• Journal of the Korean housing association
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.119-127
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• 1994

This study has tried to grasp the awareness of employees in current apparel industry and common consumers about the show window in apparel shops. Interestingly, the employees were more concerned about the necessity of display and lighting than the consumers. However, the current display and lighting systems did not satisfy the consumers' requirements. Although they did not recognize that lighting display was closely related with display, color, and so on, they thought lighting indispensable. In consequnce, they light source and lighting method have to be carefully chosen, and the relationship between color and lighting should be fully considered as well.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.160-174
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• 2005

Despite the decrease in the number of children due to low birth rate, the domestic children's apparel market has been achieving steady growth as family income is rising thanks to more opportunities for working women, parents spend more on their children, and they prefer brand products that make their children look special. In addition, the market is suffering from hard competition as large enterprises have joined the race. The present study purposed to survey the children's apparel market in Korea, which is in a transitional period, and to contribute to the development of the market with Korean brands. For this purpose, we analyzed the characteristics of children's apparel brands in the 21st century based on the current state of the domestic children's apparel market and, based on the findings, forecasted the future trend of children's apparel brands, suggested improvements for expected problems, proposed standards for coping with changes such as diversification, high quality and differentiation in the children's apparel market, and provided consumers with information on how to purchase products. According to the result of analyzing the characteristics of children's apparel brands in the 21st century, brands are categorized largely into four types - life cultural brands, functional product brands, character brands and brands advancing to China. Life cultural brands equipped with all necessities for children are expanding, and with the deepening social problems of environmental pollution and the reduction of the child population, functional products made of environment-friendly materials are spreading widely, targeting infants and children. Furthermore, for extending age targets and diversifying products, children's apparel is using characters. The use of characters is expected to have a considerable effect on the growth of brands because children are more subjective as consumers than before and they are more easily persuaded with characters. Domestic children's apparel brands advancing to China have a high expectation of success in overcoming the limitation of the local market that has reached its peak and growing into global brands. Korean apparel makers are struggling to overcome the depressed domestic market, to recover consumers' consumption, to cope with market opening, to pursue high value of sensibility and to expand the seniors' market, etc. In this situation, future trends of children's apparel brands will be the expansion of family brands, brand totalization, quality price, niche market (pre-teen market), etc. In response to these trends, we made the following suggestions for improvement. 1. Children's apparel brands are evolving into family brands as well as into total brands through voluming. Today, however, apparel makers are advancing to the children's apparel market with the concept of adults' apparel and, as a result, children's apparel is merely adults' apparel of reduced size, having problems in design, color and materials. Thus, apparel makers must develop design considering the wide range of size and the characteristics of children's apparel, strengthen sourcing abilities to create revenues, and make thorough survey of customers to find common denominators between adults' apparel and children's apparel considering that characteristic that the target class is different from the buyer class. Furthermore, they must make active investments in human resources, develop outstanding products through advanced planning and design, and support marketing techniques and management systems to stores. 2. As the declining birth rate will continue to have a negative effect on the market, it may be difficult to expand the market size but there is still a margin for growth through high-sensibility and high-quality products. The competitiveness of brands is determined by their market shares. Accordingly, concepts should be specialized according to lifestyle, customers' diverse needs should be satisfied, and cross-coordination should be achieved within a brand. 3. Considering Korean parents who do not spare investment in their children despite shrinking consumption, functional products must be high value-added goods that can enhance efficiency. However, in the current situation of the infants' apparel industry where a textile manufacturer supply its products to multiple brands, it is difficult to develop unique products only based on materials. Thus, it is considered urgent to appeal to consumers not by relying on materials only but by finding methods of applying their own characters to children's dress.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Costume Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.75-75
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• 2003

The distinctive design of apparel product is the crucial factor that provides the powerful competitive advantage and customer satisfaction. However, knock-offs or copycats easily copy the design of apparel product and its problem tends to be assented in real world. Design right is one of intellectual property rights that would be produced by intellectual activity and the appropriate means to establish the exclusive rights to the design should be established. Legal protection to the design right is the system that can prelude copycats from eroding an exclusive position in the market place. The present study was to analyze the trend of registration of design rights in apparel products and to point out problems of current protection law to design.

• Fashion, Industry and Education
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.24-34
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• 2016

This research examined two decades of the U.S. used clothing exports to the world. All countries (209) were classified into four groups based on the level of economic development. Between 1996 and 2012, U.S. used clothing exports shifted away from low-income economies to high-income economies. For the first time, our research demonstrated that the majority of used clothing discarded by American consumers is exported to high-income economies instead of poorest nations of the world. Next, used clothing exports and imports by volume and value in seven high-income countries were analyzed. The high-income countries not only exported but also imported significant amount of used clothing, which indicates a growing demand for worn apparel in developed nations. The demand might be at least partially attributed to the popular vintage clothing trend and increasing consumer environmentalism. Implications regarding development and implementation of a new classification system of worn clothing and recommendations for future research are presented.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.338-346
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• 2010

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate consumers' narcissistic orientation group and apparel products benefits sought. The data were collected from 272 female consumers in Pusan, Daegu and Ulsan. The aforementioned were analyzed utilizing frequency, factor analysis, cluster analysis, MANOVA using SPSS Win 12.0. The results were as follows. First, cluster analysis on narcissism orientation identified four groups such as non-narcissism group, high narcissism group, privilege conscious group and achievable desire conscious group. Second, the groups related to their apparel products benefits sought were high narcissism group and privilege conscious group. There were significantly differences between the groups and apparel products benefits sought such as social prestige, impressive improvement and personality.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.62-76
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to identify apparel consumers' immoral shopping behaviors from apparel retail sales associates' perspectives. As a first step to understand immoral consumer behaviors in apparel retail setting, the study took an exploratory approach using five focus-group interviews with 35 apparel salespeople. The immoral behavior of fashion (product) consumers was divided into two categories: one was the immoral behavior associated with the product, and the other was the immoral behavior relative to the consumer. The immoral behavior associated with the product was classified into three types: shoplifting, inappropriate returns, and damaging to merchandise. Immoral behavior relative to the consumer was classified into two types: abusive behavior by a consumer toward sales associates and excessive demand. Although, shoplifting was the primary immoral behavior mentioned by all interview participants, most sales associates failed to recognize shoplifting as a serious criminal behavior. Another commonly mentioned immoral consumer behaviors was retail borrowing, which may pose serious problems to the fashion industry. The findings of this study will provide a basis for approaches that may help decrease immoral consumer behavior at fashion retail stores and provide a basis for developing materials for consumer education over the long term.

• Fiber Technology and Industry
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• v.6 no.3_4
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• pp.218-227
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• 2002

• Fashion, Industry and Education
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.11-23
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• 2016

This study investigated the comparative advantages of the Bangladeshi and Vietnamese apparel industries using Global Value Chain (GVC) framework. In this study, the GVC framework was expanded to include social and environmental sustainability issues. Secondary data, for the 2012 - 2013 period, were collected and analyzed for each component of the apparel GVC. The findings indicated that while both countries have unique comparative advantages, Vietnam clearly emerged as a leader on many GVC components. Bangladesh's comparative advantage lies in lower wages, producing high volume orders, and lean manufacturing. In spite of Vietnam's higher labor costs, it has comparative advantages in higher productivity, skilled and trained workers, manufacturing of intricate styles of high quality, agility and flexible manufacturing, more developed infrastructure and logistic services as well as greater social and environmental compliances. This study contributes towards insight into best sourcing fit for fashion brand business models. Based on the findings, fashion driven companies offering more complex styles at a faster rate will benefit from choosing Vietnam. In contrast, Bangladesh might be a better choice for high volume driven companies that offer basic apparel and better value for their consumers. From theoretical perspective, the research makes an important contribution by expanding the GVC framework.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.286-294
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of marketing activities to apparel brand community on interaction of the community. Subjects of 317 members for 9 selected apparel communities responded the questionnaire in the home-page or in the attached file. Data were analyzed by exploratory factor analysis, one-way ANOVA, scheffe-test. The results were as follows: Significant differences among three community groups classified based on the levels of interactions(interaction of company to members and interaction among members) were found in several types of marketing activities(award to activities, added services, conveyance of community's purpose and acceptance of negative responses) to apparel brand community. These types of marketing activities were operated in communities with high level interactions higher than in communities with low level interactions. Therefore, marketers need to operate these types of community marketing activities to increase interactions which can contribute members' satisfaction of interest, transaction and relationship needs through apparel brand online community.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.508-512
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• 2010

To study the development trends of domestic apparel design, we analyzed patent applications that were applied to the field of apparel design. It was presumed that economic and social environment have affected directly on the number of apparel design applications. Since year 2000, the whole number of apparel design applications has shown a remarkably increasing tendency, but depending on the items, the trends of patent applications have different tendency. While the number of applications regarding western costume such as a jacket, pants, suit and coat has been increasing from mid 2000s, the number of applications regarding Hanbok and undergarments have been decreasing from mid 2000s. In early 2000s, there were a lot of applications relating to design creation due to combination of color and form in apparel design. However, from mid 2000s, variety of techniques such as granting functional characteristics, asymmetry construction, introduction of various textiles, techniques of draping were being applied in design creation.