• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.87-95
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• 2022

Purpose: This study aims to analyze the effects of Brand Coolness, Brand Love, and Self-brand Connections on Word-of-mouth positively. The retail format of Starbuck in Vietnam is successful in distribution applied when it becomes the place for customers to express themselves. Consumers are now aware about Brand Coolness of the Starbucks developed in Vietnam then turn to love the brand of store and connect themselves to the brand. In this study, the closest relationship to form the basis for consumer Word-of-mouth about a brand is the relationship between Brand Coolness and Brand Love. Results: The findings show that Brand Coolness and Brand Love are important value factors in customers' minds toward their behavior, form there, it will contribute to the brand store in distribution. Research design, data and methodology: This article used the quantitative technique utilizing PLS-SEM software to test the hypothesis with 600 samples. The data obtained shows that people have Word-of-mouth about the retail format of Starbucks in Ho Chi Minh City. Conclusion: The study has demonstrated the conclusions and proposed solutions to help beverage brands build Brand Love, thereby achieving coolness, connecting brands with themselves, leading to customer Word-of-mouth in a positive way towards retail format.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.1-20
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• 2004

This paper suggests that the relationship between store images and store loyalty is moderated by store-type (online vs. offline). Data was collected from 341 online panel survey on four online stores and four offline stores. Regression analysis with interaction terms demonstrates that assortment and service among image attributes interact with store-type. Specifically, assortment is more important for offline store loyalty where as service is more important for online store loyalty. The authors discuss the implications of these findings and offer directions for future research.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.9
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• pp.267-274
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• 2011

The purposes of the study is builded upon previous researches to set up research model and investigate the relationship among store image, customers' emotional responses and behavior intention. For achieving study purposes, research model and hypotheses were set up after reviewing previous researches. The data were collected from a sample of 296 customers of department store, then used to conducted an empirical analysis. The results showed the significant relationship were partially found among store image, emotional responses and behavior intention. Objective store image influence positive emotions, indirectly influence behavior intention through positive emotions, but objective store image don't influence negative emotions. Subjective store image influence shoppers' positive emotions and negative emotions, and indirectly influence shoppers' behavior intention through positive emotions and negative emotions. This study has provided a variety of theoretical and practical implications for retailers to set up marketing strategies.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.75-82
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• 2018

Purpose - As the role of salespersons in retail stores has expanded from selling products to sharing brand experiences with customers, the importance of research on the effects of salesperson-brand relationships has grown. The purpose of this research is to investigate the influences of salespersons' brand identification on conceptual fluency and customers' service and brand evaluations. It was supposed that salespersons' brand identification is affected by brand knowledge, which is a core dimension of internal branding. Research design, data, and methodology - The author developed a structural model in which salespersons' brand knowledge influences brand identification, hence customers' perception of salesperson-brand image congruence. And it is hypothesized that salesperson-brand image congruence influences conceptual fluency which affects customers' satisfaction and brand evaluation. Data were collected from five department stores in Seoul. Results - First, salespersons' brand knowledge was found to have a significant effect on brand identification. The more a salesperson knows about the affiliated brand, the higher her level of brand identification. Second, salespersons' brand identification influenced salesperson-brand image congruence. Third, salesperson-brand image congruence had a significant effect on brand conceptual fluency. Customers who perceive salesperson-brand image congruent are more likely to process information easily. Finally, conceptual fluency was found to be a significant determinant of store loyalty and brand value evaluation. Conclusions - The results of this study verify importance of salesperson's brand identification on customers' service and brand evaluations. To enhance salespersons' brand identification, retailers should emphasize the importance of internal branding and communication, especially by sharing brand vision, values, and identity with employees at customer contact points. Also, as brand conceptual fluency is a significant determinant of customer responses, retailers need to deliver consistent messages through various components of store environments, including salespersons' attitudes, appearances, and manners, as well as physical store design. With a deeper understanding of the effects of salesperson-brand relationship and brand conceptual fluency, retailers will be able to create more effective brand strategies to enhance their performances. Future studies should consider data from various retail types, such as discount stores, to generalize the findings.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.10
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• pp.875-884
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• 2020

Thailand has a rapidly growing pharmaceutical sector, which is the eighth largest in the Asia-Pacific region and one of the largest and most developed among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. This study examines how to provide the most appropriate approach to enhance Thailand's pharmaceutical services to dispense medicine to end consumers. The main objective is to determine the most appropriate corporate image for Thai Pharmacy Retail Stores (PRSs) for entering the ASEAN market community. An exploratory mixed-method design characterized by qualitative and quantitative phases of data collection and analysis and the linking of data from these two separate data strands was adopted to conduct an in-depth interview with pharmacists and the owner of pharmacy retail stores as well as 405 respondents who had visited a pharmacy retail store and interacted with pharmacists during the previous year. The multiple linear regression (MLR) was applied to analyze the relative influences of perceived service quality and the cultural dimension on the corporate image. Findings reveal that the perceived service quality and cultural dimension contribute 50% towards the corporate image, and the perceived service quality had more effect than cultural dimension. This study mainly focuses on PRSs in Thailand, while the findings show other analyses concerning how to successfully create and promote an effective PRS image for ASEAN markets.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.21-46
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• 2003

Despite importance of private brands in the retail industry, not many studies have been performed on factors affecting consumers' attitude formation toward private brands. This study tries to understand attitude formation toward private brands from the perspective of image congruence. Focusing on three types of image congruence-image congruence between a private brand and a consumer's self, image congruence between a store and a product category used for a private brand, and image congruence between a store and a consumer's self - this study explores relationships and effects of these three types of image congruence on attitudes toward private brands. According to results, image congruence between a private brand and a consumer's self has the strongest effect among three types of image congruence. Image congruence between a store and a product category also has a significant positive effect on attitudes toward private brands. Effects of image congruence between a store and a consumer's self on attitudes toward private brands were opposite to the hypothesized direction, and explanations about the unexpected result are provided.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.151-162
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• 2014

One of the largest changes in retail business in Korea since the distribution market was opened in the mid 1990s is the appearance of foreign discount stores and the rapid growth of department stores. Discount stores and department stores have changed the structure of distribution business which has been primarily made up of traditional markets and supermarkets that have been the main retail markets in Korea. The retail business is changing from just a product purchasing place to a space where various values such as pleasure, happiness, etc. are provided. Therefore the purpose of this research is to grasp the effects that the shopping experience values at department stores have on the department brands, images, and awareness by means of theoretical and empirical research. Especially I classified the shopping experience values, an independent variable, into aesthetics, pleasures, consumers' interests, and services' excellence, and I verified whether they have a meaningful effects on the brand recognition and image, an endogenous variable, and the store royalty, a final various. A total of 235 questionnaires were used for analysis to test the research hypotheses. The positive analysis was done with SPSS 17.0K and AMOS 17.0 covariance structure analysis was performed. As a result, variables of the shopping experience values except consumers' interests seemed to have not only right influences on recognition and image, but also right influences on store royalty. Therefore this research shows that department store customers not only make use of department stores to buy products, but also visit department stores to get the values of pleasure and happiness, and that these aspects have a greater influence on the department store's image, recognition, or royalty in a sense.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.15-27
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• 2011

Although a huge number of academic researchers have paid considerable attention to exploring both the degree to which store image influences retailer brand customers and how to develop store personality, they have overlooked the contemporary retail context in which retailers have developed many different types of retailer brands, that is, price-oriented or quality-oriented retailer brands. Rather than focusing on the latter, much literature has looked at the former. Accordingly, even though there are many articles related to store image, a few authors have shown their interest in identifying the extent to which store personality affects customers purchasing retailer brands at lower prices. As a result, their efforts have been to illustrate the relationship between store image and consumer behaviours buying retailer brands. In that multiple retailers over the world such as E-Mart, Lotte-Mart, Tesco Korea and Tesco UK have actively introduced not only the quality-focused retailer brands that quality is better than, or equal to national brands, and prices are slightly higher than, or equal to them, but also price-focused retailer brands, academicians should make an effort to investigate how store image affects customers purchasing a quality-oriented retailer brand, comparing with previous research results. That is why the authors illustrate the extent to which store personality components influence retailer brand customers, including particularly quality-oriented retailer brand customers through an empirical research. By adopting a questionnaire method as a research technique to illuminate the relationship between store image components and retailer brand customers, research validity increases and further, data gathered through a field survey are analysed through a few statistic analysis methods, in order to minimise statistical deviations. Compared with the prior research concentrated on price-focused retailer brands, the authors have significantly shed light on customer behaviours purchasing retailer brand products with higher quality. When it comes to store personality components, the research suggests the following five items: merchandise attributes, services, physical facilities, promotions, and institutional image, considering the subcomponents mentioned by the previous research. Proposing the conceptual research model which those elements are differently hypothesised, according to retailer brand types: PR (Price-oriented Retailer brand) and QR (Quality-oriented Retailer brand), the research is proceeded. Through empirical research, the authors found that amongst the five items, only promotion influenced retailer brand customers in the Korean retailing marketplace, unlike other countries explored by many researchers, such as UK. Although much literature emphasises that those elements are closely related to retailer brand buying proneness, it is completely not fit to the Korean market. Also, research findings provide new insights into the degree of store image effects on retailer brand customers for academiciansand practitioners. Whether the retailer brand development program that a retailer has carried simultaneously both price-focused and quality-focused retailer brand types is practically profitable should be explored in the future.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.22-29
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to investigate the details of the overall interior design of the department store supermarket retail space, interior design and development, seeks to help change. In this study, a range of research the department store supermarket located in the major department store. Since 2012, new construction or renewal has been done in a department store, was investigated by selecting a total of five locations of two places in the premium supermarket. Conclusions are as followings ; First, In-store merchandising strategies, store configuration strategy, product mix strategies, and the layout plan considering the advanced strategies. Secondly, the interior guidelines are, (1)VP should be planned as an expression of a company or brand management strategies to visualize a concept image of product planning stages of merchandising to entering the store to induce curiosity to customers. (2)PP is by planning purposes, the use of lighting, directing structure, color harmony, by utilizing such as props and small parts must be able to attract attention. (3)IP is the customer to organize display, depending on the type of the display items to facilitate fraud, and the fixture plan in association with it, the customer selects a product must induced to purchase.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.209-237
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• 2012

1. Research Purpose Consumers rely on various clues to evaluate their decision to patronize a retail store, and store brand is one of them (Dodds 1991; Grewal et al. 1998). As consumers find ever increasing variety of contact points connecting them to specific store, the value of experiential shopping as a means of increasing store's brand equity warrants greater attention from scholars of retail management. Retail shopping values are credited for creating not only cognitive experiences like brand knowledge but also emotional experiences such as shopping pleasure and pride (Schmitt 1999). This may be because today's consumers place emphasis on emotional values associated with shopping pleasure, lifestyle brought to life, brand relationship, and store atmosphere more than utilitarian values such as product quality and price. Many previous literature found this to be true (Ahn and Lee 2011; Mathwick et al. 2001). This brings forth important research issues and questions regarding the roles of shopping experiential values and brand equity with regard to consumer's retail patronage choice. However, despite this importance, research on this area remains quite inadequate (Hwang 2010). For this reason, this study aims to verify the relationships among experiential shopping values, retail store brand equity and tries to link that with customer loyalty by surveying large-scale discount store shoppers in Korea and China. 2. Research Contents In order to carry out the research objective, this study conducted comprehensive literature survey on previous literature by discussing major findings and implications with regard to shopping values and retail brand equity and store loyalty. For data collection, researcher employed survey-based research method where data were collected in two major cities of Korea (Seoul) and China (Bejing) and sampling frame was based on patrons of large discount stores in both countries. Specific research questions raised in this study are as follows; RQ1: How do Korean and Chinese consumers differently perceive of shopping values regarding shopping at large-sclae discount stores? RQ2: Are there differences in consumers' emotional consumption propensities? RQ3: Do Korean and Chinese consumers display different perceptions of brand equity towards large-scale discount stores? RQ4: Are there differences in relationships between shopping values and brand equity for Korean and Chinese consumers? For statistical analysis, SPSS17.0, AMOS17.0 and SmartPLS were employed. 3. Research Results The data collected through face-to-face survey conducted in Seoul and Bejing revealed appropriate data validity and reliability as a result of exploratory/confirmatory factor analysis and reliability tests, andh SEM model yielding satisfactory model fitness. The result of the study may be summarized by three main points. First, as a result of testing differences in consumption dispositions, Chinese consumers showed higher scores in aesthetic and symbolic dispositions, whereas Korean consumers scored higher in hedonic disposition. Second, testing on perceptions toward brand equity of large discount stores showed that Korean consumers exhibited more positive perceptions of brand awareness and brand image than Chinese counterparts. Third, the result of exploratory factor analysis on the experiential shopping values revealed different factors for each country. On Korean side, consumer interest value, aesthetic value, and hedonic value were prominent, whereas on Chinese side, hedonic value, aesthetic value, consumer interest value, and service excellence value were found salient. 4. Research Implications While many previous studies on inter-country differences in retailing area mainly focused on cultural dispositions or orientations to explain the differences, this study sets itself apart by specifically targeting individual consumer's shopping values from an experiential viewpoint. The study result provides important theoretical as well as practical implications for large-scale discount store, especially the impotance of fully exploring the linkage between shopping values and brand equity, which has significant influence on loyalty. Therefore, the specific implications deriving from the result shed some important insights upon the consumption values based on shopping experiences and brand equity. The differences found in store shoppers between the two countries may also provide useful insights for Korean and Chinese retailers who plan to expand their operations globally. Related strategic implications derived from this study is the importance of localizing retail strategy which is based on the differences found in experiential shopping values between the two country groups. Especially the finding that Chinese consumers value consumer interest and service excellence, whereas Koreans place importance on hedonic or aesthetic values indicates the need to differentiate the consumer's psychographical profiles when it comes to expanding retail operations globally. Particularly important will be to pursue price-orienated strategy in China in consideration of the high emphasis on consumer interests and service excellence, but to emphasize the symbolic aspects of brand equity in Korea by maximizing the brand equity associated with aesthetic values and hedonic orientations. 5. Recommendations This study focused on generic retail branded discount stores in both countries, thus making it difficult to tease out store-specific strategies based on specific retail brands. Future studies may benefit fro employing actual brand names in survey questionnaire to verify relationship between shopping values and brand-based store strategy. As with other studies of this nature, this study needs to strengthen the result's generalizability by selecting respondents from a wider spectrum of respondents.