• Title/Summary/Keyword: Utilization & Satisfaction

Search Result 679, Processing Time 0.025 seconds

A study of SCM strategic plan: Focusing on the case of LG electronics (공급사슬 관리 구축전략에 관한 연구: LG전자 사례 중심으로)

  • Lee, Gi-Wan;Lee, Sang-Youn
    • Journal of Distribution Science
    • /
    • v.9 no.3
    • /
    • pp.83-94
    • /
    • 2011
  • Most domestic companies, with the exclusion of major firms, are reluctant to implement a supply chain management (SCM) network into their operations. Most small- and medium-sized enterprises are not even aware of SCM. Due to the inherent total-systems efficiency of SCM, it coordinates domestic manufacturers, subcontractors, distributors, and physical distributors and cuts down on cost of inventory control, as well as demand management. Furthermore, a lack of SCM causes a decrease in competitiveness for domestic companies. The reason lies in the fundamentality of SCM, which is the characteristic of information sharing, process innovation throughout SCM, and the vast range of problems the SCM management tool is able to address. This study suggests the contemplation and reformation of the current SCM situation by analyzing the SCM strategic plan, discourses and logical discussions on the topic, and a successful case for adapting SCM; hence, the study plans to productively "process" SCM. First, it is necessary to contemplate the theoretical background of SCM before discussing how to successfully process SCM. I will describe the concept and background of SCM in Chapter 2, with a definition of SCM, types of SCM promotional activities, fields of SCM, necessity of applying SCM, and the effects of SCM. All of the defects in currently processing SCM will be introduced in Chapter 3. Discussion items include the following: the Bullwhip Effect; the breakdown in supply chain and sales networks due to e-business; the issue that even though the key to a successful SCM is cooperation between the production and distribution company, during the process of SCM, the companies, many times, put their profits first, resulting in a possible defect in demands estimation. Furthermore, the problems of processing SCM in a domestic distribution-production company concern Information Technology; for example, the new system introduced to the company is not compatible with the pre-existing document architecture. Second, for effective management, distribution and production companies should cooperate and enhance their partnership in the aspect of the corporation; however, in reality, this seldom occurs. Third, in the aspect of the work process, introducing SCM could provoke corporations during the integration of the distribution-production process. Fourth, to increase the achievement of the SCM strategy process, they need to set up a cross-functional team; however, many times, business partners lack the cooperation and business-information sharing tools necessary to effect the transition to SCM. Chapter 4 will address an SCM strategic plan and a case study of LG Electronics. The purpose of the strategic plan, strategic plans for types of business, adopting SCM in a distribution company, and the global supply chain process of LG Electronics will be introduced. The conclusion of the study is located in Chapter 5, which addresses the issue of the fierce competition that companies currently face in the global market environment and their increased investment in SCM, in order to better cope with short product life cycle and high customer expectations. The SCM management system has evolved through the adaptation of improved information, communication, and transportation technologies; now, it demands the utilization of various strategic resources. The introduction of SCM provides benefits to the management of a network of interconnected businesses by securing customer loyalty with cost and time savings, derived through the consolidation of many distribution systems; additionally, SCM helps enterprises form a wide range of marketing strategies. Thus, we could conclude that not only the distributors but all types of businesses should adopt the systems approach to supply chain strategies. SCM deals with the basic stream of distribution and increases the value of a company by replacing physical distribution with information. By the company obtaining and sharing ready information, it is able to create customer satisfaction at the end point of delivery to the consumer.

  • PDF

Patterns in the Use and Perception of Digital Breast Tomosynthesis: A Survey of Korean Breast Radiologists (디지털 유방 토모신테시스에 대한 국내 사용 현황과 인식에 관한 설문조사 연구)

  • Eun Young Chae;Joo Hee Cha;Hee Jung Shin;Woo Jung Choi;Jihye Kim;Sun Mi Kim;Hak Hee Kim
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
    • /
    • v.83 no.6
    • /
    • pp.1327-1341
    • /
    • 2022
  • Purpose To evaluate the pattern of use and the perception of digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) among Korean breast radiologists. Materials and Methods From March 22 to 29, 2021, an online survey comprising 27 questions was sent to members of the Korean Society of Breast Imaging. Questions related to practice characteristics, utilization and perception of DBT, and research interests. Results were analyzed based on factors using logistic regression. Results Overall, 120 of 257 members responded to the survey (response rate, 46.7%), 67 (55.8%) of whom reported using DBT. The overall satisfaction with DBT was 3.31 (1-5 scale). The most-cited DBT advantages were decreased recall rate (55.8%), increased lesion conspicuity (48.3%), and increased cancer detection (45.8%). The most-cited DBT disadvantages were extra cost for patients (46.7%), insufficient calcification characterization (43.3%), insufficient improvement in diagnostic performance (39.2%), and radiation dose (35.8%). Radiologists reported increased storage requirements and interpretation time for barriers to implementing DBT. Conclusion Further improvement of DBT techniques reflecting feedback from the user's perspective will help increase the acceptance of DBT in Korea.

The Association between Patient Characteristics of Chungnam-do and External Medical Service Use Using Health Insurance Cohort DB 2.0 (건강보험 코호트 자료를 활용한 충청남도 지역 환자의 특성에 따른 관외 의료이용과의 연관성)

  • Yeong Jun Lee;Se Hyeon Myeong;Hyun Woo Moon;Seo Hyun Woo;Sun Jung Kim
    • Health Policy and Management
    • /
    • v.34 no.1
    • /
    • pp.48-58
    • /
    • 2024
  • Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between external medical service use and the characteristics of Chungcheongnam-do patients. We aimed to provide evidence of external medical service use enhance the healthcare delivery system in Chungcheongnam-do. Methods: We used the Health Insurance Cohort DB 2.0 of 2016-2019, and 2,570,439 patients were included in the study. Multivariate logistic regression and multinomial logistic regression were used to identify the association between external medical service use and each patient characteristic. Generalized linear model was used to identify the association between medical costs and external medical service use area. Results: During the study period, 32.2% of inpatients and 12.5% of outpatients had external medical service use in Chungcheongnam-do. In comparison to patients living in Cheonan and Asan, the odds ratio (OR) for external medical services use was higher across all regions. Specifically, hospitalized patients from Gyeryong, Nonsan, and Geumsan (OR, 116.817) and Gongju, Buyeo, and Cheongyang (OR, 72.931) demonstrated extremely high likelihood of external medical service use in the Daejeon area. Furthermore, compared to medical expenses incurred within Chungcheongnam-do, patients with external medical service use in the capitol area (outpatient=17.01%, inpatients=22.11%) and Daejeon area (outpatient=16.63%, inpatients=15.41%) spent more on healthcare services. Conclusion: This study found the evidence of external medical service use among Chungcheongnam-do patients. Further study should be conducted taking into account variables including satisfaction of local medical services, different types of patient diseases, and others. The study's findings may serve as a foundation for policy proposals aimed at ensuring the financial stability of our health insurance system, ensuring the efficient delivery of medical care, and localization of medical care.

An Empirical Study on the Determinants of Supply Chain Management Systems Success from Vendor's Perspective (참여자관점에서 공급사슬관리 시스템의 성공에 영향을 미치는 요인에 관한 실증연구)

  • Kang, Sung-Bae;Moon, Tae-Soo;Chung, Yoon
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
    • /
    • v.20 no.3
    • /
    • pp.139-166
    • /
    • 2010
  • The supply chain management (SCM) systems have emerged as strong managerial tools for manufacturing firms in enhancing competitive strength. Despite of large investments in the SCM systems, many companies are not fully realizing the promised benefits from the systems. A review of literature on adoption, implementation and success factor of IOS (inter-organization systems), EDI (electronic data interchange) systems, shows that this issue has been examined from multiple theoretic perspectives. And many researchers have attempted to identify the factors which influence the success of system implementation. However, the existing studies have two drawbacks in revealing the determinants of systems implementation success. First, previous researches raise questions as to the appropriateness of research subjects selected. Most SCM systems are operating in the form of private industrial networks, where the participants of the systems consist of two distinct groups: focus companies and vendors. The focus companies are the primary actors in developing and operating the systems, while vendors are passive participants which are connected to the system in order to supply raw materials and parts to the focus companies. Under the circumstance, there are three ways in selecting the research subjects; focus companies only, vendors only, or two parties grouped together. It is hard to find researches that use the focus companies exclusively as the subjects probably due to the insufficient sample size for statistic analysis. Most researches have been conducted using the data collected from both groups. We argue that the SCM success factors cannot be correctly indentified in this case. The focus companies and the vendors are in different positions in many areas regarding the system implementation: firm size, managerial resources, bargaining power, organizational maturity, and etc. There are no obvious reasons to believe that the success factors of the two groups are identical. Grouping the two groups also raises questions on measuring the system success. The benefits from utilizing the systems may not be commonly distributed to the two groups. One group's benefits might be realized at the expenses of the other group considering the situation where vendors participating in SCM systems are under continuous pressures from the focus companies with respect to prices, quality, and delivery time. Therefore, by combining the system outcomes of both groups we cannot measure the system benefits obtained by each group correctly. Second, the measures of system success adopted in the previous researches have shortcoming in measuring the SCM success. User satisfaction, system utilization, and user attitudes toward the systems are most commonly used success measures in the existing studies. These measures have been developed as proxy variables in the studies of decision support systems (DSS) where the contribution of the systems to the organization performance is very difficult to measure. Unlike the DSS, the SCM systems have more specific goals, such as cost saving, inventory reduction, quality improvement, rapid time, and higher customer service. We maintain that more specific measures can be developed instead of proxy variables in order to measure the system benefits correctly. The purpose of this study is to find the determinants of SCM systems success in the perspective of vendor companies. In developing the research model, we have focused on selecting the success factors appropriate for the vendors through reviewing past researches and on developing more accurate success measures. The variables can be classified into following: technological, organizational, and environmental factors on the basis of TOE (Technology-Organization-Environment) framework. The model consists of three independent variables (competition intensity, top management support, and information system maturity), one mediating variable (collaboration), one moderating variable (government support), and a dependent variable (system success). The systems success measures have been developed to reflect the operational benefits of the SCM systems; improvement in planning and analysis capabilities, faster throughput, cost reduction, task integration, and improved product and customer service. The model has been validated using the survey data collected from 122 vendors participating in the SCM systems in Korea. To test for mediation, one should estimate the hierarchical regression analysis on the collaboration. And moderating effect analysis should estimate the moderated multiple regression, examines the effect of the government support. The result shows that information system maturity and top management support are the most important determinants of SCM system success. Supply chain technologies that standardize data formats and enhance information sharing may be adopted by supply chain leader organization because of the influence of focal company in the private industrial networks in order to streamline transactions and improve inter-organization communication. Specially, the need to develop and sustain an information system maturity will provide the focus and purpose to successfully overcome information system obstacles and resistance to innovation diffusion within the supply chain network organization. The support of top management will help focus efforts toward the realization of inter-organizational benefits and lend credibility to functional managers responsible for its implementation. The active involvement, vision, and direction of high level executives provide the impetus needed to sustain the implementation of SCM. The quality of collaboration relationships also is positively related to outcome variable. Collaboration variable is found to have a mediation effect between on influencing factors and implementation success. Higher levels of inter-organizational collaboration behaviors such as shared planning and flexibility in coordinating activities were found to be strongly linked to the vendors trust in the supply chain network. Government support moderates the effect of the IS maturity, competitive intensity, top management support on collaboration and implementation success of SCM. In general, the vendor companies face substantially greater risks in SCM implementation than the larger companies do because of severe constraints on financial and human resources and limited education on SCM systems. Besides resources, Vendors generally lack computer experience and do not have sufficient internal SCM expertise. For these reasons, government supports may establish requirements for firms doing business with the government or provide incentives to adopt, implementation SCM or practices. Government support provides significant improvements in implementation success of SCM when IS maturity, competitive intensity, top management support and collaboration are low. The environmental characteristic of competition intensity has no direct effect on vendor perspective of SCM system success. But, vendors facing above average competition intensity will have a greater need for changing technology. This suggests that companies trying to implement SCM systems should set up compatible supply chain networks and a high-quality collaboration relationship for implementation and performance.

Health Status and Use of Health Care Services of the Elderly Utilizing Senior citizen Centers (경로당 노인의 건강상태와 건강관리서비스 이용 관련요인 분석)

  • Shin, Sun-Hye;Kim, Jin-Soon
    • Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
    • /
    • v.27 no.1
    • /
    • pp.99-113
    • /
    • 2002
  • For this study a sample of 205 people, 66 males and 139 females, over 65 years of age, residing in C-gu of S-si and utilizing senior centers, were selected, The objective of the study was to provide basic data for health promotion program development provided by health centers. A questionnaire was used to collect date on general characteristics, health status, social health status and utilization rate for health services. The instruments used in this study were the Lawton scale, to measure daily routine function, the MMSE-K developed by Folstein and modified to fit the Korea situation, for mental health status, and the CES-Dtool developed by Radloff, for emotional health status. the SPSS Window program was used to calculate percentages. Tests of significance were done using t-test and ANOVA. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify variables influencing the use of health services. The results are as follows : Of those utilizing senior citizen centers, 40.9% of males and 17.3% of the female thought they were healthy. The average score for IADL was 7.4. The daily routine of female respondents consisted of buying household articles and drugs, and other IADLs such as riding the bus or subway alone. These resulted in a higher score compared to males. For emotional health, 7.6% of the males reported depression compared to 21.6% of the females. For mental health, 48.5% of the males and 28.8% of the females were found to be in the group suspicious for dementia. On social health, 57.6% of the males and 62.6% of the females reported no intimate human relations. Of those older people who had close human relations, 52.5% of the males indicated a friend as the closest person and 53.8% of the females, their children. On use of health services, there was a significantly higher need for mobile medical care services treatment for those with lower education levels and status of window/widower. There was a significantly higher need for health exmination services for those with lower levels of exercise, greater satisfaction with sleep, higher levels of oral health care, and higher social contacts. In conclusion, there is a need to provide varied programs for the promotion of health, along with parallel resolution of social, psychological and economic issues. It is recommended that health services for elderly people provided by the health centers be implemented with full recognition of these characteristics and differences.

  • PDF

Intelligent VOC Analyzing System Using Opinion Mining (오피니언 마이닝을 이용한 지능형 VOC 분석시스템)

  • Kim, Yoosin;Jeong, Seung Ryul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.19 no.3
    • /
    • pp.113-125
    • /
    • 2013
  • Every company wants to know customer's requirement and makes an effort to meet them. Cause that, communication between customer and company became core competition of business and that important is increasing continuously. There are several strategies to find customer's needs, but VOC (Voice of customer) is one of most powerful communication tools and VOC gathering by several channels as telephone, post, e-mail, website and so on is so meaningful. So, almost company is gathering VOC and operating VOC system. VOC is important not only to business organization but also public organization such as government, education institute, and medical center that should drive up public service quality and customer satisfaction. Accordingly, they make a VOC gathering and analyzing System and then use for making a new product and service, and upgrade. In recent years, innovations in internet and ICT have made diverse channels such as SNS, mobile, website and call-center to collect VOC data. Although a lot of VOC data is collected through diverse channel, the proper utilization is still difficult. It is because the VOC data is made of very emotional contents by voice or text of informal style and the volume of the VOC data are so big. These unstructured big data make a difficult to store and analyze for use by human. So that, the organization need to automatic collecting, storing, classifying and analyzing system for unstructured big VOC data. This study propose an intelligent VOC analyzing system based on opinion mining to classify the unstructured VOC data automatically and determine the polarity as well as the type of VOC. And then, the basis of the VOC opinion analyzing system, called domain-oriented sentiment dictionary is created and corresponding stages are presented in detail. The experiment is conducted with 4,300 VOC data collected from a medical website to measure the effectiveness of the proposed system and utilized them to develop the sensitive data dictionary by determining the special sentiment vocabulary and their polarity value in a medical domain. Through the experiment, it comes out that positive terms such as "칭찬, 친절함, 감사, 무사히, 잘해, 감동, 미소" have high positive opinion value, and negative terms such as "퉁명, 뭡니까, 말하더군요, 무시하는" have strong negative opinion. These terms are in general use and the experiment result seems to be a high probability of opinion polarity. Furthermore, the accuracy of proposed VOC classification model has been compared and the highest classification accuracy of 77.8% is conformed at threshold with -0.50 of opinion classification of VOC. Through the proposed intelligent VOC analyzing system, the real time opinion classification and response priority of VOC can be predicted. Ultimately the positive effectiveness is expected to catch the customer complains at early stage and deal with it quickly with the lower number of staff to operate the VOC system. It can be made available human resource and time of customer service part. Above all, this study is new try to automatic analyzing the unstructured VOC data using opinion mining, and shows that the system could be used as variable to classify the positive or negative polarity of VOC opinion. It is expected to suggest practical framework of the VOC analysis to diverse use and the model can be used as real VOC analyzing system if it is implemented as system. Despite experiment results and expectation, this study has several limits. First of all, the sample data is only collected from a hospital web-site. It means that the sentimental dictionary made by sample data can be lean too much towards on that hospital and web-site. Therefore, next research has to take several channels such as call-center and SNS, and other domain like government, financial company, and education institute.

A Methodology of Customer Churn Prediction based on Two-Dimensional Loyalty Segmentation (이차원 고객충성도 세그먼트 기반의 고객이탈예측 방법론)

  • Kim, Hyung Su;Hong, Seung Woo
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.26 no.4
    • /
    • pp.111-126
    • /
    • 2020
  • Most industries have recently become aware of the importance of customer lifetime value as they are exposed to a competitive environment. As a result, preventing customers from churn is becoming a more important business issue than securing new customers. This is because maintaining churn customers is far more economical than securing new customers, and in fact, the acquisition cost of new customers is known to be five to six times higher than the maintenance cost of churn customers. Also, Companies that effectively prevent customer churn and improve customer retention rates are known to have a positive effect on not only increasing the company's profitability but also improving its brand image by improving customer satisfaction. Predicting customer churn, which had been conducted as a sub-research area for CRM, has recently become more important as a big data-based performance marketing theme due to the development of business machine learning technology. Until now, research on customer churn prediction has been carried out actively in such sectors as the mobile telecommunication industry, the financial industry, the distribution industry, and the game industry, which are highly competitive and urgent to manage churn. In addition, These churn prediction studies were focused on improving the performance of the churn prediction model itself, such as simply comparing the performance of various models, exploring features that are effective in forecasting departures, or developing new ensemble techniques, and were limited in terms of practical utilization because most studies considered the entire customer group as a group and developed a predictive model. As such, the main purpose of the existing related research was to improve the performance of the predictive model itself, and there was a relatively lack of research to improve the overall customer churn prediction process. In fact, customers in the business have different behavior characteristics due to heterogeneous transaction patterns, and the resulting churn rate is different, so it is unreasonable to assume the entire customer as a single customer group. Therefore, it is desirable to segment customers according to customer classification criteria, such as loyalty, and to operate an appropriate churn prediction model individually, in order to carry out effective customer churn predictions in heterogeneous industries. Of course, in some studies, there are studies in which customers are subdivided using clustering techniques and applied a churn prediction model for individual customer groups. Although this process of predicting churn can produce better predictions than a single predict model for the entire customer population, there is still room for improvement in that clustering is a mechanical, exploratory grouping technique that calculates distances based on inputs and does not reflect the strategic intent of an entity such as loyalties. This study proposes a segment-based customer departure prediction process (CCP/2DL: Customer Churn Prediction based on Two-Dimensional Loyalty segmentation) based on two-dimensional customer loyalty, assuming that successful customer churn management can be better done through improvements in the overall process than through the performance of the model itself. CCP/2DL is a series of churn prediction processes that segment two-way, quantitative and qualitative loyalty-based customer, conduct secondary grouping of customer segments according to churn patterns, and then independently apply heterogeneous churn prediction models for each churn pattern group. Performance comparisons were performed with the most commonly applied the General churn prediction process and the Clustering-based churn prediction process to assess the relative excellence of the proposed churn prediction process. The General churn prediction process used in this study refers to the process of predicting a single group of customers simply intended to be predicted as a machine learning model, using the most commonly used churn predicting method. And the Clustering-based churn prediction process is a method of first using clustering techniques to segment customers and implement a churn prediction model for each individual group. In cooperation with a global NGO, the proposed CCP/2DL performance showed better performance than other methodologies for predicting churn. This churn prediction process is not only effective in predicting churn, but can also be a strategic basis for obtaining a variety of customer observations and carrying out other related performance marketing activities.

Comparative Analysis of Community Health Practitioner's Activities and Primary Health Post Management Before and After Officialization of Community Health practitioner (보건진료원의 정규직화 전과 후의 보건진료원 활동 및 보건진료소 관리운영체계의 비교 분석)

  • Yun, Suk-Ok;Jung, Moon-Sook
    • Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
    • /
    • v.19 no.2
    • /
    • pp.141-158
    • /
    • 1994
  • To provide better health care services to the rural population, the government has made the Community Health Practitioner(CHP) a regular government official from April 1, 1992. This study was carried out to study the impact of officialization of CHP on the activities and management system of Primary Health Post(PHP). Fifty PHPs were selected by two stage sampling, cluster and simple random, from 595 PHPs in Kyungnam and Kyungpook provinces. Data were collected by a personal interview with CHPs and review of records and reports kept in the PHPs. The study was done for the periods of January 1-March 31, 1992 (before officialization) and January 1-March 31, 1993 (after officialization). Ninety-six percent of the CHPs wanted to become a regular government official in the hope of better job security and higher salary. The proportion of CHPs who were proud of their iob was increased from 24% to 46% after officialization. Those CHPs who felt insecure for their job decreased from 30% to 10%. Monthly salary was increased by 34% from 802,600 Won to 1,076,000 Won and 90% of the CHPs were satisfied with their salary, also more CHPs responded that they have autonomy in their work planning, implementation of plan, management of the post, and evaluation of their activity. There were no appreciable changes in such CHPs' activities as assessment of local health resources, drawing map for the catchment area, utilization of community organization, grasping the current population structure in the catchment area, keeping the family health records, individual and group health education, and school health service. However, the number of home visits was increased from 13.6 times on the average per month per CHP to 27.5 times. More mothers and children were referred to other medical facilities for the immunization and family planning services. Average number of patients of hypertension, cancer, and diabetes in three months period was decreased from 12.7 to 11.6, from 1.5 to 1.2, and 4.3 to 3.4, respectively. Records for the patient care, drug management, and equipment were well kept but not for other records. The level of record keeping was not changed after officialization. The proportion of PHPs which had support from the health center was increased for drug supply from 14.0% to 30.0%, for consumable commodities from 22.0% to 52.0%, for maintenance of PHP from 54.0% to 68.0%, for supply of health education materials from 34.0% to 44.0%, and supply of equipment from 54.0% to 58.0%. Total monthly revenue of a PHP was increased by about 50,000 Won; increased by 22,000 Won in patient care and 34,700 Won in the government subsidy but decreased in the membership due and donation. However, there was no remarkable changes in the expenditure. The proportion of PHPs which had received official notes from the health center for the purpose of guidance and supervision of the CHPs was increased from 20% to 38% during three months period and the average number of telephone call for supervision from the health center per PHP was increased from 1.8 to 2.1 times(p<0.01). However, the proportion of PHPs that had supervisory visit and conference was reduced from 79% to 62%, and from 88% to 74%, respectively. The proportion of CHPs who maintained a cooperative relationship with Myun Health Workers was reduced from 42% to 36%, that with the director of health center from 46% to 24%, that with the chief of public health administration section from 56% to 36%, and that with the chairman of PHP management council from 62% to 38%. Most of the CHPs (92% before and 82% after officialization) stated that the PHP management council is not helpful for the PHP. CHPs who considered the PHP management council unnecessary increased from 4% to 16%(p<0.05). Suggestions made by the CHPs for the improvement of CHP program included emphasis on health education, assurance of autonomy for PHP management, increase of the kind of drugs that can be dispensed by CHPs, and appointment of an experienced CHP in the health center as the supervisor of CHPs. The results of this study revealed that the role and function of CHPs as reflected in their activities have not been changed after officialization. However, satisfaction in job security and salary was improved as well as the autonomy. Support of health center to the PHP was improved but more official notes were sent to the PHPs which required the CHPs more paper works. Number of telephone calls for supervision was increased but there was little administrative and technical guidance for the CHP activities.

  • PDF

The Influence of Store Environment on Service Brand Personality and Repurchase Intention (점포의 물리적 환경이 서비스 브랜드 개성과 재구매의도에 미치는 영향)

  • Kim, Hyoung-Gil;Kim, Jung-Hee;Kim, Youn-Jeong
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
    • /
    • v.17 no.4
    • /
    • pp.141-173
    • /
    • 2007
  • The study examines how the environmental factors of store influence service brand personality and repurchase intention in the service environment. The service industry has been experiencing the intensified competition with the industry's continuous growth and the influence from rapid technological advancement. Under the circumstances, it has become ever more important for the brand competitiveness to be distinctively recognized against competition. A brand needs to be distinguished and differentiated from competing companies because they are all engaged in the similar environment of the service industry. The differentiation of brand achievement has become increasingly important to highlight certain brand functions to include emotional, self-expressive, and symbolic functions since the importance of such functions has been further emphasized in promoting consumption activities. That is the recent role of brand personality that has been emphasized in the service industry. In other words, customers now freely and actively express their personalities or egos in consumption activities, taking an important role in construction of a brand asset. Hence, the study suggests that it is necessary to disperse the recognition and acknowledgement that the maintenance of the existing customers contributes more to boost repurchase intention when it is compared to the efforts to create new customers, particularly in the service industry. Meanwhile, the store itself can offer a unique environment that may influence the consumer's purchase decision. Consumers interact with store environments in the process of,virtually, all household purchase they make (Sarel 1981). Thus, store environments may encourage customers to purchase. The roles that store environments play are to provide informational cues to customers about the store and goods and communicate messages to stimulate consumers' emotions. The store environments differentiate the store from competing stores and build a unique service brand personality. However, the existing studies related to brand in the service industry mostly concentrated on the relationship between the quality of service and customer satisfaction, and they are mostly generalized while the connective studies focused on brand personality. Such approaches show limitations and are insufficient to investigate on the relationship between store environment and brand personality in the service industry. Accordingly, the study intends to identify the level of contribution to the establishment of brand personality made by the store's physical environments that influence on the specific brand characteristics depending on the type of service. The study also intends to identify what kind of relationships with brand personality exists with brand personality while being influenced by store environments. In addition, the study intends to make meaningful suggestions to better direct marketing efforts by identifying whether a brand personality makes a positive influence to induce an intention for repurchase. For this study, the service industry is classified into four categories based on to the characteristics of service: experimental-emotional service, emotional -credible service, credible-functional service, and functional-experimental service. The type of business with the most frequent customer contact is determined for each service type and the enterprise with the highest brand value in each service sector based on the report made by the Korea Management Association. They are designated as the representative of each category. The selected representatives are a fast-food store (experimental-emotional service), a cinema house (emotional-credible service), a bank (credible-functional service), and discount store (functional-experimental service). The survey was conducted for the four selected brands to represent each service category among consumers who are experienced users of the designated stores in Seoul Metropolitan City and Gyeonggi province via written questionnaires in order to verify the suggested assumptions in the study. In particular, the survey adopted 15 scales, which represent each characteristic factor, among the 42 unique characteristics developed by Jennifer Aaker(1997) to assess the brand personality of each service brand. SPSS for Windows Release 12.0 and LISREL were used in the analysis of data verification. The methodology of the structural equation model was used for the study and the pivotal findings are as follows. 1) The environmental factors ware classified as design factors, ambient factors, and social factors. Therefore, the validity of measurement scale of Baker et al. (1994) was proved. 2) The service brand personalities were subdivided as sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness, which makes the use of the brand personality scales by Jennifer Aaker(1997) appropriate in the service industry as well. 3) One-way ANOVA analysis on the scales of store environment and service brand personality showed that there exist statistically significant differences in each service category. For example, the social factors were highest in discount stores, while the ambient factors and design factors were highest in fast-food stores. The discount stores were highest in the sincerity and excitement, while the highest point for banks was in the competence and ruggedness, and the highest point for fast-food stores was in the sophistication, The consumers will make a different respond to the physical environment of stores and service brand personality that are inherent to the corresponding service interface. Hence, the customers will make a different decision-making when dealing with different service categories. In this aspect, the relationships of variables in the proposed hypothesis appear to work in a different way depending on the exposed service category. 4) The store environment factors influenced on service brand personalities differently by category of service. The factors of store's physical environment are transferred to a brand and were verified to strengthen service brand personalities. In particular, the level of influence on the service brand personality by physical environment differs depending on service category or dimension, which indicates that there is a need to apply a different style of management to a different service category or dimension. It signifies that there needs to be a brand strategy established in order to positively influence the relationship with consumers by utilizing an appropriate brand personality factor depending on different characteristics by service category or dimension. 5) The service brand personalities influenced on the repurchase intention. Especially, the largest influence was made in the sophistication dimension of service brand personality scale; the unique and characteristically appropriate arrangement of physical environment will make customers stay in the service environment for a long time and will lead to give a positive influence on the repurchase intention. 6) The store environment factors influenced on the repurchase intention. Particularly, the largest influence was made on the social factors of store environment. The most intriguing finding is that the service factor among all other environment factors gives the biggest influence to the repurchase intention in most of all service types except fast-food stores. Such result indicates that the customers pay attention to how much the employees try to provide a quality service when they make an evaluation on the service brand. At the same time, it also indicates that the personal factor is directly transmitted to the construction of brand personality. The employees' attitude and behavior are the determinants to establish a service brand personality in the process of enhancing service interface. Hence, there should be a reinforced search for a method to efficiently manage the service staff who has a direct contact with customers in order to make an affirmative improvement of the customers' brand evaluation at the service interface. The findings suggest several managerial implications. 1) Results from the empirical study indicated that store environment factors have a strong positive impact on a service brand personality. To increase customers' repurchase intention of a service brand, the management is required to effectively manage store environment factors and create a friendly brand personality based on the corresponding service environment. 2) Mangers and researchers must understand and recognize that the store environment elements are important marketing tools, and that brand personality influences on consumers' repurchase intention. Based on such result of the study, a service brand could be utilized as an efficient measure to achieve a differentiation by enforcing the elements that are most influential among all other store environments for each service category. Therefore, brand personality established involving various store environments will further reinforce the relationship with customers through the elevated brand identification of which utilization to induce repurchase decision can be used as an entry barrier. 3) The study identified the store environment as a component of service brand personality for the store's effective communication with consumers. For this, all communication channels should be maintained with consistency and an integrated marketing communication should be executed to efficiently approach to a larger number of customers. Mangers and researchers must find strategies for aligning decisions about store environment elements with the retailers' marketing and store personality objectives. All ambient, design, and social factors need to be orchestrated so that consumers can take an appropriate store personality. In this study, the induced results from the previous studies were extended to the service industry so as to identify the customers' decision making process that leads to repurchase intention and a result similar to those of the previous studies. The findings suggested several theoretical and managerial implications. However, the situation that only one service brand served as the subject of analysis for each service category, and the situation that correlations among store environment elements were not identified, as well as the problem of representation in selection of samples should be considered and supplemented in the future when further studies are conducted. In addition, various antecedents and consequences of brand personality must be looked at in the aspect of the service environment for further research.

  • PDF