• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.137-149
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• 2004

This research analyzed the tasks performed by firm's consumer department, evaluation, and efficiency of those tasks. In addition, regression analysis was employed to find what factors influence the level of evaluation and efficiency of tasks performed by firm's consumer department. Research results summarized as follows. First, two thirds of the appropriate amount of resources and systems for the consumer department were equipped and the score of evaluating for consumer counseling tasks was high. Second, the amounts of resources and systems being equipped by the firm's consumer department were greater in insurance companies and firms with more employees, firms with 70% to 100% female employees in the consumer department, firms that listed their stocks, and firms with the consumer department located higher than the second floor. Third, the score of evaluating the tasks performed by the firm's consumer department was greater in firms that listed their stocks, owned great resources and systems, and had a higher degree of work satisfaction. Finally, the task of consumer counseling performed by the consumer department turned out to be effective in firms that listed their stocks, were recently established, and owned necessary resources and systems.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.55-70
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• 2015

The main objective of this study is to investigate the moderating roles of the competitor's pricing strategy and the degree of consumer's risk-aversion on perceived risk and perceived benefit in responding to price increases and package downsizing. Based on Prospect Theory, several prior researches find that consumers perceive increased price as more loss than package downsizing and perceive package downsizing as more benefit than increased price. We extend these behavioral economics approach using the reference effect of competitor's pricing strategy. We focus on consumer heterogeneity on risk-aversion, measure the degree of consumer's risk-aversion, and divide the consumers into two groups of high levels of risk-aversion vs. low levels of risk-aversion. We find that the firm's pricing strategies of both price increases and package downsizing do not significantly influence the perceived benefit for relatively low risk-aversion consumers. We find that when the firm reduce the package size, relatively high risk-aversion consumers perceived more benefit and had higher purchase intention compared to price increases. We also find that the competitor's pricing strategies do not significantly influence the consumer's response for relatively low risk-aversion consumers. For relatively high risk-aversion consumers, they perceived more loss when the firm has different pricing strategy from the competitor's.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.351-362
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• 2015

This study examined differences in counseling work and work performance in a firm by the individual characteristics of counselors. This study also investigated the effects of consumer counselor's reaction and stress from counseling work on counselor satisfaction in regards to counseling work and work performance. The results of this study are as follows. First, consumer counselor's work satisfaction was high for female counselors, university-educated, with middle or high status occupations, had short work years, had a higher tendency towards consumerism, worked in a counseling department with an active reaction policy towards consumer complaints, and had a lower level. Second, the work performance of a counselor was high for those who were older, university-educated, had short work years, worked in large-size counseling departments in a firm, had a higher tendency of consumerism, and worked in counseling departments with active reaction policies toward consumer and consumer's complaints. Third, consumer counselor's work stress effected work satisfaction but did not influence work performance. The counselor's reaction towards consumer's complaints influenced the work performance but did not influence the work satisfaction of a counselor.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.41-65
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• 2018

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities are important tool in corporate management strategies. However, the way that companies conduct CSR activities might bring different effect on consumers. The purpose of this study is to verify the effect of CSR fit (similarity between the firm's CSR activities and the firm's core products or technologies) on the consumers' evaluation on product performance. In addition to the main effects of CSR fit on perceived product performance, and we also examined how this effect changes when CSR information source and consumer expertise are involved as control variables. Study 1 of this research was conducted with US consumers and study 2 was with Chinese consumers. Experimental results show that consumers' perceive product performance is better when the fit between CSR activities and firm's core products or technologies is low than the fit is high. When CSR information sources are neutral sources, consumers perceive product performance to be better when the fit between the firm's CSR activities and the firm's core products or technologies is low than the fit is high. However when CSR information was delivered by company's source like nadvertisement, such difference disappears. This study also show that the higher the customer's expertise, the better the product performance was perceived for high-fit CSR activities. On the other hand, the lower the consumer's expertise, the better perceived product performance was perceived for low-fit CSR activities.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.117-125
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• 2019

Purpose - We investigate how to increase consumer incentives to buy public offering funds, resulting in activating the public offering fund market. In particular, this study aims to find ways to expand diversity and to improve efficiency of public offering fund. The public fund market of Korea has been stagnant in recent years. However, the public offering fund market plays a very significant role in terms of consumer welfare. Since only a few wealthy investors can participate in the private equity market, the stagnation in the public offering fund market usually reduces the opportunity of consumer's buying funds thus ultimately affecting their future wealth. Research design, data, and methodology - To attain our purpose, the 'factor-based portfolio strategy' has been considered. It is an alternative portfolio strategy, which composites the advantages of the passive management and active management. For our empirical anaylsis, we used global stock distribution market data over the period of 1991 and 2016. Then we constructed portfolios based on firm-size, firm-value, and momentum. Finally, a regression model was set, then hypotheses were tested, analyzing the performances. Results - First, among the 15 factor-based portfolios of global, Europe, Asia-Pacific(ex Japan), US and Japan, in eight portfolios, positive excess returns are observed at 5% significance level. Further, there is another portfolio with positive excess return at 10% significance level. Second, most of the portfolios with significant excess performance show positive relationship with the market portfolio. However, the firm-value based portfolio in Asia-Pacific region shows no relationship, and the firm-value based portfolio in US shows negative relationship. Third, we confirmed that the two firm-value factor portfolios in Asia-Pacific region and US, not having positive relationship with market portfolio, provide significant excess returns. Conclusions - In this paper, we provide empirical evidences supporting that the factor-based portfolios expand the diversity of funds and improve the efficiency of investment performance. However, there is no guarantee that the efficiency will continue in the future. In addition, various constraints and costs must be considered. Nevertheless, our novel findings in the advanced financial market such as US and Asia-Pacific are very interesting and offers important implications.

• Food Engineering Progress
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.99-104
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• 2009

Tofu has been playing an important role in people's daily diet in most of Asia and recently in North America due to several health-promoting functions, preventing and treating a number of chronic diseases such as cancer, coronary heart disease and osteoporosis. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of different levels of yakong incorporation (0, 5, 10, and 15%, w/w) in preparation of firm tofu. Quality parameters such as pH, titratable, moisture content, color, and consumer preference were determined, and their correlations were analysed. There were no significant differences in pH, titratable acidity, and moisture content due to different levels of yakong incorporation studied (p>0.05). A significant decrease in L$^{*}$ and b$^{*}$-values whereas significant increase in a$^{*}$-value was observed (p<0.05). Five percent yakong tofu received the most favorable mean scores with respect to color, texture, and overall acceptability. Correlation analysis revealed that yakong incorporation was well correlated with some of physicochemical properties as well as consumer preference.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.221-233
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• 2022

Purpose: This study investigates how the salespersons behave in coordinating the multiple communication channels during supplier integration (SI) for new product development (NPD), especially when their engineers directly collaborate with the buyer. Methods: This study conducted a qualitative study to explore the dynamics of the supplier's salespersons during SI for NPD. With the support of a consumer goods manufacturer (focal firm) in South Korea, we interviewed several managers, including purchasing and engineering, from the focal firm and salespersons from eight tier-1 suppliers of the focal firm. Results: The results found that the supplier's salespersons show two different behaviors toward managing and controlling the collaboration between their engineers and the buyer: (1) Process regulating behaviors that control the flows of information or communication between the engineers and the buyer, and (2) knowledge regulating behaviors that directly and indirectly support the engineers to be equipped with accurate and complete knowledge so that they can share the right knowledge with the buyer. Conclusion: This study contributes to academia and practitioners as follows. To academia, this study fill the gap in the literature by introducing the distinct behaviors of the supplier's salesperson in SI for NPD. To practitioner, in addition, our findings present coordination mechanisms to manage and control multiple communications within an inter-organizational collaboration.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.593-598
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• 2014

Brands play a critical role as a core asset and the primary driver for corporate growth because of their power of identity and influence on customers' perceptions in restaurant industry. However, in spite of diverse and dynamically changing recent brand portfolio strategies of restaurants, a study on the effect of brand diversification on financial performance has been rarely conducted in the restaurant industry context. Considering competing viewpoints regarding diversification's influence on financial performance, the purpose of this study is, therefore, to examine the effect of brand diversification on firm performance of restaurants. The results indicated that brand diversification is positive effect to profitability. Brand diversification seems to be attractive and might be a reasonable growth strategy to expand market power by satisfying diverse consumer needs. Therefore, restaurant managers should be consider in implementing brand diversification strategy especially in dynamically changing trend of brand diversification in the current restaurant industry.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.46-58
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• 2019

Purpose - This paper analyzes how Research and Development (R&D) cartelization and Research Joint Ventures (RJV) affect firms that engage in Cournot competition in their product market using a model in which the Home and Foreign firm produce differentiated products and export their total output to a third country's market. Design/Methodology - In a two-stage game, research expenditures incurred in the first stage improve product quality and are subject to various degrees of spillovers. We consider four different scenarios. Findings - In a symmetric equilibrium we observe the following: (i) an RJV that cooperates in R&D decision yields the highest R&D expenditure. However, the scenario which yields the lowest expenditure depends on the extent of differentiation between the goods and the degree of spillovers; (ii) RJV cartelization yields the highest product quality, output, and consumer surplus in the third country; however, the lowest is produced by R&D competition if spillovers are strong and by R&D cartelization if spillovers are weak; and (iii) each firm's profit is at its minimum in R&D competition and its maximum in RJV cartelization. Furthermore, if spillovers are strong, the profit of each firm in R&D cartelization is greater than that in RJV competition, and vice versa. Originality/value - By analyzing product innovation in international markets, we can find similarities and differences between process R&D and product R&D in international markets.

• Management Science and Financial Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.55-72
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• 2007

We consider the product differentiation model of online channel competition and examine the strategies of hybrid firms in terms of efficiency. After measuring the social cost of online business strategies, we show that (i) online channel of hybrid firm under blockaded entry may increase the social cost if the firms' delivery cost is sufficiently smaller than the consumer's transportation cost, and (ii) online competition under free entry may increase the social cost if the firms' delivery cost is sufficiently larger than the consumer's transportation cost. Finally, we discuss the strategic incentive of hybrid firms to reduce delivery cost and investigate the effect of the Internet maturity on the social cost.