• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.17-27
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• 2017

Purpose - In align with the increasing competition in both online and offline franchise markets caused by the increasing impact of social networking service, entrepreneurial passion(EP) of the franchise owners has crucial impact on the stakeholders. This study proposed the customer among stakeholders has the critical influence firm's success and examined the structural relationship between entrepreneurial passion(EP) and trust, identification, and loyalty from the customer's perspective. Research design, data, and methodology - This study examines the structural relationship between entrepreneurial passion(EP), trust, identification, and loyalty from the customer's perspective. More specifically, the EP were measured using three sub-dimensions such as EP-inventing(Perceived passion for inventing), EP-founding(Perceived passion for foundting), and EP-developing(Perceived passion for developing). In order to verify the research purposes, research model and hypotheses were developed. All constructs were measured with multiple items developed and tested in the previous studies. Each item was measured on a 7 point Likert-scale anchored by '1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree'. The data were collected from 449 franchise consumers through online survey and were analyzed using SPSS 21.0 and Smart PLS 3.0. statistical program. Result - The results of this study are as follows. First, EP-inventing and EP-developing have significant impacts on corporate trust. Second, EP-founding does not have significant impact on corporate trust. Third, EP-inventing and EP-founding have significant impacts on consumer identification. Fourth, EP-developing does not have impact on identification directly, but does indirectly through corporate trust as a mediator. Fifth, corporate trust and identification have significant impacts on loyalty. Conclusions - This indicates that the foodservice franchise CEOs should continuously develop new menus and service to fulfill customer needs. EP-inventing of the food franchise CEOs may enhance customer trust for higher quality of product or service, and EP-developing can also be a driving force for customer trust as it embeds belief in customers that the franchise is sustainably developing. Also, food franchise CEOs should first clarify the support process for the existing brands before developing new ones. Customers tend to lead the trend by using brands that satisfy new trends in the foodservice franchise market, and it could have identification with the trend-setting franchise. Customers do not accept if a company is different from their personal image or norms. So the franchise CEOs must create identification with customers by building corporate trust. Corporate trust influences consumer behavior and emotion, thus the franchises need to secure trust by improving product or service continuously.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.25-36
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• 2017

Purpose - Recently, entrepreneurship education has been revitalized with interest in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship education is an educational service activity that is provided for entrepreneurship and individual start-up success within a certain period of time. According to previous studies on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship, the satisfaction of entrepreneurship education affects entrepreneurship and as a result increases entrepreneurship. In recent years, the number of female entrepreneurs has also increased as the number of entrepreneurial issues has increased. Based on previous studies, this research proposed the theoretical framework about the structural relationships among mentoring quality (career development, psychological social, role modeling), education satisfaction, recommendation intention and entrepreneurial intention. This study is to find out the possibility of attempting to create a theoretical basis for entrepreneurial mentoring education in entrepreneurship education program. Research design, data, and methodology - In this model, mentoring quality consists of three sub-dimensions such as career development, psychological social, and role modeling. In order to test research model and hypotheses, the data were collected from 203 female college students who participated in entrepreneurial education. The data were analyzed using frequency analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, and structural equational modeling with SPSS 24.0 and SmartPLS 3.0 statistical program. Result - The results of the study are as follows. First, role modeling has a positive effect on recommendation intention and entrepreneurial intention. Second, career development has a strong negative effect on the entrepreneurial intention. Third, career development and role modeling had a positive effect on educational satisfaction, and educational satisfaction had positive influence on recommendation intention and entrepreneurial intention. Conclusions - As women's social advancement becomes more active, start-up support programs including entrepreneurship mentoring are increasing. The results of this study suggest how to use the mentoring program mix and how to allocate the resources for the education program when the entrepreneurial education manager plans and executes the mentoring education program. For example, this study shows that career development and role modeling enhance educational satisfaction, and in turn increase recommendation intention and entrepreneurial intention. This means that entrepreneurship education should consist of contents that include career development functions such as sponsorship, guidance, protection, and provision of challenging work. In addition, the findings of this study indicate that mentors should perform the function of allowing the participants to have confidence and professional thinking ability at the time of start up based on their experiences.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.31-44
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• 2016

Purpose - This study aims to examine different impacts of franchisor's leadership and franchisee's marketing efforts on franchisee dissatisfaction and switching intentions, and to investigate how franchisee dissatisfaction plays a mediating role in the relationship between these constructs. This study attempted to fill the gap in the literature by treating the franchisee dissatisfaction as a mediator in the relationship between these constructs, identify how franchisor's leadership and franchisee's marketing efforts have effects on franchisee dissatisfaction, in turn, reduce switching intentions, and provide the managerial implications for building a long-term relationship to achieve mutual goals between franchisors and franchisees Research design, data, and methodology - In order to test the hypotheses, the data were collected from franchisees in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. The franchisee owners were informed about the purpose of this study by the trained interviewers. The respondents received a letter introducing the purpose of this study and another letter that the owners wrote to encourage their active participation. Among the 300 questionnaires distributed, 260 (86.7%) questionnaires were returned. Of those collected questionnaires, 6 uncompleted responses were excluded, and 254 questionnaires with an effective response rate of 84.7% were coded and analyzed using frequency, confirmatory factor analysis, and correlations analysis, and structural equation modeling with SPSS 21.0 and SmartPLS 3.0. Results - The findings of the study are as follows. First, franchisor leadership had a negative effect on franchisee dissatisfaction, but franchisee marketing efforts did not have a significant effect on franchisee dissatisfaction. Second, franchisee dissatisfaction had a positive effect on switching intentions. Third, franchisor leadership had a negative effect on switching intentions, but franchisee marketing efforts did not have a significant effect on switching intentions. Conclusions - This study researched the franchisor's leadership as a single factor of transformational leadership. Thus, it may have limits in measuring leadership. Future studies shall include emotional, loyal, and transactional leadership. In addition, the future studies shall also research the effect of franchisor's leadership and franchisees' marketing efforts on dissatisfaction and switching intentions. For example, the franchisor's relationship-oriented efforts can be a crucial parameter that reduces dissatisfaction and switching intentions.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.21-31
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• 2018

Purpose - Recently, the franchise business has made remarkable progress, but many conflicts have occurred. From this perspective, this paper explains how to improve the long - term relationship between franchisor and franchisee by integrating the relationship between franchisor of franchise business and franchisee. This study aims to identify the franchisee's economic and social satisfaction and to examine their influences on calculative and affective commitment, and loyalty. At the end of this paper, theoretical and managerial implication were suggested. Research design, data, and methodology - The data were collected from owners and store managers in franchisees located in Seoul, Korea. The trained researchers contacted owners and managers of the franchise stores. The questionaires were distributed to owners and managers consented to respond. The collected questionnaires were used for the final analysis of 324 copies(243 store owners and 81 store managers), except for 26 copies of the untrustworthy response out of 350 copies. The data were analyzed with SPSS, 21.0 and SmartPls 3.0 Result - The results of the study are as follows. First, economic satisfaction effects both calculative and affective commitment, but social satisfaction does not. Second, both calculative and affective commitment have positive effects on loyalty. Third, economic satisfaction has a positive impact on loyalty, but social satisfaction does not. Conclusions - The implications of this study are following as: From the theoretical perspective, this study analyze the satisfaction and commitment of the franchisee from the multidimensional perspective by analyzing the effects of the franchisee on two dimensions of economic and social satisfaction and on calculative and affective commitment. That is, this study explains the trade-off between economica and social satisfaction, and between calculative and affective commitment. From the managerial perspective, the results of this study suggest that the economic satisfaction of the franchise headquarters felt by franchisees should be prioritized over social satisfaction. Especially at the early stage of the contract, economic satisfaction should be given priority over social satisfaction. However, since affective and calculative commitment have a significant effect on loyalty, social satisfaction factors should not be excluded by focusing on only economic ones. In other words, the franchisors should not only think of franchisees as a source of sales and profits, but should respect franchisees and maintain loyal relationships with friends.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.149-167
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to analyze the performance of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure(VDI) adoption. VDI performance was measured by IS manager (system quality, security, and managerial operation) and business user (usability, access, and user satisfaction). The survey questionnaires were developed for measuring VDI performance. 84 data samples were collected from the companies that had adopted cloud-based VDI. This research model was verified by Smart-PLS and SPSS. The research findings were as follows: First, the companies using VDI experienced actual performance, but they did not attain their expectation. Second, as results of comparing between IS managers and business users, IS administrators had considerably higher performance than business users, which indicates that there were big differences in performance perception among users. Compared with prior research such as technical trend, system construction, and performance improvement, this study has the following implications. First, by comparing the expected performance with the actual performance of the companies that have implemented and operating VDI, it was suggested how a company that wants to adopt VDI can manage the expectation level of VDI and achieve higher actual performance. Second, because the perception of VDI performance differs between business users and system managers, it is meaningful that a fair evaluation of VDI performance requires a balanced consideration of business users and system managers.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.65-96
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• 2012

Brand has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume product or services, they are exposed to a lot of brand related stimuli. These contain brand personality, brand experience, brand identity, brand communications and so on. A special kind of new crisis occasionally confronting companies' brand management today is the brand related rumor. An important influence on consumers' purchase decision making is the word-of-mouth spread by other consumers and most decisions are influenced by other's recommendations. In light of this influence, firms have reasonable reason to study and understand consumer-to-consumer communication such as brand rumor. The importance of brand rumor to marketers is increasing as the number of internet user and SNS(social network service) site grows. Due to the development of internet technology, people can spread rumors without the limitation of time, space and place. However relatively few studies have been published in marketing journals and little is known about brand rumors in the marketplace. The study of rumor has a long history in all major social science. But very few studies have dealt with the antecedents and consequences of any kind of brand rumor. Rumor has been generally described as a story or statement in general circulation without proper confirmation or certainty as to fact. And it also can be defined as an unconfirmed proposition, passed along from people to people. Rosnow(1991) claimed that rumors were transmitted because people needed to explain ambiguous and uncertain events and talking about them reduced associated anxiety. Especially negative rumors are believed to have the potential to devastate a company's reputation and relations with customers. From the perspective of marketer, negative rumors are considered harmful and extremely difficult to control in general. It is becoming a threat to a company's sustainability and sometimes leads to negative brand image and loss of customers. Thus there is a growing concern that these negative rumors can damage brands' reputations and lead them to financial disaster too. In this study we aimed to distinguish antecedents of brand rumor transmission and investigate the effects of brand rumor characteristics on rumor spread intention. We also found key components in personal acceptance of brand rumor. In contextualist perspective, we tried to unify the traditional psychological and sociological views. In this unified research approach we defined brand rumor's characteristics based on five major variables that had been found to influence the process of rumor spread intention. The five factors of usefulness, source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness, encompass multi level elements of brand rumor. We also selected product involvement as a control variable. To perform the empirical research, imaginary Korean 'Kimch' brand and related contamination rumor was created and proposed. Questionnaires were collected from 178 Korean samples. Data were collected from college students who have been experienced the focal product. College students were regarded as good subjects because they have a tendency to express their opinions in detail. PLS(partial least square) method was adopted to analyze the relations between variables in the equation model. The most widely adopted causal modeling method is LISREL. However it is poorly suited to deal with relatively small data samples and can yield not proper solutions in some cases. PLS has been developed to avoid some of these limitations and provide more reliable results. To test the reliability using SPSS 16 s/w, Cronbach alpha was examined and all the values were appropriate showing alpha values between .802 and .953. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted successfully. And structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the research model using smartPLS(ver. 2.0) s/w. Overall, R² of adoption of rumor is .476 and R² of intention of rumor transmission is .218. The overall model showed a satisfactory fit. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. According to the results, the variables of brand rumor characteristic such as source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness affect argument strength of rumor. And argument strength of rumor also affects rumor intention. On the other hand, the relationship between perceived usefulness and argument strength of rumor is not significant. The moderating effect of product involvement on the relations between argument strength of rumor and rumor W.O.M intention is not supported neither. Consequently this study suggests some managerial and academic implications. We consider some implications for corporate crisis management planning, PR and brand management. This results show marketers that rumor is a critical factor for managing strong brand assets. Also for researchers, brand rumor should become an important thesis of their interests to understand the relationship between consumer and brand. Recently many brand managers and marketers have focused on the short-term view. They just focused on strengthen the positive brand image. According to this study we suggested that effective brand management requires managing negative brand rumors with a long-term view of marketing decisions.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-27
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• 2011

In an attempt to cope with widespread, dynamic, and accelerating changes in both internal and external business environments, companies often utilize information technologies such as SCM(Supply Chain Management). To date, SCM research has mainly focused on the effects of dynamic factors on SCM success and emphasized adoption strategies and critical success factors. Consequently, the effects of more static factors such as interdependency between SCM partners have been largely ignored. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine the effects of both dynamic and static factors on SCM performance by controlling for information quality and partnership quality. The five factors examined in this study include innovative ness, mutual dependency, quality of information, partnership quality, and SCM performance. All factors were examined from the perspective of part suppliers, except the mutual dependency which was examined from two aspects: supplier's dependency on customer and customer's dependency on supplier. Data was collected through five hundred survey questionnaires distributed to the part supplier companies that have implemented SCM systems for at least one year. As a result, a total of 170 valid responses were obtained. A structural equation research model was fitted using SAS 9.1.3 and SMART-PLS 2.0. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, innovativeness positively affected SCM information quality. SCM partnership quality, and ultimately SCM performance. The path coefficient between innovativeness and information quality was 0.387, with a t-value of 3.528. Innovativeness also had a positively direct effect on partnership quality. The path coefficient was 0.351 with a t-value of 3.366. The total effect of innovativeness on partnership quality was significant, although its indirect effect on partnership quality by altering information quality was negligible. The total indirect effect of innovativeness on SCM performance by affecting information quality and partnership quality was significant with a p-value of 0.014. Innovativeness played an important role in determining SCM performance. Second, mutual dependency showed no significant effect on SCM information quality. This result contradicts the earlier assertion that the more dependent two companies are, the more accurate and timely the information they exchange ought to be. This study showed that this may not be the case; a partner may provide information of poor quality even when it is strongly dependent on the other. Mutual dependency showed significant effect on partnership quality. However, when the mutual dependency perceived by suppliers was divided into two parts, one being a supplier's dependency on its customer company and the other being a customer's dependency on the supplier, the latter showed a significant impact on the perceived SCM partnership quality. This result indicates that a customer company can hardly improve the partnership quality perceived by suppliers by making them more dependent. It improves only when the suppliers perceive that their partners, typically having more bargaining power, are more dependent on them. The overall effect of mutual dependency of any kind on SCM performance, however, was not significant. Although mutual dependency has been mentioned as an important static factor influencing almost every aspect of cooperation on a supply chain, its influences may not be as significant as it was initially perceived to be. Third, the correlation between information quality and partnership quality was 0.448 with a p-value of less than 0.001. Information quality had a path coefficient of 0.256 to partnership quality with a t-value of 2.940. The quality of information exchanged between partners may have an impact on their partnership quality. Fourth, information quality also had a significant impact on SCM performance with a path coefficient of 0.325 with a t-value of 3.611. In this study, SCM performance was divided into four categories: product quality, cost saving, service quality, and order fulfillment. Information quality has Significant impacts on product quality, cost saving and service quality, but not on order fulfillment. Fifth, partnership quality, as expected, had a significant impact on SCM performance. The path coefficient was 0.403 with a t-value of 3.539. Partnership quality, like information quality, had positive impacts on product quality, cost saving and service quality, but showed no impact on order fulfillment. It seemed that order fulfillment is the hardest category of performance that SCM can satisfy. One major limitation of this study is that it surveyed only the suppliers. To better understand the dual aspects of SCM, it is important to survey both suppliers and the assemblers, especially in pairs. This research, to our best knowledge, was the first attempt to study the level of dependency between the two groups by measuring the dual aspects of SCM and studying mutual dependency from the categories of suppliers and assemblers each.. In the future, a more comprehensive and precise measurement of SCM characteristics needs to be achieved by examining from both the supplier's and assembler's perspectives.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.65-93
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• 2011

As relationship between buyer and seller has been brought closer and long-term relationship has been more important in B2B markets, the importance of service and service convenience increases as well as product. In homogeneous markets, where service offerings are similar and therefore not key competitive differentiator, providing greater convenience may enable a competitive advantage. Service convenience, as conceptualized by Berry et al. (2002), is defined as the consumers' time and effort perceptions related to buying or using a service. For this reason, B2B customers are interested in how fast the service is provided and how much save non-monetary cost like time or effort by the service convenience along with service quality. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impact of service convenience on relationship factors such as relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The purpose of this study is to find out whether service convenience can be a new antecedent of relationship quality and relationship performance. In addition, this study tries to examine how five-dimensional service convenience constructs (decision convenience, access convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affect customers' relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The service convenience comprises five fundamental components - decision convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with service purchase or use decisions), access convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with initiating service delivery), transaction convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with finalizing the transaction), benefit convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with experiencing the core benefits of the offering) and post-benefit convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with reestablishing subsequent contact with the firm). Earlier studies of perceived service convenience in the industrial market are none. The conventional studies that have dealt with service convenience have usually been made in the consumer market, or they have dealt with convenience aspects in the service process. This service convenience measure for consumer market can be useful tool to estimate service quality in B2B market. The conceptualization developed by Berry et al. (2002) reflects a multistage, experiential consumption process in which evaluations of convenience vary at each stage. For this reason, the service convenience measure is good for B2B service environment which has complex processes and various types. Especially when categorizing B2B service as sequential stage of service delivery like Kumar and Kumar (2004), the Berry's service convenience measure which reflect sequential flow of service deliveries suitable to establish B2B service convenience. For this study, data were gathered from respondents who often buy business service and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The sample size in the present study is 119. Composite reliability values and average variance extracted values were examined for each variable to have reliability. We determine whether the measurement model supports the convergent validity by CFA, and discriminant validity was assessed by examining the correlation matrix of the constructs. For each pair of constructs, the square root of the average variance extracted exceeded their correlations, thus supporting the discriminant validity of the constructs. Hypotheses were tested using the Smart PLS 2.0 and we calculated the PLS path values and followed with a bootstrap re-sampling method to test the hypotheses. Among the five dimensional service convenience constructs, four constructs (decision convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affected customers' positive relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. This result means that service convenience is important cue to improve relationship between buyer and seller. One of the five service convenience dimensions, access convenience, does not affect relationship quality and performance, which implies that the dimension of service convenience is not important factor of cumulative satisfaction. The Cumulative satisfaction can be distinguished from transaction-specific customer satisfaction, which is an immediate post-purchase evaluative judgment or an affective reaction to the most recent transactional experience with the firm. Because access convenience minimizes the physical effort associated with initiating an exchange, the effect on relationship satisfaction similar to cumulative satisfaction may be relatively low in terms of importance than transaction-specific customer satisfaction. Also, B2B firms focus on service quality, price, benefit, follow-up service and so on than convenience of time or place in service because it is relatively difficult to change existing transaction partners in B2B market compared to consumer market. In addition, this study using partial least squares methods reveals that customers' satisfaction and commitment toward relationship has mediating role between the service convenience and relationship performance. The result shows that management and investment to improve service convenience make customers' positive relationship satisfaction, and then the positive relationship satisfaction can enhance the relationship commitment and relationship performance. And to conclude, service convenience management is an important part of successful relationship performance management, and the service convenience is an important antecedent of relationship between buyer and seller such as the relationship commitment and relationship performance. Therefore, it has more important to improve relationship performance that service providers enhance service convenience although competitive service development or service quality improvement is important. Given the pressure to provide increased convenience, it is not surprising that organizations have made significant investments in enhancing the convenience aspect of their product and service offering.

• 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.