• Fourth Industrial Review
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.23-29
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• 2021

Purpose - Faced with the great change of the 4th industrial revolution and the addition of the COVID-19 pandemic, great confusion and crises are occurring in the retail environment as well. The purpose of this study is to suggest the necessity of establishing a methodology for applying retail tech to offline distribution channels in crisis. Research design, data, and methodology - After examining the recent developments of representative fields to which retail technology is applied, it is rearranged through consideration through previous studies. Result - The retail industry must transform into digital commerce through digital transformation. According to the development of retail technology, the distribution industry is at a time of change from the stage of brokering product and service transactions to a structure that creates value based on information on production and consumption. The business model of the distribution industry must be converted to a platform business model in which both consumers and producers become users. Conclusion - In-depth analysis of the cases has not been conducted, and there are limitations in that the development is somewhat insufficient due to insufficient prior research data. However, it is meaningful to suggest the necessity of finding a methodology for applying retail technology to overcome the crisis of offline retailers through quantitative research on the retail technology area.

• The Journal of Natural Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.209-216
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• 1998

The results of the study of diving the 21st century's Korea fashion market into consumer market, fashion market, and a new marketing strategy are as follows. The 21st consumer market is First, a fashion democracy phenomenon. As many people try to leave unconditional fashion following, consumer show a phenomenon to choose and create their own fashion by subjective judgements. Second, a phenomenon of total fashion pursuit. Consumer in the future are likely to put their goals not in differentiating small item products, but considering various fashion elements based on their individuality and sense of value. Third, world quality-oriented. With the improvement of life level, it accomplishes to emphasize consumers' fashion mind on the world wide popular use of materials, quality, design and brand image. Fourth, with the entrance of neo-rationalism, consumers show increasing trends to emphasize wisdom, solidity in goods strategy pursuing high quality fashion and to demand resonable prices. Fifth, concept-oriented. Consumers are changing into pursuing concept appropriate to individual life scene. Prospecting the composition of the 21st century's fashion market, First, sportive casual zone will draw attention more than any other zone. This is because interest in sports will grow according to the increase of leisure time and the expasion of time and space in the 21st century, and also ecology will become the important issue of sports sense because of human beings's natural habit toward nature. Second, the down aging phenomenon will accelerate its speed as a big trend. Third, a retro phenomenon, a concept contrary to digital and high-tech, will become another big trend for its remake, antique, and classic concept in fashion market with ecology trend. New marketing strategy to cope with changing fashion market is as follows. First, with the trend of borderless concept, borders between apparels are becoming vague, for example, they offer custom-made products to consumers. Second, as more enterprises take the way of gorilla and guerrilla where guerrillas who aim at niche market show up will develop. Basically, they think highly of individual creative study, and pursue the scene adherence with high sensitiveness. However this polarization becomes mutually-supplementing relationship showing gorilla's guerilla movement, and guerilla's gorilla high-tech. Third with the development of value retailing, enterprises pursuing mass merchandising of groups called category killers are expanded and amplified to new product fields, and expand business' share. Fourth, using outsourcing, the trend to use exterior function leaving each enterprise's strength by inspecting its own work is gradually strong. Fifth, with the expansion of none store sale, the entrance of the internet and the CD-ROM sales added to communication sales such as catalogues are specified. An eminent American think tank expect that 5-5% of the total sale of clothes and home goods in 2010 will be done by none store sale. Accordingly, to overcome the problems, First international, global level marketing, Second, the improvement of technology, Third, knowledge-creating marketing are needed.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.209-237
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• 2012

1. Research Purpose Consumers rely on various clues to evaluate their decision to patronize a retail store, and store brand is one of them (Dodds 1991; Grewal et al. 1998). As consumers find ever increasing variety of contact points connecting them to specific store, the value of experiential shopping as a means of increasing store's brand equity warrants greater attention from scholars of retail management. Retail shopping values are credited for creating not only cognitive experiences like brand knowledge but also emotional experiences such as shopping pleasure and pride (Schmitt 1999). This may be because today's consumers place emphasis on emotional values associated with shopping pleasure, lifestyle brought to life, brand relationship, and store atmosphere more than utilitarian values such as product quality and price. Many previous literature found this to be true (Ahn and Lee 2011; Mathwick et al. 2001). This brings forth important research issues and questions regarding the roles of shopping experiential values and brand equity with regard to consumer's retail patronage choice. However, despite this importance, research on this area remains quite inadequate (Hwang 2010). For this reason, this study aims to verify the relationships among experiential shopping values, retail store brand equity and tries to link that with customer loyalty by surveying large-scale discount store shoppers in Korea and China. 2. Research Contents In order to carry out the research objective, this study conducted comprehensive literature survey on previous literature by discussing major findings and implications with regard to shopping values and retail brand equity and store loyalty. For data collection, researcher employed survey-based research method where data were collected in two major cities of Korea (Seoul) and China (Bejing) and sampling frame was based on patrons of large discount stores in both countries. Specific research questions raised in this study are as follows; RQ1: How do Korean and Chinese consumers differently perceive of shopping values regarding shopping at large-sclae discount stores? RQ2: Are there differences in consumers' emotional consumption propensities? RQ3: Do Korean and Chinese consumers display different perceptions of brand equity towards large-scale discount stores? RQ4: Are there differences in relationships between shopping values and brand equity for Korean and Chinese consumers? For statistical analysis, SPSS17.0, AMOS17.0 and SmartPLS were employed. 3. Research Results The data collected through face-to-face survey conducted in Seoul and Bejing revealed appropriate data validity and reliability as a result of exploratory/confirmatory factor analysis and reliability tests, andh SEM model yielding satisfactory model fitness. The result of the study may be summarized by three main points. First, as a result of testing differences in consumption dispositions, Chinese consumers showed higher scores in aesthetic and symbolic dispositions, whereas Korean consumers scored higher in hedonic disposition. Second, testing on perceptions toward brand equity of large discount stores showed that Korean consumers exhibited more positive perceptions of brand awareness and brand image than Chinese counterparts. Third, the result of exploratory factor analysis on the experiential shopping values revealed different factors for each country. On Korean side, consumer interest value, aesthetic value, and hedonic value were prominent, whereas on Chinese side, hedonic value, aesthetic value, consumer interest value, and service excellence value were found salient. 4. Research Implications While many previous studies on inter-country differences in retailing area mainly focused on cultural dispositions or orientations to explain the differences, this study sets itself apart by specifically targeting individual consumer's shopping values from an experiential viewpoint. The study result provides important theoretical as well as practical implications for large-scale discount store, especially the impotance of fully exploring the linkage between shopping values and brand equity, which has significant influence on loyalty. Therefore, the specific implications deriving from the result shed some important insights upon the consumption values based on shopping experiences and brand equity. The differences found in store shoppers between the two countries may also provide useful insights for Korean and Chinese retailers who plan to expand their operations globally. Related strategic implications derived from this study is the importance of localizing retail strategy which is based on the differences found in experiential shopping values between the two country groups. Especially the finding that Chinese consumers value consumer interest and service excellence, whereas Koreans place importance on hedonic or aesthetic values indicates the need to differentiate the consumer's psychographical profiles when it comes to expanding retail operations globally. Particularly important will be to pursue price-orienated strategy in China in consideration of the high emphasis on consumer interests and service excellence, but to emphasize the symbolic aspects of brand equity in Korea by maximizing the brand equity associated with aesthetic values and hedonic orientations. 5. Recommendations This study focused on generic retail branded discount stores in both countries, thus making it difficult to tease out store-specific strategies based on specific retail brands. Future studies may benefit fro employing actual brand names in survey questionnaire to verify relationship between shopping values and brand-based store strategy. As with other studies of this nature, this study needs to strengthen the result's generalizability by selecting respondents from a wider spectrum of respondents.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.103-119
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• 2008

Traditional market which is characterized by the folksy retailing market has lost its competitiveness rapidly due to the emergence of the Internet and the change of customer's purchasing behavior. The recession of the traditional market contracts the regional economy. We suggest a u-Market, a traditional market with ubiquitous computing capability, to revitalize traditional market. The suggested u-Market system applies ubiquitous computing technologies characterized by communications between customers and objects without limitations of time and location. The proposed u-Market system offers location information and specific contents of traditional market to customers. Furthermore, u-Market system recommends the store and product list that customers are likely to visit and purchase based on their contexts, so they can save their time and effort to search the products or contents.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.783-795
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• 2014

This study investigates how the physical attractiveness of salespeople and other customers and self-image congruence influence customer perception and brand attitude. As a result of a pretest, four types of pictorial stimuli were developed: physical attractiveness of salespeople (high/low) ${\times}$ that of other customers (high/low). Stimuli were developed using Photoshop CS. A total of 550 samples in two experiments were used and all respondents were women in their 20s and 30s. Data were analyzed using ANOVA and SEM. The result of analysis shows that the physical attractiveness of salesperson had a significant impact on perceived quality, but that of other customers did not. However, self-image congruence with other customers shows a significant effect on perceived quality; however, salespeople did not. The impact of the perceived product quality on brand attitude is higher than perceived service quality. This study adds to fashion retailing literature by demonstrating that physical attractiveness and self-image congruence can influence a customers' perception of product or service quality and brand attitude. It provides interesting insight into how retailers can use social factors as a strategic tool in a retail setting.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.83-90
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• 2016

Purpose - During the last two years, convenient stores (CS) are emerging as one of the most fast-growing retail trades in Korea. The goal of this work is to forecast and to analyze sales at CS using ARIMA-Intervention model (IM) and exponential smoothing method (ESM), together with sales at supermarkets in South Korea. Considering that two retail trades above are homogeneous and comparable in size and purchasing items on off-line distribution channel, individual behavior and characteristic can be detected and also relative superiority of future growth can be forecasted. In particular, the rapid growth of sales at CS is regarded as an everlasting external event, or step intervention, so that IM with season variation can be examined. At the same time, Winters ESM can be investigated as an alternative to seasonal ARIMA-IM, on the assumption that the underlying series shows exponentially decreasing weights over time. In case of sales at supermarkets, the marked intervention could not be found over the underlying periods, so that only Winters ESM is considered. Research Design, Data, and Methodology - The dataset of this research is obtained from Korean Statistical Information Service (1/2010~7/2016) and Survey of Service Trend of Korea Statistics Administration. This work is exploited time series analyses such as IM, ESM and model-fitting statistics by using TSPLOT, TSMODEL, EXSMOOTH, ARIMA and MODELFIT procedures in SPSS 23.0. Results - By applying seasonal ARIMA-Intervention model to sales at CS, the steep and persisting increase can be expected over the next one year. On the other hand, we expect the rate of sales growth of supermarkets to be lagging and tied up constantly in the next 2016 year. Conclusions - Based on 2017 one-year sales forecasts for CS and supermarkets, we can yield the useful information for the development of CS and also for all retail trades. Future study is needed to analyze sales of popular items individually such as tobacco, banana milk, soju and so on and to get segmented results. Furthermore, we can expand sales forecasts to other retail trades such as department stores, hypermarkets, non-store retailing, so that comprehensive diagnostics can be delivered in the future.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.23-35
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• 2009

A hypermarket as the one of the most globally standardized retailing format is also the type of store among various types of stores that the most active in expanding into other foreign markets. Recently, as several Korean retailing companies start to penetrate into Chinese market they differentiate themselves with modern facilities and customers service oriented high-end concept. China and Korea as Far East Asian countries share many common values, however precise and careful analysis should be carried out since there may also be critical differences in socio-economic aspects as well as in consumption patterns due to the level of development stages of retail industry among two countries. Even though precise and careful study is crucial on Chinese retailing market and consumers, none of researches and studies on 'how the quality of service dimensional structure is different between Korea and China', and 'what will be the most important and influential service dimensional factors for Chinese consuers compared to the hypermarkets customers in Korea' in order to improve the level of Chinese consumers satisfaction' have been fulfilled At this point of view, this study uses KD-SQS (Rho Eun Jung & Sir Yong Gu, 2008) which is a measure of Korean hypermarkets service quality to set up a hypothesis on Korean and Chinese consumers, and an empirical analysis is conducted. We try to get the answers about how the comparative importance of Service quality dimensions which decides the level of customer satisfaction is different depending on the cultural dimensions and socio-economic factors among two countries, Korea and China. Based upon the results, we try to give a valuable suggestion of what service dimensional factors should be reinforced to improve the level of CS in Chinese retailing market. Hypotheses for this study are as follows : H1. Each dimension of Service Quality significantly affects the level of CS H2. The effect of 'Basic Benefit' in service quality dimensions on the level of CS is greater in China than in Korea H3. The effect of 'Promotion' in service quality dimensions on the level of CS is greater in China than in Korea H4. The effect of 'Physical Aspects'in service quality dimensions on the level of CS is greater in Korea than in China. H5. The effect of 'Personal Interaction' in service quality dimensions on the level of CS is greater in China than in Korea H6. The effect of 'Policy' in service quality dimensions on the level of CS will be greater in Korean than in China H7. The effect of additional convenience in service quality dimensions on the level of CS will be greater in Korean than in China. More than 1,100 data were collected directly from the surveys of Chinese and Korean consumers in order to verify the hypotheses above. In Korea, stores which have floor space of over $9,000m^2$and opened later than year 2000 were selected for the samples, and thus Gayang, Wolgye, Sangbong, Eunpyeong, Suh-Suwon, Gojan stores and their customers were surveyed. In China, notable differences in the income levels and consumer behaviors between cities and regions were considered, and thus the research area was limited to the stores only in Shanghai. 6 stores which have the size of over $6,000m^2$ and opened later than 2000, such as Ruihong, Intu, Mudanjang, Sanrin, Raosimon, and Ranchao stores were selected for the survey. SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 7.0 were used as statistical tools, and exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and multi-group analysis were conducted. In order to carry out a multi group analysis that decides whether the structure variables which shows the different effects of 6 service dimensions in Korean and Chinese groups is statistically valid, configural invariance, metric invariance, and structural invariance are tested in order. At the results of the tests, 3 out of 7 hypotheses were supported and other 4 hypotheses were denied. According to the study, 4 dimensions (Basic Benefit, Physical Environment, Policy, and additional convenience) were positively correlated with CS in Korea, and 3 dimensions (i.e. basic benefit, policy, additional convenience) were significant in China. However, the significance of the service-dimensions was turned out to be partially different in Korea and China. The Basic Benefit is more influential in deciding the level of CS in china than Korea, however Physical Aspect is more important factor in Korea. 'Policy dimension' did not make significant difference between two countries. In the 'additional convenience dimension', the differences in 'socio-economic factors' than in'cultural background' were considered as more important in Chinese consumers than Korean. Overall, the improvement of Service quality will be crucial factors to increase the level of CS in Chinese market same as Korean market. In addition, more emphases need to be placed on the service qualities of 'Basic Benefit' and 'additional convenience' dimensions in China. In particular, 'low price' and 'product diversity' that constitute 'Basic Benefit' are proved to be comparatively disadvantageous and weak points of Korean companies compared to global players, and thus the prompt strengthening those dimensions would be urgent for Korean retailers. Moreover, additional conveniences such as various tenants and complex service and entertaining area will be more important in China than in Korea. Besides, Applying advanced Korean Hypermaret`s customer policy to Chinese consumers will help to get higher reliability and to differentiate themselves to other competitors. However, as personal interaction, physical aspect, promotions were proved as not significant for the level of CS in China, Korean companies need to reconsider the priority order of resource allocations when they tap into Chinese market.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.113-132
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• 2007

Price rigidity involves prices that do not change with the regularity predicted by standard economic theory. It is of long-standing interest for firms, industries and the economy as a whole. However, due to the difficulty of measuring price rigidity and price adjustments directly, only a few studies have attempted to provide empirical evidence for explanatory theories from Economics and Marketing. This paper proposes and validates a research model to examine different theories of price rigidity and to predict what variables can explain the observed empirical regularities and variations in price adjustment patterns of Internet-based retailers. I specify and test a model using more than 3 million daily observations on 385 books, 118 DVDs and 154 CDs, sold by 22 Internet-based retailers that were collected over a 676-day period from March 2003 to February 2005. I obtained a number of interesting findings from the estimation of our logit model. First, quality seems to play a role-I find that both price levels as proxies for store quality, and information on the quality of a product consumers have, affect online price rigidity. Second, greater competition(i.e., less industry concentration) leads to less price rigidity(i.e., more price changes) on the Internet. I also find that Internet-based sellers more frequently change the prices of popular products, and the sellers with broader product coverage change prices less frequently, which seem due to economic forces faced by these Internet-based sellers. To the best of my knowledge, this research is the first to empirically assess price rigidity patterns for multiple industries in Internet-based retailing, and attempt to explain the variation in these patterns. I found that price changes are more likely to be driven by quality, competitive and economic considerations. These results speak to both the IS and economics literatures. To the IS literature these results suggest we take economic considerations into account in more sophisticated ways. The existence and variation in price rigidity argue that simplistic assumptions about frictionless and completely flexible digital prices do not capture the richness of pricing behavior on the Internet. The quality, competitive and economic forces identified in this model suggest promising directions for future theoretical and empirical work on their role in these technologically changing markets. To the economics literature these results offer new evidence on the sources of price rigidity, which can then be incorporated into the development of models of pricing at the firm, industry and even macro-economic level of analysis. It also suggests that there is much to be learned through interdisciplinary research between the IS, economics and related business disciplines.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.97-109
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• 2011

As a marketing vehicle to survive in intensified retailing competition, retailer brand development has been adopted by retailers in Korea. As evidence, the retailer brand share of a major retailer, Tesco Korea, has grown from 20% in 2007 to 22.8% in the first half of 2008. It means that retailers have provided more and more retailer brand foods for customers. With the growing accessibility to retailer brand foods, it would be expected that the number of retailer brand food claims will increase. Customers have increasingly exposed to a variety of marketing activities conducted by retailers. When buying the retailer brand foods, customers tend to be affected by marketing activities of retailers. Despite the fact that customers trust retailers and then, buy their brand foods, in case of food accidents caused by production process, customers have to seek compensation from a retailer brand supplier. Of course, a retailer tends to shift its responsibility to its suppliers. Accordingly, it is not easy for customers to solve food claims. The research, therefore, aims at exploring the relationship between the buying-decision processes of retailer brand customers and which side takes legal responsibility for food claims. To effectively achieve the research aim, the author adopted a quantitative and a qualitative research technique, in order to supplement the disadvantages of each method. Before field research, based on the developed research model, the author pre-tested questionnaire with 10 samples, amended, and handed out to 400 samples. Amongst them, 316 questionnaires are available. For a focus group interview, 9 participants were recruited, who are students, housewives, and full-time workers, aged from 20s to 40s. Through the focus group interview as well as the questionnaire results, it was found that most customers were influenced by a retailer or store image in a customer's mind, retailer reputation and promotional activities. Surprisingly, customers think that the name of a retailer is a more important factor than who produces retailer brand foods, even though many customers check a retailer brand supplier, when making a buying-decision. Rather than retailer brand suppliers, customers trust retailers. That is why they purchase retailer brands. Nevertheless, production-related food claims is not involved with retailers. In fact, it would be difficult for customers to distinguish whether a food claim is related to selling or manufacturing processes. Based on research results, from a customer perspective, the research suggests that the government should require retailers to take the whole responsibility for retailer brand food claims, preventing retailers from passing the buck to retailer brand suppliers. In case of food claims, in order for customers to easily get the compensation, it is necessary to reconsider the current system. If so, retailers have to fully get involved in retailer brand production stage, and further, the customer awareness of retailer brands will be improved than ever before. Retailers cannot help taking care of the whole processes of retailer brand development, because of responsibility. As a result, the process to seek compensation for food claims might become easier, and further, the protection of customer right might be improved.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.7 no.8
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• pp.245-254
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to analyse the effects of salesperson's lifestyle, selling behaviors on strategic management of salesperson. So this study not only examines differences in the salesperson's lifestyle, selling behaviors and job satisfaction but also analyses the impact of salespersons' lifestyle and selling behaviors on job satisfaction. The results of this study are summarized as follows. First, the result of analyzing differences in the lifestyle according to the characteristics of sex, age, academic background income is no significant difference. Second, the result of analyzing differences in the selling behavior according to the characteristics of sex and marriage is significant difference. Third, the result of analyzing differences in the job satisfaction according to the characteristics of store type is significant difference. Salesperson working at the exclusive agencies is most high job satisfaction. According to the result of examining the relationship between salespersons' lifestyle and the selling behaviors, job-oriented lifestyle has positive effects on the customer orientation and hospitality orientation. Finally salespersons' job satisfaction is positively affected by the job-oriented lifestyle and hospitality-orientation selling behavior.