• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.105-114
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• 2017

Purpose - Recently, domestic pharmaceutical market is growing steadily, but top-tier companies are concentrating on sales growth. In this market, SMEs, which account for more than 80% of the entire market, suffer from the problem of lower margins and increasing inventory costs. According to the government's policy changes related to pharmaceuticals, it is pointed out that the management of existing customers and the control of salespeople are important issues for pharmaceutical companies. This study investigates the effect of the control system on the salesperson in domestic pharmaceutical distribution channel on customer-oriented selling behaviors and sales performance. Research design, data, and methodology - To verify the proposed research model and test hypotheses, the authors selected 244 MR(medical representatives)'s responses which have currently relationship with doctors or pharmacists. This study carefully investigated the reliability, content validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of the proposed model. Results - The authors find out the following results: capacity control, activity control, and self control have positive effects on customer-oriented selling behaviors and customer-oriented selling behaviors have a positive effect on sales performance. In addition, we present alternative model to check the direct effect between the control systems and the sales performance, but control system factors except self control have no direct influence. Conclusions - First of all, competency control and activity control increases the customer-oriented selling behavior of the salesperson. This means that the salesperson's sales skill, negotiation skill, customer access skill, presentation ability, monitoring, direction and evaluation are important and it is also important to control activities to check the number of visits to customers, report preparation, and customer service etiquette. Second, the fact that self-control of salesperson affects the customer-oriented selling behavior suggests that self-control is not controlled by external factors but rather establishes short/long-term goals. Therefore, it is important for sales organization to create an environment in which members can induce persistent incentives for self-control. Finally, output control did not affect customer-oriented sales behavior, which is less likely to form confidence or motivation to MRs when output control is perceived as a means of monitoring, supervising, or controlling rather than providing information to salespeople.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.105-115
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• 2019

Purpose - Previous research has shown that a very high level and a very low level of job scope can both be more stressful than intermediate levels of job scope. This study investigates the potential positive and negative effects of the number of accounts handled by sales personnel. The primary objective of this paper is to examine how the number of accounts salespeople handle affects their stress and performance. Research design, data, and methodology - This research conducted the data collection using a survey of salespeople in the pharmaceutical industry. I sent the survey to 420 salespeople, and received 318 usable responses. To assess measurement reliability and validity, I ran an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. I also employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to test all hypothesized effects in AMOS and also measured the interaction variable using Ping's (1996) approach. Results - These results show that there are linear and non-linear effects of the number of accounts handled by the salesperson on both role ambiguity and role conflict. First, the number of accounts handled by a salesperson is positively related to role ambiguity and role conflict. Second, the effect of the number of accounts handled on role ambiguity and role conflict decreases as the number of accounts handled by the salesperson increases. Third, as accounts increase from a low level, role stress increases; when the number of accounts reaches an optimal level, role stress decreases; and when the number of accounts increases to a high level, it can be detrimental to the salesperson's role stress. Fourth, while product complexity is positively related to role ambiguity, brand strength is negatively related to both role ambiguity and role conflict. Fifth, the greater the brand strength, the weaker the relationship will be between the number of accounts handled and salesperson role ambiguity. Finally, role ambiguity is positively related to salesperson performance. Conclusion - Too much and too little accounts increase the role ambiguity and role conflict of salespersons. Managers should identify the complex effect of the number of accounts handled by salespeople. Also, when products are complex, managers should provide training to eliminate any complex processes and complex information. These results suggest ways to decrease salespersons' role stress by ensuring an optimal level of the number of accounts and brand strength.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.35 no.10
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• pp.1150-1160
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• 2011

This study investigates i) the effect of salesperson's self efficacy and work overload on emotional labor and ii) the mediating role of emotion. A survey questionnaire is developed and implemented on salespersons working in the fashion retail stores of department stores. The measurement scales are composed of emotional labor, self efficacy, work overload and emotion. A total of 112 responses are analyzed by confirmatory factor analysis and a structural equation model with AMOS18.0. The results are as follows. Firstly, self efficacy has direct effect on both deep acting and surface acting of emotional labor without the mediating effect of emotion. Self efficacy has a positive effect on deep acting. Secondly, work overload has a negative effect on emotion. Job emotion has positive effect on deep acting and it has a negative effect on surface acting. Thirdly, emotion has a significant mediating effect between work overload and emotional labor. Finally, implications for personal management and job design in the fashion retail organizations are suggested.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.1-21
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• 2023

Purpose - The study investigates the role of authenticity of B2B salespersons has on their consultative selling competence. The study also examines the mediating effect of customer orientation between the authenticity of B2B salespersons and their consultative selling competence, as well as the moderating role of trust in the buyer-seller exchange. Design/methodology/approach - This research utilized a covariance-based structural equation model technique. The study assessed the research model's moderation effects through a stepwise approach, which allowed for an examination of the moderating effect of trust in the buyer-seller relationship. Findings - As a result of structural equation analysis, this study found that the authenticity of B2B salespersons influences their consultative selling competence by mediating their customer orientation significantly. In addition, trust in the buyer-seller exchange plays a significant role as a moderating variable between customer orientation and competitive selling competence, but it is not significant as a moderating variable between the authenticity and customer orientation of B2B salespersons. Research implications or Originality - This research proposed the role of authenticity of the B2B salesperson as a key factor in the trust-based relationship and a key variable of consultative selling competence. The study has taken the research on the authenticity of the B2B salesperson one step further from the study of authenticity of the brand and the company's leadership.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.565-578
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to examine the emotional experience dimension on the brand of the low price cosmetics and to empirically investigate the effect of emotional experience on the relationship between customers and brand. Data were collected for 10 days starting on March $2^{nd}$ 2009. Questionnaires were distributed to 517 female college students who experienced to purchase the products of the low price cosmetic brand and answers were collected. The results of analysis on collected data showed that the emotional experience was classified into sense, spatial environmental emotion, sales promotion emotion, salesperson emotion and visual/verbal identity, and emotional experience on low price cosmetic brand had a positive effect on the relationship between customer and brand. Specifically, it was showed that emotional experience on low price cosmetic brand significantly affected the customer satisfaction, brand trust and brand attachment. In terms of effect of emotional experience on customer satisfaction, the orders in the degree of influence were following: the sense, spatial environmental emotion, sale promotion emotion and salesperson emotions. In terms of effect of emotional experience on brand trust, the orders in the degree of influence were following: the sense, salesperson emotions, sale promotion emotion and spatial environmental emotion. In terms of effect of emotional experience on brand attachment, the orders in the degree of influence were following: the sense, spatial environmental emotion, salesperson emotions, visual/verbal identity and sale promotion emotion.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.49-70
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• 2006

This study aims to identify the effect of information quality of CRM and salespersons' adaptive selling behavior(ASB) on their performance. For this research goal, the authors established research model and hypotheses which focus to the mediating role of quality of customer relationship. The results of empirical analysis show that information quality of CRM has no direct effect on salesperson performance and just indirectly influence to it via quality of customer relationship. Compared to this result, ASB directly and indirectly affects on performance. These results suggest that the most important thing to enhance salesperson performance is the maintenance of good relationship with customers.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.88-103
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• 2018

Message sidedness of fashion salespersons on consumer behavior with the consideration of the mediating roles of trust and cognitive efforts, and the moderation of a regulatory focus of consumers. Two scenarios were devised, a single message in which a salesperson explains only the advantages of a product to customers, and the second with a double message that explains both the advantages and drawbacks of the product. The results showed that participants trusted a fashion salesperson more and perceived stronger cognitive effort for two-sided messages. The two-sided messages mediated the consumer's trust in the salesperson and cognitive effort, and influenced consumers' buying behavior. This study also found that salesperson trust was stronger in the two-sided messages scenario than in the one-sided message scenario, regardless of consumers' focused preference, and that it was more effective for promotion focus customers. The analysis of the results on consumers' cognitive effort indicated that prevention focused customers did not exhibit any difference in cognitive effort concerning two-sided messages. However, promotion focused customers exhibited an increased cognitive effort in the two-sided message scenario than in the one-sided message scenario. Marketing implications were discussed based on the findings.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.933-944
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• 2001

The purpose of this research was to classify service dimensions for each apparel product which was thought to be important to consumers and to examine what kind of service dimensions are assessed to be more important than others. Furthermore, whether there were significant differences in the service dimensions and importances of services dimensions were examined by apparel product type(casual, formal products). Data were collected from women who were over 20 years old that live in Seoul. A questionnaire developed based on the previous researches and data were analyzed by factor analysis, t-test, ANOVA, frequency analysis. The results of this study were as follows: First, services of salesperson were divided into six dimensions: \"focused on customers\", \"knowledge/competency\", \"courtesy\", \"appearance/image\", \"purchasing induction\", and \"concerning\". As to service dimension importance, consumers think that \"service focused on customers\" is the most important dimension of service. Second, results of examining the importance according to apparel product type showed that five of the six service dimensions in formal product sales were more important except for the \"knowledge\" related service. Last, as to demographic characteristic variables, people who were over 40 years old were likely to think \"purchasing induction\", \"appearance/image\", \"concerning\" service dimensions more important than the other ages. And it was found that consumers who spend less money on purchasing clothing in a month thought \"focused on customers\" service was more important than the other consumers. In conclusion store managers could apply these results to service education of salesperson and use on preservation and improvement of customer relationship. And according to apparel product types, the results will give some implications to various service policies.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.34-48
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• 2004

This study aims to determine any possible causation between identifying which major factors affect CRM(Customer Relationship Management) in terms of promotion strategies for fashion goods and classifying customers into several categories, so that it can seek reasonable strategic measures based on CRM. This study suggested a model by selecting several variables meeting its goals, and used total 672 sheets of questionnaire for final analysis. In addition, a structural equation model was analyzed As a result, it was found that pricing flexibility had more or less influential relationships with trust, satisfaction and commitment in CRM, although having a negative relationship with commitment. Salesperson's role was also significantly correlated with trust, satisfaction and commitment in CRM, and especially, there were more influential relationships with satisfaction than any other factor. Service quality had relatively high influential relationships with trust, satisfaction and commitment in CRM. Retained customers showed more or less influential relationships with trust, satisfaction and commitment, while loyal customers did so with satisfaction and commitment, except for trust.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.561-574
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• 2011

This study investigates the ultimate factor structure of consumer dissatisfaction with the off-line purchase and usage of clothing. It identifies the determinant dimensions of consumer dissatisfaction on clothing purchase and usage and investigates the hierarchical structure of consumer dissatisfaction by assessing and comparing the effectiveness of five alternative factor structure models. A total of 300 women were online-surveyed to assess the level of dissatisfaction based on their dissatisfying experience with clothing purchases and usage in terms of product quality, price, salesperson's attitude, and store environment. The exploratory factor analysis identified the underlying dimensions of dissatisfaction: Handling, Aesthetics, Salesperson, Size, Price, Product Quality, Service, and Environment. By employing a first-order confirmatory factor analysis and higher-order confirmatory factor analysis, consumer dissatisfaction was confirmed to have a hierarchical structure with three second-order constructs Intrinsic instrument is manifested by handling, quality, and size, Intrinsic expression consists of service, salesperson, and environment, and Extrinsic circumstance contains aesthetics and price. On empirically demonstrating the multi-dimensional constructs of consumer dissatisfaction by identifying its hierarchical structure, the study provides the theoretical and practical insights to comprehend consumer purchase and post-purchase behavior. Specifically, it affords an empirical platform to extend the scope of research with condensed concepts of dissatisfaction to researchers. In addition, it also enables marketers to take a broader view of consumer dissatisfaction by providing cues about potential problems and identifying the source of those problems.