by attaining customer satisfaction through higher quality in Korea.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.93-112
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• 2015

Depending on the change in consumer's consumption pattern, existing retail shop has evolved in hypermarket or convenience store offering grocery and daily products mostly. Therefore, it is important to maintain the inventory levels and proper product configuration for effectively utilize the limited space in the retail store and increasing sales. Accordingly, this study proposed proper product configuration and inventory level strategy based on RFM(Recency, Frequency, Monetary) model and SOM(self-organizing map) for manage the retail shop effectively. RFM model is analytic model to analyze customer behaviors based on the past customer's buying activities. And it can differentiates important customers from large data by three variables. R represents recency, which refers to the last purchase of commodities. The latest consuming customer has bigger R. F represents frequency, which refers to the number of transactions in a particular period and M represents monetary, which refers to consumption money amount in a particular period. Thus, RFM method has been known to be a very effective model for customer segmentation. In this study, using a normalized value of the RFM variables, SOM cluster analysis was performed. SOM is regarded as one of the most distinguished artificial neural network models in the unsupervised learning tool space. It is a popular tool for clustering and visualization of high dimensional data in such a way that similar items are grouped spatially close to one another. In particular, it has been successfully applied in various technical fields for finding patterns. In our research, the procedure tries to find sales patterns by analyzing product sales records with Recency, Frequency and Monetary values. And to suggest a business strategy, we conduct the decision tree based on SOM results. To validate the proposed procedure in this study, we adopted the M-mart data collected between 2014.01.01~2014.12.31. Each product get the value of R, F, M, and they are clustered by 9 using SOM. And we also performed three tests using the weekday data, weekend data, whole data in order to analyze the sales pattern change. In order to propose the strategy of each cluster, we examine the criteria of product clustering. The clusters through the SOM can be explained by the characteristics of these clusters of decision trees. As a result, we can suggest the inventory management strategy of each 9 clusters through the suggested procedures of the study. The highest of all three value(R, F, M) cluster's products need to have high level of the inventory as well as to be disposed in a place where it can be increasing customer's path. In contrast, the lowest of all three value(R, F, M) cluster's products need to have low level of inventory as well as to be disposed in a place where visibility is low. The highest R value cluster's products is usually new releases products, and need to be placed on the front of the store. And, manager should decrease inventory levels gradually in the highest F value cluster's products purchased in the past. Because, we assume that cluster has lower R value and the M value than the average value of good. And it can be deduced that product are sold poorly in recent days and total sales also will be lower than the frequency. The procedure presented in this study is expected to contribute to raising the profitability of the retail store. The paper is organized as follows. The second chapter briefly reviews the literature related to this study. The third chapter suggests procedures for research proposals, and the fourth chapter applied suggested procedure using the actual product sales data. Finally, the fifth chapter described the conclusion of the study and further research.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.239-248
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• 2010

This paper describes a collaborative project between academia and industry which focused on improving the marketing and product development strategies for two private label apparel brands of a large regional department store chain in the southeastern United States. The goal of the project was to revitalize product lines of the two brands by incorporating student ideas for new solutions, thereby giving the students practical experience with a real-life industry situation. There were a number of key players involved in the project. A privately-owned department store chain based in the southeastern United States which was seeking an academic partner had recognized a need to update two existing private label brands. They targeted middle-aged consumers looking for casual, moderately priced merchandise. The company was seeking to change direction with both packaging and presentation, and possibly product design. The branding and product development divisions of the company contacted professors in an academic department of a large southeastern state university. Two of the professors agreed that the task would be a good fit for their classes - one was a junior-level Intermediate Brand Management class; the other was a senior-level Fashion Product Development class. The professors felt that by working collaboratively on the project, students would be exposed to a real world scenario, within the security of an academic learning environment. Collaboration within an interdisciplinary team has the advantage of providing experiences and resources beyond the capabilities of a single student and adds "brainpower" to problem-solving processes (Lowman 2000). This goal of improving the capabilities of students directed the instructors in each class to form interdisciplinary teams between the Branding and Product Development classes. In addition, many universities are employing industry partnerships in research and teaching, where collaboration within temporal (semester) and physical (classroom/lab) constraints help to increase students' knowledge and experience of a real-world situation. At the University of Tennessee, the Center of Industrial Services and UT-Knoxville's College of Engineering worked with a company to develop design improvements in its U.S. operations. In this study, Because should be lower case b with a private label retail brand, Wickett, Gaskill and Damhorst's (1999) revised Retail Apparel Product Development Model was used by the product development and brand management teams. This framework was chosen because it addresses apparel product development from the concept to the retail stage. Two classes were involved in this project: a junior level Brand Management class and a senior level Fashion Product Development class. Seven teams were formed which included four students from Brand Management and two students from Product Development. The classes were taught the same semester, but not at the same time. At the beginning of the semester, each class was introduced to the industry partner and given the problem. Half the teams were assigned to the men's brand and half to the women's brand. The teams were responsible for devising approaches to the problem, formulating a timeline for their work, staying in touch with industry representatives and making sure that each member of the team contributed in a positive way. The objective for the teams was to plan, develop, and present a product line using merchandising processes (following the Wickett, Gaskill and Damhorst model) and develop new branding strategies for the proposed lines. The teams performed trend, color, fabrication and target market research; developed sketches for a line; edited the sketches and presented their line plans; wrote specifications; fitted prototypes on fit models, and developed final production samples for presentation to industry. The branding students developed a SWOT analysis, a Brand Measurement report, a mind-map for the brands and a fully integrated Marketing Report which was presented alongside the ideas for the new lines. In future if the opportunity arises to work in this collaborative way with an existing company who wishes to look both at branding and product development strategies, classes will be scheduled at the same time so that students have more time to meet and discuss timelines and assigned tasks. As it was, student groups had to meet outside of each class time and this proved to be a challenging though not uncommon part of teamwork (Pfaff and Huddleston, 2003). Although the logistics of this exercise were time-consuming to set up and administer, professors felt that the benefits to students were multiple. The most important benefit, according to student feedback from both classes, was the opportunity to work with industry professionals, follow their process, and see the results of their work evaluated by the people who made the decisions at the company level. Faculty members were grateful to have a "real-world" case to work with in the classroom to provide focus. Creative ideas and strategies were traded as plans were made, extending and strengthening the departmental links be tween the branding and product development areas. By working not only with students coming from a different knowledge base, but also having to keep in contact with the industry partner and follow the framework and timeline of industry practice, student teams were challenged to produce excellent and innovative work under new circumstances. Working on the product development and branding for "real-life" brands that are struggling gave students an opportunity to see how closely their coursework ties in with the real-world and how creativity, collaboration and flexibility are necessary components of both the design and business aspects of company operations. Industry personnel were impressed by (a) the level and depth of knowledge and execution in the student projects, and (b) the creativity of new ideas for the brands.