• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.570-581
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to investigate competitive structure between the department store and the discount store based on consumers' purchase intention. Female consumers who purchased clothing both in the department store and the discount store participated in the study by completing questionnaires (N=533) . Data were analyzed using factor analyses, paired t-test, Cronbach's $\alpha$, and chi-square analyses. The result was as following: 1 . Overall, the department store and the discount store are competing complementarily. However, this competitive structure varied with clothing items and consumers' age. 2. As a result of factor analyses, the two retailer's service quality could be evaluated with four dimensions: price and A/S, store atmosphere and VMD, store policy, and salesperson. 3. The department store was expected to provide the highest level of service in ‘price and A/S’, ‘store atmosphere and VMD’, ‘salesperson’ whereas the discount store in ‘store policy’ 4. Respondents were classified in four groups according to how frequently they use department store and discount store as following: shopper of both retailers (68.35％), discount store shopper(20.97%), department store shopper(4.70%), shopper of neither retailer(3.97％). Each group showed differences in service satisfaction and demographic characteristics.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.19 no.8
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• pp.1893-1900
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• 2015

The government has the responsibility to prevent abuses of monopoly and promote competition in order to maximize consumer welfare. The government should address the asymmetry in the information as much as possible and ensure consumer choice. The subsidy seems to reduce the burden on the consumer service charges and handset prices but it actually distorts the market through price discrimination. The government caused the principal-agent problem by neglecting their appropriate role to prevent distortion of the mobile telecom market. The money used as subsidy is part of excess profit and could be transferred to down the price of mobile phone and charges and it would become a benefit to consumers. Separate announcement of subsidies by Mobile Communications Terminal Distribution Structure Improvement Act is a little developed policy but it was not actually realized. The market price close to that from perfect competition structure is plausible, ultimately.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.35-69
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• 2014

The impact of competition on pricing has been studied in the context of counterfactual merger analyses where expected optimal prices in a hypothetical monopoly are compared with observed prices in an oligopolistic market. Such analyses would typically assume static decision making by consumers and firms and thus have been applied mostly to data obtained from consumer packed goods such as cereal and soft drinks. However such static modeling approach is not suitable when decision makers are forward looking. When it comes to the markets for durable products with indirect network effects, consumer purchase decisions and firm pricing decisions are inherently dynamic as they take into account future states when making purchase and pricing decisions. Researchers need to take into account the dynamic aspects of decision making both in the consumer side and in the supplier side for such markets. Firms in a two-sided market typically subsidize one side of the market to exploit the indirect network effect. Such pricing behaviors would be more prevalent in competitive markets where firms would try to win over the battle for standard. While such qualitative expectation on the relationship between pricing behaviors and competitive structures could be easily formed, little empirical studies have measured the extent to which the distinct pricing structure in two-sided markets depends on the competitive structure of the market. This paper develops an empirical model to measure the impact of competition on optimal pricing of durable products under indirect network effects. In order to measure the impact of exogenously determined competition among firms on pricing, we compare the equilibrium prices in the observed oligopoly market to those in a hypothetical monopoly market. In computing the equilibrium prices, we account for the forward looking behaviors of consumers and supplier. We first estimate a demand function that accounts for consumers' forward-looking behaviors and indirect network effects. And then, for the supply side, the pricing equation is obtained as an outcome of the Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium in pricing. In doing so, we utilize numerical dynamic programming techniques. We apply our model to a data set obtained from the U.S. video game console market. The video game console market is considered a prototypical case of two-sided markets in which the platform typically subsidizes one side of market to expand the installed base anticipating larger revenues in the other side of market resulting from the expanded installed base. The data consist of monthly observations of price, hardware unit sales and the number of compatible software titles for Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 from September 1996 to August 2002. Sony PlayStation was released to the market a year before Nintendo 64 was launched. We compute the expected equilibrium price path for Nintendo 64 and Playstation for both oligopoly and for monopoly. Our analysis reveals that the price level differs significantly between two competition structures. The merged monopoly is expected to set prices higher by 14.8% for Sony PlayStation and 21.8% for Nintendo 64 on average than the independent firms in an oligopoly would do. And such removal of competition would result in a reduction in consumer value by 43.1%. Higher prices are expected for the hypothetical monopoly because the merged firm does not need to engage in the battle for industry standard. This result is attributed to the distinct property of a two-sided market that competing firms tend to set low prices particularly at the initial period to attract consumers at the introductory stage and to reinforce their own networks and eventually finally to dominate the market.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2014.10a
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• pp.933-936
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• 2014

The government has the duty to prevent abuses of monopoly and promote competition in order to maximize consumer welfare. In order to promote competition we have to address the asymmetry in the information as possible and to ensure consumer choice. The subsidy seems to reduce the burden on the consumer service charges and handset prices but it virtually distort the market through price discrimination. The government caused the principal-agent problem by avoiding their appropriate role to prevent distortion of the mobile telecom market. The money used as subsidy could be transferred to down the price of cell phone and charges and it would be a benefit to consumers. Separate notice of subsidies by Mobile Communications Terminal Distribution Structure Improvement Act is a developed policy but it was too late. It, the market price close to that from perfect competition structure, is plausible, ultimately.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.22 no.50
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• pp.231-241
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• 1999

Recent market competition forces the price to be determined in the design stage so that the design would meet the target price of the product. However, most commercial PDM(Product Data Management) systems currently in use lack such a cost estimation function. In this paper, we propose detailed structure and functions of a new approach to estimate the cost of new products using integrated BOM in PDM. Such system will reduce the total life cycle cost of the products to be designed.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.24 no.66
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• pp.37-45
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• 2001

Because the structure of the economy is being changed from product-oriented and company-centered economy to service-oriented and customer-centered economy, and the market competition is varying with the competition of non-price factors, the importance for customer service of logistics system is being increased. Thus, the level of customer service should be represented as an element of the logistics decision and the facility location decision. The level of customer service provided by logistics system has an effect on customers\` purchase decisions, hence on the market demand. That is, the market demand is elastic for customer service as it is influenced by product price. Considering the effect of customer service on demand, this study develops the market area which each facility will serve. That area is circular, and distance norm is considered Euclidean and Rectilinear (or Manhattan) distance norm. The market demand for product at a particular area is affected by the level of customer service that facility provides, and the relationship between the market demand and the level of customer service is represented with a mathematical function.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.47-55
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• 2016

The proliferation of the Internet and related technologies has led to a new form of distribution channels, namely online retailers. The conventional offline and the new online retailers have different transaction costs perceived by the consumers in the following perspectives: the accessibility to the product information, the traffic cost and the opportunity cost for the time to visit the store, the delivery time and the possibility of 'touch and feel' to test the quality of the product. In particular, the online retailers have lower distribution cost structure in that they do not have physical stores, which results in lower selling price. Thus they continuously offer price competition against offline retailers using the lower selling cost as competitive weapon. Moreover the emergence of the social commerce is likely to intensify the competition between the online and offline retailers. To survive in this fierce competition, the offline retailers are trying to defend their business interests by sticking to offline transaction in anticipation of increased customer loyalty, customer's preference for 'touch and feel' style shopping, and others. Despite of these efforts, customers who touch and feel a product in an offline store but purchase the product through an online retailer are increasing. To protect such customers, recently, some of the offline retailers began to provide the mobile discount service (MDS) which enables the offline customers to purchase a product at a discounted price through the mobile applications. In business competitions, the price discount strategy is usually considered to secure more market share at the cost of lower profit. In this study, however, we analyze the effect of MDS as a weapon for securing more profit. To do this, we set up a game model between the online and offline retailers which incorporates the effect of the MDS. By numerically analyzing the Nash equilibrium of the game, some managerial implications for using the MDS for more profit are discussed.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.1-18
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• 2020

We estimate a choice-based aggregate demand model accounting for consumers' consideration sets, and study its implications on market structure. In contrast to past research, we model and estimate consumer demand using aggregate-level consumer browsing data in addition to aggregate-level choice data. The use of consumer browsing data allows us to study consumer demand in a realistic setting in which consumers choose from a subset of products. We calibrate the proposed model on both data sets, avoid biases in parameter estimates, and compute the price elasticity measures. As an empirical application, we estimate consumer demand in the camcorder category and study its implications on market structure. The proposed model predicts a limited consumer price response and offers a more discriminating competitive landscape from the one assuming universal consideration set.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.231-248
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• 2014

The relationship between market structure and social welfare outcomes has received considerable critical attention in the field of competition policy research. In particular, it is necessary to study in greater depth the impact of market power on social welfare in the telecommunications industry, which is highly likely to form a monopolistic market structure. This is because, when market powers are concentrated on few upper carriers, there are negative effects on social welfare due to an excess of profits. Against this background, the present study investigates the relationship between the market structure of the mobile communications industry (the level of market power) and social welfare outcomes (the retail rate cut) through an international comparison. The results demonstrate that both the market structure and competition status of the Korean market have had significant gaps in global trends. It also points out that the monopolistic market structure (when the leading provider has more than 50% of the market share) has significantly negative effects on consumer welfare (the retail price cut). In addition, the findings of this study suggest that the direction of competition policy should focus on not only improving market concentration(HHI), but also on mitigating the monopoly of power of a dominant operator.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.202-208
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• 2024

Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine the competitive environment of 7-Eleven using Porter's 5 Force model to analyze the specific competitiveness of 7-Eleven that has maintained continuous growth as a competitive company. Methods: This study is a case study of 7-Eleven. Results: As a result of the analysis, 7-Eleven has reinforced its competitiveness with existing competitors by raising entry barriers by expanding domestic stores and developing overseas convenience store business, focusing on North America, based on economy of scale. In addition, 7-Eleven seeks to differentiate itself from other convenience stores by developing a "private brand" and strengthens its bargaining power with suppliers through the development of new products by gathering information and know-how of experts in product development based on customer needs. The bargaining power with customers has been strengthened by building loyalty and trust in the brand by allowing consumers to purchase the same products at the same price no matter which store they visit. As a threat to potential competitors, 7-Eleven has secured a competition advantage by raising the barrier to entry by concentrating stores in specific areas through a dominant franchise development strategy and increasing awareness of 7-Eleven among consumers. In the case of threats from substitute products, it was confirmed that 7-Eleven has overcome the threat from substitute products by opening 24 hours a day and providing various services such as ATMs and copiers.