• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.137-154
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• 2002

It's not easy to renew old brand of over 50 years history to the tastes of new consumer of our time. Most of national brands that has a history of some 20 years in Korea have strove for continuation and growth of brand to no avails, which can be taken as a good example of current situation. For instance, C company, one of the National brand of US which has a history of 51 years, has made its position secure as a fashion group and based itself on a sound foundation by establishing new marketing strategy and completing successful brand renewal in the process of strategic M&A with Italian company. Those successful marketing strategies are as follows. 1) they regarded both market and consumer oriented marketing activity as company's highest priority strategy and put great emphasis upon concentration on target market and reestablishment of brand image of business casual wear. 2) Setting up and operating planning team composed of merchandizer alone in Milano, they set the direction of plan on the basis of concentrated research on potential item in market according to thorough market research done by buying office in Korea, branch office in Hong Kong and buyer in US prior to blueprint planning for season. 3) Great emphasis was placed on business which focused on intensive presentation of basic key item for apparel career women who are main consumer group in the midium-low prices market in US and on supplementation of size and color. they named this line 'collectibles' and helped their customer develop their own clothes plan without worrying about the change of color and fabric by supporting same fabric and color throughout the year and enabled them to add variation easily by supplementing new trend item. 4) Company set black as a main color that lots of apparel career women find easy to care and to express their own image and presented them with pebble which belongs to navy and beige and added fashion color such as wine and brown etc as season goes by. They constructed basic line in order for their customers to coordinate purchased item with new one or to add them to present collection, and to achieve efficient sale by setting up strategy which allows this cross coordination and changing pattern occasionally. 5) Though basic jacket for 99$, short slim skirt for 49$ are products within midium-low prices range, in the material planning stage aiming at production of item that has both resonable function appealing to consumer and is fashionable, synthetic material had to be used as a main source due to price competitiveness. Despite this situation, considering comfortable sense of fit and refined drape of silhouette that has no sign of cheap material, whole collectible line was divided into two items, which contributed to reduction of cost. In case of material that is composed of triacetate and polyester in 70 to 30 ratio, was used up to 4 million yard, which allowed drastic curtailment of cost accompanied by concentration. In case of 'collectibles' line, using Korean material mainly, C company chose to have their product sewed in Southeast Asian countries where transportation is well developed and both productivity and quality verified by operating global production system which aiming at cutdown of cost through outsourcing production from the country where labor cost is low and getting finished product. Polarization between present consumers telling us that consumers with the mind of middle classes in the past no longer exists between consumers who seek after only fine article of highest quality and wise consumers who are sensible enough to judge bubble on correlation between price and quality. To cope with this change in new consumer mind, apparel makes changing their policy so as to produce item that has reasonable quality and falls within affordable price range anywhere in the world. and they're striving to get out of difficult situation by operating global marketing strategy which stresses separation of planning, production and sale and sensibility of fashion shared worldwide. The marketing strategy of C company can be exemplified as a successful one.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.36
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• pp.669-702
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• 2014

Today, in Korean modern fine arts, 'cartoon images' are utilized for their roles of the 'personas' of the artists, and as the 'texts' for the artistic discourses, while they play a role as a bridgehead between the public and art. In this study, we made a study, focusing on 'Atomouse' of Lee Dong-gi, in order to examine how the borrowing of the 'cartoon images' was made in the Korean modern fine arts, and what its period context is. 'Atomouse' of Lee Dong-gi is the first cartoon character that appeared in Korean modern fine arts, and it has acquired a symbolism of a subculture being acknowledged as art. In this study, we tried to find out what period contexts the changes of 'Atomouse' have, focusing on the private exhibitions of Lee Dong-gi, such as 'Smoking' Exhibition (2006), 'Bubble' Exhibition (2008), 'Double Vision' Exhibition (2008), 'The Garden of Uncertainty' Exhibition (2012) and 'Do Not Look Back with Angry Face' Exhibition (2013). Atomouse was born in the era of 'lack of pop' a change was attempted of it in the era of 'excess of pop' and its proceeding ended along with the 'settlement of the neo-pop'. From Atomouse started from the unconsciousness of the artist, we can find the 'identity' of the Republic of Korea, which was being influenced by the 'American and Japanese' culture, as well as the symbolism of a subculture being acknowledged as art, while it emerged as an icon to represent the Korean pop art of the time. Then, as the agony and self-examination of the artist was contained in it, its use was changed into the role as a persona and it was utilized as a tool to connect the and figurative worlds. In the end, the artist put an end to the proceeding of the 'Atomouse' at the boundaries of a persona and an alter ego, removing the creation with his own hands. In the process in which Lee Dong-gi created and changed 'Atomouse', the start-up and growth of the pop art are included in the history of the Korean modern fine arts, apart from a study of an artist. 'Atomouse' was not only painted on the walls of the subway stations in the form of public art, but it tried to closely communicate with the public through the collaboration with diverse media. It made the best use of the 'marketability' which a 'cartoon character' had at first, so that pure art was made a step closer to the public. So 'Atomouse' of Lee Dong-gi not only raised a subculture into the realm of high art, but lowered the door sill to high art. Through the study we could confirm what position 'Atomouse' of Lee Dong-gi, which started absurdly between parody and Hommage, takes in Korean modern art of today.