• Fashion, Industry and Education
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.47-59
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• 2016

This research is concerned with comparing fluctuation in the Korean and the US economies in order to ascertain the degree to which the former is influenced by changes in the latter. The aim of this research is to explore business cycles, to examine consumer expenditure in Korea and the US, and to discover the relationships between business fluctuation indexes and overall expenditure. Statistical data from the national statistics of Korea and the US during period from 1990 to 2015 were used. The instrument included a measure of GDP, unemployment rates, GDP deflator rate (inflation rates), and household income and expenditure. For the average annual household expenditures, food, apparel and transportation expenditure data were compared across the two countries. Data were collected separately from different (though comparable) sources and were analyzed using relatively straight forward statistical techniques. It was found that Korean and the US consumers' income and expenditure were greatly affected by economic fluctuations. Total expenditure and the expenditures for food and transportation were much influenced by business fluctuation in the US, whereas, the expenditures for apparel were much influenced by business fluctuation in Korea.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.987-997
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• 2012

The sales volume of men's cosmetics has drastically increased in Korea. In recent years, men's needs for cosmetics have been diversified and the consumer demand for functional cosmetics has greatly risen. In particular, male consumers have become more interested in essence product that is a light and concentrated treatment to correct skin problems. This research analyzes consumer preferences for essence-for-men through the use of choice-based conjoint analysis. This approach is adopted since the task of respondents to choose the most preferred option from several alternatives closely mimics actual marketplace purchasing behavior by consumers. New technique for the construction of choice sets is suggested based on the balanced incomplete block design, to accommodate a larger number of product profiles. The proposed design for choice sets is balanced and provides a tool to filter the contradictory choices. Conjoint analyses are performed to assess the relative importance of attributes and identify the most preferred profile of essence-for-men with respect to attributes such as emphasized function, price, type of content, and design of container. Some differences are indicated in the analysis results between age brackets as well as between groups classified by the amount of fashion item expenditures.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.907-921
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• 2021

This study aims to predict causal relationships between experience economy, perceived flow, and continuous use intention in the mixed reality (MR) environment. A virtual fitting mirror with two modes (i.e., avatar and self-image) was selected for this study. A total of 200 samples was obtained in two sample frames: virtual fitting users in avatar mode (group 1, n = 119) and self-image mode (group 2, n = 81). The results showed that the experience economy consists of entertainment, education, esthetic, and escapism. The entertainment and esthetic experiences had positive effects on perceived flow, leading to continuous use intentions. For avatar mode, the entertainment and esthetic experiences had positive effects on continuous use intentions through the mediating effect of flow; and the education experience had a positive effect on the continuous intentions to use the MR technology. For self-image mode, the flow mediated the effect of entertainment on continuous use intentions, whereas education and escapism directly affected the intention to use the MR technology. The paper also discusses the theoretical and managerial implications of using MR technologies in fashion retailing.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.524-537
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• 2019

The aim of this study was to explore the effect of combinations of diverse methods notifying price discounts (i.e., reference price, odd price, and discount rate signs) and the relationships among product attribute perception, discount perception, attitude toward product, and purchase intention of product. Experiments were conducted where 12 stimuli of different price discount information notifications regarding T-shirt advertisements were presented to 352 informants. The results showed that notification of each type of discount information increased discount perception, whereas no effect due to the size of letters used in the discount rate notification was found. As more price discount information notifications were used, discount perception tended to become stronger. The results of ANOVA analysis show that both product attribute perception and discount perception affected attitude toward the product. In addition, product purchase intention was determined by attitude toward the product as well as price discount perception. Based on these findings, marketers may want to use a combination of methods of price discount notifications in advertisements to deliver price discount information clearly to consumers. Confirmation of discount information using multiple cues would help consumers to notice and perceive price discount information provided by retailers more effectively. Discount information is crucial for increasing both purchase intention and favorable attitude, therefore, diverse strategies regarding discount information presentations should be developed, tested and applied in the real world of retailing.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.57 no.2 s.111
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• pp.69-85
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• 2007

Despite the recovery of consumer expenditure and retailing in the Korean economy after 2001, the domestic apparel industry has been aggravated by negative growth in both productivity and production. The purpose of the stud? is to diagnose the develop competitive of the Korean apparel industry and derive implications for this after estimating the efficiency of the Korean apparel companies with Data Envelopment Analysis. Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) is a methodology based in non-parametric analysis and linear programming. It was developed for measuring the relative efficiency of a set of firms that use inputs to produce outputs. Data used fer input and output variables in the analysis are drawn from financial statement recorded by the Korean Financial Supervisory Service. The initial input data comprise the number fo the employees, fixed assets, general management and selling expenses, and cost of sales. The initial outputs are the operating profit and the gross margin. To summary the results, the efficiencies of the Korean apparel companies has increased yearly in spite of being overabundance of investment in Labour and Capital. According to correlation between input and output variables, the Korean apparel industry has been revamping gradually from labor intensive industries to the capital. The companies need to reduce costs in the results from the number of employees, fixed asset and cost of sales to transform into an efficiently enterprise. The companies owning or obtaining a brand had bitter establish an outsourcing strategic in production, while OEM corporations are called far setting up a manufactory in domestic or abroad. Although the paper is derived some implications with production efficiencies, the relation between apparel companies and brand power, consumption level of consumer, and social trend is remained on a limitation to the study. The next research necessitates a topic with Fashion industry or examining the correlation between brand value, social propensity and profit margin.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.31 no.3 s.162
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• pp.463-474
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• 2007

With rapid expansion in e-retailing of apparel business, personalized fitting model service shows the possibility as the differentiated marketing strategy in cyber shopping. According as necessity of personalized fitting model construction rises, it is tried personalized fitting model creation in several fields such as computer engineering, mechanical engineering, information engineering. But, because existent study was concentrated only on human body modeling, it does not reflect average morphological characteristics of human body properly. In this study, we wish to examine if morphing is fit for expressing characteristic of average human body shape and suggest desirable morphing. We used 3-D scan data of 254 Korean middle aged men collected by Size Korea 2004. The result of this study are as follows: Lower body types were categorized by height hip girth and lower drop(hip girth-navel girth) which were main factors of lower body shape. Then each factor was divided into 3 groups respectively, 30% in the middle, over 30%, under 30%. In 27 groups, the group which belonged to 30% in the middle of height, 30% in the middle of hip girth, 30% in the middle of lower drop was selected as a representative group. We tested geometrical figure by differ volume, tilt, position of point. And we created a representative type of men's lower bodies by morphing the representative group and analyzed it's horizontal, vertical sections. A representative type which was created by morphing reflected a real body and changed realistically at the part of hip, crotch, calf muscle and so on. A cross sections of a representative type were similar to average cross sections of the representative group in size and shape. So it was proved that morphing was successful.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.12 no.7
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• pp.7-17
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• 2021

This study investigated the effect of size recommendation technology convergence on purchase intention mediated by information credibility and satisfaction. The survey for this study was conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk targeting U. S. residing women aged 18 to 60 years old who have never used size recommendation technology. They experienced the size recommendation technology in the provided web page and returned to the survey to answer the questionnaire. The analysis was done with 213 surveys using SPSS 27.0 and Process Macro (model 6, 5,000 Bootstrapping sample). The dimensions of service quality were found to be responsiveness and ease of use, and both have a significant effect on purchase intention through information credibility and satisfaction.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.285-297
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• 2019

Retail firms have begun to pursue the marketing strategies, which stimulate consumers' sensibility and lead people to purchase their products. The visible effects of visual merchandising (VM) arouse consumers' interest and play an effective role in having busy people efficiently choose products. Apparel retail stores such as SPA use the offline store to be the experiential environment of their branding. Consumers' sensitivity and response toward various visual merchandising strategies needs to be accessed. The purpose of this study is to identify VM consciousness and VM evaluation attribute factors. Relationship of such variables with other variables were accessed. As consequence variables, product satisfaction and unplanned purchase behavior were included in the study. An empirical survey data was collected from men and women of various ages. Results indicated that VM consciousness and VM evaluation attribute factors were not correlated with consumer demographic variables. VM evaluation attributes were factored into appropriateness, attractiveness and functionality dimensions. Clothing involvement and brand orientation significantly influenced product satisfaction and unplanned purchase. The direct and indirect effect (via VM consciousness) were significant. For unplanned purchase, brand orientation only had indirect effect. The influence of VM evaluation attribute factors were significant. Appropriateness had stronger effect on product satisfaction whereas attractiveness had stronger effect on unplanned behavior. Functionality dimension had only indirect effect on product satisfaction but did not show significant direct and indirect effects on unplanned purchase. This study identified the pivotal role of VM consciousness in various shopping and purchasing circumstances in offline retail store of apparel brands.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.57-63
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• 2009

With an exponential increase in electronic commerce (e-commerce), marketers are attempting to gain a competitive advantage by emphasizing service quality and post interaction service aspects, which leads to customer satisfaction or behavioral consequence. Particularly for apparel, service quality is one of the key determinants in encouraging customer e-loyalty, and hence the success of apparel retailing in the context of electronic commerce. Therefore, this study explores e-service quality (E-SERVQUAL) factors and their unique effects on e-loyalty for apparel online shopping based on Parasuraman et al' s (2005) framework. Specific objectives of this study are to identify underlying dimension of E-SERVQUAL, and analyze a structural model for examining the effect of E-SERVQUAL on e-loyalty for online apparel shopping. For the theoretical framework of service quality in the context of online shopping, literatures on traditional and electronic service quality factors were comparatively reviewed, and two aspects of core and recovery services were identified. This study hypothesized that E-SERVQUAL has an effect on e-loyalty; customer satisfaction has a positive effect on e-service loyalty for apparel online shopping; and customer satisfaction mediates in the effect of E-SERVQUAL on e-loyalty for apparel online shopping. A self-administered questionnaire was developed based on literatures. A total of 252 usable questionnaires were obtained from online consumers who had purchase experience with online shopping for apparel products and reside in standard metropolitan areas, in the United States. Factor analysis (e.g., exploratory, confirmatory) was conducted to assess the validity and reliability and the structural equation model including measurement and structural models was estimated via LISREL 8.8 program. Findings showed that the E-SERVQUAL of shopping websites for apparel consisted of five factors: Compensation, Fulfillment, Efficiency, System Availability, and Responsiveness. This supports Parasuraman (2005)'s E-S-QUAL encompassing two aspects of core service (e.g., fulfillment, efficiency, system availability) and recovery related service (e.g., compensation, responsiveness) in the context of apparel shopping online. In the structural equation model, there are five exogenous latent variables for e-SERVQUAL factors; and two endogenous latent variables (e.g., customer satisfaction, e-loyalty). For the measurement model, the factor loadings for each respective construct were statistically significant and were greater than .60 and internal consistency reliabilities ranged from .85 to .88. In the estimated structural model of the e-SERVEQUAL factors, the system availability was found to have direct and positive effect on e-loyalty, whereas efficiency had a negative effect on e-loyalty for apparel online shopping. However, fulfillment was not a significant predictor for explaining consequences of E-SERVQUAL for apparel online shopping. This finding implies that perceived service quality of system available was likely to increase customer satisfaction for apparel online shopping. However, it was not supported that e-loyalty was determined by service quality, because service quality has an indirect effect on e-loyalty (i.e., repurchase intention) by mediating effect of value or satisfaction in the context of online shopping for apparel. In addition, both compensation and responsiveness were found to have a significant impact on customer satisfaction, which influenced e-loyalty for apparel online shopping. Thus, there was significant indirect effect of compensation and responsiveness on e-loyalty. This suggests that the recovery-specific service factors play an important role in maximizing customer satisfaction levels and then maintaining customer loyalty to the online shopping site for apparel. The findings have both managerial and research implications. Fashion marketers can establish long-term relationship with their customers based on continuously measuring customer perceptions for recovery-related service quality, such as quick responses to problem and returns, and compensation for customers' problem after their purchases. In order to maintain e-loyalty, recovery services play an important role in the first choice websites for consumers to purchase clothing. Given that online consumers may shop anywhere, a marketing strategy for improving competitive advantages is to provide better service quality, maximize satisfaction, and turn to creating customers' e-loyalty for apparel online shopping. From a researcher's perspective, there are some limitations of this research that should be considered when interpreting its findings. For future research, findings provide a basis for the further study of this important topic along both theoretical and empirical dimensions. Based on the findings, more comprehensive models for predicting E-SERVQUAL's consequences can be developed and tested. For global fashion marketing, this study can expand to a cross-cultural approach into e-service quality for apparel by including multinational samples.