• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.31 no.12
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• pp.1710-1720
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• 2007

Environmental changes, including intensive international competition, unpredictable consumer demand, and market trends of variety and short product life cycles, have compelled the U. S. textiles and apparel industry to focus increasingly on the consumer as a way to meet these challenges. The industry began expanding into mass customization that used information technology, flexible processes, and organizational structures to deliver a wide range of products and services that met specific needs of individual customers but on a mass scale. This paper presents cases of leading-edge technology application on customization and breakthrough concepts in personalization, with a view to raising the level of debate on these issues to its highest level.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.44 no.9
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• pp.1388-1398
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• 2015

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is the most complete and comprehensive method for translating what customers need from a product. This study utilized QFD to develop sauces made from Gochujang and to determine how to fulfill international customers' requirements. A customer survey and expert opinion survey were conducted from May 13 to August 22, 2014 and targeted 220 consumers and 20 experts in the U.S. and China. Finally, a total of 208 (190 consumers and 18 experts) useable data were selected. The top three customer requirements for Gochujang sauces were identified as fresh flavor (4.40), making better flavor (3.99), and cooking availability (3.90). Thirty-three engineering characteristics were developed. The results from the calculation of relative importance of engineering characteristics identified that 'cooking availability', 'free sample and food testing', 'unique concept', and 'development of brand' were the highest. The relative importance of engineering characteristics, correlation, and technical difficulties are ranked, and this result could contribute to the development Korean sauces based on customer needs and engineering characteristics.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.233-244
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to improve awareness of network marketing business in South Korea, which takes a quite negative view of network marketing, to raise awareness of "starting up a business" as independent business owners, to assist them in building their own subjecthood in network business and entrepreneurial identity, and ultimately to give some suggestions on how to improve their self-directed entrepreneurial competency and the quality of their business management. To make an empirical analysis of 121 independent business owners of Korean native network marketing, the personal and background variables of the entrepreneurs were selected as independent variables, and entrepreneurship was selected as a mediator variable. The selected dependent variables were financial and non-financial business performances. A multiple regression analysis was conducted by inputting the variables. The findings of the study were as follows: It produced an effect of more financial performance when the innovation of the independent business owners of network marketing was better, and this innovation was possible to have only when they improved in entrepreneurial efficacy and locus of control. In contrast, only authenticity had an effect on boosting non-financial business performance among the factors of entrepreneurship. To have authenticity, it's necessary to strengthen achievement needs and awareness of locus of control among the personal characteristics of the independent business owners of network marketing. Among the factors of entrepreneurship, there was better authenticity when their personal networks were broader among their background characteristics. In addition, self-efficacy that was one of personal characteristics made a direct contribution to the enhancement of non-financial performance. As a result, independent business owners of network marketing are required to hold a strong belief in their own business, to be active in business activities and to have a high efficacy as spontaneous principal agents, and they also are required to have more adventurous, planned, active and propulsive achievement needs that enable them to attain the goals of their business and keep moving forward. Besides, they should foster their locus-of-control competency that is to control, endure and be responsible for a variety of phenomena or incidents that they face, and there will be better financial performance or non-financial performance only when they demonstrate their self-belief and confidence and when they have faith in and conviction about themselves. For independent business owners of network marketing, a consumer-centered thinking that entails authenticity and trustworthiness and touches the hearts of customers is a more effective marketing strategy than an egocentric thinking as sellers when they approach customers. And they are expected to make progress in terms of the quality of business management when their business attachment or enthusiasm is great enough to match their own efficacy with entrepreneurial identity or strike a balance between them.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.43-65
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• 2010

Facing a complex environment driven by a decade, many companies are adopting new strategic frameworks such as Customer Relationship Management system to achieve sustainable profitability as well as overcome serious competition for survival. In many business areas, CRM system advanced a great deal in a matter of continuous compensating the defect and overall integration. However, pharmaceutical companies in Korea were slow to accept them for usesince they still have a tendency of holding fast to traditional way of sales and marketing based on individual networks of sales representatives. In the circumstance, this article tried to empirically address current status of CRM system as well as the effects of the system on the performance of pharmaceutical companies by applying BSC method's four perspectives, from financial, customer, learning and growth and internal process. Survey by e-mail and post to employers and employees who were working in pharma firms were undergone for the purpose. Total 113 cases among collected 140 ones were used for the statistical analysis by SPSS ver. 15 package. Reliability, Factor analysis, regression were done. This study revealed that CRM system had a significant effect on improving financial and non-financial performance of pharmaceutical companies as expected. Proposed regression model fits well and among them, CRM marketing information system shed the light on substantial impact on companies' outcome given profitability, growth and investment. Useful analytical information by CRM marketing information system appears to enable pharmaceutical firms to set up effective marketing and sales strategies, these result in favorable financial performance by enhancing values for stakeholderseventually, not to mention short-term profit and/or mid-term potential to growth. CRM system depicted its influence on not only financial performance, but also non-financial fruit of pharmaceutical companies. Further analysis for each component showed that CRM marketing information system were able to demonstrate statistically significant effect on the performance like the result of financial outcome. CRM system is believed to provide the companies with efficient way of customers managing by valuable standardized business process prompt coping with specific customers' needs. It consequently induces customer satisfaction and retentionto improve performance for long period. That is, there is a virtuous circle for creating value as the cornerstone for sustainable growth. However, the research failed to put forward to evidence to support hypothesis regarding favorable influence of CRM sales representative's records assessment system and CRM customer analysis system on the management performance. The analysis is regarded to reflect the lack of understanding of sales people and respondents between actual work duties and far-sighted goal in strategic analysis framework. Ordinary salesmen seem to dedicate short-term goal for the purpose of meeting sales target, receiving incentive bonus in a manner-of-fact style, as such, they tend to avail themselves of personal network and sales and promotional expense rather than CRM system. The study finding proposed a link between CRM information system and performance. It empirically indicated that pharmaceutical companies had been implementing CRM system as an effective strategic business framework in order for more balanced achievements based on the grounded understanding of both CRM system and integrated performance. It suggests a positive impact of supportive CRM system on firm performance, especially for pharmaceutical industry through the initial empirical evidence. Also, it brings out unmet needs for more practical system design, improvement of employees' awareness, increase of system utilization in the field. On the basis of the insight from this exploratory study, confirmatory research by more appropriate measurement tool and increased sample size should be further examined.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.93-107
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• 2014

In this paper, we report what we have observed with regard to user-perspective issue clustering based on multi-layered two-mode network analysis. This work is significant in the context of data collection by companies about customer needs. Most companies have failed to uncover such needs for products or services properly in terms of demographic data such as age, income levels, and purchase history. Because of excessive reliance on limited internal data, most recommendation systems do not provide decision makers with appropriate business information for current business circumstances. However, part of the problem is the increasing regulation of personal data gathering and privacy. This makes demographic or transaction data collection more difficult, and is a significant hurdle for traditional recommendation approaches because these systems demand a great deal of personal data or transaction logs. Our motivation for presenting this paper to academia is our strong belief, and evidence, that most customers' requirements for products can be effectively and efficiently analyzed from unstructured textual data such as Internet news text. In order to derive users' requirements from textual data obtained online, the proposed approach in this paper attempts to construct double two-mode networks, such as a user-news network and news-issue network, and to integrate these into one quasi-network as the input for issue clustering. One of the contributions of this research is the development of a methodology utilizing enormous amounts of unstructured textual data for user-oriented issue clustering by leveraging existing text mining and social network analysis. In order to build multi-layered two-mode networks of news logs, we need some tools such as text mining and topic analysis. We used not only SAS Enterprise Miner 12.1, which provides a text miner module and cluster module for textual data analysis, but also NetMiner 4 for network visualization and analysis. Our approach for user-perspective issue clustering is composed of six main phases: crawling, topic analysis, access pattern analysis, network merging, network conversion, and clustering. In the first phase, we collect visit logs for news sites by crawler. After gathering unstructured news article data, the topic analysis phase extracts issues from each news article in order to build an article-news network. For simplicity, 100 topics are extracted from 13,652 articles. In the third phase, a user-article network is constructed with access patterns derived from web transaction logs. The double two-mode networks are then merged into a quasi-network of user-issue. Finally, in the user-oriented issue-clustering phase, we classify issues through structural equivalence, and compare these with the clustering results from statistical tools and network analysis. An experiment with a large dataset was performed to build a multi-layer two-mode network. After that, we compared the results of issue clustering from SAS with that of network analysis. The experimental dataset was from a web site ranking site, and the biggest portal site in Korea. The sample dataset contains 150 million transaction logs and 13,652 news articles of 5,000 panels over one year. User-article and article-issue networks are constructed and merged into a user-issue quasi-network using Netminer. Our issue-clustering results applied the Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM) algorithm and Multidimensional Scaling (MDS), and are consistent with the results from SAS clustering. In spite of extensive efforts to provide user information with recommendation systems, most projects are successful only when companies have sufficient data about users and transactions. Our proposed methodology, user-perspective issue clustering, can provide practical support to decision-making in companies because it enhances user-related data from unstructured textual data. To overcome the problem of insufficient data from traditional approaches, our methodology infers customers' real interests by utilizing web transaction logs. In addition, we suggest topic analysis and issue clustering as a practical means of issue identification.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.137-164
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• 2011

In the past, retailers secured customer loyalty by offering convenient locations, unique assortments of goods, better services than competitors, and good credit policy. All this has changed. Goods assortments among stores have become more alike as national-brand manufacturers place their goods in more and more retail stores. Service differentiation also has eroded. Many department stores have trimmed services, and many discount stores have increased theirs. Customers have become smarter shoppers. They don't pay more for identical brands, especially when service differences have diminished. In the face of increased competition from discount storess and specialty stores, department stores are waging a comeback war. Growth of intertype competition, competition between store-based and non-store-based retailing and growing investment in technology are changing the way consumers shop and retailers sell. Different types of stores-discount stores, catalog showrooms, department stores-all compete for the same consumers by carrying the same type of merchandise. The biggest winners are retailers that have helped shoppers to be economically cautious, simplified their increasingly busy and complicated lives, and provided an emotional connection. The growth of e-retailers has forced traditional brick-and-mortar retailers to respond. Basically brick-and-mortar retailers utilize their natural advantages, such as products that shoppers can actually see, touch, and test, real-life customer service, and no delivery lag time for small-sized purchases. They also provide a shopping experience as a strong differentiator. They are adopting practices as calling each shopper a "guest". The store atmosphere should match the basic motivations of the shopper. If target consumers are more likely to be in a task-oriented and functional mindset, then a simpler, more restrained in-store environment may be better. Consistent with this reasoning, some retailers of experiential products are creating in-store entertainment to attract customers who want fun and excitement. The retail experience must deliver value to turn a one-time visitor into a loyal customer. Retailers need a tool that measures the full range of components that define experience-based value. This study uses an experiential value scale(EVS) developed by Mathwick, Malhotra and Rigdon(2001) which reflects the benefits derived from perceptions of playfulness, aesthetics, customer "return on investment" and service excellence. EVS is useful to predict differences in shopping preferences and patronage behavior of customers. EVS consists of items measuring efficiency, economic value, visual appeal, entertainment value, service excellence, escapism, and intrinsic enjoyment, which are subscales of experiencial value. Efficiency, economic value, service excellence are linked to the utilitarian shopping value. And visual appeal, entertainment value, escapism and intrinsic enjoyment are linked to hedonic shopping value. It has been found that consumers value hedonic experiences activated from escapism and attractiveness of shopping environment as much as the product quality, price, and the convenient location. As a result, many department stores, discount stores, and other retailers are introducing differential marketing strategy based on emotional/hedonic values. Many researches suggest that consumers go shopping not only for buying products but also for various shopping experiences. In other words, they seek the practical, rational value as well as social, recreational values in the shopping process(Babin et al, 1994; Bloch et al, 1994). Retailers may enhance buyer's loyalty to store by providing excellent emotional/hedonic value such as the excitement from shopping, not just the practical value of buying good products efficiently. We investigate the effect of perceived shopping values on the emotional experience and store loyalty based on the EVS(Experiential Value Scales) developed by Holbrook(1994), Mathwick, Malhotra and Rigdon(2001). This study assumes that the relative effect of shopping value dimensions on the responses of shoppers will differ according to types of stores and analyzes the moderating effect of store type(department store VS. discount store) on the causal relationship between shopping value dimensions and store loyalty. Emprical results show that utilitarian values of shopping experience and hedonic value of shipping experience give the positive effect on the emotional response of consumers and store loyalty. We also found the moderating effect of store types. The effect of utilitarian shopping values on the attitude toward discount store is higher than the effect of utilitarian shopping values on the attitude toword department store. And the effect of hedonic shopping value on the emotional response to discount store is higher than on the emotional response to department store. The empirical results reflect on the recent trend that discount stores try to fulfill the hedonic needs of consumers as well as utilitarian needs(i.e, low price) that discount stores traditionally have focused on

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.137-154
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• 2008

The increase of the supply of medical service and the increase of hospitals have intensified the competition of hospitals, and the advancement towards internationalization in the opening of medical industry has triggered the infinite competition of medical profession. In addition, the high expectation of customers and quality improvement in the medical care in accordance with the improvement of overall income, and the change of active role of medical consumers according to the popularization and the improvement of rights awareness reflect the customer needs and choice in the medical service. Customers wanted to receive the kind and pleasant service under the up-to-date medical service. Therefore, as a solution, hospital coordinators were emerged for the purpose of smooth treatment and customer satisfaction by generalizing all service of hospital. Accordingly, this thesis attempted to investigate the effect of hospital coordinator education curriculum on the education satisfaction and the quality of medical service. In order to solve the purpose of this study, I, author reviewed the existing literatures, established hypothesis, and verified hypothesis by using the variety of statistics techniques such as reliability, validity, frequency analysis, and regression analysis. The verification of hypothesis is as followings: First, among education training factors of hospital coordinators, the quality of instructor significantly affects the satisfaction of hospital coordinator education training. Second, among training factors of hospital coordinator, the attitude of trainee significantly affects the training satisfaction of hospital coordinator. Third, among education training factors of hospital coordinator, education course significantly affects the training satisfaction of hospital coordinator education. As the qualities of instructor are better equipped, the satisfaction of education becomes higher. It indicates that the education method of instructors is important as an index to represent the qualities of instructor such as the appropriateness of education method, preparation, passion, visual materials, the adequacy of education procession, and specialized knowledge, and it has important effect on the satisfaction of education. In order to enhance the satisfaction of hospital coordinator education, the creation of education environment, making trainee concentrate on the education, is required by appropriately allocating programs, arousing interest in education, based on the attitude of trainee, discussion, and preliminary programs, preparation, ahead of enforcement of education. Fourth, the satisfaction of hospital coordinator education training significantly affects the reliability among the qualities of medical service. Fifth, satisfaction of hospital coordinator education training significantly affects hospitality I kindness among the qualities of medical service. If the education satisfaction of trainee is high, it is effective in the practical application such as dealing with complaints, the duty performance for the patients, and so on in offering the medical service, related to reliability and furthermore, we can find the positive change in the attitude change of medical professions related to the reliability of hospital coordinator. In addition, in the process of offering medical services such as the kind explanation on the duty, rapid response to the customers inquiry, and tidy uniform, practical effect was verified. Sixth, the education training factor of hospital coordinator significantly affects the reliability among the quality of medical service. Seventh, the education training factors of hospital coordinator significantly affect hospitality/kindness. In the education of hospital coordinator, the methods to attract the interest of trainee by emphasizing reliability should be sought and for gaining the practical effect of hospital coordinator education, the sufficient preparation and investigation on the education curriculum should be prerequisite and under this condition, intensified discussion on the instructor and education course is needed. In the design of education course, more education hours and subjects should be allocated in the part of hospitality in order to improve the practical application of hospitality. Therefore, it is meaningful in a sense that this study newly approached the components of hospital coordinator education and the need to modify the quality components of medical service in accordance with the study subjects was raised. This study also finds its meaning in that it provides basic materials for the study of future hospital coordinator education by suggesting the system development model of hospital coordinator education through preliminary study of education training. In addition, this study is meaningful in the aspect that it suggested the direction of education training by showing how the hospital coordinator education training would applied to the hospital coordinator course of the Continuing Education Center at Pusan and Kyungnam National University to some extent. Since all investigation of this study was approached from the side of hospital coordinator, the thoughts of patients who are beneficiaries of medical service, and care givers cannot be identified. Therefore, the satisfaction of patients and care givers through the experience of medical service, which is the essential prerequisite of medical service, should be importantly considered and investigated. Accordingly, The study of comparing and analyzing the views of both patients and care givers should be carried out in the future.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.75-82
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• 2011

Along with economic development, the service industry is growing as days go by. Therefore, companies should maximize customer satisfaction through continuous changes by providing services which are suitable for customer needs. The general service industry has a decisive effect on the rate of growth and profitability of a superior business. Therefore, many companies try to provide the best customer service to increase profitability. Because service to a customer is delivered through interactions with the employee, the employee's attitude has a strong influence on the customer's satisfaction level. For these, most service industries are required to provide new types of labor. It is often referred to 'Emotional Labor', and that is different from physical and mental labor. Service providers always provide a service for the customers with a smile, even though they conceal their emotions. The Purpose of this study is to identify theologically the fact of that Sales Workers at Department Stores emotional labor, according to the economization of service, has become to decide the predominance of competition among companies and represents the quality of service ; to confirm that their emotion management is a crucial part of the work; to identify the correlation among job stress and job satisfaction which are experienced in the process of performing display rules required by organization. To practice them, this study deals with the theological consideration of the emotional labor, job stress and job satisfaction. This study proceeded to evaluate how the emotional labor of sales workers at department stores effected on their job stress and satisfaction. The result of this study will be summarized below. First of all, the frequency of emotional display and attentiveness required to display emotions both have a similar effect on the level of job stress. In the case of the emotional dissonance, there isn't a great amount of proof that it effects the job stress. That shows us that the aspect of the latter, they express the feelings on their daily lives less than the former by the public awareness and gaze. so, once they could accept the latter, the effect on the job stress would be vanished. Second, a study was performed to figure out the effect of emotional labor on job stress. As a result, none of them make negative effects on the job satisfaction but the attentiveness to required display rules even have positive effects on it. that means the emotional labor has an indirect effect on the job satisfaction through some intermediation stuff. Third, the role conflict of job stress factors has a negative effect on job satisfaction, Although role ambiguity has a negative effect on that as well, I couldn't find appropriate proof for that. As far as I figured out, job stress can only increase job dissatisfaction. In other hands, the sales workers would have tendencies to have more motivation to work hard rather than reveal their job stress and complain about work. Finally, emotional laborers always work close to job stress. This can maximize service for the customers, but it increases stress of the laborers providing services at the same time. Then, they can not provide high quality service. It is no doubt that we need to begin managing it systematically. In conclusion, the work satisfaction of the sales workers is connected to the service quality for the customers directly.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.97-115
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to illustrating how the store selection factors affect the customer's satisfaction about the store and the intention of revisit base on the analyzing the store selection factors. At the same time, the difference between the influence on the customer's satisfaction and revisit intention of that in Korea and in China is also compared. Accordingly, through the notional understanding of configuration variables and the investigation of previous research, the Research hypothesis was set and the relevance between the two was inspected. The survey was aimed at the Korean customers who visit the large supermarkets in Korea and Chinese customers who visit the large supermarkets in China. After that, the reliability and validity of the collected data was verified and the research hypothesis was validated by structure equation modeling. The result of this study can by concluded as follows: First, in Korea the customer's satisfaction is showed to be affected by store selection factors, product property, service property and physical environment. Second, in China the customer's satisfaction is showed to be affected by store selection factors, product property, service property and physical environment. Third, in Korea the revisit intention is showed to be affected by customer's satisfaction. Forth, in China the revisit intention is showed to be affected by customer's satisfaction. Fifth, it shows little difference between the store selection factors of the customers visiting large supermarkets in Korea and in China. According to the research results above, the implications can be drawn as the customer's satisfaction of those who visit the large supermarkets may be affected by store selection factors (store property, product property, service property and physical environment). In recent years, more and more overseas large supermarkets are opening in both Korea and China and the competition among each is become more intense day by day. Every larger supermarket is trying their best to refine their store property, product property, service property and physical environment, in order to enhance the customer's satisfaction. The biggest factor that affects the customer's satisfaction and revisit intention in Korea is service property, So that the services requires proper measures and improvement. In China, the factor that affects most on the customer's satisfaction and revisit intention is physical environment. In order to enhance the customer's positive consciousness of stores, the physical environment needs to be well constructed. Lastly, in the compared research between Korea and China, the distribution of survey responders was limited from certain areas. Therefore, the further study can be implemented by more research in various geographical areas and more development in store selection factors.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.249-269
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• 2020

Recently, as the online market has matured, it is facing many problems to prevent the growth. The most common problem is the homogenization of online products, which fails to increase the number of customers any more. Moreover, although the portion of the online market has increased significantly, it now becomes essential to expand offline for further development. In response, many online firms have recently sought to expand their businesses and marketing channels by securing offline spaces that can complement the limitations of online platforms, on top of their existing advantages of online channels. Based on their competitive advantage in terms of analyzing large volumes of customer data utilizing information technologies (e.g., big data and artificial intelligence), they are reinforcing their offline influence as well through this online for offline (O4O) business model. On the other hand, most of the existing research has primarily focused on online to offline (O2O) business model, and there is still a lack of research on O4O business models, which have been actively attempted in various industrial fields in recent years. Since a few of O4O-related studies have been conducted only in an experience marketing setting following a case study method, it is critical to conduct an empirical study on O4O selection attributes and their impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Therefore, focusing on China's representative O4O business model, 'Fresh Hema,' this study attempts to identify some key selection attributes specialized for O4O services from the customers' viewpoint and examine the impact of these attributes on customer satisfaction and loyalty. The results of the structural equation modeling (SEM) with 300 O4O (Fresh Hema) experienced customers, reveal that, out of seven O4O selection attributes, four (mobile app quality, mobile payment, product quality, and store facilities) have an impact on customer satisfaction, which also leads to customer loyalty (reuse intention, recommendation intention, and brand attachment). This study would help managers in an O4O area well adapt to rapidly changing customer needs and provide them with some guidelines for enhancing both customer satisfaction and loyalty by allocating more resources to more significant selection attributes, rather than less significant ones.