• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.181-192
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• 2019

The growth of cheap, industrial, mass-production-so-called "fast fashion"-has led to dramatic increases in levels of consumption. Inexpensive products tend to foster unsustainable consumption behaviors, which negatively impact the environment and increase pressure to obtain goods at lower and lower prices; this, in turn, has the competitive effect of decreasing wages. This study focused on the concept of socially responsible consciousness in relation to fashion products. Environmental and labor issue concerns were employed as major variables. Empirical data were collected from males and females, between the ages of 10 and 50. Demographic differences were found in SR consciousness. For example, participants in their 10s, 40s, and 50s had higher levels of SR consciousness than those in their 20s and 30s. In addition, consumers' levels of environmental and labor issue concerns had varying effects on the criteria they used to select clothing. Product category type was also an influential factor. Moreover, the analysis showed that SR consciousness was less important in the apparel industry than in the food sector. The study also found an attitude-behavior link in relation to the concept of SR consciousness. The link was stronger for environmental concerns than for labor issue concerns. This study aimed to develop a better understanding of current customers' characteristics and levels of SR consciousness.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.585-593
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• 2021

The service industry has become the driving force of economic development in recent years. With the current fierce competitive situation, competing businesses have continually provided a superior quality of service, and an excellent perceived brand image to gain customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. This study's current purpose is to empirical research the linking between service quality, brand image, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty. We collect research data from 299 consumers who bought goods at supermarkets in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, using a convenient sampling technique. We proposed the conceptual model from prior studies and considered it in Vietnam's context. PLS-SEM was conducted to test the relationships in the conceptual model. We have estimated the scale's reliability by Cronbach's alpha values and composite reliability values. Moreover, we have evaluated discriminant validity by the Fornell-Larcker standard. The findings showed that service quality positively affects the brand image, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty. Likewise, the results also confirmed brand image had a positive impact on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Moreover, the outcomes also disclosed that customer satisfaction had a positive relationship with customer loyalty. The research suggested implications for managers, limitations, and directions for future research from the above findings.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.99-112
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• 2020

It is no exaggeration to say that today's world economy is dependent on international trade, which is the result of inter-state transactions. As the vast majority of international goods transport is transported by international shipping, interest in the seaborne transport field is natural in international and trade studies. In particular, in the case of international shipping, as it is the basis of typical international transportation, changes in international shipping due to the innovation of technology may have an effect on international trade norms. In this study, as a result of evaluating port preference in a hypothetical scenario by using the Design of Experiments method, bunkering as well as port service, which is traditionally important, was identified as a major competitive factor of future ports. It has been revealed that, above all, the port to respond to the future is the continued importance of port services and the supply of ship fuel. Therefore, port authorities are providing implications that LNG bunkering infrastructure suitable for international environmental regulations is important.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.175-197
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• 2017

As a revision negotiation on the KORUS FTA has become a national pending issue, this study aims to analyze changes in the trade structure of Korean export industry before and after the KORUS FTA. For the analysis, this study used Market Comparative Advantage(MCA) and Intra-industry Trade(IIT) indexes. Results of the analysis are as follows: First, in analyzing the competitive and complementary relationships of export products using the MCA index, it was discovered that Korea has formed an export-oriented complementary relationship with the United States. Second, the results of analysing IIT showed that Korea has made a low-quality vertical IIT with the U.S. in some items while it has usually made a weak IIT with the U.S.. Based on the results above, this study proposes a few policy suggestions in the following areas: Improvement of competitiveness in trade-deficit service sector, achievement of the balance of profit and loss in goods and service sectors through the revision negotiation of the KORUS FTA, enhancement of competitiveness in competitive and comparative disadvantage items, reinforcement of ability to respond to consumption patterns in U.S. market, etc. in export-dominant items, and pursuit of horizontal-vertical division of labor in comparative advantage items and horizontal division of labor in comparative disadvantage items.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.35-69
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• 2014

The impact of competition on pricing has been studied in the context of counterfactual merger analyses where expected optimal prices in a hypothetical monopoly are compared with observed prices in an oligopolistic market. Such analyses would typically assume static decision making by consumers and firms and thus have been applied mostly to data obtained from consumer packed goods such as cereal and soft drinks. However such static modeling approach is not suitable when decision makers are forward looking. When it comes to the markets for durable products with indirect network effects, consumer purchase decisions and firm pricing decisions are inherently dynamic as they take into account future states when making purchase and pricing decisions. Researchers need to take into account the dynamic aspects of decision making both in the consumer side and in the supplier side for such markets. Firms in a two-sided market typically subsidize one side of the market to exploit the indirect network effect. Such pricing behaviors would be more prevalent in competitive markets where firms would try to win over the battle for standard. While such qualitative expectation on the relationship between pricing behaviors and competitive structures could be easily formed, little empirical studies have measured the extent to which the distinct pricing structure in two-sided markets depends on the competitive structure of the market. This paper develops an empirical model to measure the impact of competition on optimal pricing of durable products under indirect network effects. In order to measure the impact of exogenously determined competition among firms on pricing, we compare the equilibrium prices in the observed oligopoly market to those in a hypothetical monopoly market. In computing the equilibrium prices, we account for the forward looking behaviors of consumers and supplier. We first estimate a demand function that accounts for consumers' forward-looking behaviors and indirect network effects. And then, for the supply side, the pricing equation is obtained as an outcome of the Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium in pricing. In doing so, we utilize numerical dynamic programming techniques. We apply our model to a data set obtained from the U.S. video game console market. The video game console market is considered a prototypical case of two-sided markets in which the platform typically subsidizes one side of market to expand the installed base anticipating larger revenues in the other side of market resulting from the expanded installed base. The data consist of monthly observations of price, hardware unit sales and the number of compatible software titles for Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 from September 1996 to August 2002. Sony PlayStation was released to the market a year before Nintendo 64 was launched. We compute the expected equilibrium price path for Nintendo 64 and Playstation for both oligopoly and for monopoly. Our analysis reveals that the price level differs significantly between two competition structures. The merged monopoly is expected to set prices higher by 14.8% for Sony PlayStation and 21.8% for Nintendo 64 on average than the independent firms in an oligopoly would do. And such removal of competition would result in a reduction in consumer value by 43.1%. Higher prices are expected for the hypothetical monopoly because the merged firm does not need to engage in the battle for industry standard. This result is attributed to the distinct property of a two-sided market that competing firms tend to set low prices particularly at the initial period to attract consumers at the introductory stage and to reinforce their own networks and eventually finally to dominate the market.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.3-49
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• 1990

This paper analyzes U.S. demand for imports from Asian NIEs and Japan, utilizing the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) developed by Deaton and Muellbauer, with an emphasis on the effect of changes in the exchange rate. The empirical model assumes a two-stage budgeting process in which the first stage represents the allocation of total U.S. demand among three groups: the Asian NIEs and Japan, six Western developed countries, and the U.S. domestic non-tradables and import competing sector. The second stage represents the allocation of total U.S. imports from the Asian NIEs and Japan among them, by country. According to the AIDS model, the share equation for the Asia NIEs and Japan in U.S. nominal GNP is estimated as a single equation for the first stage. The share equations for those five countries in total U.S. imports are estimated as a system with the general demand restrictions of homogeneity, symmetry and adding-up, together with polynomially distributed lag restrictions. The negativity condition is also satisfied for all cases. The overall results of these complicated estimations, using quarterly data from the first quarter of 1972 to the fourth quarter of 1989, are quite promising in terms of the significance of individual estimators and other statistics. The conclusions drawn from the estimation results and the derived demand elasticities can be summarized as follows: First, the exports of each Asian NIE to the U.S. are competitive with (substitutes for) Japan's exports, while complementary to the exports of fellow NIEs, with the exception of the competitive relation between Hong Kong and Singapore. Second, the exports of each Asian NIE and of Japan to the U.S. are competitive with those of Western developed countries' to the U.S, while they are complementary to the U.S.' non-tradables and import-competing sector. Third, as far as both the first and second stages of budgeting are coneidered, the imports from each Asian NIE and Japan are luxuries in total U.S. consumption. However, when only the second budgeting stage is considered, the imports from Japan and Singapore are luxuries in U.S. imports from the NIEs and Japan, while those of Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong are necessities. Fourth, the above results may be evidenced more concretely in their implied exchange rate effects. It appears that, in general, a change in the yen-dollar exchange rate will have at least as great an impact, on an NIE's share and volume of exports to the U.S. though in the opposite direction, as a change in the exchange rate of the NIE's own currency $vis-{\grave{a}}-vis$ the dollar. Asian NIEs, therefore, should counteract yen-dollar movements in order to stabilize their exports to the U.S.. More specifically, Korea should depreciate the value of the won relative to the dollar by approximately the same proportion as the depreciation rate of the yen $vis-{\grave{a}}-vis$ the dollar, in order to maintain the volume of Korean exports to the U.S.. In the worst case scenario, Korea should devalue the won by three times the maguitude of the yen's depreciation rate, in order to keep market share in the aforementioned five countries' total exports to the U.S.. Finally, this study provides additional information which may support empirical findings on the competitive relations among the Asian NIEs and Japan. The correlation matrices among the strutures of those five countries' exports to the U.S.. during the 1970s and 1980s were estimated, with the export structure constructed as the shares of each of the 29 industrial sectors' exports as defined by the 3 digit KSIC in total exports to the U.S. from each individual country. In general, the correlation between each of the four Asian NIEs and Japan, and that between Hong Kong and Singapore, are all far below .5, while the ones among the Asian NIEs themselves (except for the one between Hong Kong and Singapore) all greatly exceed .5. If there exists a tendency on the part of the U.S. to import goods in each specific sector from different countries in a relatively constant proportion, the export structures of those countries will probably exhibit a high correlation. To take this hypothesis to the extreme, if the U.S. maintained an absolutely fixed ratio between its imports from any two countries for each of the 29 sectors, the correlation between the export structures of these two countries would be perfect. Therefore, since any two goods purchased in a fixed proportion could be classified as close complements, a high correlation between export structures will imply a complementary relationship between them. Conversely, low correlation would imply a competitive relationship. According to this interpretation, the pattern formed by the correlation coefficients among the five countries' export structures to the U.S. are consistent with the empirical findings of the regression analysis.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.27-45
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• 1990

Two opposing views prevail regarding the economic impact of rural out-migration on the rural areas of origin. The optimistic neoclassical view argues that rapid rural out-migration is not detrimental to the income and welfare of the rural areas of origin, whereas Lipton (1980) argues the opposite. We developed our own alternative model for rural to urban migration, appropriate for rapidly developing economies such as Korea's. This model, which adopts international trade theories of nontraded goods and Dutch Disease to rural to urban migration issues, argues that rural to urban migration is caused mainly by two factors: first, the unprofitability of farming, and second, the decrease in demand for rural nontraded goods and the increase in demand for urban nontraded goods. The unprofitability of farming is caused by the increase in rural wages, which is induced by increasing urban wages in booming urban manufacturing sectors, and by the fact that the cost increases in farming cannot be shifted to consumers, because farm prices are fixed worldwide and because the income demand elasticity for farm products is very low. The demand for nontraded goods decreases in rural and increases in urban areas because population density and income in urban areas increase sharply, while those in rural areas decrease sharply, due to rapid rural to urban migration. Given that the market structure for nontraded goods-namely, service sectors including educational and health facilities-is mostly in monopolistically competitive, and that the demand for nontraded goods comes only from local sources, the urban service sector enjoys economies of scale, and can thus offer services at cheaper prices and in greater variety, whereas the rural service sector cannot enjoy the advantages offered by scale economies. Our view concerning the economic impact of rural to urban migration on rural areas of origin agrees with Lipton's pessimistic view that rural out-migration is detrimental to the income and welfare of rural areas. However, our reasons for the reduction of rural income are different from those in Lipton's model. Lipton argued that rural income and welfare deteriorate mainly because of a shortage of human capital, younger workers and talent resulting from selective rural out-migration. Instead, we believe that rural income declines, first, because a rapid rural-urban migration creates a further shortage of farm labor supplies and increases rural wages, and thus reduces further the profitability of farming and, second, because a rapid rural-urban migration causes a further decline of the rural service sectors. Empirical tests of our major hypotheses using Korean census data from 1966, 1970, 1975, 1980 and 1985 support our own model much more than the neoclassical or Lipton's models. A kun (county) with a large out-migration had a smaller proportion of younger working aged people in the population, and a smaller proportion of highly educated workers. But the productivity of farm workers, measured in terms of fall crops (rice) purchased by the government per farmer or per hectare of irrigated land, did not decline despite the loss of these youths and of human capital. The kun having had a large out-migration had a larger proportion of the population in the farm sector and a smaller proportion in the service sector. The kun having had a large out-migration also had a lower income measured in terms of the proportion of households receiving welfare payments or the amount of provincial taxes paid per household. The lower incomes of these kuns might explain why the kuns that experienced a large out-migration had difficulty in mechanizing farming. Our policy suggestions based on the tests of the currently prevailing hypotheses are as follows: 1) The main cause of farming difficulties is not a lack of human capital, but the in­crease in production costs due to rural wage increases combined with depressed farm output prices. Therefore, a more effective way of helping farm economies is by increasing farm output prices. However, we are not sure whether an increase in farm output prices is desirable in terms of efficiency. 2) It might be worthwhile to attempt to increase the size of farmland holdings per farm household so that the mechanization of farming can be achieved more easily. 3) A kun with large out-migration suffers a deterioration in income and welfare. Therefore, the government should provide a form of subsidization similar to the adjustment assistance provided for international trade. This assistance should not be related to the level of farm output. Otherwise, there is a possibility that we might encourage farm production which would not be profitable in the absence of subsidies. 4) Government intervention in agricultural research and its dissemination, and large-scale social overhead projects in rural areas, carried out by the Korean government, might be desirable from both efficiency and equity points of view. Government interventions in research are justified because of the problems associated with the appropriation of knowledge, and government actions on large-scale projects are justified because they required collective action.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.91-101
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• 2010

This paper has the purpose of suggesting a development-method on the fashion products that would secure the competitiveness in the global markets through creating supersensitive practical products on the basis of developing originative fashion-goods being made of jacquard that is fine quality of couture. This paper has collected data through the cases of the developed nations in fashion, precedent studies and all the related literature on the subject. The results of this researching are as following: The first, it is expected that the necessity of developing new fashion products would be appealed toward the prestige group of consumers who are seeking for the fine quality and super-sensitivity in female fashion in Korea, and it is the current situation that the products made of jacquard are gradually expanding not only in the area of apparel, fashion goods and interior but also another areas. The current situation of the global market suggests the necessary strategy of survival, that is, the development of supersensitive materials and creative products which would be able to keep the high quality and lower the selling price through cost reduction. The second, the suggestion of the direction in developing the products of the female fashion made of jacquard has two points - the development of the texture that would realize a unique form and the development of the material that would be able to realize planar pattern and three dimensional pattern which are woven with thin and light materials with various solidity and delicacy through various techniques of mixing and three dimensional expression. The third, the expected ripple effect and utilization generated from the development of fashion products are as followings: As material characteristics of jacquard, It needs the specialization of various techniques and specialized production system in using jacquard, and the specialized technique and system would make it possible to produce not only the higher value-added products through expressing affluent colors and delicate design but also competitive products through cutting the process and cost, eventually, it would lead to the expansion of the jacquard market of super-sensitive prestige. Therefore, it is remarkable that various development of products toward the global market and the prestige female fashion market can suggest the vision that make the national fashion industry develop into the higher value-added knowledge industry integrating technology and culture.

• Industry Promotion Research
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.181-199
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• 2023

E-commerce is gradually upgrading from traditional text and image formats to short video and livestreaming formats. Livestreaming e-commerce enriches the content and forms of information dissemination and product display, enhances the consumer's shopping experience, and gradually becomes the mainstream new consumer scene. However, there are many negative phenomena in the development of livestreaming e-commerce, such as false propaganda, counterfeit goods, and various negative events, which seriously affect the level of consumer trust in livestreaming e-commerce. Trust is the core competitive factor of livestreaming e-commerce. Based on previous research on trust theory and combined with the characteristic elements of "people, goods, and scenes" of livestreaming e-commerce, this article constructs a trust model for livestreaming e-commerce, proposes hypotheses, and proves through empirical research that factors such as store characteristics, livestream host characteristics, brand image, product information, platform reputation, livestreaming situation, and trust tendency have a significant positive impact on consumer trust. Based on the research conclusions, this article provides insights and management suggestions, such as emphasizing the construction of store characteristic indicators, creating desirable livestream host characteristics, focusing on product brand building and selection, maintaining the display of product information, selecting suitable livestreaming platforms, and creating rich content for livestreaming situations.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.30 no.6 s.112
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• pp.471-481
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• 2006

This paper aims to provide strategies to attract container cargoes for the Incheon port by analysing O/D of the container cargoes with the year-2004 export and import data from. The Korean customs service. O/D analysis was carried out with establishing optimal zones, which are defined as City, Gun, Gu(Korean administrative districts) to which the export-import service can be provided from a certain port with minimized freight(or transport) cost and stevedoring fee. For the Incheon port, 35 administrative districts including Seoul and Incheon in Kyunggi-Do and Kangwon-Do are recognized as the optimal zones, and approximately 25.50% of around 2.02-million-TEU per year of the cargoes from the zones are exported and imported through the port. The strategies to attract container cargoes was suggested by comparing the Incheon port to supposed-competitive ports. The Busan port(64.89%), Guangyang port(4.46%) and Pyeongtaeck port(3.35%) are supposed as the competitive ports which have a large proportion of handling the cargoes from the optimal zones. When comparing the Incheon port to these ports. The Incheon port requires a distinctive cost strategy, providing incentives to attract shipping companies and cargoes, improving efficiency related to loading-unloading at the port, and reinforcing Feeder-Network and advertisements about cost-saving to the shippers(the owners of goods) in the national capital region Consequently, the mentioned requirements are suggested as the strategies to attract cargoes for the Incheon port.