• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.15-27
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• 2018

Purpose - The purpose of the study is to examine the relationships among the following retail operations variables: retail store operations (i.e., store management, sales personnel, promotion of merchandise), success of assortment planning, firm performance (i.e., market share, overall competitive position, profitability, product quality, consumer satisfaction), and retail buyer's demographics and firm's characteristics. Research design, data, and methodology - After conducting a pilot test, the survey was conducted in Seoul, South Korea. With using the listwise deletion method, 378 usable data sets were analyzed. For data analysis, descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) methods were employed. Results - As evidenced from the path diagram, the relationship between retail store operations and the success of assortment planning is strong and significant. Retail store operations affect firm performance, though at a weaker significance than it affects the success of assortment planning. The relationship between the success of assortment planning and firm performance, is the strongest relationship observed by this research. Conclusions - The findings of this empirical study contribute to the retail/fashion buying/management field by confirming (a) the importance of assortment planning for retail firm performance and (b) the role of store operations for successful assortment planning and firm performance for fashion retailers.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.34-45
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• 2008

This research was designed to find decision factors through color assortment planning process by Korean women's clothing merchandisers and to look for if there exists difference with American women's clothing merchandisers. A merchandise assortment is a collection of various quantities of styles, colors, sizes, and prices of related merchandise, usually grouped under one classification within a department. The subjects were 20 women's clothing merchandisers who work for clothing retail stores from 5 to 22 years in US and Korea. The authoring process was done for qualitative data analysis. The decision factors of color assortment planning were identified with four stages; information search, qualitative evaluation, quantitative evaluation, and selection. There were differences of color assortment decision factors due to different business types, business sizes, fashion-ability, sourcing ways, and merchandise turnover. Noticeable color assortment decision factor differences caused by country difference were not found except considering the target market ethnicity and skin color in US market. Korea merchandisers seem to be more sensitive to present sales data usages and spot order availability in color assortments because of more local production use than American merchandisers.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.815-824
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• 2004

In academic and/or practitioner literature, the assortment planning for fashion sensitive products is rarely systematically studied, and organized in an objective format. The purpose of this study was to develop a suggested assortment planning model for women's clothing retail buyers by integrating a conceptual assortment planning model and a practical-use assortment planning model, which are also developed in this study. In developing the conceptual model, this research categorized and organized the pieces of assortment planning activities illustrated in available literature. In developing the practical-use model, ten women's dress buyers from department stores and specialty stores were interviewed. The contents of the interview dictation were classified and summarized by concepts and variables. The summary was validated by the interviewees and recontextualized for the practical-use model. Five experts compared the conceptual and practical-use models, adjusted the discrepancies, and integrated into the suggested model. In addition, a questionnaire asking review of all functional activities of the suggested model was sent to interviewees to ascertain its validity. As the result, assortment planning process was determined at abstract level as the following: (a) recognize problem, (b) search for information, (c) evaluate qualitative value of product, (d) evaluate quantitative value of product, (e) plan product selection, and (f) plan sales.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.9 no.7
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• pp.7-18
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• 2018

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine how clothing retail buyers (i.e., retail buyers, merchandisers, and storeowners), who are involved in assortment planning and retail buying use assortment criteria in their decisions. Comparisons are made between criteria used by men's wear and women's wear retail buyers as well as criteria used by male and female retail buyers. Research design, data, and methodology - A structured questionnaire was developed to collect data both in English and Korean. After conducting two pilot tests, the survey was conducted in Seoul, South Korea. Mantrala et al.'s 17 inputs of product assortment planning model with 23 assortment criteria from other previous studies were used. Results - Significant differences existed in consideration of assortment criteria between men's wear and women's wear retail buyers as well as between male and female retail buyers. Men's wear retail buyers rated the importance of sales history criteria (i.e., sales history, previous year's sales of same/similar styles) significantly lower than women's wear buyers did. Female retail buyers rated sales history criteria and weather criteria (i.e., unpredicted weather change, forecasting information of weather) significantly higher than male retail buyers did. Conclusions - This study provides guidelines for retail buyers regarding what criteria to use in what situations and how to organize assortment criteria from the most important criterion to the least one. In addition, the findings help them understand other retail buyers' buying behavior.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.24 no.7
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• pp.995-1003
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• 2000

This study examined the role of apparel merchandisers’in Korea. Data were collected by interviewing 7 apparel merchandisers who had worked for major apparel manufacturers. The interviews were analyzed by use of chronologically sequenced events. Korean apparel merchandisers take part in planning and production of the merchandise, sales management, and promotion. Merchandisers’activities related to merchandise planning were as follows: analysis of fashion trend and market, concept evolvement, planning of assortment and volume assortment, time table set up, color pallette decision, fabrication, line adoption, pricing, line preview, production planning, and placing order of materials. Merchandisers’activities related to apparel production were planning and controlling production and consolidation. In sales, merchandisers analyze retail sales and control inventory by reorder or conducting markdown sale. In relation to promotion, apparel merchandisers monitor merchandise advertisement, and educate salesman.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.85-91
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• 2016

Purpose - Prior research has suggested that consumers typically prefer to have a larger number of options. However, preference of assortment size may depend on how depleted resources in consumers' mind are. Reduced capacity for self-regulation by resource depletion makes people rely on more intuitive and less effortful decision processing. When they are mentally depleted, people are likely to focus on the choice difficulty from large assortment, which leads to preference for the small assortment when they make a decision. It could be an important question potentially how being in a depleted mode through effortful self-regulation will influence on the evaluation of assortment size. To answer this questioner, we hypothesized that being engaged in self-regulation, as compared with not being engaged in self-regulation, will influence on the evaluation of product assortment size such as attractiveness, difficulty of choice, and anticipated regret. Research design, data, and methodology - In this study, we first manipulated self-regulatory resource availability using a self-regulation task (i.e., instructing participants to solve Sudoku puzzle vs. to solve diagram cube by filling any diagrams that they prefer into cube instead of number) and asked to indicate the difficulty of the tasks available to them ("How much difficulty did you feel when you complete the task?") Next, participants were asked to imagine that they were planning to buy a laptop at one of the two stores (small assortment: 6 options vs. large assortment: 30 options), both offering good quality of products. After reading the product descriptions, participants were instructed to consider all the information and choose a store that they would like to shop. Finally we measured the choice difficulty, evaluation of product assortments, and anticipated regret on a 7-point scale. We conducted two-way ANOVA in testing the main hypothesis that depleted consumers will show poorer subsequent self-control than non-depleted consumers when they make a decision in large assortment. Results - Compared with non-depleted participants, depleted participants showed the bigger difference from the degree of choice difficulty and product attractiveness between large and small assortments, but the result revealed only a significant interaction effect of resource depletion and assortment size on choice difficulty. Also depleted participants showed the smaller difference from the degree of anticipated regret between large and small assortments than non-depleted participants. Conclusion - Depleted individuals by a prior task are relatively effortless and intuitive form of choosing products so that they try to avoid making effortful trade-offs among choice difficulty such as large assortment, compare with non-depleted individuals. However, for anticipated regret, non-depleted individuals in small assortment anticipate more regret by excluding or at least restricting the possibility of buying attractive items or another kind of potential items than depleted individuals, regardless less choice difficulty in small option. To sum up, it is important to note that individuals are influenced by self-regulatory resources and their self-regulatory conditions contribute to the overall positive or negative impact of product assortment on choice.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.66-78
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• 2012

This paper proposes a computation model of the quantity supplied to optimize inventory costs for the fast fashion. The model is based on a forecasting, a store and production capacity, an assortment planning and quick response model for fast fashion retailers, respectively. It is critical to develop a standardized business process and mathematical model to respond market trends and customer requirements in the fast fashion industry. Thus, we define a product supply model that consists of forecasting, assortment plan, store capacity plan based on the visual merchandising, and production capacity plan considering quick response of the fast fashion retailers. For the forecasting, the decomposition method and multiple regression model are applied. In order to optimize inventory costs. A heuristic algorithm for the quantity supplied is designed based on the assortment plan, store capacity plan and production capacity plan. It is shown that the heuristic algorithm produces a feasible solution which outperforms the average inventory cost of a global fast fashion company.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.134-146
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• 2011

This paper suggests the product supply process model based on the store and production capacity, assortment planning and quick response for fast fashion retailers with BPMN. In the fast fashion industry, the standardized business process model is required to respond quickly market trends and customer requirements based on the quantitative and qualitative criteria. Thus we define the product supply processes which incorporate forecasting and assortment plan, cost and profitability of the production, store capacity based on the visual merchandising, and production capacity of the fast fashion retailers. Also we design the key performance indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of these product supply processes. The product supply process model for the fast fashion has great significance in embracing the fast fashion product development process because it presents the holistic view of the product supply process of the fast fashion and provides a performance evaluation mechanism. A case study shows that adopting the processes, a Korean fast fashion company achieves improvement in various performance indicators.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.283-290
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to investigate the shopping condition of Dongdaemoon Shoppingmall. A depth interview was administered to eight consumers aged 10s through 30s who had shopping experiences at Dongdaemoon Shoppingmall. The contents of interview were about the reasons of preference for Dongdaemoon Shoppingmall, the merchandise categories purchased, assortment, price, shopping environment, and service offered by Dongdaemoon Shoppingmall. The results of this study were as follows: The reasons of consumers' Dongdaemoon Shoppingmall preference were reasonable price, variety of merchandise assortment, easy catch of fashion trend, entertainment place, and opening hour at nighttime. The mainly purchased items were casual and fashionable clothes. Children's wear was mainly bought item by housewives too. The unique design, similar merchandises sold at department stores and new style in early adoption of fashion cycle were perceived as positive aspects, but copied merchandises and large quantity of same merchandise as negative aspects. The fixed price system was not trusted by consumers. Consumers' complaints about shopping condition were crowded pathways and shopping booths, the lacks of facilities such as fitting room, toilet, lounge area, sales persons' service, and difficulty of using credit cards. From these results, some implications for marketing strategies and practices might be suggested. In order to improve the design variety of merchandises, marketers and apparel manufacturers should make efforts by managing merchandise planning, production, selling, and promotion cooperatively. Fixed price system, acceptance of credit cards, and merchandise return/exchange service should be improved. The training the salespersons was the most important and basic step and easy way to get to successful business.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• no.29
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• pp.94-102
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• 2001

The urban land is incapacitated to grow and correspond to demand the space in urban area. And recently, rapid increasing of population and complex of urban function on pushed to develop the underground space. In Korea, the underground space development in inefficient in aspect. because development of underground space have not consistent and systematic planning method in underground environment inclounding interion design, extererior design. Therefore this study is suggested the design element for comfortable underground living environment and assortment on utilization of underground space. The results of this study on utilization are security of space through land use efficiency, conservation of historical place, building and natural environment, and technological characteristics, mental image. Accordingly, this study is proposed design element that make comfortable underground space as aspect from stimulation and diversity, sapciousness and feeling of warmth and dryness to compensate improper image of underground space, spacial orientation and way finding.