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

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

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.1-25
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• 2008

Ⅰ. Introduction Retailers in the 21st century are being told that future retailers are those who can execute seamless multi-channel access. The reason is that retailers should be where shoppers want them, when they want them anytime, anywhere and in multiple formats. Multi-channel access is considered one of the top 10 trends of all business in the next decade (Patricia T. Warrington, et al., 2007) And most firms use both direct and indirect channels in their markets. Given this trend, we need to evaluate a channel equity more systematically than before as this issue is expected to get more attention to consumers as well as to brand managers. Consumers are becoming very much confused concerning the choice of place where they shop for durable goods as there are at least 6-7 retail options. On the other hand, manufacturers have to deal with category killers, their dealers network, Internet shopping malls, and other avenue of distribution channels and they hope their retail channel behave like extensions of their own companies. They would like their products to be foremost in the retailer's mind-the first to be proposed and effectively communicated to potential customers. To enable this hope to come reality, they should know each channel's advantages and disadvantages from consumer perspectives. In addition, customer satisfaction is the key determinant of retail customer loyalty. However, there are only a few researches regarding the effects of shopping satisfaction and perceptions on consumers' channel choices and channels. The purpose of this study was to assess Korean consumers' channel choice and satisfaction towards channels they prefer to use in the case of electronic goods shopping. Korean electronic goods retail market is one of good example of multi-channel shopping environments. As the Korea retail market has been undergoing significant structural changes since it had opened to global retailers in 1996, new formats such as hypermarkets, Internet shopping malls and category killers have arrived for the last decade. Korean electronic goods shoppers have seven major channels : (1)category killers (2) hypermarket (3) manufacturer dealer shop (4) Internet shopping malls (5) department store (6) TV home-shopping (7) speciality shopping arcade. Korean retail sector has been modernized with amazing speed for the last decade. Overall summary of major retail channels is as follows: Hypermarket has been number 1 retailer type in sales volume from 2003 ; non-store retailing has been number 2 from 2007 ; department store is now number 3 ; small scale category killers are growing rapidly in the area of electronics and office products in particular. We try to evaluate each channel's equity using a consumer survey. The survey was done by telephone interview with 1000 housewife who lives nationwide. Sampling was done according to 2005 national census and average interview time was 10 to 15 minutes. Ⅱ. Research Summary We have found that seven major retail channels compete with each other within Korean consumers' minds in terms of price and service. Each channel seem to have its unique selling points. Department stores were perceived as the best electronic goods shopping destinations due to after service. Internet shopping malls were perceived as the convenient channel owing to price checking. Category killers and hypermarkets were more attractive in both price merits and location conveniences. On the other hand, manufacturers dealer networks were pulling customers mainly by location and after service. Category killers and hypermarkets were most beloved retail channel for Korean consumers. However category killers compete mainly with department stores and shopping arcades while hypermarkets tend to compete with Internet and TV home shopping channels. Regarding channel satisfaction, the top 3 channels were service-driven retailers: department stores (4.27); dealer shop (4.21); and Internet shopping malls (4.21). Speciality shopping arcade(3.98) were the least satisfied channels among Korean consumers. Ⅲ. Implications We try to identify the whole picture of multi-channel retail shopping environments and its implications in the context of Korean electronic goods. From manufacturers' perspectives, multi-channel may cause channel conflicts. Furthermore, inter-channel competition draws much more attention as hypermarkets and category killers have grown rapidly in recent years. At the same time, from consumers' perspectives, 'buy where' is becoming an important buying decision as it would decide the level of shopping satisfaction. We need to develop the concept of 'channel equity' to manage multi-channel distribution effectively. Firms should measure and monitor their prime channel equity in regular basis to maximize their channel potentials. Prototype channel equity positioning map has been developed as follows. We expect more studies to develop the concept of 'channel equity' in the future.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.135-144
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• 2010

Apple recently announced a new policy about software development kit that banned the use of tools that convert apps built on other platforms into iPhone apps. Therefore, Adobe cannot develop their software to AppStore that inquire to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission about antitrust actions. Someone argue that Apple try to exclusive smartphone market such as the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit in 1998, but this case is essentially different. First, it need to define Apple's software development kit for iPhone and iPad is whether antitrust or not. Because of the characteristics of two-sided market in Smartphone Apple's iPhone cannot monopoly in cellphone or smartphone market, but it can be an antitrust in application store market. However, Apple re-announced new software development kit policy that shows positive results. Instead of hastily intervened regulatory agencies, the DOJ or the FTC, it is quite desirable that watching the interaction between companies that whether market failures or not and if it's harmful for consumer's benefit. Adobe attack Apple to advocate consumers and developers freedom of choice, but the most important thing is conclusion based on a comprehensive analysis need to objective point of view that Apple do whether antitrust act or not and damage to developers and consumers who are both side of platform.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.6 no.3 s.25
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• pp.144-155
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• 2005

Since 1950s, the Korean housing market has continually experienced the chronicle lack of housing stock because of lower housing investment in comparison with a population explosion, prompt urbanization and rapid restructuring of family. The Korean housing market have thus been driven not by the pricing model by housing demand-supply chain but by the Korean housing policies focusing on the increase of housing supply and the living stability of the middle or low-income bracket. After all, repetitive economic vicious circle of housing price and the increase of unsold apartments aggravated the malfunction of the Korean housing market. Meanwhile, the Korean construction firms have exacerbated their profitability. Such terrible situations are mainly triggered by the Korean construction firms that weighed on the short-term profits and quick response of the government policy alterations rather than the prospect of housing market Therefore, this research focusing on the dynamics of housing market identified and classified the demand and supply elements that consist not only of housing system structures but also of the environmental elements that affect the structures. Based on the system thinking and traditional theory of consumer's choice, the interactions of these elements were constructed as a causal loop diagram that explains the mutual influences among housing subsystems with feedback loops. This paper describes and discusses about the causes of the dynamic changes in the Korean housing market. This study would help housing suppliers, including housing developers, construction firms, etc., to form a more comprehensive understanding on the fundamental issues that constitute the Korean housing market and thereby increasing their long term as well as minimizing the risk involved in the housing supply businesses.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.191-209
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• 2011

In a buyer-seller transaction process, 'value for money,' a measure of quality-price-ratio, is one of the most important criteria for buyers' purchasing decisions. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a method which helps online shoppers choose the best of several sellers offering homogeneous goods. We suggest FDH (free disposal hull) model, an applied model of data envelopment analysis (DEA), for online buyer-seller transactions and verify it with the data from an Internet comparison shopping site. For this purpose, we analyze consumer choice behaviors by examining how consumers respond to different sale conditions such as price, brand, or delivery time. Then, we implement a seller recommendation system to support buyers' purchasing decisions. We expect our FDH model to provide valuable information for rational buyers who want to pay the least price for high quality products/services and to be used in implementing automated evaluation processes in micro transactions. Moreover, we expect that our results can be utilized for sellers' benchmarking strategies which help sellers be more competitive by showing them how to attract buyers.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.219-243
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• 2004

Generally, electricity market has monopoly market structure because of need of enormous investment for infrastructure. However, the introduction of competition in network industry as electricity is a tendency of the world with decreasing the effects of economy of scale due to the advancement of technology. Now, electricity industry restructuring is in progress but the competition in electricity retail market is not in force yet in Korea. Whether a effective competition exist or not is very important to policy decision maker who drive restructuring, but there are small numbers of quantitative researches on that. In this study, we estimated the effectiveness of competition in the electricity retail market through switching costs. If switching costs are high, consumers actually can be locked in incumbent firm in spite of introduction of competition. Therefore switching is a critical factor to determine effectiveness of competition and to estimate the size of switching costs quantitatively can proffer the information about whether the competition in the electricity retail market is effective or not in the future. We estimated switching costs using consumer' stated-preference data by conjoint analysis. In according to estimation results, the cost of switching process is not so high, but the relative brand loyalty of an incumbent company is significantly high. And the price is considered as the most important factor choosing an electric service commodity. Based on the empirical results, it is possible to analyze the relationship between suppliers' competitiveness resulted from management efficiency and customers' switching possibilities. The paper therefore provides guidance for suppliers in deciding to enter into retail competition and for policy makers in introducing retail competition. And it has a significance of estimating the switching costs directly.

• Food Science and Preservation
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.381-387
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• 2014

Food irradiation is one of the successful modern techniques used to preserve food. However, it needs very careful control. Detection of irradiated food is of prime importance to facilitate global trade and consumer assurance, choice, and protection. This study was performed to evaluate the radiation-induced hydrocarbon content of dried squid and octopus by e-beam irradiation. The samples were collected from supermarkets all over South Korea and irradiated with an e-beam at 0, 1, 3, 5, 7, and 10 kGy doses. Lipids were extracted with soxhelt, and the hydrocarbons induced with irradiation were separated via solid phase extraction (SPE) and identified via gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The major induced hydrocarbons in the irradiated dried squid and octopus were 1-tetradecene and pentadecane derived from palmitic acid and 1-hexadecene and heptadecane from stearic acid. The concentration of hydrocarbons differed from the composition of the fatty acid at the same radiation and increased according to the level of the radiation dose. The hydrocarbons induced by e-beam irradiation, including 1-tetradecene, 1-hexadecene, and heptadecane, were confirmed to have been the irradiation marker compounds. Therefore, they can be used to distinguish the e-beam-irradiated dried squid and octopus from the non-irradiated ones.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.221-229
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• 2015

This study aims to identify and analyze the main factors that determine the properties and buying behavior in the premium bottled select and analyze the degree of impact on the relevant variables are premium water demand. When applied to the truncated negative binomial model to derive the study results: The results of estimating the variables that affect the demand for premium mineral water are as follows. Premium bottled water demand of this group my purchases with a choice between buying behavior variables are significantly higher than the relative population. To also do a good ingredient water, it appeared to be on a statistically significant positive effect on the demand for the more groups you purchase a premium bottled water for the purpose of receiving special feeling, just buy purpose is called to drinking water does not significantly affect to be analyzed. Among demographic characteristics it showed that demand for premium bottled water purchases are significantly higher in women than in men, professional / clerical job, such as the military, college graduates were more consumer research as significant in comparison to the relative population. Taste and package design factors of premium bottled mineral water among the select attribute factors are having a significant positive impact on the purchasing demand, local conditions and cost factors have been estimated to be insignificant.

• International Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.67-78
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• 2007

The aim of this paper was to compare differences and similarities of farmhouses between Denmark and Korea as a cross-cultural study. Farmhouses built during the 18th and 19th centuries in Denmark, and ones from Chosun Dynasty (AD. 1392-1910) in Korea were targets of this study. Literature study and field trips to districts and open-air museums in both countries were used. Field trips were carried out during summer of 2005 in Denmark, and fall of 2005 in Korea. Detailed comparisons focused on farmhouse plans, the use of rooms and furnishing, and building materials. As a conclusion, some differences were found between the two countries. In terms of farmhouse plans, square types with four wings, and parallel types were the most frequent forms in Denmark, while a few types, such as the "I", "L", "U" shapes and square types, were more frequently found in Korea. In Denmark, the most important room was the dwelling-room, in which daily family life took place. Every member of the family slept, ate, and worked here, and kept geese and young animals during the winter season. Therefore, this room was laid out in the center of the house. However, Anbang, the most important room in Korea, was not situated in the best part of the house. Instead, the Daechung-maru occupied the center and the best place because the daechung-maru, in which the ancestral ceremony was held, was thought of as more important than a place for live people. Also the use of rooms and furnishing was quite different between the two countries, reflecting each life style. Danish furnishings represented practical daily life, while Korean furnishings reflected more conceptual aspects. It might have resulted from Confucianism in the Chosun Dynasty, which ruled daily life and even influenced use of rooms and furnishings. In other word, philosophy influenced common peoples' daily life and living environment. With reference to building materials, there was rarely a difference between the two countries. Major materials for farmhouse were quite common, such as half-timbering wood and clay, but the difference was in bricks and roof coverings. Bricks were rarely used in Korean farmhouses, while rice-straw was rare for the roof of a Danish farmhouse. Of course, the choice of materials was strongly affected by the local surroundings and overall environment. This result can give some clues for design ideas when architects and interior designers plan housing that is adapted for local peoples. This kind of cross-cultural study can also contribute to one's understanding of foreign culture, especially in housing and culture. And, it can broaden one's insight of design ideas for designers who have to compete frequently with designers in foreign countries.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.265-291
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• 2011

Changes in a drug's availability from prescription only to over-the-counter (OTC) status is of concern to physicians from both public health and individual patient perspectives. Government has generally been supportive of changes in medications from prescription(Rx) to over-the-counter (OTC) status in Korea, however, recognizing that there are both benefits and risks to any health care intervention, health care professionals are conservative in implementing changes to either the process or structure of health care. Changes in status of a drug from Rx to OTC can represent a change in both structure and process. Cost and convenience seem to be major factors in determining whether, given the choice, patients purchase a medicine over the counter or obtain it on prescription. With current arrangements, exemption from prescription charges provides an incentive to continue to obtain products on NHS prescription even when they are available over the counter. There is therefore no simple relation between the availability of over the counter medicines and the level of prescribing of deregulated products. The appropriate use of over the counter medicines-particularly those that have only recently been deregulated-places a burden of care on community pharmacists and calls for closer working relationships with general practitioners. In particular, systems for referral and for recording details of both prescribed and over the counter medicines need to be developed, and a direct route needs to be established for community pharmacists to report adverse drug reactions to over the counter products. Reclassification of prescription medicines-by making them available through pharmacies without a prescription-provides the opportunity for consumers to purchase a wider range of medicinal products without making a demand on NHS resources. There is, however, no simple relation between availability of over the counter medicines and demand for NHS prescriptions. In the late 1980s the UK government fuelled the over the counter market by making it easier to reclassify certain medicines from prescription only status to allow over the counter sale in pharmacies. To explore the influence of deregulation of medicines on NHS prescribing, this article presents analyses of consumer behaviour in using medicines and prescribers' attitudes to over the counter medication and collates findings from research. Policy makers should be aware that patients' expectations in relation to OTC medicines may be in conflict with evidence-based practice.