• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.216-230
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• 2014

The importance of the Chinese fashion market is increasing; therefore, this study investigates the possibility of implementing a Word-of-Mouth (WOM) marketing strategy among Chinese students in Korea. This study examines the effects of consumer characteristics (similarity, opinion leadership, and fashion innovativeness), awareness of Korean fashion brands, satisfaction with Korean fashion products on WOM experiences and WOM behavior (off-line as well as on-line). A total of 161 responses from Chinese students in Korea were gathered and analyzed using SPSS 20.0 for descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and regression analysis. The results show that consumer characteristics (except similarity) significantly influence WOM experiences, opinion leadership influence off-line WOM behavior, and fashion innovativeness influence online WOM behavior. However, similarity has no influence on WOM experiences and WOM behavior. Second, Korean brand awareness affect both WOM experiences and behavior; however, satisfaction with Korean fashion products only affected WOM experiences. This study showed the feasibility of conducting a WOM marketing strategy using the WOM effects of Chinese students in Korea. The study may help the Korean apparel industries establish an entry strategy for the Chinese market.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.708-725
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• 2013

In the 2010s, skinny jeans were trendy, and they became a must-have for young women. The styles, clothing pressure and buying behavior of skinny jeans have been studied, but the patternmaking of skinny jeans has not been researched yet. To analyze skinny jeans patterns, we grouped skinny jeans into nine brands. They were sorted into three groups: special jeans brand, trendy jeans brand, and SPA brand. This study compared skinny jeans' sizing systems, product dimensions and pattern measurements in three brand groups. The appearance and fit of skinny jeans were evaluated by random groups of people in their 20s and 30s. The sizing systems for skinny jeans were different with KS K0051, and they were shown waist girth in inches. The waist and hip circumferences were different among brand groups. In product dimensions, trendy jeans brands had a shorter crotch length, a lower crotch depth, a narrower back crotch width, and a longer inseam than the others. The measurements of skinny jeans flat patterns were significantly different in as below; front crotch depth, front crotch height, front crotch length, back crotch extension, gap between back and front crotch depth, back crotch height, back crotch length, and center back angle. In the sensory survey results, trendy jeans brands were evaluated well in the fit of the waist line, hip line, crotch line, midthigh line, outseam, inseam, side waist line, crotch length and overall fit.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.86-99
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• 2001

The purpose of this study was to identify and profile store browsers in terms of their browsing motives, fashion behavioral characteristics, buying behavior and preferred store attributes. The data were collected through questionnaire from 302 female college students by convenient sampling method. Statistical analysis of factor analysis, x²-test, and t-test were performed in analyzing the data. The browsing motives of browsers were to obtains fashion information, sensory stimulation and diversion from routine life. They showed the high level of fashion involvement, shopping confidence, shopping innovativeness, shopping opinion leadership as well s fashion opinion leadership. Browsers tended to be impulse buyers and spent more money on clothing than non-browsers. The attributes that influence their store choice were the variety of products and brands, information availability ,and pleasant store atmosphere.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.808-818
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• 2010

This study compares the consumption values and clothing benefits between married and unmarried women. The data were collected from a questionnaire with 548 working women in their 20's and 30's. Data were analyzed by factor analysis, reliability analysis, t-test, and one way ANOVA. The factor analysis on consumption values resulted in five dimensional structures: pro-environmental, conspicuous, enjoyable, aesthetic, and economic values. Five dimensions of clothing benefits were identified by factor analysis: individuality, social recognition, well-known brands, practicality, and low price pursuit. The respondents were classified into four groups by marital status and age, as well as two groups only by marital status. There were significant differences among the groups in demographic characteristics, consumption values, and clothing benefits. The results provide insight into marketing strategies of apparel makers or retailers targeting single women.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.85-90
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• 2015

Purpose - Global trends play a part to change the structure of the fashion industry. In particular, companies attempting to conduct innovative marketing centering on such products as SPA brands are growing into global companies. SPA stands for "Specialty Store Retailer of Private Label Apparel", meaning its activities are fully integrated from manufacturing through sales, including material procurement design, product, distribution, inventory management, and final sales. For this reason, more understanding of individual corporate profitability is very sensitive to consumer's attitudinal changes. The effects that corporate marketing activities on customer lifetime value through brand attitude were analyzed based on a structural equation model. Rust suggested value equity, brand equity, and relationship equity as customer equity driver. The study examines Chinese consumer because China is the fastest growing fashion market in the world. Research design, data, and methodology - The survey targeted Chinese college student age 20s. Only respondents who had purchased SPA brands in the past year were included for this research. A total of 303, except for 47 missing data of 350 distributed questionnaires were included in this research. The questionnaire is consists of six part to measure value, brand, relationship equity, attitude toward brand, purchase intention and demographic characteristics. This research conducted exploratory factor analysis and reliability test. To verify research hypotheses, structural equation model test was conducted. As for customer equity, diversified models in consideration of the scope of acquisition data, a method of collection of data, influencing factor, and predictability were suggested based on a net present value model. However, the history of customer equity study is relatively short, and sufficient empirical analyses have not been conducted, so more integrated analysis is required. In this study, the concept of driver suggested by Rust was applied to figure out the effects that consumer's attitude has on customer equity. The customer equity driver suggested by them consists of brand equity, value equity, and relationship equity. Results - This study reveals that value equity and brand equity have a positive influence on relationship equity. And, relationship equity has a positive influence on purchase intention through brand attitude. However, value equity and brand equity do not influence on brand attitude. Conclusion - The results of this research generated following implications. First, SPA brands need to take advantage of their value equity such as perceived low price and up-to-date fashion style to attract Chinese young consumer. Second, strong brand equity promises dominants position in the competitive market. As Chinese fashion market grows rapidly, SPA brands can consider branding strategy such as flagship store and celebrity marketing enhancing brand image. Third, the core concept of customer equity strategy is to maintain a relationship with their expecting and existing customers. The relationship equity is built by brand equity and value equity. When SPA brands serves product and service meet with individual customers, customers have intimacy to the brands.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.220-232
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• 2013

Ever-evolving diverse communication tools bring numerous changes and improvements into the lives of humans. It is extremely important to provide visual information when communicating with consumers in the commercial arena because humans acquire over eighty percent of the information around them through sense of sight. One cannot compete with just sheer quality in today's world. Therefore, the applications of digital technology in the visual merchandising became crucial, for it can dramatically improve the market value. Among these applications is digital signage, a new media for esthetic experience. I strongly believe that this would be a new marketing tool for the brand's distinctive and unique publicity. This research has been conducted in order to find out how the fast-growing digital signage, defined by the contents, has become not just a mere digital video clip but an esthetic merchandising tool that can produce various effective marketing strategies; and to discover the characteristics that this application has brought out in the visual merchandising field of fashion stores' global SPA brands. Based on the market case study, analyses have been made for the digital signage types and strategies regarding the visual merchandising expressive elements and for the effects the digital signage application will have on publicity. According to the results, the digital signage has proven to be informative, diversely applicable and contributes greatly to the increase in sales and to the improvement of company and brand image. Thus, it is much more than just a media tool for advertisement.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.979-988
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to analyze the lower body size and forms of married women in their thirties who have experienced pregnancy and parturition. Their measurements derived from the direct anthropometry and indirect photographic measures were compared to those of 20's. Improving consumer satisfaction for missy brand, especially in fitness of skirt and pants, some lower body classification were presented. The results were as follows : 1. The characteristics of lower body showed many differences by individuals especially in depth, girth, length and angle measures rather than height and breadth measures. Many items including index, calculations and angles revealed significant differences compared to those of 20's. Several breadth items, crotch length had distinct increase than those of women in twenties. Flattened buttocks side silhouette from waist to hip, buttocks drooping and decrease of inclination implied the influence of pregnancy, parturition and aging. 2. We hardly find out sizing system differences between missy brand and miss brand. Based on waist and hip girth measurements of subjects, sizing system of missy apparel wasn't suitable for their body size. Excessive drop(hip girth-waist girth) of missy brands, 25~30 cm, was almost the same to the drop of miss brands. 3. To improve the size satisfaction of missy women, we classified the lower body into 5 types according to drop, buttocks angle and hip length. Type 1 was small waist with large buttocks projection, and hip length was close to an average. Type 2 was small waist with medium buttocks projection, and the hip length was close to an average. Type 3 was medium waist, with average projection of the buttocks and hip length. Type 4 was large waist, projection of the buttocks and the hip length were close to an average. Type 5 was large waist, projection of the buttocks was small and the hip length was close to an average.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether customers' fashion involvement, brand familiarity, and expertise of negative information moderate the influence of the original brand attitudes on the attitude toward extended brand attitudes in the fashion market. For these purposes, four hypotheses were developed and data was collected from 480 students. Data was analyzed using SPSS methods such as factor analysis, frequency, 1-test, and moderated regression analysis. The results were as follows; first, it was found that the original brand attitudes positively influence the extended brand attitudes. Second, the influence of the original brand attitudes on the extended brand attitudes was stronger when fashion involvement was high rather than low. Third, in the case that perceived similarity between the original and the extended product classes was high, the influence of the original brand attitudes on the extended brand attitudes was stronger when brand familarity was high. Fourth, the influence of original brand attitudes on the extended brand attitudes was stronger when the perceived expertise of negative information source on the extended brand was high. Therefore, the results suggest that extending brands requires the systematic brand management considering customers' variables such as fashion involvement, brand familiarity, negative information etc. Also, it seems that the brand strategy should be based on the segmentation for targeted customers' characteristics.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2000

The purposes of this thesis are to investigate characteristics, environment of characters through comprehensive approach to analyze its use and strategies in apparel brands. As a method to accomplish this research, fashion related articles, documents and magazines are used along with marketing references forecasting 21st century market changes. The character industry has diverse application to different medias and also intimacy and absorbtion beyond sex, age, generation, nationality. The cultural background of character fashion is based on casual clothing caused by wide spread pursuit of sports and leisure culture, indivisualization and diversification of clothing, customer-made marketing atmosphere and tendency of pursuit of fun and humor. In case of domestic young casual market, own characters are developed for creating differentiated it's own brand images. Characters are applied as an design details or cyber fashion models standing for the image of it's own brand and take a part in other events and visual parts as well. Characters not only limited to clothing items but also further usages of characters extended to stickers and other related stationary goods are necessary. A 'Character multi shop' can be one of good methods to maximize synergy effect.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.15-26
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• 2010

Due to the globalization across various industries and cultural trade among many countries, oriental concepts have been attracting world’s attentions. In fashion industry, one's traditional culture is often developed as fashion theme for designers' creation and became strong strategies to stand out among competitors. Because of the increase of preferences for oriental images, opportunities abound to introduce traditional fashion goods and expand culture based business to global fashion markets. However, global fashion brands that include Korean traditional culture are yet to be developed. In order to develop a global fashion brand with Korean taste, it is very important for native citizen to accept their own culture in domestic apparel market prior to expansion into foreign market. Loungewear is evaluated to be appropriate for adopting Korean traditional details into clothing since this wardrobe category embraces various purposes which will easily lead to natural adaptation and wide spread use. Also, this market is seeing an increased demand for multipurpose wardrobes and fashionable underwear (Park et al. 2009). Despite rapid growth in the loungewear market, specific studies of loungewear is rare; and among research on developing modernized-traditional clothing, fashion items and brands do not always include the loungewear category. Therefore, this study investigated the Korean loungewear market and studied consumer evaluation toward loungewear with Korean traditional fashion design elements. Relationship among antecedents of purchase intention for Korean traditional fashion design elements were analyzed and compared between lifestyle groups for consumer targeting purposes. Product quality, retail service quality, perceived value, and preference on loungewear with Korean traditional design elements were chosen as antecedents of purchase intention and a structural equation model was designed to examine their relationship as well as their influence on purchase intention. Product quality and retail service quality among marketing mixes were employed as factors affecting preference and perceived value of loungewear with Korean traditional fashion design elements. Also effects of preference and perceived value on purchase intention were examined through the same model. A total of 357 self-administered questionnaires were completed by female consumers via web survey system. A questionnaire was developed to measure samples' lifestyle, product and retail service quality as purchasing criteria, perceived value, preference and purchase intention of loungewear with Korean traditional fashion design elements. Also, loungewear purchasing and usage behavior were asked as well in order to examine Korean loungewear market status. Data was analyzed through descriptive analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, ANOVA and structural equation model was tested via AMOS 7.0. As for the result of Korean loungewear market status investigation, loungewear was purchased by most of the consumers in our sample. Loungewear is currently recognized as clothes that are worn at home and consumers are showing comparably low involvement toward loungewear. Most of consumers in this study purchase loungewear only two to three times a year and they spend less than US$10. A total of 12 items and four factors of loungewear consumer lifestyle were found: traditional value oriented lifestyle, brand-affected lifestyle, pursuit of leisure lifestyle, and health oriented lifestyle. Drawing on lifestyle factors, loungewear consumers were classified into two groups; Well-being and Conservative. Relationships among constructs of purchasing behavior related to loungewear with Korean traditional fashion design elements were estimated. Preference and perceived value of loungewear were affected by both product quality and retail service quality. This study proved that high qualities in product and retail service develop positive preference toward loungewear. Perceived value and preference of loungewear positively influenced purchase intention. The results indicated that high preference and perceived value of loungewear with Korean traditional fashion design elements strengthen purchase intention and proved importance of developing preference and elevate perceived value in order to make sales. In a model comparison between two lifestyle groups: Well-being and Conservative lifestyle groups, results showed that product quality and retail service quality had positive influences on both preference and perceived value in case of Well-being group. However, for Conservative group, only retail service quality had a positive effect on preference and its influence to purchase intention. Since Well-being group showed more significant influence on purchase intention, loungewear brands with Korean traditional fashion design elements may want to focus on characteristics of Well-being group. However, Conservative group's relationship between preference and purchase intention of loungewear with Korean traditional fashion design elements was stronger, so that loungewear brands with Korean traditional fashion design elements should focus on creating conservative consumers' positive preference toward loungewear. The results offered information on Korean loungewear consumers' lifestyle and provided useful information for fashion brands that are planning to enter Korean loungewear market, particularly targeting female consumers similar to the sample of the present study. This study offers strategic and marketing insight for loungewear brands and also for fashion brands that are planning to create highly value-added fashion brands with Korean traditional fashion design elements. Considering different types of lifestyle groups that are associated with loungewear or traditional fashion goods, brand managers and marketers can use the results of this paper as a reference to positioning, targeting and marketing strategy buildings.