• 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.

• 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.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.101-119
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• 2005

For the customer satisfaction, the inside customer satisfaction must be made by offering the service of a good quality to the inside customer. If the inside customer is not satisfied with own business, the achievement of customer's loyalty & customer satisfaction which have direct effects on the performance of a corporation, comes to be difficult. This study tries to analyze what effect the inside customer satisfaction has on the yield performance of a corporation on the subject of the salespersons of the direct-control store among the retail store business.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.93-110
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• 2015

This research is based on studies about functional service quality in service marketing field and tries to expand application of lovemark effect for service employee. To test the effect of service employee job attributes on lovemark as the antecedents, the analysis was held with customers who experienced specific service retail store recently. According to the research result, service employee job attributes factors including expertise and communication have positive effect on the lovemark. Furthermore, lovemark affected store loyalty significantly. The research has several marketing implication on service marketing and lovemark theory. For service providers, customers'perception of service employee's job attributes can present 'positive lovemark effect' and develop store loyalty in the service marketing perspectives.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.16 no.4 s.44
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• pp.471-484
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• 1992

The purpose of this study was 1) to find out Market segmentation possibilities according to consumer's store selection factors by analysis of Consumer's attitude and oriteria of apparel store selection, 2) to provide marketing strategies of segment marker for apparel stores Research problems were as follows. 1) To find out the important factors of consumer's store selection and to segment markets according to their factors. 2) To find out consumer characteristics (demographic variables, clothing life factors, cloth-ing purchase behaviors) according to segment markets. 3) To find out preference store types and preference factors according to segment markets. 4) To provide marketing mix strategy for retail apparel store sales. The subjects selected for the final analysis were 586 female college students, housewives, and workers living in Seoul. A questionnaire was developed in order to measure consumer's selection criteria of apparel store, consumer characteristics and preferred store types and preferential factors. The results of this study were as follows: 1. There were 8 factors of consumer's store selection such that: the high quality, convenience, store atmosphere, economy, dependency commercials, store patronage, the conformity, product assortment. the result of cluster analysis based on these 8 factors of store selection verified that market was able to be segmented as four different market, which were the store loyalty group, the aligned economical group, the assortment pursuing group, the store fame dependent group. 2. There were significant differences among four groups, for 4 variables related to consumer's characteristics such as demographic characteristics (sex, age, job, level of education, the living quarters, marrige or unmarrige), clothing life factors, clothing evaluating criteria, and favorite fashion information sources. 3. There were significant differences among four groups for 2 variable related to store preference such as preference types of store and preference factors of store.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.79-99
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• 2008

This study attempts to investigate the effects of perceived value on customer satisfaction and customer voluntary behavioral intention such as customer loyalty, participation intention, cooperation intention in retail store. For this purpose, the model posits that perceived value will have a positive impact on customer satisfaction and customer voluntary behavioral intention. We investigate the 680 customers of the korean open air market(337) and the discount store(343) for the research. The results showed that perceived value positively influences customer satisfaction and customer voluntary behavioral intention. Implications of the findings are considered and future research directions identified.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.45-52
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• 2021

Purpose: Contemporary consumers are increasingly adopting public displays of their loyalty towards brands: consumer dedication surpasses loyalty in that they find various ways to show their devotion to their favorite brands. The purpose of the current study is to utilize sports psychology to improve customer experience in the sports shops. Research design, data and methodology: To investigate the purpose of the study and suggest the solutions, Epistemology methods were used to analyze the nature of knowledge and various forms of attaining knowledge. As such, epistemology asks questions such as "what are constitutes of valid knowledge?". Results: This study figured out five theoretical results to suggest for practitioners in the sports retail shop based on prior research. According to the research, sports psychology can affect consumer buying behavior which builds upon specific demographics and their differentiating behavior. The results also show that males shop with specificity, while female consumers are likely to shop for pleasure. Men are also less frequent shoppers than women. Conclusions: Above all, this study concludes that a consumer decision-making study is vital in the sports retail business, and information about consumer decision-making can be an influential factor for sports retailers to increase their competitive advantage.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.23-30
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• 2014

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to analyze the efficiency of retail businesses by dividing domestic retailers into discount stores, super supermarkets (SSMs), and department stores. It suggests retail-business investment strategies by using data environment analysis (DEA) to analyze how input elements such as store area, parking lot area, number of employees, and sales management expenses for the convenience of customers positively affect business performance measurements such as sales and visiting customers per day. Research Design, Data, and Methodology - The DEA model calculates a ratio of the weighted mean of various inputs to the weighted mean of various outputs and measures the efficiency of a specific decision making unit (DMU). The study included 19 companies (five discount store DMUs, ten SSM DMUs, and four department store DMUs). Because the business elements and sizes of retail store DMUs used in this analysis are different, average per-store input and output variables were used. Data were collected from "The Yearbook of Retail Industry in Korea (2012)." DEA analysis was used to determine differences in efficiency among discount stores, SSMs, and department stores in terms of the business elements of each retail business. It was also used to determine what business elements were excessively invested in by comparing and analyzing efficiency by business elements using SPSS software's ANOVA (Analysis of Variance). Results - The CCR and BCC efficiency analysis found that the efficiency of discount stores is low. We believe that the saturation state of discount stores is a major factor. The ANOVA analysis confirms the VRS hypothesis with a statistically significant difference among the three groups, based on an analysis confidence interval of 95%. CRS and SE were not found to be significantly different among the three groups. As for the post hoc test, which concretely shows differences by group, the Scheffe's multiple comparison analysis test found the average differences between group 1 (discount stores) and group 2 (SSM) to be statistically significant. Conclusions - The DEA efficiency analysis implies that investment in input elements, including store area, parking lot area, and sales management expenses, were excessive in the case of discount stores, while SSMs need to invest more in promotion activities such as gifts, events, and coupons for customer management. Department stores have found that small companies invest excessively in input elements. Department stores need to invest in differentiated shopping mall complexes. This study was limited in acquiring statistical data; various input variables which might have shown more secure customer management and promotional expenses could not be applied. As the study was limited in various aspects of the efficiency analyses because financial analyses of the companies and of causal relationships, including satisfaction and loyalty of visiting customers, were not done, these aspects will be examined in the next study.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.5-14
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• 2011

One of the new roles of modern retail stores is to supply consumers with a memorable experience. In Korea, enhancing a store's environment so that customers remember a unique shopping experience is recognized as a sound strategy for strengthening the store's competitiveness. Motivated by this incentive, awareness of the experience-store concept is starting to increase in various categories of the retail industry. However, many experience stores, except in a few cases, have yet to derive a significant profit, explaining why Korean consumers are somewhat unfamiliar with, yet fascinated by, the experience stores that now exist in the country. Consumer satisfaction directly, and indirectly, affects a company's future profit and potential financial gain; customer satisfaction also affects loyalty. Therefore, knowing the significant factors that increase satisfaction and loyalty is essential for any company, in any field, to be able to effectively differentiate itself from the competition. Intrigued by increased competition opportunities, most Korean companies have adopted experience-store marketing strategies. When establishing the most effective processes for increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage of a new concept, companies should consider certain factors that influence consumers' ability to accept new concepts and ideas. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is a theory that models how people accept new concepts. TAM proposes the following two factors that influence a person's decisions about how, and when, he or she will use a new product: "perceived usefulness" and "perceived ease of use." Much of the existing research has suggested that a person's character also affects the process for accepting new ideas. Such personal character attributes as individual preferences, self-confidence, and a person's values, traits, and/or skills affect the process for willingly consenting to try something new. It will be meaningful to establish how the TAM theory's components, as well as personal character, affect individuals accepting the experience-store concept. To that end, as it pertains to an experience store, the first goal of the study is to examine the influence of innovative factors (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) on satisfaction and loyalty. The second objective is to define the moderate effect of consumers' personal characteristics on the model. The proposed model was tested on 149 respondents who were engaged in leisure sports activities and bought sports outdoor garments and equipment. According to the study's findings, the satisfaction and loyalty of an experience store can be explained by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, with the study's results demonstrating the stronger of the two factors being "perceived ease of use." The study failed to explain the effects of a person's character on the model. In conclusion, when the companies that operate the experience stores execute their marketing and promotion strategies, they should stress the stores' "ease of use" product components. Additionally, it can be extrapolated from the study data that since the experience-store idea is still relatively unfamiliar to Korean consumers, most customers are not yet able to evaluate, nor take a position regarding, their respective attitudes toward experience stores.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.137-164
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• 2011

In the past, retailers secured customer loyalty by offering convenient locations, unique assortments of goods, better services than competitors, and good credit policy. All this has changed. Goods assortments among stores have become more alike as national-brand manufacturers place their goods in more and more retail stores. Service differentiation also has eroded. Many department stores have trimmed services, and many discount stores have increased theirs. Customers have become smarter shoppers. They don't pay more for identical brands, especially when service differences have diminished. In the face of increased competition from discount storess and specialty stores, department stores are waging a comeback war. Growth of intertype competition, competition between store-based and non-store-based retailing and growing investment in technology are changing the way consumers shop and retailers sell. Different types of stores-discount stores, catalog showrooms, department stores-all compete for the same consumers by carrying the same type of merchandise. The biggest winners are retailers that have helped shoppers to be economically cautious, simplified their increasingly busy and complicated lives, and provided an emotional connection. The growth of e-retailers has forced traditional brick-and-mortar retailers to respond. Basically brick-and-mortar retailers utilize their natural advantages, such as products that shoppers can actually see, touch, and test, real-life customer service, and no delivery lag time for small-sized purchases. They also provide a shopping experience as a strong differentiator. They are adopting practices as calling each shopper a "guest". The store atmosphere should match the basic motivations of the shopper. If target consumers are more likely to be in a task-oriented and functional mindset, then a simpler, more restrained in-store environment may be better. Consistent with this reasoning, some retailers of experiential products are creating in-store entertainment to attract customers who want fun and excitement. The retail experience must deliver value to turn a one-time visitor into a loyal customer. Retailers need a tool that measures the full range of components that define experience-based value. This study uses an experiential value scale(EVS) developed by Mathwick, Malhotra and Rigdon(2001) which reflects the benefits derived from perceptions of playfulness, aesthetics, customer "return on investment" and service excellence. EVS is useful to predict differences in shopping preferences and patronage behavior of customers. EVS consists of items measuring efficiency, economic value, visual appeal, entertainment value, service excellence, escapism, and intrinsic enjoyment, which are subscales of experiencial value. Efficiency, economic value, service excellence are linked to the utilitarian shopping value. And visual appeal, entertainment value, escapism and intrinsic enjoyment are linked to hedonic shopping value. It has been found that consumers value hedonic experiences activated from escapism and attractiveness of shopping environment as much as the product quality, price, and the convenient location. As a result, many department stores, discount stores, and other retailers are introducing differential marketing strategy based on emotional/hedonic values. Many researches suggest that consumers go shopping not only for buying products but also for various shopping experiences. In other words, they seek the practical, rational value as well as social, recreational values in the shopping process(Babin et al, 1994; Bloch et al, 1994). Retailers may enhance buyer's loyalty to store by providing excellent emotional/hedonic value such as the excitement from shopping, not just the practical value of buying good products efficiently. We investigate the effect of perceived shopping values on the emotional experience and store loyalty based on the EVS(Experiential Value Scales) developed by Holbrook(1994), Mathwick, Malhotra and Rigdon(2001). This study assumes that the relative effect of shopping value dimensions on the responses of shoppers will differ according to types of stores and analyzes the moderating effect of store type(department store VS. discount store) on the causal relationship between shopping value dimensions and store loyalty. Emprical results show that utilitarian values of shopping experience and hedonic value of shipping experience give the positive effect on the emotional response of consumers and store loyalty. We also found the moderating effect of store types. The effect of utilitarian shopping values on the attitude toward discount store is higher than the effect of utilitarian shopping values on the attitude toword department store. And the effect of hedonic shopping value on the emotional response to discount store is higher than on the emotional response to department store. The empirical results reflect on the recent trend that discount stores try to fulfill the hedonic needs of consumers as well as utilitarian needs(i.e, low price) that discount stores traditionally have focused on