• Title/Summary/Keyword: Perceived Store Satisfaction

Search Result 102, Processing Time 0.027 seconds

The Effects of Perceived Satisfaction Level of High-Involvement Product Choice Attribute of Millennial Generation on Repurchase Intention: Moderating Effect of Gender Difference

  • KIM, Young Ei;YANG, Hoe Chang
    • The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
    • /
    • v.7 no.1
    • /
    • pp.131-140
    • /
    • 2020
  • The purpose of this study is to derive various clues for the establishment of marketing strategies for companies that produce and sell high-involvement products for Millennials who are not the subject of current consumption but who will lead future consumption. For this purpose, this study aimed to derive 17 factors of high-involvement product selection attributes through FGI, and its relationship on repurchase intention after make a variable through PCA. A total of 158 valid questionnaires were used, and IPA, independent sample t-test, regression analysis, and hierarchical controlled regression analysis were performed. The results showed that overall, external and internal selection factors had a positive influence on repurchase intentions, and in particular, appealing to internal and external selection factors in order to promote repurchase intention. Meanwhile, the Millennials were found to have no gender difference. Therefore, the company producing and selling high-involvement products suggests that it is necessary to make a priority effort to secure brand awareness, trust in product producers, store trust, and product self-reputation as components of internal selection factors. It was also concluded that more strategic efforts were needed to focus on and appeal to the characteristics of the Millennial itself rather than to consider gender differences.

A Study on the Contents and Consumers' Recognition of Clothing Product Evaluation Statements in the Internet Apparel Shopping Mall (인터넷 쇼핑몰의 의류 상품평 내용과 소비자 인식에 관한 연구)

  • Choi Eun-Young
    • The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
    • /
    • v.12 no.6 s.53
    • /
    • pp.984-998
    • /
    • 2004
  • The purpose of this study was to analyze contents of clothing product evaluation statements in the internet shopping mall and to discover consumers' recognition and evaluation of it. The data were collected from 151 consumers' statements in the four internet apparel shopping malls and a questionnaire was developed to measure consumers' recognition of clothing product evaluation statements. The questionnaire was administrated 272 consumers over 18 years old. The results of this study were as follows; First, The contents of clothing product evaluation statements in the internet shopping blog, were divided into three categories which were product, service and consumer buying decision process. Product category include evaluation of clothing product, description of difference between real product and product on the screen, and advice of uses. Service category include quickness and kindness in delivery, store preference for good service. For consumer buying decision process, motivation of purchasing, perceived risk, expression of satisfaction from good buying and canvassing for purchasing were included. Second, consumer recognized that clothing product evaluation statements has function of furnishing information, confirmation of purchasing decision, risk reduction of internet shopping, and interesting entertainment. Consumers also were dependent on product evaluation statements for making purchasing decision. And it was trusted by consumers. This recognition & evaluation were correlated with consumer's clothing product knowledge, involvement, risk perception of internet shopping, experiences of internet shopping. Managerial implications are provided for internet shopping mall.

  • PDF

The Influence of IT based service environment and Emotional Commitment (IT 기반 서비스환경이 고객의 정서적 몰입에 미치는 영향)

  • Ryu, Jung-min;Seo, Yong-mo
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
    • /
    • 2015.10a
    • /
    • pp.743-745
    • /
    • 2015
  • The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between IT environment and commitment in online.The satisfaction of customers, who are in a servicescape, will be subject to many environmental stimulations. In particularly, the servicescapes of the store and the customer characteristics are important factors that affecting the emotional commitment of consumers. In this study, the servicescape that consumers evaluated can be divided into physical and social factors. Furthermore, how these factors can affect the emotional commitment through perceived service quality and social interaction will be studied as well. In addition, the moderating effects of the individual characteristics at the perception of servicescape, such as optimum stimulation level and social appropriateness will be studied together.

  • PDF

A Study on the Effect of the Importance of Selection Attributes for Chicken Specialty Store on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty : Focusing on Undergraduate and Graduate Students in Daejeon City (치킨 전문점의 선택속성 중요도가 고객만족 및 고객충성도에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구 (대전지역 대학생.대학원생을 중심으로))

  • Kwon, Nam-Wook;Oh, Suk-Tae
    • Culinary science and hospitality research
    • /
    • v.17 no.4
    • /
    • pp.169-184
    • /
    • 2011
  • This study tried to know the effect of selection attributes for chicken specialty stores on customer satisfaction and loyalty. IPA analysis on relation between the attributes and the satisfaction showed that most quality-related product attributes such as 'the taste and quality of chicken', 'proper portion', and 'fresh ingredients' had high levels of perceived importance and satisfaction. It indicates that the stores need to keep the current good quality. On the other hand, customers showed lower levels of satisfaction in 'reasonable prices', 'quick delivery'(certainty factors), and 'kindness of employees', so that those attributes need improving. The hypothesis testing showed that supplementary product factors such as 'side dishes offered with chicken', 'use of neat and convenient wrapping package', and 'coupon offers' among the customer selection attributes had a significant impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Therefore, the owners of chicken specialty stores need to choose a reasonable price to make customers satisfied and shorten delivery time directly related to quality. Also, they need to differentiate their services by continuous employee training and education and provide additional services in order to enhance customer satisfaction for their repurchase.

  • PDF

A Study on the Consumer's Service Quality Perception Based on the Types of Life-style (소비자의 라이프스타일에 따른 서비스품질 지각 차이에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Yoon-Seo;Lee, Seung-In;Choi, In
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
    • /
    • v.19 no.2
    • /
    • pp.53-67
    • /
    • 2009
  • For the last decades, service quality has been studied as one of the most important tools for a service company to compete with the other companies. Based on these past researches, it has been agreed that the service quality is a basic and powerful tool to create the competitive advantage. Due to similar reason, many service marketing practitioners have been also focused on the service quality to retain the existing consumers and collect the new consumers. However, service quality is subjectively perceived by individual consumers. Consumer evaluation of service quality can be different from each other. Especially consumers with one life-style may evaluate the service quality differently from the consumers with the other life-styles. Therefore we need to know whether there are differences in service quality perception on the categories of life-style. Life-style refers to a distinctive mode of living in its aggregate and broadest sense. It embodies the patterns that were developed and emerged from the dynamics of living in a society. Since the concept of life-style and its relationship to marketing was introduced in 1963 by William Lazer, methods of measuring the life-style and their application have been developed. Life-style has been usually used to segment the marketplace because it offers marketers a unique and important view of the market. When Life-style is combined with clustering methods, life-style segmentation can generate identifiable whole persons rather than isolated fragment. Life-style segmentation begins with people instead of products and classifies them into different life-style types, each characterized by a unique style of living based on a wide range of activities, interests, and opinions(Plummer, 1974). In this study we applies the life-style segmentation based on the AIO(Activities, Interests, and Opinions) to the consumers of the large discount stores. In Korea, the large discount store market has entered into maturity stage so that the market differentiation strategy is becoming a more critical issue to the marketing practitioners. One of the most important tools to differentiate from the competitors in large discount store market is continuously to provide service of better quality than competitors. This study tries to find answers about the following questions: 1) How can we categorize the consumer life-styles in the large discount store? 2) What are the characteristics of the categorized groups? 3) Are there any differences in service quality perception among the consumers with different life-styles 4) Are there any differences in consumer behavior among them in the large discount store? For the purpose, we collected survey data from consumers and analyzed the data with the SPSS package where we had $X^2$-test, factor analysis, ANOVA, MANOVA, and cluster analysis. The survey was made during one month in the April of 2008. Among the collected 306 copies of questionnaires, 281 copies were chosen as the effective samples for empirical analysis except 25 copies with wrong responses. To identify the life-style patterns, we used the measures employed by Kim and Kwon(1999), where 44 items on a seven-point scale were used to measure factors of the life-style patterns. The Principal Component Method was used for factor extraction, and the VARIMAX orthogonal factor rotation was employed. The 7 items showing low factor loading were eliminated. The results of the factor analysis suggested that nine factors of the life-style patterns were identified as follows: 1) the equality-of-sexes and pursuit-of-independence tendency 2) self-management tendency 3) sociable tendency 4) self-display tendency 5) degree of a dilettante life 6) pursuit-of-information tendency 7) bargain hunter tendency 8) TV preference tendency 9) pursuit-of-leisure tendency. Next, after the K-means cluster analysis was performed with nine factors of the life-style patterns, the life-styles of the respondents were classified into four groups which are named as the 'progressive practicality-oriented group', 'positive success-oriented group', 'sociable ostentation-oriented group', 'stable conservation-oriented group'. The analysis results for usage behavior between the market segments showed statistically significant differences in the frequency of usage, duration time in the store, consumer satisfaction, and loyalty. Also, we tried to investigate whether the large discount store consumers differently perceive the quality of service based upon the types of life-style. To measure the service quality of large discount store, we adapted several measurement models measuring the service quality such as SERVPERF, BCP, R-SERVPERF, R-BCP. MANOVA and One-Way ANOVA were performed to confirm the difference in service quality perception based on the market segments. The results have also shown significant differences between life-style types in service quality perception. These findings show that the large discount store marketers should consider consumer life-style as one of the most important market segments for marketing and understand the difference in service quality perception between life-style types. Our findings give important implications to marketers of large discount stores as well as life-style researchers. First, this study showed there were significant differences in consumer's service quality perception and usage behavior between the types of life-style. It provides evidence that the life-style approach can be a important basis in segmenting the large discount store market and will make consumers perceive the service quality high. Second, most previous researches on service quality have been in aggregate level. However, our results imply that the future research on service quality have to focus on segment level.

  • PDF

An Exploratory Study on Channel Equity of Electronic Goods (가전제품 소비자의 Channel Equity에 관한 탐색적 연구)

  • Suh, Yong-Gu;Lee, Eun-Kyung
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
    • /
    • v.18 no.3
    • /
    • pp.1-25
    • /
    • 2008
  • Ⅰ. Introduction Retailers in the 21st century are being told that future retailers are those who can execute seamless multi-channel access. The reason is that retailers should be where shoppers want them, when they want them anytime, anywhere and in multiple formats. Multi-channel access is considered one of the top 10 trends of all business in the next decade (Patricia T. Warrington, et al., 2007) And most firms use both direct and indirect channels in their markets. Given this trend, we need to evaluate a channel equity more systematically than before as this issue is expected to get more attention to consumers as well as to brand managers. Consumers are becoming very much confused concerning the choice of place where they shop for durable goods as there are at least 6-7 retail options. On the other hand, manufacturers have to deal with category killers, their dealers network, Internet shopping malls, and other avenue of distribution channels and they hope their retail channel behave like extensions of their own companies. They would like their products to be foremost in the retailer's mind-the first to be proposed and effectively communicated to potential customers. To enable this hope to come reality, they should know each channel's advantages and disadvantages from consumer perspectives. In addition, customer satisfaction is the key determinant of retail customer loyalty. However, there are only a few researches regarding the effects of shopping satisfaction and perceptions on consumers' channel choices and channels. The purpose of this study was to assess Korean consumers' channel choice and satisfaction towards channels they prefer to use in the case of electronic goods shopping. Korean electronic goods retail market is one of good example of multi-channel shopping environments. As the Korea retail market has been undergoing significant structural changes since it had opened to global retailers in 1996, new formats such as hypermarkets, Internet shopping malls and category killers have arrived for the last decade. Korean electronic goods shoppers have seven major channels : (1)category killers (2) hypermarket (3) manufacturer dealer shop (4) Internet shopping malls (5) department store (6) TV home-shopping (7) speciality shopping arcade. Korean retail sector has been modernized with amazing speed for the last decade. Overall summary of major retail channels is as follows: Hypermarket has been number 1 retailer type in sales volume from 2003 ; non-store retailing has been number 2 from 2007 ; department store is now number 3 ; small scale category killers are growing rapidly in the area of electronics and office products in particular. We try to evaluate each channel's equity using a consumer survey. The survey was done by telephone interview with 1000 housewife who lives nationwide. Sampling was done according to 2005 national census and average interview time was 10 to 15 minutes. Ⅱ. Research Summary We have found that seven major retail channels compete with each other within Korean consumers' minds in terms of price and service. Each channel seem to have its unique selling points. Department stores were perceived as the best electronic goods shopping destinations due to after service. Internet shopping malls were perceived as the convenient channel owing to price checking. Category killers and hypermarkets were more attractive in both price merits and location conveniences. On the other hand, manufacturers dealer networks were pulling customers mainly by location and after service. Category killers and hypermarkets were most beloved retail channel for Korean consumers. However category killers compete mainly with department stores and shopping arcades while hypermarkets tend to compete with Internet and TV home shopping channels. Regarding channel satisfaction, the top 3 channels were service-driven retailers: department stores (4.27); dealer shop (4.21); and Internet shopping malls (4.21). Speciality shopping arcade(3.98) were the least satisfied channels among Korean consumers. Ⅲ. Implications We try to identify the whole picture of multi-channel retail shopping environments and its implications in the context of Korean electronic goods. From manufacturers' perspectives, multi-channel may cause channel conflicts. Furthermore, inter-channel competition draws much more attention as hypermarkets and category killers have grown rapidly in recent years. At the same time, from consumers' perspectives, 'buy where' is becoming an important buying decision as it would decide the level of shopping satisfaction. We need to develop the concept of 'channel equity' to manage multi-channel distribution effectively. Firms should measure and monitor their prime channel equity in regular basis to maximize their channel potentials. Prototype channel equity positioning map has been developed as follows. We expect more studies to develop the concept of 'channel equity' in the future.

  • PDF

Brand Equity and Purchase Intention in Fashion Products: A Cross-Cultural Study in Asia and Europe (상표자산과 구매의도와의 관계에 관한 국제비교연구 - 아시아와 유럽의 의류시장을 중심으로 -)

  • Kim, Kyung-Hoon;Ko, Eun-Ju;Graham, Hooley;Lee, Nick;Lee, Dong-Hae;Jung, Hong-Seob;Jeon, Byung-Joo;Moon, Hak-Il
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
    • /
    • v.18 no.4
    • /
    • pp.245-276
    • /
    • 2008
  • Brand equity is one of the most important concepts in business practice as well as in academic research. Successful brands can allow marketers to gain competitive advantage (Lassar et al.,1995), including the opportunity for successful extensions, resilience against competitors' promotional pressures, and the ability to create barriers to competitive entry (Farquhar, 1989). Branding plays a special role in service firms because strong brands increase trust in intangible products (Berry, 2000), enabling customers to better visualize and understand them. They reduce customers' perceived monetary, social, and safety risks in buying services, which are obstacles to evaluating a service correctly before purchase. Also, a high level of brand equity increases consumer satisfaction, repurchasing intent, and degree of loyalty. Brand equity can be considered as a mixture that includes both financial assets and relationships. Actually, brand equity can be viewed as the value added to the product (Keller, 1993), or the perceived value of the product in consumers' minds. Mahajan et al. (1990) claim that customer-based brand equity can be measured by the level of consumers' perceptions. Several researchers discuss brand equity based on two dimensions: consumer perception and consumer behavior. Aaker (1991) suggests measuring brand equity through price premium, loyalty, perceived quality, and brand associations. Viewing brand equity as the consumer's behavior toward a brand, Keller (1993) proposes similar dimensions: brand awareness and brand knowledge. Thus, past studies tend to identify brand equity as a multidimensional construct consisted of brand loyalty, brand awareness, brand knowledge, customer satisfaction, perceived equity, brand associations, and other proprietary assets (Aaker, 1991, 1996; Blackston, 1995; Cobb-Walgren et al., 1995; Na, 1995). Other studies tend to regard brand equity and other brand assets, such as brand knowledge, brand awareness, brand image, brand loyalty, perceived quality, and so on, as independent but related constructs (Keller, 1993; Kirmani and Zeithaml, 1993). Walters(1978) defined information search as, "A psychological or physical action a consumer takes in order to acquire information about a product or store." But, each consumer has different methods for informationsearch. There are two methods of information search, internal and external search. Internal search is, "Search of information already saved in the memory of the individual consumer"(Engel, Blackwell, 1982) which is, "memory of a previous purchase experience or information from a previous search."(Beales, Mazis, Salop, and Staelin, 1981). External search is "A completely voluntary decision made in order to obtain new information"(Engel & Blackwell, 1982) which is, "Actions of a consumer to acquire necessary information by such methods as intentionally exposing oneself to advertisements, taking to friends or family or visiting a store."(Beales, Mazis, Salop, and Staelin, 1981). There are many sources for consumers' information search including advertisement sources such as the internet, radio, television, newspapers and magazines, information supplied by businesses such as sales people, packaging and in-store information, consumer sources such as family, friends and colleagues, and mass media sources such as consumer protection agencies, government agencies and mass media sources. Understanding consumers' purchasing behavior is a key factor of a firm to attract and retain customers and improving the firm's prospects for survival and growth, and enhancing shareholder's value. Therefore, marketers should understand consumer as individual and market segment. One theory of consumer behavior supports the belief that individuals are rational. Individuals think and move through stages when making a purchase decision. This means that rational thinkers have led to the identification of a consumer buying decision process. This decision process with its different levels of involvement and influencing factors has been widely accepted and is fundamental to the understanding purchase intention represent to what consumers think they will buy. Brand equity is not only companies but also very important asset more than product itself. This paper studies brand equity model and influencing factors including information process such as information searching and information resources in the fashion market in Asia and Europe. Information searching and information resources are influencing brand knowledge that influences consumers purchase decision. Nine research hypotheses are drawn to test the relationships among antecedents of brand equity and purchase intention and relationships among brand knowledge, brand value, brand attitude, and brand loyalty. H1. Information searching influences brand knowledge positively. H2. Information sources influence brand knowledge positively. H3. Brand knowledge influences brand attitude. H4. Brand knowledge influences brand value. H5. Brand attitude influences brand loyalty. H6. Brand attitude influences brand value. H7. Brand loyalty influences purchase intention. H8. Brand value influence purchase intention. H9. There will be the same research model in Asia and Europe. We performed structural equation model analysis in order to test hypotheses suggested in this study. The model fitting index of the research model in Asia was $X^2$=195.19(p=0.0), NFI=0.90, NNFI=0.87, CFI=0.90, GFI=0.90, RMR=0.083, AGFI=0.85, which means the model fitting of the model is good enough. In Europe, it was $X^2$=133.25(p=0.0), NFI=0.81, NNFI=0.85, CFI=0.89, GFI=0.90, RMR=0.073, AGFI=0.85, which means the model fitting of the model is good enough. From the test results, hypotheses were accepted. All of these hypotheses except one are supported. In Europe, information search is not an antecedent of brand knowledge. This means that sales of global fashion brands like jeans in Europe are not expanding as rapidly as in Asian markets such as China, Japan, and South Korea. Young consumers in European countries are not more brand and fashion conscious than their counter partners in Asia. The results have theoretical, practical meaning and contributions. In the fashion jeans industry, relatively few studies examining the viability of cross-national brand equity has been studied. This study provides insight on building global brand equity and suggests information process elements like information search and information resources are working differently in Asia and Europe for fashion jean market.

  • PDF

Influence of Service Environments on Service Quality, Social Interaction, and Emotional Commitment -Moderating Effects of OSL and Social Appropriateness- (서비스 환경이 서비스 품질과 사회적 상호작용, 그리고 정서적 몰입에 미치는 영향 -최적자극수준과 사회적 적합성향의 조절효과-)

  • Peng, Peng;Jeong, Yong-Gil
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
    • /
    • v.12 no.4
    • /
    • pp.390-400
    • /
    • 2012
  • The satisfaction of customers, who are in a servicescape, will be subject to many environmental stimulations. In particularly, the servicescapes of the store and the customer characteristics are important factors that affecting the emotional commitment of consumers. In this study, the servicescape that consumers evaluated can be divided into physical and social factors. Furthermore, how these factors can affect the emotional commitment through perceived service quality and social interaction will be studied as well. In addition, the moderating effects of the individual characteristics at the perception of servicescape, such as optimum stimulation level and social appropriateness will be studied together. The results show that the physical factor of servicescape is one of the most important elements that affect "emotional commitment" and under this process; the perceived service quality is performed as a parameter. Besides, the social factor of servicescape, such as the other customer and companion affect can also affect emotional commitment through social interaction. On the other hand, through the analysis of optimum stimulation level and social appropriateness, we found that the higher the social appropriateness, the greater the effect of servicescape. Overall, in order to enhance the customer's emotional commitment, we must build high quality servicescape, meanwhile; the management of other customers and the companion are needed at the same time.

Perceived Product Value and Attitude Change Affecting Web-based Price Discount Level and Scarcity (웹 기반 가격할인 수준과 희소성이 영향을 주는 지각된 제품 가치와 태도 변화)

  • Zhang, Yutao;Lim, Hyun-A;Choi, Jaewon
    • The Journal of Information Systems
    • /
    • v.27 no.2
    • /
    • pp.157-173
    • /
    • 2018
  • Purpose Product characteristics and price value in website have strongly effects on customer satisfaction. Especially, in the online shopping site, the scarcity limits the customer's opportunity to purchase the product. Thus scarcity has been proposed as a important factor that makes the customer highly aware of the merchantability of the product. The scarcity in the web store is used as an important variable to make purchasing decisions of users easier by psychological pressure. In the case of scarce products with price discounts in online commerce, advertising formats that highlight scarcity value in the web commerce market are very effective in enhancing purchase intentions of consumers. Unlike offline stores, the importance of scarcity becomes more important when reflecting the characteristics of online commerce. Therefore, this study intends to confirm the influence of the degree of price discounts and scarcity information presented by Web sites on consumer purchase behavior in Web purchase behavior. Design/methodology/approach This study conducted a web-based experimental study on price sensitivity and price discount. Therefore, we created experimental web-sites that offer two stimuli according to the discount rate. The 200 respondents were randomly assigned. The stimuli were fictitious based on tourism products. The first stimulus presented the price discount(15% discount) with basic explanation about the package of the tourist package. The stimuli assigned to the second group were used for groups with high price discount intensity(65% discount). In this way, the two stimuli clearly distinguished the level of price discount intensity. This paper conducted t-test analysis and structural equation to analyze the experiemental results after confirming the reliability and validity. Findings The results of this study are as follows. The difference in price discount intensity (15% vs 65%) with scarcity showed the mean difference among all the variables. Therefore, this study concluded that there is a significant difference between the price discount of 15% and 65% for the acquisition value and transaction value of users. In particular, consumers' purchase intention is greater and product recommendation intensity is stronger when the price discount is 65%. As a result, the high degree of the price discount intensity with scarcity exerts a greater influence on consumers' purchase intentions. Product scarcity also have a significant impact on perceived value of users. Therefore, purchase intention of customers increases when perceived value increases their profit and pleasure feeling.

A Study on Antecedents of Ethical Leadership of Power Retailers, : Focusing on the Relationship between Discount Stores and Their Suppliers (대형 유통업체 윤리적 리더십의 선행변수에 관한 연구 : 할인점과 공급업체 간 관계를 중심으로)

  • Kim, Sang-Deok
    • Journal of Distribution Research
    • /
    • v.17 no.3
    • /
    • pp.59-92
    • /
    • 2012
  • With accumulated research evidence, there is little doubt that leadership behavior is related to a wide variety of positive individual and organizational outcomes. Indeed, leadership behavior has been empirically linked to increased employee satisfaction, organizational commitment, extra effort, turnover intention, organizational citizenship behavior, and overall employee performance. Although leadership behavior has been linked to a number of positive organizational outcomes, research regarding the antecedents of such behavior is limited. Especially there is little research dealing with the antecedents of inter-organizational leadership behavior. This study interests in inter-organizational ethical leadership among marketing channel members. In both the mass media and the academic association, there has been a surge in interest in the ethical and unethical behavior of leaders. Although the corporate scandals in recent years may explain much of the mass media and popular focus, academics' interest has been limited by evidence that ethical leadership behavior is associated with both positive and negative inter-organizational processes and performances. This study tried to contribute to this body of knowledge by examining antecedents of ethical leadership. Ethical leadership is defined "the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision-making." Ethical leaders not only inform individuals of the behefits of ethical behavior and the cost of inappropriate behavior, such leaders also set clear standards and use rewards and fair and balanced punishment to hold followers accountable for their ethical conduct. Despite the assume importance and prominence of ethical leadership among organizations, there are still many questions relating to its antecedents and consequences. One is whether the likelihood of an leading organization being perceived as an ethical leader among other following organizations in marketing channels can be predicted using its characteristics and inter-organizational relationship maintenance skills. Identifying trait and skill antecedents will aid in the development of strategies for selecting and developing ethical leaders and determining the best means to reinforce ethical behaviors. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of three categorized variables on ethical leadership of channel leader. To be concrete, this study develops a model of the antecedents of three conceptually distinct forms of channel leader characteristics, such as organizational traits, inter-organizational relationship maintenance strategies, and supplier management strategies, and tests the hypothesized differential effects on ethical leadership of marketing channel leaders. The reason why this study deals with discount store channel is that there is very strong inter-dependence between a discount store and its suppliers. Their strong inter-dependence makes their relationship as the relationship between a leader and suppliers and creates an atmosphere that leadership occur without difficulty. The research model is as follows. For the purpose of empirical testing, 295 respondents of suppliers of discount store channel in Korea were surveyed. The procedures included scale reliability, and discriminant and convergent validity were used to validate measures. Also, the reliability measurements traditionally employed, such as the Cronbach's alpha, were used. All the reliabilities were greater than .70. This study conducted confirmatory factor analyses to assess the validity of our measurements. All items loaded significantly on their respective constructs(with the lowest t-value being 15.2), providing support for convergent validity. We then examined composite reliability and average variance extracted(AVE). The composite reliability of each construct was greater than .70. The AVE of each construct was greater than .50. This study tested research model using Partial Least Square(PLS). The estimation of the structural equation model revealed an acceptable fit of the model to the data($r^2$=.851). Thus, This study concluded that the model fit was considered acceptable. The results of PLS are as follows. The results indicated that conscientiousness, openness, conflict management, social networks, training, fair reward had positive effects on ethical leadership of channel leaders. On the other hand, emotional insecure had negative effect and agreeableness, assurance, and inter-organizational communication had no significant effect on supply chain leadership.

  • PDF