• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.59-73
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• 2022

Untact marketing is being activated due to COVID-19. As a result, live commerce, an untact seller, is also active in the e-commerce market. Therefore, in this study, we tried to find out what factors influence consumers when they purchase through live commerce. In particular, since consumers' trust and flow in live commerce platforms and products is important, their mediating effects were analyzed. The research model was established by deriving common variables among the characteristics of live commerce based on previous studies. An online survey was conducted for empirical analysis. 200 users who made at least one purchase in live commerce were analyzed. The study results are as follows. Among the characteristics of live commerce, entertainment, economics, professionality were found to have a positive (+) effect on purchase intention. On the other hand, ease of use did not significantly affect purchase intention. The influence was shown in the order of entertainment, professionality and economics. The mediating effect of trust was found to play a mediating role in that entertainment, economics, and professionality affect purchase intention. On the other hand, a significant mediating effect was not tested between ease of use and purchase intention. As for the mediating effect of flow, it was found that flow plays a mediating role in that entertainment and economics affect purchase intention. On the other hand, the mediating effect of flow in terms of ease of use and economics affecting purchase intention was not tested. As for the multiple mediating effect of flow and trust, the mediating effect of flow was stronger than the mediating effect of trust when entertainment had an effect on purchase intention. In terms of professionality affecting purchase intention, the mediating effect of flow was also stronger than the mediating effect of trust. On the other hand, it was analyzed that only trust had a mediating effect when economics had an effect on purchase intention. The results of this study empirically tested that entertainment, which is a fun and interesting factor of live commerce content, is the most important factor when consumers use live commerce. In addition, various results were derived, such as cases where trust and flow act as mediators at the same time or not at all. Practical implications can be found in that it provided a clue about what to prioritize in order to reach consumers for live commerce platform.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-24
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• 2012

Nowadays, customer satisfaction has been one of company's major objectives, and the index to measure and communicate customer satisfaction has been generally accepted among business practices. The major issues of CSI(customer satisfaction index) are three questions, as follows: (a)what level of customer satisfaction is tolerable, (b)whether customer satisfaction and company performance has positive causality, and (c)what to do to improve customer satisfaction. Among these, the second issue is recently attracting academic research in several perspectives. On this study, the second issue will be addressed. Many researchers including Anderson have regarded customer satisfaction as core competencies, such as brand equity, customer equity. They want to verify following causality "customer satisfaction → market performance(market share, sales growth rate) → financial performance(operating margin, profitability) → corporate value performance(stock price, credit ratings)" based on the process model of marketing performance. On the other hand, Insoo Jeon and Aeju Jeong(2009) verified sequential causality based on the process model by the domestic data. According to the rejection of several hypotheses, they suggested the balance model of marketing performance as an alternative. The objective of this study, based on the existing process model, is to examine the causal relationship between customer satisfaction and corporate value performance. Anderson and Mansi(2009) proved the relationship between ACSI(American Customer Satisfaction Index) and credit ratings using 2,574 samples from 1994 to 2004 on the assumption that credit rating could be an indicator of a corporate value performance. The similar study(Sangwoon Yoon, 2010) was processed in Korean data, but it didn't confirm the relationship between KCSI(Korean CSI) and credit ratings, unlike the results of Anderson and Mansi(2009). The summary of these studies is in the Table 1. Two studies analyzing the relationship between customer satisfaction and credit ratings weren't consistent results. So, in this study we are to test the conflicting results of the relationship between customer satisfaction and credit ratings based on the research model considering Korean credit ratings. To prove the hypothesis, we suggest the research model as follows. Two important features of this model are the inclusion of important variables in the existing Korean credit rating system and government support. To control their influences on credit ratings, we included three important variables of Korean credit rating system and government support, in case of financial institutions including banks. ROA, ER, TA, these three variables are chosen among various kinds of financial indicators since they are the most frequent variables in many previous studies. The results of the research model are relatively favorable : R², F-value and p-value is .631, 233.15 and .000 respectively. Thus, the explanatory power of the research model as a whole is good and the model is statistically significant. The research model has good explanatory power, the regression coefficients of the KCSI is .096 as positive(+) and t-value and p-value is 2.220 and .0135 respectively. As a results, we can say the hypothesis is supported. Meanwhile, all other explanatory variables including ROA, ER, log(TA), GS_DV are identified as significant and each variables has a positive(+) relationship with CRS. In particular, the t-value of log(TA) is 23.557 and log(TA) as an explanatory variables of the corporate credit ratings shows very high level of statistical significance. Considering interrelationship between financial indicators such as ROA, ER which include total asset in their formula, we can expect multicollinearity problem. But indicators like VIF and tolerance limits that shows whether multicollinearity exists or not, say that there is no statistically significant multicollinearity in all the explanatory variables. KCSI, the main subject of this study, is a statistically significant level even though the standardized regression coefficients and t-value of KCSI is .055 and 2.220 respectively and a relatively low level among explanatory variables. Considering that we chose other explanatory variables based on the level of explanatory power out of many indicators in the previous studies, KCSI is validated as one of the most significant explanatory variables for credit rating score. And this result can provide new insights on the determinants of credit ratings. However, KCSI has relatively lower impact than main financial indicators like log(TA), ER. Therefore, KCSI is one of the determinants of credit ratings, but don't have an exceedingly significant influence. In addition, this study found that customer satisfaction had more meaningful impact on corporations of small asset size than those of big asset size, and on service companies than manufacturers. The findings of this study is consistent with Anderson and Mansi(2009), but different from Sangwoon Yoon(2010). Although research model of this study is a bit different from Anderson and Mansi(2009), we can conclude that customer satisfaction has a significant influence on company's credit ratings either Korea or the United State. In addition, this paper found that customer satisfaction had more meaningful impact on corporations of small asset size than those of big asset size and on service companies than manufacturers. Until now there are a few of researches about the relationship between customer satisfaction and various business performance, some of which were supported, some weren't. The contribution of this study is that credit rating is applied as a corporate value performance in addition to stock price. It is somewhat important, because credit ratings determine the cost of debt. But so far it doesn't get attention of marketing researches. Based on this study, we can say that customer satisfaction is partially related to all indicators of corporate business performances. Practical meanings for customer satisfaction department are that it needs to actively invest in the customer satisfaction, because active investment also contributes to higher credit ratings and other business performances. A suggestion for credit evaluators is that they need to design new credit rating model which reflect qualitative customer satisfaction as well as existing variables like ROA, ER, TA.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.95-108
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• 2017

Recently, AlphaGo which is Bakuk (Go) artificial intelligence program by Google DeepMind, had a huge victory against Lee Sedol. Many people thought that machines would not be able to win a man in Go games because the number of paths to make a one move is more than the number of atoms in the universe unlike chess, but the result was the opposite to what people predicted. After the match, artificial intelligence technology was focused as a core technology of the fourth industrial revolution and attracted attentions from various application domains. Especially, deep learning technique have been attracted as a core artificial intelligence technology used in the AlphaGo algorithm. The deep learning technique is already being applied to many problems. Especially, it shows good performance in image recognition field. In addition, it shows good performance in high dimensional data area such as voice, image and natural language, which was difficult to get good performance using existing machine learning techniques. However, in contrast, it is difficult to find deep leaning researches on traditional business data and structured data analysis. In this study, we tried to find out whether the deep learning techniques have been studied so far can be used not only for the recognition of high dimensional data but also for the binary classification problem of traditional business data analysis such as customer churn analysis, marketing response prediction, and default prediction. And we compare the performance of the deep learning techniques with that of traditional artificial neural network models. The experimental data in the paper is the telemarketing response data of a bank in Portugal. It has input variables such as age, occupation, loan status, and the number of previous telemarketing and has a binary target variable that records whether the customer intends to open an account or not. In this study, to evaluate the possibility of utilization of deep learning algorithms and techniques in binary classification problem, we compared the performance of various models using CNN, LSTM algorithm and dropout, which are widely used algorithms and techniques in deep learning, with that of MLP models which is a traditional artificial neural network model. However, since all the network design alternatives can not be tested due to the nature of the artificial neural network, the experiment was conducted based on restricted settings on the number of hidden layers, the number of neurons in the hidden layer, the number of output data (filters), and the application conditions of the dropout technique. The F1 Score was used to evaluate the performance of models to show how well the models work to classify the interesting class instead of the overall accuracy. The detail methods for applying each deep learning technique in the experiment is as follows. The CNN algorithm is a method that reads adjacent values from a specific value and recognizes the features, but it does not matter how close the distance of each business data field is because each field is usually independent. In this experiment, we set the filter size of the CNN algorithm as the number of fields to learn the whole characteristics of the data at once, and added a hidden layer to make decision based on the additional features. For the model having two LSTM layers, the input direction of the second layer is put in reversed position with first layer in order to reduce the influence from the position of each field. In the case of the dropout technique, we set the neurons to disappear with a probability of 0.5 for each hidden layer. The experimental results show that the predicted model with the highest F1 score was the CNN model using the dropout technique, and the next best model was the MLP model with two hidden layers using the dropout technique. In this study, we were able to get some findings as the experiment had proceeded. First, models using dropout techniques have a slightly more conservative prediction than those without dropout techniques, and it generally shows better performance in classification. Second, CNN models show better classification performance than MLP models. This is interesting because it has shown good performance in binary classification problems which it rarely have been applied to, as well as in the fields where it's effectiveness has been proven. Third, the LSTM algorithm seems to be unsuitable for binary classification problems because the training time is too long compared to the performance improvement. From these results, we can confirm that some of the deep learning algorithms can be applied to solve business binary classification problems.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.29-62
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• 2012

As distribution environment is changing rapidly and competition is more intensive in the channel of distribution, the importance of retailer image and retailer equity is increasing as a different competitive advantages. Also, consumers are not functionally oriented and that their behavior is significantly affected by the symbols such as retailer image which identify retailer in the market place. That is, consumers do not choose products or retailers for their material utilities but consume the symbolic meaning of those products or retailers as expressed in their self images. The concept of self-image congruence has been utilized by marketers and researchers as an aid in better understanding how consumers identify themselves with the brands they buy and the retailer they patronize. Although self-image congruity theory has been tested across many product categories, the theory has not been tested extensively in the retailing. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impact of self image congruence between retailer image and self image of consumer on retailer equity such as retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty. The purpose of this study is to find out whether retailer-self image congruence can be a new antecedent of retailer equity. In addition, this study tries to examine how four-dimensional retailer equity constructs (retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty) affect customers' repatronage intention. For this study, data were gathered by survey and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The sample size in the present study was 254. The reliability of the all seven dimensions was estimated with Cronbach's alpha, composite reliability values and average variance extracted values. We determined whether the measurement model supports the convergent validity and discriminant validity by Exploratory factor analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. For each pair of constructs, the square root of the average variance extracted values exceeded their correlations, thus supporting the discriminant validity of the constructs. Hypotheses were tested using the AMOS 18.0. As expected, the image congruence hypotheses were supported. The greater the degree of congruence between retailer image and self-image, the more favorable were consumers' retailer evaluations. The all two retailer-self image congruence (actual self-image congruence and ideal self-image congruence) affected customer based retailer equity. This result means that retailer-self image congruence is important cue for customers to estimate retailer equity. In other words, consumers are often more likely to prefer products and retail stores that have images similar to their own self-image. Especially, it appeared that effect for the ideal self-image congruence was consistently larger than the actual self-image congruence on the retailer equity. The results mean that consumers prefer or search for stores that have images compatible with consumer's perception of ideal-self. In addition, this study revealed that customers' estimations toward customer based retailer equity affected the repatronage intention. The results showed that all four dimensions (retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty) had positive effect on the repatronage intention. That is, management and investment to improve image congruence between retailer and consumers' self make customers' positive evaluation of retailer equity, and then the positive customer based retailer equity can enhance the repatonage intention. And to conclude, retailer's image management is an important part of successful retailer performance management, and the retailer-self image congruence is an important antecedent of retailer equity. Therefore, it is more important to develop and improve retailer's image similar to consumers' image. Given the pressure to provide increased image congruence, it is not surprising that retailers have made significant investments in enhancing the fit between retailer image and self image of consumer. The enhancing such self-image congruence may allow marketers to target customers who may be influenced by image appeals in advertising.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.147-187
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• 2008

Online game researchers focus on the flow and factors influencing flow. Flow is conceptualized as an optimal experience state and useful explaining game experience in online. Many game studies focused on the customer loyalty and flow in playing online game, In showing specific game experience, however, it doesn't examine multidimensional experience process. Flow is not construct which show absorbing process, but construct which show absorbing result. Hence, Flow is not adequate to examine multidimensional experience of games. Online game is included in hedonic consumption. Hedonic consumption is a relatively new field of study in consumer research and it explores the consumption experience as a experiential view(Hirschman and Holbrook 1982). Hedonic consumption explores the consumption experience not as an information processing event but from a phenomenological of experiential view, which is a primarily subjective state. It includes various playful leisure activities, sensory pleasures, daydreams, esthetic enjoyment, and emotional responses. In online game experience, therefore, it is right to access through a experiential view of hedonic consumption. The objective of this paper was to make up for lacks in our understanding of online game experience by developing a framework for better insight into the hedonic experience of online game. We developed this framework by integrating and extending existing research in marketing, online game and hedonic responses. We then discussed several expectations for this framework. We concluded by discussing the results of this study, providing general recommendation and directions for future research. In hedonic response research, Lacher's research(1994)and Jongho lee and Yunhee Jung' research (2005;2006) has served as a fundamental starting point of our research. A common element in this extended research is the repeated identification of the four hedonic responses: sensory response, imaginal response, emotional response, analytic response. The validity of these four constructs finds in research of music(Lacher 1994) and movie(Jongho lee and Yunhee Jung' research 2005;2006). But, previous research on hedonic response didn't show that constructs of hedonic response have cause-effect relation. Also, although hedonic response enable to different by stimulus properties. effects of stimulus properties is not showed. To fill this gap, while largely based on Lacher(1994)' research and Jongho Lee and Yunhee Jung(2005, 2006)' research, we made several important adaptation with the primary goal of bringing the model into online game and compensating lacks of previous research. We maintained the same construct proposed by Lacher et al.(1994), with four constructs of hedonic response:sensory response, imaginal response, emotional response, analytical response. In this study, the sensory response is typified by some physical movement(Yingling 1962), the imaginal response is typified by images, memories, or situations that game evokes(Myers 1914), and the emotional response represents the feelings one experiences when playing game, such as pleasure, arousal, dominance, finally, the analytical response is that game player engaged in cognition seeking while playing game(Myers 1912). However, this paper has several important differences. We attempted to suggest multi-dimensional experience process in online game and cause-effect relation among hedonic responses. Also, We investigated moderate effects of perceived complexity. Previous studies about hedonic responses didn't show influences of stimulus properties. According to Berlyne's theory(1960, 1974) of aesthetic response, perceived complexity is a important construct because it effects pleasure. Pleasure in response to an object will increase with increased complexity, to an optimal level. After that, with increased complexity, pleasure begins with a linearly increasing line for complexity. Therefore, We expected this perceived complexity will influence hedonic response in game experience. We discussed the rationale for these suggested changes, the assumptions of the resulting framework, and developed some expectations based on its application in Online game context. In the first stage of methodology, questions were developed to measure the constructs. We constructed a survey measuring our theoretical constructs based on a combination of sources, including Yingling(1962), Hargreaves(1962), Lacher (1994), Jongho Lee and Yunhee Jung(2005, 2006), Mehrabian and Russell(1974), Pucely et al(1987). Based on comments received in the pretest, we made several revisions to arrive at our final survey. We investigated the proposed framework through a convenience sample, where participation in a self-report survey was solicited from various respondents having different knowledges. All respondents participated to different degrees, in these habitually practiced activities and received no compensation for their participation. Questionnaires were distributed to graduates and we used 381 completed questionnaires to analysis. The sample consisted of more men(n=225) than women(n=156). In measure, the study used multi-item scales based previous study. We analyze the data using structural equation modeling(LISREL-VIII; Joreskog and Sorbom 1993). First, we used the entire sample(n=381) to refine the measures and test their convergent and discriminant validity. The evidence from both the factor analysis and the analysis of reliability provides support that the scales exhibit internal consistency and construct validity. Second, we test the hypothesized structural model. And, we divided the sample into two different complexity group and analyze the hypothesized structural model of each group. The analysis suggest that hedonic response plays different roles from hypothesized in our study. The results indicate that hedonic response-sensory response, imaginal response, emotional response, analytical response- are related positively to respondents' level of game satisfaction. And game satisfaction is related to higher levels of game loyalty. Additionally, we found that perceived complexity is important to online game experience. Our results suggest that importance of each hedonic response different by perceived game complexity. Understanding the role of perceived complexity in hedonic response enables to have a better understanding of underlying mechanisms at game experience. If game has high complexity, analytical response become important response. So game producers or marketers have to consider more cognitive stimulus. Controversy, if game has low complexity, sensorial response respectively become important. Finally, we discussed several limitations of our study and suggested directions for future research. we concluded with a discussion of managerial implications. Our study provides managers with a basis for game strategies.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.55-78
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• 2011

Recently strategic alliance between business firms has become prevalent to overcome increasing competitive threats and to supplement resource limitation of individual firms. As one of allianced sales promotion activities, a new type of discount program, so called "Alliance Card Discount", is introduced with the partnership of credit cards and loyalty cards. The program mainly pursues short-term sales growth by larger discount scheme while spends less through cost share among alliance partners. Thus this program can be regarded as cost efficient discount promotion. But because there is no solid evidence that it can really deliver profitable sales growth, an empirical study for its effects on sales and profit should be conducted. This study has two basic research questions concerning the effects of allianced discount program ; 1)the possibility of sales increase 2) the profitability of the discount driven sales. In F&B industry, sales increase mainly comes from increased guest count. Especially in family restaurants, to increase the number of guests we need to enlarge the size of visitor group (number of visitors for one group) because customers visit by group in a special occasion. And because they pay the bill by group(table), the increase of sales per table is a key measure for sales improvement. The past researches for price & discount sensitivity and reference discount rate explain that price sensitive consumers have narrow reference discount zone and make rational purchase decision. Differently from all time discount scheme of regular sales promotions, the alliance card discount program only provides the right to get discount like discount coupon. And because it is usually once a month opportunity given by the past month usage level, customers tend to perceive alliance card discount as a rare chance to get. So that we can expect customers try to maximize the discount effect when they use the limited discount opportunity. Considering group visiting practice and low visit frequency of family restaurants, the way to maximize discount effect should be the increase the size of visit group. And their sensitivity to discount and rational consumption behavior defer the additional spending for ordering high price menu, even though they get considerable amount of savings from the discount. From the analysis of sales data paid by alliance discount cards for four months, we found the below. 1) The relation between discount rate and number of guest per table is positive : 25% discount results one additional guest 2) The relation between discount rate and the spending per guest is negative. 3) However, total profit amount per table is increased when discount rate is increased. 4) Reward point accumulation & redemption did not show any significant relationship with the increase of number of guests. These results suggest that the allianced discount program substantially contributes to sales increase and profit improvement by increasing the number of guests per table. Though the spending per guest is decreased by discount rate increase, the total amount of profit per table is improved. It seems the incremental profit by increased guest count offsets the profit decrease. Additional intriguing finding is the point reward system does not have any significant impact on the increase of number of guest, even if the point accumulation & redemption of loyalty program are usually regarded as another saving offers by customers. In sum, because it is proved that allianced discount program with credit cards and loyalty cards is effective to both sales drive and profit increase, the alliance card program could be recommended as strategically buyable program.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.383-393
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• 2017

This study was conducted to analyze the dietary lifestyle of local Chinese consumers and to classify dietary characteristics according to their dietary lifestyle factors and dietary behaviors. This investigation was conducted for 1 month from 1 January 2017 targeting 300 adult males and females living in China using the online survey company surveymonkey. Four factors relating to dietary lifestyle were identified, gourmet factor, healthy factor, convenience factor and economic factor, and these were grouped into 4 clusters according to their dietary lifestyle factor scores. Group 1, the gourmet economy group, showed a high percentage of living alone and a high frequency of eating out, but a relatively low percentage of three regular meals per day. Their dietary lifestyle was sensitive to gourmet factors and economic factors, but less sensitive to health and convenience factors. Group 2, the wide interest group, contained a high percentage of individuals in their 30s, as well as more highly educated individuals and a higher income than other groups. Because their dietary lifestyle scores tended to be higher than those of other groups, they sought a variety of new foods and gourmet meals for enjoyment of dining and life, as well as well-being food materials and foods related to health. Group 3, the health economic group, constituted a family-type consumer group with lower income level than the other groups. Members of this group were seeking health food and natural food in their dietary lifestyle and tended to pursue a high economic profit ratio when purchasing food. Finally, group 4 showed a relatively higher percentage of women over 30 and individuals with a college level or higher education than the other groups. This group was more interested in health and taste than price and convenience, and showed the highest LOHAS orientation among middle aged Chinese women. Moreover, members of this group directly utilized their knowledge regarding nutrition in real life.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.28 no.12 s.138
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• pp.1596-1604
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• 2004

Quality Function Deployment(QFD) is a product development tool which ensures that the voice of the customer needs is heard and translated into products. To develop a sensible brassiere for middle-aged women QFD was adopted. In this study the applicability and usefulness of QFD was examined through the engineering design process for a sensible brassiere for middle-aged women. The customer needs for the wear comfort of brassiere was made by one-on-one survey of 100 women who aged 30-40. The customer competitive assessment was generated by wearing tests of 10 commercial brassieres. The subjective assessment was conducted in the enviornmental chamber that was controlled at $28{\pm}1^{\circ}C,\;65{\pm}3\%RH.$ As a results, we developed twenty-one customer needs and corresponding HOWs for the wear comfort of brassiere. The Customer Competitive Assessment was generated by wearing tests of commercial brassiere. The subjective measurement scale and dimension for the evaluation of sensible brassiere were extracted from factor analysis. Four factors were fitting, aesthetic property, pressure sensation, displacement of brassiere due to movement. The most critical design parameter was wire-related property and second one was stretchability of main material of brassiere. Also, wearing comfort of brassiere was affected by the interaction of initial stretchability of wing and support of strap. Engineering design process, QFD was applicable to the development of technical and aesthetic brassieres.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.33
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• pp.293-315
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• 2013

The number of French movies imported to and released in S. Korea is constantly increasing. All French movies released in Korean theatres, however, are not a great success. For the domestic film market and audiences, the idea French cinema is generally equivalent to 'diversity cinema' or 'arthouse films' is common notion. In this respect, French movies introduced throughout the country would be culture product into which one can read other cultural significances different from that of domestic cinema, and also serve significant cultural value to understand diversity in cinema, for domestic audiences. However, it could be said that French movies, in common with Hollywood films, obey rules in the film industry and needs for audience trends. In this content, what the researchers want to do is to analysis the tendency of the domestic audience reception and main causes of commercial success in the domestic film market, analysing Taken produced in France. The analysis, most of all, suggests the consideration for the film industry beside the notion of cultural diversity in cinema, as imported films are released in the domestic theatre. For this, the study examines the promotional strategy the french cinema perceived generally as the arthouse film applies extensively, analysing on Taken, and inquires into factors of commercial success, using SWOT Analysis. This study, the first of all, (briefly) examines what audiences consider when they choose a film to watch, articulating (generally) the choice-and-consume modality of the domestic audience. And then, it examines dominant factors Taken was a commercial success in domestic film market, even though the film is a french film, using SWOT Analysis. On the basis of SWOT Analysis, finally, this study draws up promotional plan for Taken, and shed new light on dominant preconditions, when the foreign cinema would be imported from the now on.

• Archives of design research
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• v.18 no.4 s.62
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• pp.95-104
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to estimate the determinants of product design and analyze the impacts of product design on quality competitiveness, product reliability, and consumer satisfaction in an attempt to provide a foundation for the theory of design management. For this empirical analysis, this study has derived the relevant measurement variables from a survey on 400 Korean manufacturing firms during the period of $August{\sim}October$ 2003. The empirical findings are summarized as follows: First, the determinants of product design are very significantly (at p<0.001) estimated to be the R&D capability, the level of R&D expenditure, the level of innovative activities(5S, TQM, 6Sigma, QC, etc.). This empirical result can support Pawar and Driva(1999)'s two principles by which the performance of product design and product development can be simultaneously evaluated in the context of CE(concurrent engineering) of NPD(newly product development) activities. Second, the hypothesis on the causality: product design${\rightarrow}$quality competitiveness${\rightarrow}$customer satisfaction${\rightarrow}$customer loyalty is very significantly (at p<0.001) accepted. This implies that product design positively affects consumer satisfaction, not directly but indirectly, by influencing quality competitiveness. This empirical result of this study can also support the studies of for example Flynn et al.(1994), Ahire et at.(1996), Afire and Dreyfus(2000) which conclude that design management is a significant determinant of product quality. The aforementioned empirical results are important in the following sense: the empirical result that quality competitiveness plays a bridging role between product design and consumer satisfaction can reconcile the traditional debate between QFD(quality function development) approach asserted by product developers and conjoint analysis maintained by marketers. The first empirical result is related to QFD approach whereas the second empirical result is related to conjoint analysis. At the same time, the empirical results of this study can support the rationale of design integration(DI) of Ettlie(1997), i.e., the coordination of the timing and substance of product development activities performed by the various disciplines and organizational functions of a product's life cycle. Finally, the policy implication (at the corporate level) from the empirical results is that successful design management(DM) requires not only the support of top management but also the removal of communication barriers, (i.e. the adoption of cross-functional teams) so that concurrent engineering(CE), the simultaneous development of product and process designs can assure product development speed, design quality, and market success.