• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.33 no.11
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• pp.1719-1732
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• 2009

A firm seeking to enter a foreign market must make an important strategic decision of which market entry mode to use. Because entry modes involve resource commitments, the initial choice by a firm on a particular entry mode is difficult to change without a considerable loss of time and money. Substantial prior research has been undertaken to explain why firms select a particular entry mode into global markets. However, there exists limited research on this area in the field of foreign apparel brands in Korea, although some research has analyzed influential entry mode factors when Korean textile and clothing companies went overseas. This study reviews prior research on the entry mode choice and analyzes the factors that influence the entry mode choice for 510 foreign clothing brands in Korea. Price range, clothing types, distribution strategy, and cultural distance were considered as influential determinants for different entry mode choices. Crosstabs with a chi-square test and logistic regression are used for analysis. This study shows that high-priced brands and luxury brands are associated with the export orientated entry mode in the Korean market. Brands that pursued the strategy of multiple distribution channels showed a preference for a licensing mode or direct investment over other entry modes, and brands from higher-cultural-distance countries entered the Korean clothing market by licensing mode. The findings of this study are appropriate for the strategic planning of foreign apparel intent on entering the Korean market or for Korean apparel firms planning to enter the global market.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.7
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• pp.89-123
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• 2009

The Philippines was colonized by Spain for about centuries, from 1521 to 1898, and ruled by America for around four decades, from 1899 to 1946. After recovering from the Second World War, the government started to harness human labor as export itself. In the present time the overseas Filipinos keep the economy afloat with their steady transfer of money to relatives and dependents. Through the art works, the issue which Filipinos were exploited and exported by its government has been reflected as the various allegories. As Filipinos traditionally follow and keep Catholic belief, themes of Christ's sacrifice has allegorically been represented as salvation, struggle, suppression, and emancipation of people. Through the allegory, we can interpret both the intrinsic and superficial texts. Also we can identity certain modes of the visuality of allegory in selected works from Philippine art history that in their complex mediations materialize the people and dignity of their predicament and their prevailing. Philippine art can be divided as three different features: passion, vagrancy, and mass formation. The passion stage was depicted as deep structure of Christian thought and devotional feeling, harsh capitalist system. In the pictures of vagrancy, under the regime of Ferdinand Marcos, the themes of drift, deprivation, and homelessness are reckoned through the images of pictures. The stories represented with allegory have been played an important role to bring local issues up as national ones. Those stages take us to the processes of mass formation or the depiction of the people as a moment in the totality of force. The allegorical sign refers to another sign that precedes it, but with which it will never able to coincide reach back to a previous stage and in this constant attempt at return incorporates a structural distance from its origin. The true people's art is one that radically generates transformative technologies and techniques so that it irrevocably breaks the plane of "art". In the painting, the truth is represented by functioning as foundation of a rhetoric of the image. And at this axis, the passional, the vagrant, and the mass formation tend to come together because they render the form of contingency that must be suffered and hopefully surpassed, a Filipino subjectivity that must be stitched in time.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.341-366
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• 2013

The term, Mittelstand, has no exact english translation for the definition, but, today, Mittelstand refers to small and medium-sized enterprises(SME), mostly family-owned firms in Germany. The Mittelstand is called the backbone of the German economy because it drove the economic miracle after World War II. During the global recession and the euro zone's debt crisis in recent years, in which european businesses have faced the near-collapse of competitiveness particularly in manufacturing, the German exports are booming and exceeded exports of China in 2012. Most importantly, the Germany economic performance has been widely attributed to the strength of the Mittelstand. Many of countries, even some leading public companies are seeking to emulate the success of the Mittelstand. Investors evaluate that many of Germany's investable "hidden champions" are Mittelstand companies. The purpose of this study is to present some of answers to the following questions: Firstly, what makes the German Mittelstand so successful? Secondly, what does the success of the German Mittelstand mean for the Korean SMEs in global competitiveness? Thirdly, what Korean government has to do improve the global competitiveness of the Korean SMEs? Some discussions in this study mention the managerial implications for Korean exporting SMEs particularly in manufacturing. Several factors that account for the success of the German Mittelstand are technological excellence and the tradition of family-owned management, concentration on niche market and globalization, and institutional supports. There are some of important lessons to be learned from the German Mittelstand. If the purposes of Korean SMEs want to remain in the sustainable competitive advantage and withstand unforeseen economic turbulences in the future, they must be able to meet the followings: 1) Technology that meets the global standard or exceeding it 2) Competitiveness in price in the global market 3) Active involvement in the globalization process, utilizing various entry modes Innovative products at globally competitive price are a crucial point for Korean exporting SMEs to achieve their competitive edge over others in the target markets abroad. It is time for Korean SMEs to cultivate a core competence in manufacturing in order to position Korea as a global manufacturing hub with SMEs leading.