• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.145-158
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• 2017

This paper aims to analyze the characteristics of the contemporary Chinese fashion market and the competitiveness of Korean fashion brands in China. Fashion professionals experienced in both the Korean and Chinese fashion markets participated to investigate the Shanghai market and consumers. The results of in-depth interviews show that Shanghai is the most favorable city among Tier 1 cities for Korean fashion brands planning on entering into the Chinese market. Shanghai consumers are open to international brands and highly prefer newness in fashion. Contemporary menswear was selected as a potentially big market due to the increase of unique, young, upper-middle-class male consumers. The Korean fashion brands' strength is that they are capable of satisfying Shanghai consumers with excellent product planning and sensory design capabilities. Their disadvantage is that their brand recognition is weaker than that of global and international brands, and their ability to localize to the Chinese market is weak. The opportunity comes is from the Korean Wave, which is a positive for Korea's products and has good geographical access. The threat is that the Shanghai market is fiercely competitive; having access to many worldwide brands, and the competitiveness of Chinese brands is on the rise. To enter the Shanghai market, creative design ability, trendy product development, skill, and appropriate PR methods such as using Korean culture contents would be required to satisfy the young, powerful consumers in Shanghai.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.408-418
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• 2015

This study investigates the purchasing and wearing conditions of wetsuits, and analyzes consumer awareness on wetsuit functional factors between domestic and imported brands. This research provides basic information on presenting competitiveness and developing suitable wetsuits for the Korean body shape through an investigation of a size system. An in-depth interview was conducted to consider consumer awareness with 10 persons of different levels of scuba diving experience. The survey variables consist of classified suggestion of inquires for functional factors and size systems. We distributed 80 questionnaires to scuba diving club members; subsequently, a total of 66 usable data sets were coded for statistical analysis through SPSS WIN 18.0. The result shows that respondents preferred imported ready-to-wear brands, whereas national ready-to-wear brands were purchased less often. However, the difference in customer awareness of functional factors between domestic and imported brands was not significant. In evaluating the size system of six brands (including three domestic and three imported brands), wetsuits of domestic brands were better fitted to the Korean body shape than imported brands; however, competitiveness has been hindered by public perception that domestic brands imitate imported brands. The results suggest that domestic brands can strengthen their competitiveness through promoting a lower price and size suited to Koreans while trying to change public perception as imitators of imported brands.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.449-463
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• 2021

The aim of this study was to analyze the perceptions and entering status of small business online fashion retailers on portal shopping and fashion shopping malls. Case studies were conducted on a total of 10 research samples. The results were as follows: first, regarding the strategic factors of online fashion stores, 'price competitiveness' is important, especially in portal shopping and low-cost brands; 'product assortment' is important but not essential in all platforms; and 'differentiation' is important to continuously secure loyal customers in fashion shopping malls. Customer satisfaction leads to customer loyalty, and customer loyalty affects the sales conversion rate and brand growth of online sales channels. Factors that promoted sales activities in online sales channels were exposure, advertisements, SNS, events, special exhibitions, and events. Hindrance factors were low price competition, overheated competition, and the MD of sales channels. Second, the research samples used multiple online sales channels, including portal shopping malls and fashion shopping malls, in addition to their own malls. The selection factors were platform reputation and commission, branding, and customer inflow through exposure. Portal shopping malls were perceived as providing easy access, advertising/customer communication, exposure/search, price competitiveness, scalability, and intense competition, whereas fashion shopping malls were perceived as providing a brand image and concept, brand promotion, high commissions, difficult entry, and low profits. The factors for success in portal shopping malls were exposure/search, price competitiveness, and brand recognition, whereas the factors for success in fashion shopping malls were differentiation, brand, exposure/advertisement, product assortment, and MD.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.667-678
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• 2022

A characteristic of a region's environmental resources is the competitiveness of local agricultural products. This study explores methods of making locally produced agricultural products appealing to consumers. We looked at ways to appeal to consumers by using the image of environment resource and environment-agriculture product image congruence. The relationships of two dimensions of environmental image, perceived quality and purchase intention, are examined. From the results of the study, both the image of environment resource and environment-agriculture product image congruence have a positive effect on purchasing local agricultural products through perceived quality. This study tried to ascertain which of the two dimensions of the environmental image factor is more effective in terms of consumer appeal for local agricultural products. As a result, both the image of environment resource and environment-agricultural product image congruence are found to have a positive effect on the purchase intention of consumers through perceived quality. By comparing the paths of the two dimensions it is found that the method of appealing to consumers by using the environment-agriculture product image congruence is more effective. The results of this study present an effective method of making locally produced agricultural products appealing to consumers and suggest an effective strategic direction for selling local agricultural products.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.125-130
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• 2014

The competitiveness in today's global market forces many companies to develop families of products to provide enough variety for the marketplace. The challenge when designing a product family is in resolving the tradeoff between product commonality and distinctiveness. Simultaneously it is necessary to consider environmental performance to design a product family as well as to shorten lead-times, improve quality and reduce costs. This paper proposes a metaheuristic algorithm based redesign methodology for green product family considering environmental performance. The proposed method uses a genetic algorithm as metaheuristic algorithm and green product family index (GPFI) to support green product family design. In addition, it provides the redesign methodology such as product family level and component level. A case study used table lamps as an product family's example shows the verification and effectiveness of the proposed method.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.39-44
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• 2017

The domestic mold industry is composed of 6,560 small and medium sized mold companies as of 2015. The structure of mold industry centered on less than 10 people in the past has been improved in the direction of increasing number of medium and large scale companies with more than 20 competitors with global competitiveness and has maintained its position as the world's second largest mold exporter with global competitiveness. Nevertheless, the manpower structure and corporate competitiveness structure of the mold industry is very high, with the proportion of production manpower reaching 70% and shortage rate of 10% or more in order to respond to the orders of customers. However, the development base for new employees with technological skills required by the industrial field is poor, and the inflow of young people is very limited due to factors such as the avoidance of small and medium enterprises and production jobs. It is expected that the labor shortage of mold enterprises will be further increased in the future. In the mold industry, due to the characteristics of small quantity multi-product production corresponding to the demand of the consumer, many production processes are individually and independently carried out, resulting in low labor productivity, and the structural time required for the worker to increase the working time Due to limitations, the working hours per week of the employees are about 50 hours. The implementation of the working time reduction bill, which is recently promoted by the government, is a crisis factor. In order to cultivate the mold industry, it is necessary to expand the base of molds to meet the intensification of global competition, the convergence of technologies to actively respond to the restructuring of the industrial structure, and the response to the new industry, It is necessary to improve labor productivity through policies such as development and dissemination of system, and to secure price, delivery and quality competitiveness in global market.

• Journal of Evidence-Based Herbal Medicine
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.33-38
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• 2009

Korean Ginseng has been recognized as a representative special product in Korea and over the world for a long time, since its quality is known to be superior to Chinese, North American Ginseng. However, the export volume of Korean Ginseng products has been diminishing since 1990 because the imports of low price Chinese Ginseng and the effective marketing policy on North American Ginseng. Therefore, this study is to suggest the competitiveness reinforcement strategies through analyses of the present state and transition of the international competitiveness in Korean Ginseng. This study conducts the comparative analysis of international competitive power of ginseng between Korea and other exporting countries. There are many kinds of saponin that are competitive from a quality profile. However, price competitiveness was very low. According to the result of analysis, this study suggest the competitiveness reinforcement strategies of Korean Ginseng as follows ; First, it is necessary to establish the ginseng plan for high-quality environmentally-friendly production. Second, Korean Ginseng producer should develop various consumer-oriented products according to purchasing power and taste of target market consumers. Third, export strategies must be established by finding out every importing country’s characteristics with regard its import, circulation and consumption of the Korean Ginseng. The use of this study is to forecast useful information to concerned organization for the future policies to the ginseng products in the international market.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.95-113
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• 2017

The advent of information communication technology or the Fourth Industrial Revolution facilitated the fusion of equipment and management systems, such as Manufacturing Execution System, Enterprise Resource Planning, and Product Lifecycle Management, in the successful implementation of smart factories. The government supports the early adoption of these systems in small and medium companies to enhance their global competitiveness in producing products that can be recognized in a dramatically changing manufacturing environment. This study introduces smart factories to improve company competitiveness and address influences from the government assistance, CEO leadership, external consultancy, and organizational participation. We analyzed 101 results received from the questionnaires circulated to small- and medium-sized manufacturing companies. Given a successful smart factory implementation, company competitiveness is the factor that mostly influences organizational participation, government assistance, external consultancy, and CEO leadership. This study suggests several perspectives to implement a smart factory, which is the most important aspect of company competitiveness.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.127-145
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• 2017

The study focuses on the ICT industry, which is considered future growth engine. Tthe main objective of the research is to examine the extent of the competitiveness of the Chinese ICT industry, which is rapidly emerging as a competitor of the ICT industry in Korea. The ICT items subject to primary analysis of this study were computer and peripherals items. Analysis methods used were MSI (Market Share Index), EBI (Export Bias Index), and MCA (Market Comparative Advantage). The analysis period was from 2008 to 2016, and the analysis dater used were the export-import data provided by KITA. According to the study, Korean market share of Chinese computers and peripherals items has continued to increase, exports concentrated on the Korean market are intensifying, though the degree of competitiveness gained by the Korean market is quite strong. In particular, 852851, 847160 items have the largest competitiveness in the Korean market compared to other items used in this study. The implications of this study for the Korean market are as follows: i) improvement of quality with price ii) convergence product development between computer and peripherals items and consumer -friendly design development, and iii) marketing efforts to improve product awareness so that consumers recognize Korean computer and peripherals products.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.210-223
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• 1999

An efficient management of product information is critical to the enhancement of corporate competitiveness. Product information is often distributed in term of organization, geography, and time. With the rapid increase in the use of Internet or its associated Web and intranets, it has been accelerating to integrate the distributed information. In this research, a Distributed, Open, Intelligent Product data Management system, namely DOI-PDM, is developed. This system deals with product information following the STEP standard, and its operation is controlled by a Web-based workflow management system. CORBA is employed to ensure interoperability among distributed objects. It is intended to achieve openness by using various standards, such s STEP, KQML, SGML, and WfMC specifications. One major difficulty in managing it needs also be properly modified according to the dynamics. It however is very hard to have a prior anticipation to the dynamics. It however is very hard to have a prior anticipation to the modification requirements in practice. We introduce a process adaptation model and a use of intelligent agent technology. An agent is delegated to modify process definitions during run-time. A method of agent implementation and a proper communication scheme among te agents are proposed. Also developed in this research is a STEP-based content search system which can co-work with the agents by providing relevant product information that the agents require.