• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.15-23
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• 2021

Purpose: This study aims to identify the role of technological progress in the distribution sector in Saudi Arabia. Research design, data, and methodology: The study applies the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to estimate the Cobb Douglas production function of the wholesale and retail trade sector in Saudi Arabia, relied on annual data from the General Authority for Statistics from 2005 to 2019. Results: The results show that there is a long run relationship between the production of the wholesale and retail trade sector in KSA and the factors of production labour, capital and technology progress. The elasticity of the wholesale and retail trade production with respect to capital and labour are 0.26 and 0.78 respectively; the coefficients are positive and statistically significant. The wholesale and retail trade sector is operating under increasing returns to scale. The main result indicates that the elasticity of the wholesale and retail production with respect to the technology progress is 4.62%, which is positive and statistically significant. Conclusions: The study concluded that technological progress has a positive contribution to the growth of the distribution sector in KSA. Therefore, the technological progress can improve the productivity and efficiency of the resources allocated to the dis.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.22 no.9
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• pp.97-106
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• 2024

Purpose: In view of increased social awareness of today's consumers, it is very important to understand how retail customers perceive their sense of social responsibility. This study aims to explore the decision processes of university students that affect the patronage of social enterprises in retail sector. Research design, data and methodology: This study proposes and tests whether and how social network traits, firm's image, and perceived trustworthiness serve as predictors of value co-creation behavior specific to two different industries (social enterprises and regular firms) operating in retail sector of South Korea. This study incorporated theoretical premise of value co-creation to verify the structural relationships among the predictors of value co-creation. Results: The result demonstrates that social network and firm's image both significantly influence consumers' value co-creation behavior. The study further found that the firm's image is overall more effective for eliciting consumers' value co-creation behavior than social network traits. Conclusions: As the result of comparing the industry type (social enterprises vs. regular firms), the study confirmed a meaningful difference such that consumers indicated greater impact of firm's image on value co-creation for social enterprises than for regular firms. The findings are expected to provide useful industrial insights for the management of social enterprises.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.111-119
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• 2022

Purpose: This study seeks to address the omission through examining the manner in which demographic similarity affects the responses of employees in the retail sector towards horizontal pay dispersion. Through doing so the study will be effective in bolstering the recent efforts of more careful exploration of conditions. Research design, data, and methodology: Scant past studies are available to guide for practitioners in retail sector which compensation strategy might lead adequate job performance for retail sales workers. To suggest possible solution, the present authors used variables of pay dispersion and obtained 317 US retail sale workers in distribution channels to measure the association between pay dispersion and employee job performance. Results: The statistical findings indicated both first and second hypothesis could be acceptable with favorable Beta and T values, resulting high degree of pay dispersion leads a low level of job performance, while a low degree of pay dispersion can motivate retail sales workers to improve their performance. Conclusions: The findings of this study raises an argument that processes of social comparison work in a more vigorous manner. This is thus a representation of the propensity of a retail sales worker to voluntarily resign from an organization when dispersion rates are higher.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.59-67
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• 2020

Purpose: This study examines the relationship between formation of employment subcenters and regional industrial structures in Incheon. Research design, data, and methodology: We used the five-year panel data from 2012 to 2016 in 146 basic municipal units of Incheon to analyze panel regression models. Gross employment density and employment to population ratio were used as indicators of employment subcenters formation. The entropy index and Hachman index were used for analyzing the diversity and heterogeneity of industrial structures. Result: The analyses of two panel regression models showed that for the formation of employment subcenters, both the Entropy and Hachman index were significantly negative in most models. But tertiary industry was shown to have a significant positive relationship in all models. In the wholesale and retail sector, it was found that the average number of employees in the employment subcenters is significantly higher than that in the non-employment subcenters. Conclusions: The specialization of the industrial structure rather than the diversification contributes to the formation of the employment subcenters in Incheon. In particular, it can be considered that the wholesale and retail sector plays a very important role in forming the employment subcenters in many areas of Incheon.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.13-21
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• 2021

Purpose: The sports leadership theories are crucial in ensuring the success of corporations. This study shall discuss the various leadership theories employed in the sports industry and how they can be incorporated within the retailing sector to enhance the service quality and promote substantial customer value towards all the consumers visiting the retailing stores. Research design, data and methodology: The present researcher gathered textual data on potential solutions for coding of development through web searching method and coded and produced various topics as solution providers. Methods were then established to enhance quality on customer value by the leadership within their businesses, and the researcher subsequently presented the findings. Results: This study provides a total of nine solutions which are helpful systemically for practitioners in the retailer service sector. These numerous solutions can be incorporated within the retail industry through the sports leadership theories employed in the sports industry to help achieve a full and strong customer value. Conclusions: Finally, the present study concludes that the retail industry and management need to ensure that a substantial customer value is built through high-quality services rendered towards the clientele base, employing sports leadership theories such as path-goal, authentic leadership, transformation, situational and leader-member exchange theories.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.12
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• pp.853-861
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• 2020

The study aims to measure the productivity of the Saudi banking sector at the retail level using secondary data for 11 local banks from the period 2015-2019. The study uses an extended version of the Cobb-Douglas production function to account for the fact that as banks openup more retail branches, they will need to employ more labor. The extended Cobb-Douglas production function was estimated using the two-way fixed effect model to account for unobserved heterogeneity across Saudi banks resulting from differences in labor competencies and leadership style. Besides, the model accounts for unobserved heterogeneity among Saudi banks due to the advancement in electronic services over time. The results showed that labor, branches, customers' deposits, and fixed deposits have a positive effect on the total value of generated loans. Conversely, ATM has an insignificant effect on generated loans. The average scale elasticity shows that the Saudi banks at the retail level are operating under decreasing returns to scale. The average marginal rate of technical substitution shows that Saudi banks need at least one ATM to replace one unit of labor at the retail level while keeping the same level of output.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.1-10
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• 2013

According to the Global Retail Development Index (GRDI) published by A.T. Kearney (2012), India is the $5^{th}$ most attractive retail destination in the world. The retail industry in India has been largely fragmented with small businesses dominating the retail landscape, with very few large players having multiple retail outlets. However, in the last few years, the industry has witnessed a significant growth in the number of large retailers having a chain of outlets across the country. This growth in the organised retail sector has driven primarily by large Indian retail organisations and conglomerates. With the government reducing the restrictions on foreign participation in Indian retail business by increasing the FDI cap on both single and multi-brand retail outlets, the industry is likely to see an explosive growth in the organised retail sector which accounts for only 8 percent of the total industry. With more foreign retailers poised to enter into the country, one of the key issues that the industry may face is finding the right quality of manpower. Literature suggests that in an industry which is characterised by players offering similar kinds of product assortments at similar price levels, success would be governed by the quality of service, which entails employees having the right skills and attitudes for offering quality service. Therefore, the two key issues that may be of importance for retailers are levels of skills and the motivation of the employees. However, according to the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC, 2009), a significant skill gap exists in the industry, which may widen further in the years ahead, leading to greater challenges for organisations. This paper highlights some of the challenges and issues which characterise the industry in India, and suggests how companies could look at these challenges and seek ways to overcome these challenges.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.11
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• pp.77-83
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• 2014

Purpose - The National Agricultural Cooperative Federation of Korea and National Fisheries Cooperative Federation of Korea have prosecuted both financial and retail businesses. As cooperatives are public institutions and receive government support, their sound management is required by the Financial Supervisory Service in Korea. This is mainly managed by CAEL, which is changed by CAMEL. However, NFFC's business section, managing the finance and retail businesses, is unified and evaluated; the CAEL model has an insufficient classification to evaluate the retail industry. First, there is discrimination power as regards CAEL. Although the retail business sector union can receive a higher rating on a CAEL model, defaults have often been reported. Therefore, a default prediction model is needed to support a CAEL model. As we have the default prediction model using a subdivision of indexes and statistical methods, it can be useful to have a prevention function through the estimation of the retail sector's default probability. Second, separating the difference between the finance and retail business sectors is necessary. Their businesses have different characteristics. Based on various management indexes that have been systematically managed by the National Fisheries Cooperative Federation of Korea, our model predicts retail default, and is better than the CAEL model in its failure prediction because it has various discriminative financial ratios reflecting the retail industry situation. Research design, data, and methodology - The model to predict retail default was presented using logistic analysis. To develop the predictive model, we use the retail financial statements of the NFCF. We consider 93 unions each year from 2006 to 2012 to select confident management indexes. We also adapted the statistical power analysis that is a t-test, logit analysis, AR (accuracy ratio), and AUROC (Area Under Receiver Operating Characteristic) analysis. Finally, through the multivariate logistic model, we show that it is excellent in its discrimination power and higher in its hit ratio for default prediction. We also evaluate its usefulness. Results - The statistical power analysis using the AR (AUROC) method on the short term model shows that the logistic model has excellent discrimination power, with 84.6%. Further, it is higher in its hit ratio for failure (prediction) of total model, at 94%, indicating that it is temporally stable and useful for evaluating the management status of retail institutions. Conclusions - This model is useful for evaluating the management status of retail union institutions. First, subdividing CAEL evaluation is required. The existing CAEL evaluation is underdeveloped, and discrimination power falls. Second, efforts to develop a varied and rational management index are continuously required. An index reflecting retail industry characteristics needs to be developed. However, extending this study will need the following. First, it will require a complementary default model reflecting size differences. Second, in the case of small and medium retail, it will need non-financial information. Therefore, it will be a hybrid default model reflecting financial and non-financial information.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.41-64
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• 2002

Since its market opening in the year 1996, Korea's retail sector has witnessed the emergence of various new retail formats such as discount stores and Internet shopping malls. Given the competition among various retail formats, it is needed to analyze the previous trends and to measure the future potential of the market with more careful economic models. Using Time Series Analysis on Korean economy and distribution industry, we aim to economic models to follow the trends and to measure the future growth of competing retail formats such as department stores, discount stores and convenience stores. We have found that the growth of department stores, convenience stores and specialty store format is very closely related with the private consumption expenditure. On the other hand, private consumption expenditure is not a good variable to explain the growth of discount stores and the supermarket sector. Following an extensive data analysis, three year forecasting of Korean distribution market including six different retail sectors is proposed. In addition, several discussion points including statistical classification of retail formats are argued.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.11 no.9
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• pp.31-34
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• 2013

Purpose - This paper aims to explain that the Chinese distribution market will continue to bring tremendous business opportunities to commercial enterprises, given the relatively strong economic fundamentals and substantial government-led measures to boost domestic demand. Research design, data, methodology - A survey was conducted on China's retail market data during 2012. By empirically analyzing the data for retail sales of online markets and franchises, we conclude that the online retail market in China will continue to grow. Results - Based on data from 2012, 2013 is expected to be a challenging year for the retail sector, as both external and internal pressure is likely to persist. This paper outlines some major challenges facing retailers in China. Conclusions - The study shows that retailers in the Chinese market will face some major challenges: 1) the Chinese retail market is considerably affected by an uncertain economic outlook 2) an unfair environment of competition exists and 3) product safety is a serious issue. However, in the future, China's retail market will continue to bring tremendous business opportunities to commercial enterprises, given the relatively strong economic fundamentals and substantial government-led measures to boost domestic demand.