• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.85-94
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• 2017

Purpose - Owing to economic development and rapid globalization, the number of people traveling abroad has increased dramatically in recent years. For instance, according to data from World Tourism Organization, approximately 1,724 million tourists traveled abroad in 2016. This phenomenon has resulted in a change for domestic markets, as they no longer serve only domestic customers but also serve foreign customers as well. Therefore, intercultural service encounters between services providers and customers from diverse cultural backgrounds are becoming more frequent. Especially in the field of retailing, salesperson's customer oriented selling behavior is particularly important for the successful interactions. However, it is hard to find some factors that can improve salesperson's customer oriented selling behavior in intercultural sales encounters. Research design, data, and methodology - A quantitative survey methodology was utilized to collect data on 312 salespeople at duty-free shops located on Jeju Island, Korea. As a tourism-based region, Jeju Island has attracted a large number of foreign tourists since being designated as an international free city in 2002. Owing to this phenomenon, intercultural sales encounters between salespersons and customers from different cultures have become commonplace. Compared to other salespeople, salespeople working in duty-free shops have more frequent intercultural interactions, as over 90% of their total customers are from foreign countries. Additionally, regular professional training programs for salespeople help cultivate cultural intelligence. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS 20. Results - This paper explores the role of empathy and cultural intelligence in intercultural sales encounters using a theoretical model incorporating the causal relationships between empathy(cognitive empathy and emotional empathy) and customer oriented selling behavior, as well as the moderating effects of cultural intelligence in these relationships. Conclusions - This study is almost the first to explore the influence of empathy and cultural intelligence in intercultural sales encounters. Thus, this study provides a meaningful contribution to the application of empathy and cultural intelligence in the retailing field and will draw the attention of personal distribution practicers and researchers to the importance of empathy and cultural intelligence. Additionally, this study has useful managerial implications for employee selection, training, and development in retailing firms engaged in intercultural sales encounters.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.75-94
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• 2011

In this paper, we explore the information diffusion mechanism under social network environments by investigating the effect of message characteristics on the volume and speed of retweeting in Twitter, a popular online social media service. To this end, we select eight main keywords (i.e., '무상급식', '반값등록금', '나가수', '평창', '김연아', '박태환', '아이폰', '갤럭시') that have been popular on online social media in recent days. Each keyword represents various social aspects of Korea that recently grab people's attention such as political issues, entertainment, sports celebrities, and the latest digital products, and eventually holds distinctive message characteristics. Analyzing the frequency and velocity of retweeting for each keyword, we find that more than half of the sample messages posted on Twitter contain personal opinions for the certain keyword, but we also find that the tweets which include objective messages with hyperlink are the fastest ones when being retweeted by other followers. In overall, when being retweeted, the group of messages related to the certain keyword present distinctive diffusion patterns and speed according to message characteristics. From academic perspective, the findings in the study broaden our theoretical knowledge of information diffusion mechanism over online social media. For practitioners, the results also provide managerial implications regarding how to strategically utilize online social media for marketing communications with customers.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.56-66
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• 2009

As the amount of information is rapidly growing, and the ubiquitous urban environments are emerging, the question which information type to provide and which communication media to support is a major challenge for commercial and public travel-information service providers. The current research reports the first findings of analyses of recent data, collected in metropolitan Seoul, about the acquisition of travel information and the communication media used. The study is based on the assumption that information acquisition and choice of communication medium is strongly context-driven. The study applies CHAID analysis to find homogeneous segments in information acquisition and use of communication media. Findings indicate that transport mode and activity are important determinant of information acquisition and choice of media. The type of travel information acquired co-varies strongly with transport mode and activity. In addition, we found evidence of time of day effects. Similarly, the choice of communication medium depends on the type of travel information searched for, transport mode and activity. The results suggest important implications of managerial and policy measures, in particular the dynamic, contextual market segmentation.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.73-80
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• 2015

Purpose - This study's objective is to analyze the content of the communications between users and producers based on the construal level theory. User generated content refers to content created in an online-based service where users and producers communicate interactively with each other. In a user generated content platform, the messages sent and received between the many players, the users and producers who use the content, may be analyzed at the psychological level based on construal level theory. Research design, data, and methodology - This study gathered user and producer participation through a snow-bowling sampling method. The data analyzed includes 125 video clips and 2,912 comments. The period of the data collection was from September 2014 to December 2014. The collected data was analyzed using a t-test and two-way ANOVA. Results - This study obtained the following research results. First, users who were a short social distance from producers responded to user participatory activities stated in concrete language rather than abstract language. In contrast, users who were at a longer social distance from producers tended to respond to the content requesting user participation through abstract language. Second, if users and producers were at a short social distance from each other, user preference increased more when a producer response to user participation was expressed concretely rather than when it was expressed abstractly. In contrast, if the users were at a longer social distance, users' preferences increased more when producer response was expressed abstractly rather than when it was expressed concretely. Conclusion - This study found that the effect of suitability, in which the social distance and the content were in congruence at the construal level, could be observed. Therefore, based on this, academic and practical implications were drawn. The three main insights of the study are as follows. First, firms can use psychological factors to analyze the message content of users in their distribution platforms. This study reveals managerial implications for marketing managers who want to take make use of this analysis of user and producer communications. This study indicates that the main factors include the concrete and abstract scores and social distance between users and producers. Second, we also provide the strategic guidelines to maximizing user preferences and other outcomes. The main dependent variable in this study is the user preference shift; the variable increases through the congruence effect; and the construal level is determined by the social distance between the users and producers and the type of producer response. The outcomes here from users can be utilized to develop several systemic strategies. One process to use the outcomes could be: (1) firms could measure the users and producers social distance; (2) calculate the concreteness or abstractness of the messages; and, (3) predict the user preference outcomes by the congruence between user and producer social distance and the abstractness or concreteness of the message content.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.5-11
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• 2012

The core objective of this research article is to investigate different challenges and opportunities in management as well as start-ups of small businesses in India. The prudence behind this research is to examine various problems in front of the small businesses and to offer vital support and cooperation to overcome those with the support of concerned institutions through consultancy and training programs. The researchers have an intention to make available the research results to the governmental agencies, concerned small business institutions and also to the educational institutions which are continually design plans, programs, policies and strategies to upgrade the managerial and technical dexterities of the small business Indian operators. After thorough revision of relevant literature on small businesses and its management, the researchers used a well structured questionnaire and in-depth personal interviews with 586small business operators selected from manufacturing, trading (retailing and wholesaling), finance, servicing/repair businesses which are located in the coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh in India. The researchers have used convenience sampling and collected data was analyzed with the support of Microsoft Excel and frequency distribution. Noticeably, majority of the small businessmen in India are facing myriad number of challenges both in management and at the time of establishment of their business operations. In particular, 72.47 percent of small businesses operators' have substantiated their strong opinion towards the challenges they are facing particularly finance, marketing and other problems while managing their businesses. The researchers also attempted to get the opinions on problems of the various categories of small businesses while starting their operations. A staggering 68percent of respondents identified the problems related to preparation of business plan, location selection, marketing and other problems like lack of proper credit facilities, skilled manpower, and other infra related problems while setting up of their businesses. On an average, 64.62 and 63.51 percent of small businesses are facing various kinds of problems both at the time of day-to-day management as well as start-up of their businesses respectively. The present research confined with the opinions of only four categories of small business operators particularly from the manufacturing, finance, trading (retailing and wholesaling), and servicing/repair which are continuing their business operations from the nine coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh in India. The present study emphatically provides concrete information required to the business community for identifying an assortment of challenges faced by different small business operators in managing and at the time of their inception. This research paper is first of its kind from this part of the world by offering extensive and credible information required for prospective entrepreneurs in facing the dynamic challenges in managing their business. Furthermore, this research presents invaluable inputs to the stakeholders like all types of governments, policy makers, practitioners, researchers, and educators' about the various impediments faced by the small business community in India.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.187-194
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of internal marketing on job satisfaction and organizational commitment of secretaries working in IT based companies. Especially, to analyze the effects of internal marketing on secretaries in IT companies, this study has adopted job specialization rather than the comprehensive market point of internal customers. Through the analysis, the following results were obtained: firstly, internal marketing factors such as effectiveness of communication, various compensation systems, and chance of educational training have positive effects on job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Secondly, job satisfaction has no impact on organizational commitment. To be able to satisfy external customers through internal marketing, communication skills has be to improved between the workers in the company, and also various compensation systems and educational training should be provided more extensively. The secretary in the company is considered a vital link between the company and customer service. In this view, the result of this study is expected to provide some managerial strategies to decision maker in the company to establish a way to increase the satisfaction and needs of internal customers in applying internal marketing.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.53-79
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• 2013

Social enterprises can be identified roughly as social purpose-oriented business ventures. They often fill the gaps left by governmental and commercial ventures in providing for certain vulnerable sectors of society. Though social enterprises often adopt market mechanisms in their organizational structures, their emphasis on particular social outcomes means that they intentionally pursue double/triple-bottom lines, thus distinguishing them from many traditional for-profit businesses. Among the Korean laborers, women have been hardest hit by the global economic crisis. As the movements have substantially been taken to strengthen women's economic activities in the recent years, many policies are formulated with these trends, connecting women's employment with social enterprises. This study focused on analyzing social enterprises to be friendly and to provide decent work to women. Data were collected from 491 social enterprises and 830 workers. The main results are as follows. First, the women's employment in social enterprises has accounted for a relatively high rate and the women's wage also is similar to men's one. Second, as for work conditions and types, most women have preferred irregular and non-managerial work. Thus, social enterprises have showed a positive response for the women's job opportunities, while social enterprises have had a negative one for enhancing the women's status at the labor market. In conclusion, social enterprises should institutionalize how to provide more stable working condition to women and to improve their's capacity.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.28-40
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• 2000

As the surrounding of companies is more complicated and intensive. many companies attempt managerial innovations by using information technology(IT) strategically. Recently, information technology, especially Electronic Data Interchange(EDI), is highlighted in the surrounding of companies, because it is regarded as a core technology. EDI is the direct computer-to-computer exchange of business documents in standard formats. EDI brings many benefits to the organization such as reduced costs, faster turnaround, better customer service, and strategic advantage. The Purpose of this study is to identify the effects of relational characteristics-communication, trust, conflict, and commitment- on the performance of Business-to-Business EC. In other words, this study examine the relationships between each characteristics and the effects of these characteristics on the organizational performance. The results of empirical analysis revealed that communications between parties have positive influence on the trust and commitment, and high label of commitment on the EDI is improved the organizational performance. In addition, trust in parties indirectly affects characteristics has unexpectedly positive influence on the trust, commitment, and performance.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.55-77
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• 2008

The purpose of this research is to understand the effects of environmental uncertainty on transaction characteristics, industry factors, and performance in Korean franchising markets. This research tried to investigate both the characteristics of B-to-C service factors and B-to-B industry factors of franchising industry from the perspectives of CLalt, trust, communication, and other important variables. Hypothetical research model was proposed and, by using SPSS and AMOS, research hypotheses and structural equation models were empirically tested and supported. The results showed that environmental uncertainty has negative effects on relationship characteristics and industry characteristics of franchise. Trust showed positive impact on the performance. Managerial implications and limitations of the study results were also discussed. Future research direction was suggested.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.42-57
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• 2015

When a customer chooses a coffee shop, different factors can influence his/her purchase. These factors can include tangible as well as intangible elements such as the coffee shop's atmosphere, layout, and interior. Thus, many coffee brands strive to serve not only a diverse menu, but also a unique quality of environment. This study aimed to investigate the influence of physical environment on customer satisfaction and loyalty in the coffee shop and evaluate the influential power of the physical environment factors using hierarchical regression analysis. Data was collected from customers of coffee shops in Texas, the U.S. The study found that the coffee shops' physical environment influenced the customer's satisfaction and loyalty. Particularly, the coffee shop's physical environment including ambient and interior design greatly influenced the customers' satisfaction. However, a broad range of physical environment factors such as temperature, aroma, lighting, color, and interior furnishings should be provided to increase the customer loyalty. The results may have a broader application to provide effective managerial and marketing information to Korean coffee entrepreneur brand in the U.S. and beyond.