• Title/Summary/Keyword: University Loyalty

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The Development and Validation of a Core Competency Scale for Startup Talent : Focusing on ICT Sector Employees (스타트업 핵심인재 역량 척도 개발 및 타당화 : 정보통신기술(ICT)분야 종사자를 대상으로)

  • Han, Chae-yeon;Ha, Gyu-young
    • Journal of Venture Innovation
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    • v.7 no.3
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    • pp.183-228
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    • 2024
  • This study aimed to develop a competency evaluation scale tailored to the specific needs of key talent in the ICT startup sector. Existing competency assessment tools are mostly designed for environments in large corporations or traditional small and medium-sized enterprises, failing to adequately reflect the dynamic requirements of rapidly evolving startups. For startups, where a small number of individuals directly impact company success, key talent is a critical asset. Accordingly, this study sought to create a scale that measures the competencies suited to the challenges and opportunities faced by startups, helping domestic startups establish more effective talent management strategies. The research initially selected 71 items through a literature review and in-depth interviews. Based on expert feedback that emphasized the need for more precise and clear descriptions, the item descriptions were revised, and a total of 65 items were developed through four rounds of content validation. Following preliminary and main surveys, a final set of 58 items was developed. The main survey conducted further factor analysis based on the three broad competency factors?knowledge, skills, and attitude?identified in the preliminary survey. As a result, 10 latent factors emerged: 6 items for task comprehension, 6 items for practical experience (tacit knowledge), 6 items for collaboration, 9 items for management and problem-solving, 9 items for practical skills, 4 items for self-direction, 5 items for goal orientation, 5 items for adaptability, 5 items for relationship orientation, and 3 items for organizational loyalty. The developed scale comprehensively covers the multifaceted nature of competencies, allowing for a thorough evaluation of essential skills such as technical ability, teamwork, innovation, and leadership, which are critical for startups. Therefore, the scale provides a tool that helps startup managers objectively and accurately assess candidates' competencies. It also supports the growth of employees within startups, maximizing the overall organizational performance. By utilizing this tool, startups can build a strong internal talent pool and continuously enhance employees' competencies, thereby strengthening organizational competitiveness. In conclusion, the competency evaluation scale developed in this study is a customized tool that aligns with the characteristics of startups and plays a crucial role in securing sustainable competitiveness in rapidly changing market environments. Additionally, it offers practical guidance to support the successful growth of domestic startups and help them maintain their competitive edge in the market, contributing to the development of the startup ecosystem and the growth of the national economy.

Determinants of Consumer Preference by type of Accommodation: Two Step Cluster Analysis (이단계 군집분석에 의한 농촌관광 편의시설 유형별 소비자 선호 결정요인)

  • Park, Duk-Byeong;Yoon, Yoo-Shik;Lee, Min-Soo
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.17 no.3
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    • pp.1-19
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    • 2007
  • 1. Purpose Rural tourism is made by individuals with different characteristics, needs and wants. It is important to have information on the characteristics and preferences of the consumers of the different types of existing rural accommodation. The stud aims to identify the determinants of consumer preference by type of accommodations. 2. Methodology 2.1 Sample Data were collected from 1000 people by telephone survey with three-stage stratified random sampling in seven metropolitan areas in Korea. Respondents were chosen by sampling internal on telephone book published in 2006. We surveyed from four to ten-thirty 0'clock afternoon so as to systematic sampling considering respondents' life cycle. 2.2 Two-step cluster Analysis Our study is accomplished through the use of a two-step cluster method to classify the accommodation in a reduced number of groups, so that each group constitutes a type. This method had been suggested as appropriate in clustering large data sets with mixed attributes. The method is based on a distance measure that enables data with both continuous and categorical attributes to be clustered. This is derived from a probabilistic model in which the distance between two clusters in equivalent to the decrease in log-likelihood function as a result of merging. 2.3 Multinomial Logit Analysis The estimation of a Multionmial Logit model determines the characteristics of tourist who is most likely to opt for each type of accommodation. The Multinomial Logit model constitutes an appropriate framework to explore and explain choice process where the choice set consists of more than two alternatives. Due to its ease and quick estimation of parameters, the Multinomial Logit model has been used for many empirical studies of choice in tourism. 3. Findings The auto-clustering algorithm indicated that a five-cluster solution was the best model, because it minimized the BIC value and the change in them between adjacent numbers of clusters. The accommodation establishments can be classified into five types: Traditional House, Typical Farmhouse, Farmstay house for group Tour, Log Cabin for Family, and Log Cabin for Individuals. Group 1 (Traditional House) includes mainly the large accommodation establishments, i.e. those with ondoll style room providing meals and one shower room on family tourist, of original construction style house. Group 2 (Typical Farmhouse) encompasses accommodation establishments of Ondoll rooms and each bathroom providing meals. It includes, in other words, the tourist accommodations Known as "rural houses." Group 3 (Farmstay House for Group) has accommodation establishments of Ondoll rooms not providing meals and self cooking facilities, large room size over five persons. Group 4 (Log Cabin for Family) includes mainly the popular accommodation establishments, i.e. those with Ondoll style room with on shower room on family tourist, of western styled log house. While the accommodations in this group are not defined as regards type of construction, the group does include all the original Korean style construction, Finally, group 5 (Log Cabin for Individuals)includes those accommodations that are bedroom western styled wooden house with each bathroom. First Multinomial Logit model is estimated including all the explicative variables considered and taking accommodation group 2 as base alternative. The results show that the variables and the estimated values of the parameters for the model giving the probability of each of the five different types of accommodation available in rural tourism village in Korea, according to the socio-economic and trip related characteristics of the individuals. An initial observation of the analysis reveals that none of variables income, the number of journey, distance, and residential style of house is explicative in the choice of rural accommodation. The age and accompany variables are significant for accommodation establishment of group 1. The education and rural residential experience variables are significant for accommodation establishment of groups 4 and 5. The expenditure and marital status variables are significant for accommodation establishment of group 4. The gender and occupation variable are significant for accommodation establishment of group 3. The loyalty variable is significant for accommodation establishment of groups 3 and 4. The study indicates that significant differences exist among the individuals who choose each type of accommodation at a destination. From this investigation is evident that several profiles of tourists can be attracted by a rural destination according to the types of existing accommodations at this destination. Besides, the tourist profiles may be used as the basis for investment policy and promotion for each type of accommodation, making use in each case of the variables that indicate a greater likelihood of influencing the tourist choice of accommodation.

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The Legal Nature and Problems of Air Mileage (항공마일리지의 법적 성격과 약관해석)

  • Kim, Dae-Kyu
    • The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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    • v.25 no.2
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    • pp.163-199
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    • 2010
  • A frequent flyer program is a loyalty program offered by many airlines. Typically, airline customers enrolled in the program accumulate frequent flyer miles corresponding to the distance flown on that airline or its partners. There are other ways to accumulate miles. In recent years, more miles were awarded for using co-branded credit and debit cards than for air travel. Acquired miles can be redeemed for free air travel; for other goods or services, such as travel class upgrades, airport lounge access or priority bookings. The first modern frequent flyer program was created Texas International Airlines in 1979. This program was also adopted in Korean Air in 1984. Since then, the mileage programs have grown enormously. As of June 2009, the total member of two national airlines in Korea had been over thirty million. However, accumulated miles could be burden of airlines, because the korean corporations should record the annual financial report the accumulate mileage on a liability account by 'the international financial report standards(IFRS)' next year. The korean airlines need to minimize the accumulated miles, so that for instance Korean Airlines SKYPASS-miles expire 5 years after being earned. It means that miles earned on or after July 2008 will expire after five years if unredeemed. Thus, this paper attempt to analyze the unfairness of the mileage rules of korean airlines by examining a specific portion of the conditions relating to consumer protection, because many mileage users has difficulties using mileage programs and complained the amendment of the mileage rules. In conclusion, the contemporary mileage rules in Korea are rather unsatisfactory, because airlines is not only recognizing a mileage into a kind of benefit but also denying inheritance of mileage and the legal nature of mileage as a property right. It is necessary to amend relevant mileage rules in view of consumer protection, because air mileage is not simple benefit but a right of mileage user.

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A Study on Efficiently Designing Customer Rewards Programs (고객 보상프로그램의 효율적 구성에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Sang-Cheol
    • Journal of Distribution Science
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    • v.10 no.1
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    • pp.5-10
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    • 2012
  • Currently, the rewards programs offered by many companies to strengthen customer relationships have been working quite well. In addition, many companies' rewards programs, designed for stabilizing revenue, are recognized to be effective. However, these rewards programs are not significantly differentiated between companies and there are no accurate conclusions currently, which can be made about their effects. Because of this, a company with a customer rewards program may not comprehend the true level of active participation. In this environment some companies' rewards programs inadvertently hinder business profitability as a side effect while attempting to increase customer loyalty. In fact, airline and oil companies pass on the financial cost of their programs to the customer, and as a result, they have been criticized publicly. The result of this is that the corporations with bad rewards programs tend to get a bad image. In this study of stores' rewards programs, we centered our focus on the design of the program. The main problem in this study is to recognize the financial value of the rewards program and whether it can create a competitive edge for the companies despite the cost issues experienced by them. Customers receiving financial rewards for their business may be just as satisfied with a particular company or store versus those who are not, and the program, perhaps, does not form a distinctive competitive advantage. When the customer is deciding between competing companies to secure their product needs with, we wanted to figure out how much of an affect a valuable reward program had on their decision making. To evaluate this, we set the first hypothesis as, "based on the level of involvement of the customers, there is a difference between customers' preferences for rewards programs." In the results of Experiment 1 we saw that in a financial compensation program for high-involvement groups and low-involvement groups, significant differences appeared and Hypothesis 1 was partially supported. As for the second hypothesis that "customers will have different preferences between a financial rewards programs (SE) and a joint rewards programs (JE)," the analysis showed that the preference for JE was significantly higher than that for other programs. In addition, through Experiment 2, we were able to find meaningful results, which revealed that consumers have shown a significant difference in their preferences between SE and JE. The purpose of these experiments was to enable the designing of a rewards program by learning how to enhance service information distribution and strengthen customer relationships. From the results, there should be a great amount of value for future service-related endeavors and academic research programs. The research is significant, because the results can be found to have a positive effect on reward program designs however, it does have the following limitations. First, this study was performed using an experiment, and all experiments have limitations. Second, although there was an individual evaluation and a joint evaluation, setting a proper evaluation criteria was difficult. In this study, 1,000 Korean won (KRW) in the individual evaluation had a value of 2 points, and, in the joint evaluation, 1,000 KRW had a value of 1 point. There may have been alternative ways to differentiate the evaluations to obtain the proper results. In this study, since there was no funding, the experiments were performed orally however, this was complementary to the study. Third, the subjects who participated in this experiment were students. Conducting this study through experimentation was unavoidable for us, and future research should be conducted using an actual program with the target customers.

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The Effect of Hotel Employee's Service Orientation on Service Performance, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Commitment (호텔기업 종업원의 서비스지향성이 서비스 성과, 직무만족과 조직몰입에 미치는 영향)

  • Park, Dae-Hwan
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.1-22
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    • 2007
  • Customer satisfaction is important in an increasingly competitive and global marketplace. This implies that customer service is a critical factor for many organizations. In service encounter context, customer satisfaction is affected by employees' attitudes and behaviors. Accordingly, service firms have been focusing on selecting high quality of service employees, which resulted the ability to identify and select quality service- or customer- oriented employees to become critical for an organization's success. It was suggested that customer service orientation links to performance and subsequent organizational revenue. Moreover, it was found that service encounter failures were among the major reasons for customers' service switch. Therefore, the selection of customer service oriented employees is a key factor in establishing customer service - a potential source of sustained competitive advantage. However, the measurement of employee service orientation is more confusing than that of definitive answers. The difficulty of measuring service orientation is attributed to the use of broad versus narrow measures of personality. Advocates for the broad perspective prefer using basic personality constructs, such as the Big Five personality traits. On the contrary, the latter prefer a construct-oriented approach of personality research that provides a better measure of job performance because it requires the specification of the relationship of the personality traits with multiple dimensions of job performance. The customer service orientation was defined as "a set of basic individual predispositions and an inclination to provide service, to be courteous and to be helpful in dealing with customers and associates." Similarly, it is a fact that the Big five personality traits are predictors of customer orientation, and employee's self- and supervisor performance. They propose that basic personality traits may be too far removed from focal service behaviors to be able to predict specific service behaviors (customer orientation) and service worker performance. Also, customer orientation is defined as "an employee's tendency or predisposition to meet customer needs in an on-the-job context." This means that people who have job-relevant personality traits such as concern, empathy, and conscientiousness will be more adept at customer service than people who do not possess these traits. However, little attention has been given to the exploration of the service orientation of customer-contact employees who play a key role in creating satisfactory service encounters in the hospitality industry except for Kim, McCahon, & Miller (2003)'s study, especially in family restaurants context. Thus, the purposes of this study are to examine and validate the customer service orientation of customer-contact employees using the instrument developed by Donavan (1999) in Korean family restaurants, because the scale was developed to measure the personality traits related job behaviors. And this study explores the relationships between customer service orientation, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and self service performance using structural equation modeling (SEM). And this study explores the relationships between customer service orientation, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and self service performance using structural equation modeling (SEM). For these purposes the author developed several hypotheses as follows: H1: Employee's service orientation is associated with service performance. H2: Employee's service orientation is positively associated with job satisfaction. H3: Employee's service orientation is positively associated with organizational commitment. H4: Service performance is positively associated with job satisfaction. H5: Service performance is positively associated with organizational commitment. H6: Job satisfaction is negatively associated with organizational commitment. The data were collected from 278 employees in 5 deluxe hotels located in Pusan, Korea. The researcher contacted the manager of the restaurants, and managers consented to administer surveys to their employees. The survey was executed during one month period in the October of 2007. The data were analyzed with structural equation modeling with LISREL 8.7 W. The result of the overall model analysis appeared as follows: $X^2$=122.638 (p = 0.00), df=59, GFI=.936, AGFI=.901, NFI=.948, CFI=.971, RMSEA=.0625. Since the result of the overall model analysis demonstrated a good fit, we could further analyze our data. The findings can be summarized as follows: First, the greater the employee service orientation, the greater the service performance. Second, the greater the employee service orientation, the greater the job satisfaction. Third, the greater the employee service orientation, the greater the organizational commitment. Fourth, the greater the service performance, the greater the job satisfaction. Fifth, the greater the service performance, the greater the organizational commitment. Finally, the greater the job satisfaction, the greater the organizational commitment. Seventh, the greater the customer satisfaction, the greater the customer loyalty.

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How Customer Experience Management in the Hotel Industry can Lead to a Willingness to Pay More (호텔 기업의 고객경험관리(CEM)는 기꺼이 더 지불하게 하는가?)

  • Choi, Wook-Hee
    • Culinary science and hospitality research
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    • v.22 no.7
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    • pp.267-280
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    • 2016
  • Customer Experience Management (CEM) appeared as a complementary solution to overcome CRM limitations. CEM enhances profitability through building long-term relations with customers by understanding their experiences. This study aims at investigating the impact of customer experience quality on the willingness to pay more through customer satisfaction in the hotel businesses. The survey for this study was carried out on customers who had domestic hotel experience s within the last 6 months. Out of the 306 questionnaires retrieved, 225 valid responses were used for the empirical analysis that utilizied the statistical package programs SPSS 18.0 and AMOS 18.0. The research findings may be summarized as follows. First, as an outcome of the research hypothesis that each component of customer experience management would influence satisfaction, 'the peace of mind' & 'the moment of truth' were shown to have a significantly positive (+) impact on it. On the other hand, 'the product experience' was shown not to significantly influence it in a positive (+) way. Second, as an outcome of the research hypothesis that satisfaction would influence willingness to pay more. From the findings of the study, theoretical implications are as follows. It can be predicted that customer experience management will likely make customers more profitable because customers are willing to pay more with a sense of loyalty built through satisfaction of the hotel industry. In the practical implications, the dimension of experience quality examined by the study can be used as an index to measure and manage customer experience in the hotel industry.

A Study on the Blood-Letting Therapy in Elementary Questions (("황제내경소문(黃帝內經素問)" 중(中) 사혈(瀉血)에 관한 연구(硏究))

  • Lee, Jun-Geun
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Oriental Medical Informatics
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    • v.14 no.1
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    • pp.19-42
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    • 2008
  • Blood-Letting Therapy is a rational and ecological medical treatment by which we can heal most of the diseases by removing the static blood which precipitates in the blood vessel and blocks the flowing of blood. And the static blood is the generic term for the injurious, bad, dead and precipitated blood which is blocked the capillary vessel. The Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine says that "the patient is treated with drugs internally and stone acupuncture externally. "In the old texts, the blood-letting therapy is mentioned as blood-letting, network vessel pricking, bloodletting, pricking, and arousing pulses etc and it is noted down as the method of network vessel pricking in 'On the Application of Needles' of Spiritual Pivot. Nine-pricking therapy, twelve-pricking therapy and five-pricking therapy are recorded in the methods of network vessel pricking and among them, the method of squeezing blood after pricking the affected part is explained as the network vessel pricking. There are four methods of network vessel pricking, pricking, picking, cluster needling and scatter-pricking and they are fluidly applied to the various symptoms of diseases. In 'On Discriminative Treating for Patients of Different Regions' in Elementary Questions, Ki-baek emphasizes "most of the local people, there are black in skin and loose in striate, and their diseases are mostly of carbuncle kind. It is suitable to treat the disease with stone therapy to prick with stone, so the stone therapy is transmitted from the east. "And in 'On the Corresponding Relation Between the Eum and Yang of Man and All Things' in Elementary Questions, when the Emperor asked Ki-Back, he answered "sthenia means the sthenia of evil, and deficiency means the deficiency of healthy energy. When the blood is sthenic, the evil should be discharged by pricking when out letting the blood; deficiency of vital energy is the asthenia of channels and network vessels, so the energy should drain from the channel which is not deficient, to replenish. "And in this case we can use the methods of 'Breaking out the static bloods', 'driving out the static bloods', blood-letting'. With this we can infer that the blood-letting therapy is made use of the important medical treatments from the ancient times. Especially in referring to the principles of treatment in The Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine, it mostly alluded to acupuncture therapies and only eleven times to medicinal treatments. This is to verify that the blood-letting therapy formed the foundation of the medical art. In Dong's Therapy of Acupuncture-Moxibustion and Bloodletting, Dong Kyeong-Chang gave emphasis on the points that there must be extravasated bloods without exception in the serious illnesses which is old, unnatural, accompanying acute pains and so we can revive our body‘s sprit by circulating 'gi' and static blood piled up in the network vessel, regulating the weakness and strength, and controling the disharmony of the internal organs. The blood-letting therapy has effect on the orifice in emergency, such as fore draining, freeing network vessels, harmonizing gi and blood, relieving pain, dispersing swelling and concretion, sedation, resolving toxin as well as strengthening the heart, relieving itching. So it has distinguished effect on all kinds of medical treatment to the modern people. But by the change of social customs and the confucianism of confucius - it is widely spread on the period of North and South Dynasties, 'Wi' and 'Jin' in china and the period of the Three States in korea - The blood-letting therapy which was regarded as the most important medicinal treatment withered rapidly. And Confucius accentuated the importance of our body and all its members, loyalty and filial piety and banned any damage of our body under no circumstances. As a result of it, the therapy of blood-letting had a rapid decrease and barely kept itself in existence in both countries. What is worse, at the period of Japanese colonial rule of korea and our nation's founding of early stage, it has been withered by the high-handed policy to change Oriental Medicine into modern medical science. So the therapy of blood-letting barely kept itself in existence in some Buddhist temples. Another case, it has handed down as a old-fashioned quick fix in folk remedies. But all kinds of the contamination of heavy metals and the misuses of antibiotics are widely spread nowadays, which increased diseases of adult people and incurable diseases as modern society unavoidably made its way into a highly industrial society. To make us more miserable, the western medical science - the antibiotics and surgical operation medical science - already reveals itself into a limit. The necessity of a new medical science which can give a security to the patients who are suffering from the diseases of adult people and the incurable diseases is especially come into the force nowadays. In view of the results after bibliographically studying on the blood-letting Therapy in Elementary Questions of the Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine, the blood-letting therapy has acted for the important Oriental medicinal science and has been clarified the prominent effects on the diseases of adult people and the incurable diseases. So it is regarded as an appropriate thing that we lay out a determined theory of the blood-letting therapy and of course prevent the unwanted side effects from inappropriate medicinal treatments, and make full use of clinic by elevating the curative value and that we win back our self-respect of medical treatment which is dominated from the western medical science and ultimately contribute to national medical welfare.

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A Study on the Spread of Taoist Gwonseonseo in the 19th Century and the Ideological Nature of Jeoseungjeon (19세기 유교의 통속화와 「저승전」의 이념성 - 조선후기 권선서(勸善書)의 유행과 관련하여 -)

  • Kim, Jeong Suk
    • (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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    • no.69
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    • pp.297-324
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    • 2017
  • Recognizing that the ideological nature of Taoist Gwonseonseo whose publication was concentrated during the reign of King Gojong was connected to that of Jeoseungjeon, a Hangul manuscript novel in the 19th century, this study set out to examine the periodic significance of Taoist Gwonseonseo in the 19th century and check the ideological nature of Jeoseungjeon. Taoist Gwonseonseo puts an emphasis on Confucian ethics including loyalty and filial piety in a didactic aspect and shows that the practice of Confucian ethics brings good fortune, which was prominent in many private Taoist books that were huge hits in the latter part of Joseon, when Chinese Taoist Gwonseonseo was introduced in Joseon, translated and circulated in Korean, and spread widely among the public. Those works offer very specific cases of individuals doing good or evil deeds in this world and suffering the consequences in the next world. Jeoseungjeon presents the Buddhist experiences with the next world as the foundation with the next world depicted around the Great Jade Emperor, who emphasizes Confucian ethics, and the hierarchy of Taoist gods under the ultimate the Great Jade Emperor, thus clearly demonstrating the combination pattern of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism in the latter half of Joseon. The work describes the scenes of judgment and punishment in the next world according to the witness of the main character and thus gives specific ideas of daily goods, which is a feature found in the latter half of Joseon different from the previous pattern of next world experiences. It is Taoist Gwonseonseo widely spread among the people those days that connects the link.

A Study on the Effectiveness of 3PL Logistics Information System : A Focus on the Role of Supply Chain Performance in Shipper and Long-term Relationship intention (3PL 물류정보시스템의 효과성에 관한 실증적 연구 : 화주기업의 공급사슬성과와 장기지향적관계성의 역할을 중심으로)

  • Cho, Jae-yong
    • Journal of Venture Innovation
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    • v.3 no.2
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    • pp.111-128
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    • 2020
  • Recently, in the process of globalization of companies, the use of third party logistics providers (3PL) has been strengthened. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to test the effectiveness of the logistics information system provided by 3PL companies. This study is to test the relationship between the effect of the characteristics of the 3PL logistics information system on the shipper's supply chain performance, that is, logistics performance, customer performance, and organizational performance, and the shipper's loyalty to the 3PL company, that is, 3PL corporate performance. In addition, long-term relationship orientation is to test whether there is a moderating effect between the shipper company and the 3PL company. Through this, this study aims to provide strategic implications for improving the competitiveness of 3PL companies. In this study, a total 205 data were collected and used for analysis of shippers companies for hypothesis testing, and analyzed using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 21.0 statistical programs. The results of the study are summarized as follows. First, it was found that the accuracy, timeliness, and usefulness of the 3PL logistics information system all had a significant positive (+) effect on the performance of the shipper's supply chain. Second, it was found that the accuracy, timeliness, and usefulness of the 3PL logistics information system all had a significant positive (+) effect on 3PL corporate performance. Third, it was found that the performance of the supply chain of the shipper company had a significant positive (+) effect on the performance of the 3PL company. Finally, it was found that long-term relationship orientation had a moderating effect on the relationship between the performance of the shipper company's supply chain and the performance of the 3PL company. The purpose of this study is to provide academic and practical implications for securing competitive advantage through the logistics information system of 3PL logistics companies.

A New Exploratory Research on Franchisor's Provision of Exclusive Territories (가맹본부의 배타적 영업지역보호에 대한 탐색적 연구)

  • Lim, Young-Kyun;Lee, Su-Dong;Kim, Ju-Young
    • Journal of Distribution Research
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    • v.17 no.1
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    • pp.37-63
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    • 2012
  • In franchise business, exclusive sales territory (sometimes EST in table) protection is a very important issue from an economic, social and political point of view. It affects the growth and survival of both franchisor and franchisee and often raises issues of social and political conflicts. When franchisee is not familiar with related laws and regulations, franchisor has high chance to utilize it. Exclusive sales territory protection by the manufacturer and distributors (wholesalers or retailers) means sales area restriction by which only certain distributors have right to sell products or services. The distributor, who has been granted exclusive sales territories, can protect its own territory, whereas he may be prohibited from entering in other regions. Even though exclusive sales territory is a quite critical problem in franchise business, there is not much rigorous research about the reason, results, evaluation, and future direction based on empirical data. This paper tries to address this problem not only from logical and nomological validity, but from empirical validation. While we purse an empirical analysis, we take into account the difficulties of real data collection and statistical analysis techniques. We use a set of disclosure document data collected by Korea Fair Trade Commission, instead of conventional survey method which is usually criticized for its measurement error. Existing theories about exclusive sales territory can be summarized into two groups as shown in the table below. The first one is about the effectiveness of exclusive sales territory from both franchisor and franchisee point of view. In fact, output of exclusive sales territory can be positive for franchisors but negative for franchisees. Also, it can be positive in terms of sales but negative in terms of profit. Therefore, variables and viewpoints should be set properly. The other one is about the motive or reason why exclusive sales territory is protected. The reasons can be classified into four groups - industry characteristics, franchise systems characteristics, capability to maintain exclusive sales territory, and strategic decision. Within four groups of reasons, there are more specific variables and theories as below. Based on these theories, we develop nine hypotheses which are briefly shown in the last table below with the results. In order to validate the hypothesis, data is collected from government (FTC) homepage which is open source. The sample consists of 1,896 franchisors and it contains about three year operation data, from 2006 to 2008. Within the samples, 627 have exclusive sales territory protection policy and the one with exclusive sales territory policy is not evenly distributed over 19 representative industries. Additional data are also collected from another government agency homepage, like Statistics Korea. Also, we combine data from various secondary sources to create meaningful variables as shown in the table below. All variables are dichotomized by mean or median split if they are not inherently dichotomized by its definition, since each hypothesis is composed by multiple variables and there is no solid statistical technique to incorporate all these conditions to test the hypotheses. This paper uses a simple chi-square test because hypotheses and theories are built upon quite specific conditions such as industry type, economic condition, company history and various strategic purposes. It is almost impossible to find all those samples to satisfy them and it can't be manipulated in experimental settings. However, more advanced statistical techniques are very good on clean data without exogenous variables, but not good with real complex data. The chi-square test is applied in a way that samples are grouped into four with two criteria, whether they use exclusive sales territory protection or not, and whether they satisfy conditions of each hypothesis. So the proportion of sample franchisors which satisfy conditions and protect exclusive sales territory, does significantly exceed the proportion of samples that satisfy condition and do not protect. In fact, chi-square test is equivalent with the Poisson regression which allows more flexible application. As results, only three hypotheses are accepted. When attitude toward the risk is high so loyalty fee is determined according to sales performance, EST protection makes poor results as expected. And when franchisor protects EST in order to recruit franchisee easily, EST protection makes better results. Also, when EST protection is to improve the efficiency of franchise system as a whole, it shows better performances. High efficiency is achieved as EST prohibits the free riding of franchisee who exploits other's marketing efforts, and it encourages proper investments and distributes franchisee into multiple regions evenly. Other hypotheses are not supported in the results of significance testing. Exclusive sales territory should be protected from proper motives and administered for mutual benefits. Legal restrictions driven by the government agency like FTC could be misused and cause mis-understandings. So there need more careful monitoring on real practices and more rigorous studies by both academicians and practitioners.

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