• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.19-30
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• 2024

Purpose: This paper provides both quantitative and qualitative literature review on employee engagement in State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) as portrayed in literature and offers more insight into the concept on how it can be optimised. Research design, data and methodology: The study adopted a desktop research methodology. A review and analysis of both theoretical and empirical research and articles which are relevant to employee engagement in SOEs was conducted. Only secondary information gathered through those articles and research was used to analyse and build literature review on employee engagement in SOEs. Results: A literature review of both qualitative and quantitative research on employee engagement in organisations generally and in SOEs particularly was done, and it indicated the positive relationship between employee engagement and organisational performance. From the study, it is evident that employee engagement is not optimal around the world, therefore it is an area which needs more attention. Hence, this study proffered strategies for enhancing employee engagement in SOEs. Conclusions: This study proffers strategies for optimising employee engagement in SOEs. These are brand image, work environment, management and leadership characteristics, training and development opportunities, performance management, work life balance, effective communication and Kahn's three factors of meaningfulness, safety and availability. These strategies are essential in optimising employee engagement as portrayed in the reviewed literature.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.115-123
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• 2024

Purpose: Using the association concept as a basis, businesses offer association cues-trademarks and logos, for example-to support consumers' associative memories. These stimuli can be connected to anything, including a product's unique personality or the advantages it offers the company that made it. The purpose of this study is to comprehend how hypermarkets' business affiliation, relationship commitment, and trust affect consumers' attitudes and behaviors. Data, methodology, and research design: Regression analysis was used in this study to confirm the relationship between the independent and dependent variables, as well as to forecast how the changes in the independent variable would affect the changes in the dependent variable. Results: These are the findings of the research. First, it was discovered that trust and relationship commitment were significantly impacted by the hypermarket product association, corporate management-related associations, and social responsibility associations. Second, it was discovered that both behavioral and attitudinal loyalty were impacted by hypermarkets' level of trust. Third, it was discovered that both behavioral and attitudinal loyalty were impacted by a hypermarket's relationship commitment. Conclusions: Corporate associations with the hypermarket play an important role in shaping and maintaining consumers' awareness of the company or brand. Since this is affected by various factors such quality of products and services, and corporate social activities, companies need to positively induce awareness of products or services.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.95-111
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• 2015

This purpose of this study is to academically define what "luxury products" mean, and to clarify the cognitive structural relationship between product attributes and "luxuriousness" in relation to the determinant of luxuriousness that eventually affects the purchase intention of consumers. This study is also written under the theory that luxuriousness leads to benefits such as functional benefit, experiential benefit, symbolic benefit, and exclusive benefit; which all provide core values to consumers and serve as effect factors that influence the psychological satisfaction of consumers. The commonly discussed measure of the determinant of luxuriousness has often failed to adequately describe the reasons to why the consumers prefer luxury products. This study also aims to suggest a new path in how and what the consumers perceive as luxury products, and to conceptualize what luxuriousness means in the marketing perspectives on the background of a previous theory. The part of product attributes are divided in the following sections: the quality and design of functional cues and brands of symbolic cues, as well as prices. The part of the determinant of luxuriousness is divided in sections of superiority, scarcity, differentiation, and traditionality. Therefore, this study used the theoretical concept used in such common measures as well as 282 examples to empirically analyze the relationship between product attributes and luxuriousness of luxury products, and how such affect the purchase intentions of consumers. The survey used to aid this study targeted luxury product consumers regarding "B" brand of automobiles. Using the analysis through a structural equation model, the study draws a conclusion that in a relationship between product attributes and luxuriousness, quality(which is one of the functional cues) affects the facts of superiority, differentiation in a significant way, and design affects the factors of scarcity in a significant way. And brand(one of the symbolic cues) significantly affects the factors of traditionality within the luxuriousness factors, and price appeared to affect superiority and scarcity. Additionally, the brand of product attributes significantly affects purchase intention, and superiority and scarcity of luxuriousness affects purchase intention in a significant way. The structural concept of luxury and luxuriousness suggested in the study will provide the theoretical basis for building a new case study, and the determinants of luxuriousness in the marketing perspective will be a practical help for checking the consumers' psychological reasons for purchase.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.4-14
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• 2010

Collaboration strategies entail information sharing and other varied forms of cooperation that are mutually beneficial to the company and stakeholder groups. This study addresses the specific types of collaboration used in the fashion industry while also examining strategies that have been most successful for fashion companies and perceived benefits of collaboration from the customer perspective. In the present study we define fashion companies and brands as collaborators and their partners or stakeholders as collaboratees. We define collaboration as a cooperative relationship where more than two companies, brands or individuals provide customers with beneficial outcomes utilizing their own competitive advantages on an equal basis. Collaboration strategies entail information sharing and other varied forms of cooperation that are mutually beneficial to the company and stakeholder groups. Through collaboration, fashion companies have pursued both tangible differentiation, such as design and technology applications, and intangible differentiation such as emotional and psychological benefits to customers. As a result, collaboration within the fashion industry has become an important, value creating concept. This qualitative study utilized case studies and in-depth interview methodologies to examine customers' attitudes concerning collaboration in the fashion industry. A total of 173 collaboration cases were identified in Korean and international markets from 1998 through December 2008, focusing on fashion companies. Cases were collected from documented data including websites and industry data bases and top ranked portal search sites such as: Rankey.com; Naver, Daum, and Nate; and representative fashion information websites, Samsungdesignnet and Firstviewkorea. Cases were collected between November 2008 and February 2009. Cases were selected for the analysis where one or more partners were associated with the production of fashion products (excluding textile production), retail fashion products, or designer services. Additional collaboration case information was obtained from news articles, periodicals, internet portal sites and fashion information sites as conducted in prior studies (Jeong and Kim 2008; Park and Park 2004; Yoon 2005). In total, 173 cases were selected for analysis that clearly exhibited the benefits and outcomes of collaboration efforts and strategies between fashion companies and stakeholders. Findings show that the overall results show that for both partners (collaborator and collaboratee) participating in collaboration, that the major benefits are reduction of costs and risks by sharing resource such as design power, image, costs, technology and targets, and creation of synergy. Regarding types of collaboration outcomes, product/design was most important (55%), followed by promotion (21%), price (20%), and place (4%). This result shows that collaboration plays an important role in giving life to products and designs, particularly in the fashion industry which seeks for creative and newness. To be successful in collaboration efforts, results of the depth interviews in this study confirm that fashion companies should have a clear objective on why they are doing the collaboration. After setting the objective, they should select collaboratees that match their brand image and target market, make quality co-products that have definite concepts and differentiating factors, and also pay attention to increasing brand awareness. Based on depth interviews with customers, customer benefits were categorized into six factors: pursuit for individual character; pursuit for brand; pursuit for scarcity; pursuit for fashion; pursuit for economic efficiency; and pursuit for sociality. Customers also placed more importance on image, reputation, and trust of brands regarding the cases shown in the interviews. They also commented that strong branding should come first before other marketing strategies. However, success factors recognized by experts and customers in this study showed different results by subcategories. Thus, target customers and target market should be studied from various dimensions to develop appropriate strategies for successful collaboration.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.160-174
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• 2005

Despite the decrease in the number of children due to low birth rate, the domestic children's apparel market has been achieving steady growth as family income is rising thanks to more opportunities for working women, parents spend more on their children, and they prefer brand products that make their children look special. In addition, the market is suffering from hard competition as large enterprises have joined the race. The present study purposed to survey the children's apparel market in Korea, which is in a transitional period, and to contribute to the development of the market with Korean brands. For this purpose, we analyzed the characteristics of children's apparel brands in the 21st century based on the current state of the domestic children's apparel market and, based on the findings, forecasted the future trend of children's apparel brands, suggested improvements for expected problems, proposed standards for coping with changes such as diversification, high quality and differentiation in the children's apparel market, and provided consumers with information on how to purchase products. According to the result of analyzing the characteristics of children's apparel brands in the 21st century, brands are categorized largely into four types - life cultural brands, functional product brands, character brands and brands advancing to China. Life cultural brands equipped with all necessities for children are expanding, and with the deepening social problems of environmental pollution and the reduction of the child population, functional products made of environment-friendly materials are spreading widely, targeting infants and children. Furthermore, for extending age targets and diversifying products, children's apparel is using characters. The use of characters is expected to have a considerable effect on the growth of brands because children are more subjective as consumers than before and they are more easily persuaded with characters. Domestic children's apparel brands advancing to China have a high expectation of success in overcoming the limitation of the local market that has reached its peak and growing into global brands. Korean apparel makers are struggling to overcome the depressed domestic market, to recover consumers' consumption, to cope with market opening, to pursue high value of sensibility and to expand the seniors' market, etc. In this situation, future trends of children's apparel brands will be the expansion of family brands, brand totalization, quality price, niche market (pre-teen market), etc. In response to these trends, we made the following suggestions for improvement. 1. Children's apparel brands are evolving into family brands as well as into total brands through voluming. Today, however, apparel makers are advancing to the children's apparel market with the concept of adults' apparel and, as a result, children's apparel is merely adults' apparel of reduced size, having problems in design, color and materials. Thus, apparel makers must develop design considering the wide range of size and the characteristics of children's apparel, strengthen sourcing abilities to create revenues, and make thorough survey of customers to find common denominators between adults' apparel and children's apparel considering that characteristic that the target class is different from the buyer class. Furthermore, they must make active investments in human resources, develop outstanding products through advanced planning and design, and support marketing techniques and management systems to stores. 2. As the declining birth rate will continue to have a negative effect on the market, it may be difficult to expand the market size but there is still a margin for growth through high-sensibility and high-quality products. The competitiveness of brands is determined by their market shares. Accordingly, concepts should be specialized according to lifestyle, customers' diverse needs should be satisfied, and cross-coordination should be achieved within a brand. 3. Considering Korean parents who do not spare investment in their children despite shrinking consumption, functional products must be high value-added goods that can enhance efficiency. However, in the current situation of the infants' apparel industry where a textile manufacturer supply its products to multiple brands, it is difficult to develop unique products only based on materials. Thus, it is considered urgent to appeal to consumers not by relying on materials only but by finding methods of applying their own characters to children's dress.

• CRM연구
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 2011

The consumer's expectation of companies' social responsibilities has been continuously getting higher as the consumerism has been matured. So, the company has faced the shift to move forward to the positive social activity such as charity, donation, and sponsorship. In addition, the company which does make a success needs to reach goals not only to maximize profits but also to make justices of social and cultural boundaries. Thus, success of an enterprise aims at the maximization of profits as the economic objective and the creation of competitive, powerful brands. Accordingly, as enterprises consider social responsibility as the concept of effective investment to enhance the asset value of corporation, they seek to extend their brands in order to pursue cause-related marketing, which accomplishes and complements two objectives each other the performance of social responsibility and the pursuit of powerful brand assets. In Korea, there are traditional ritual ceremonies such as ceremonies of coming-of-age, marriage, funeral, and ancestor worship and they consider those ceremony occasions as very important. Moreover, social positional grade of rank like the two upper classes of old Korea made people pretend to be noble and sensitive to other people around themselves. This old custom could influence Korean people's way of life, especially, consumer-action. This deep rooted custom also could influence consumption life considerably. Through this study, we can understand the consumer behaviors of Korean who consider ritual ceremonies and saving face as essential and are influenced by this culture. on another hand, we intend to check the effects on buying luxury brands.

• Archives of design research
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• v.20 no.3 s.71
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• pp.49-60
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• 2007

As the world is in the age of globalization and information, we observe diverse changes in the market environment. Since wide-spread internet services and global networks made ubiquitous learning and business possible, equalizing consumers' ideology and preference, new trend and life style could be introduced easily. This study stipulates on the theoretical concept of the wellbeing consumer and LOHAS consumer. Consumers of LOHAS could be sampled out through pre-questionnaire targeting at selected food, clothing, and shelter based on companies of both wellbeing and general brands. Through this it is attempted to measure wellbeing emotion, recognition quotient of emotion and reason, affirmation and negation, mental emotion quotient, and preference in order to find out their value and to ultimately come up with what web design should be aiming at. Conclusions are as follows: Firstly, consumers easily recognize emotional identification from the web pages of wellbeing brand, rather than that of general brands. Secondly, what web pages of wellbeing brand recognize is reason, not emotion. Thirdly, the design of wellbeing brands scored higher than those of general brands in terms of positive aspects such as hospitality and familiarity, and high mental emotion quotient could not affect the consumers' preference toward web design. Fourthly, wellbeing brands win more preference than general brands do, and preference becomes higher after customers' visit to web pages basically. Lastly, sampled emotional adjectives toward the web designs of wellbeing brands marked a aesthetic graph figure, without leaning toward an active or stable one. It is expected that this study can serve as a groundwork to create proper strategies to actively involve consumers in industrial sphere.

• Archives of design research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.147-156
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• 2004

An enterprise is a basic unit to constitute national economy and a unit of independent production economy to pursue profit based on separation between ownership of production means and labor. Even though price and quantity of production are decided by planned economy in order to survive in the mechanism of market economy, quantity of production and of demands can't be same at all because of consumers' different preferences. An enterprise uses audio-visual media like letters, pictures, and voice in order to grasp consumers' taste, to develop products and to advertise them. Advertising is communication that a company, a non-profit organization or an individual, that is shown in the message of an ad, makes through several media. It is time that a company should appeal its image, not only its products, to consumers as a salesman. Marketing strategy of company identity is to visualize a company's intentions, to formalize its motto, slogan or culture, to build up trust of products and the company in consumers, and then, to have the consumers forever. By the virtue of development of www in 1990s, the media has been expanded to online. Development of www has united the world into a network and the market has been changed to unlimited competition. This paper intends to define the concept and characteristics of web identity and investigates and analyzes how web sites of sports shoes express their identities. In addition, it analyzes influences of multinational companies' web identifies (in Korean version) and of local companies' web identities on local consumers. Through survey, it will analyze the effects of web identity and review its operation.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.89-98
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• 2018

Purpose - Despite the global economic crisis, the numbers of coffee shops used for providing a place for social and cultural interactions show an upward trend and have become an indispensable part in people's daily life in recent years. Under the circumstance of tremendous efforts of searching new management strategies and projects, the concept of servicescape(which has physical environment characteristics) may provide a better alternative. Therefore, the purpose of this study can be broadly divided into 3 key points. First is to investigate the effects of servicescape on customer satisfaction, service value and customer loyalty about Coffee Shops in Jeonju area. Second is to examine the mediating effect of customer satisfaction and service value between servicescape and customer loyalty. Third, there is evidence that indicates the moderating effect among the interaction of customer and staff, brand image and the composition of servicescape, customer satisfaction, service value and customer loyalty. Research design, data, and methodology - This study begins empirical research about users of coffee shops' services. The data of the study is collected from 285 samples of a questionnaire which has been made from Korea and analysed by IBM SPSS 24.0 and IBM AMOS 24.0. Results - The results are reported below: First of all, the composition of condition, functionality, cleanliness and aesthetic characteristics of the servicescape has a significant impact on customer satisfaction and service value. Furthermore, customer satisfaction is identified as a factor to influence service value. Moreover, customer satisfaction and service value are identified as the causal relationship with customer loyalty. Besides, customer satisfaction and service value illustrated the mediation effect between the composition of servicescape and customer loyalty. Finally, the interaction between customer and staff, brand image illustrates the moderated effect. Conclusions - The composition of servicescape contributes to the formation of customer satisfaction and enhancing the customer's perceived service value in coffee shops. By meeting diverse and complex needs of consumers in coffee shop, the service value will not only attract loyal customers, but also increase customer loyalty and profitability. In a word, managers should rely on servicescape to enhance service experience by making differences with other competitors.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.501-513
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• 2020

Femvertising campaigns are more easily observed in oversea rather than in Korea. Most recently, not only global companies but local consumer goods companies launched several femvertising campaigns. However, no research was done on effects of femvertising in Korea. Thus, this study will explore Korean college students' understanding of, attitude toward, and effects of femvertising through focus group interviews. Study results found that college students have low level of understanding on the concept of femvertising. However, they are somewhat familiar with contents of femvertising. Femvertising is believed to have positive impacts on gender equality and female empowerment whereas there are growing concerns over commercializing feminism. Study participants, regardless of gender, suggest that femvertising could influence consumers' attitude toward advertising and brand, but they are skeptical of purchase intention. Lastly, female participants suggest that femvertising, compared to traditional advertising, will enhance attitude toward ads and brand, and even have a positive impact on feminism. However, male participants suggest that femvertising may exacerbate the gender conflict between males and females which is called as 'misandry' or 'misogyny'.