• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.111-133
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• 2010

Marketing financial services used to be easier. Today, the competition in financial services is fierce. Not only has the competition become more intense, financial services have also changed structurally. In an environment with various customer needs and severe competitions, the marketing in financial services industry is getting more difficult and more important than before. However, there are still not enough studies on financial services marketing in Korea whereas lots of research papers have been published frequently in some international journals. The purpose of this paper is (1)to review the literature on financial services marketing, (2)to investigate current marketing activities based on in-depth interview with financial marketing managers in Korea, and (3)to suggest some implications for future research on the financial services marketing. Financial products are not consumer products. In fact, they are not products at all in the way product marketing is usually described. Nor are they altogether like services. The financial industry operates in a unique way, and its marketing tasks are correspondingly complex. However, the literature review shows that there has been a lack of basic studies which dealt with inherent characteristics of financial services marketing compared to the research on marketing in other industries. Many studies in domestic marketing journals have so far focused only on the general customer behaviors and the special issues in some financial industries. However, for more effective financial services marketing, we have to answer following questions. Is there any difference between financial service marketing and consumer packaged goods marketing? What are the differences between the financial services marketing and other services marketing such as education and health services? Are there different ways of marketing among banks, securities firms, insurance firms, and credit card companies? In other words, we need more detailed research as well as basic studies about the financial services marketing. For example, we need concrete definitions of financial services marketing, bank marketing, securities firm marketing, and etc. It is also required to compare the characteristics of each marketing within the financial services industry. The products sold in each market have different characteristics such as duration and degree of risk-taking. It means that there are sub-categories in financial services marketing. We have to consider them in the future research on the financial services marketing. It is also necessary to study customer decision making process in the financial markets. There have been little research on how customers search and process information, compare alternatives, make final decision, and repeat their choices. Because financial services have some unique characteristics, we need different understandings in the customer behaviors compared to the behaviors in other service markets. And also considering the rapid growth in financial markets and upcoming severe competition between domestic and global financial companies, it is time to start more systematic and detailed research on financial services marketing in Korea. In the second part of this paper, I analyzed the results of in-depth interview with 20 marketing managers of financial services companies in Korea. As a result, I found that the role of marketing departments in Korean financial companies are mainly focused on the short-term activities such as sales support, promotion, and CRM data analysis although the size and history of marketing departments to some extent show a sign of maturity. Most companies established official marketing departments before 2001. Average number of employees in a marketing department is about 58. However, marketing managers in eight companies(40% of the sample) still think that the purpose of marketing is only to support and manage general sales activities. It shows that some companies have sales-oriented concept rather than marketing-oriented concept. I also found three key words which marketing managers think importantly in financial services markets. They are (1)Trust in customer relationship, (2)Brand differentiation, and (3)Rapid response to customer needs. 50% of the sample support that "Trust" is the most important key word in the financial services marketing. It is interesting that 80% of banks and securities companies think that "Trust" is the most important thing, whereas managers in credit card companies consider "Rapid response to customer needs" as the most important key word in their market. In addition, there are different problems recognition of marketing managers depending on the types of financial industries they belong to. For example, in the case of banks and insurance companies, marketing managers consider "a lack of communication with other departments" as the most serious problem. On the other hand, in the case of securities firms, "a lack of utilization of customer data" is the most serious problem. These results imply that there are different important factors for the customer satisfaction depending on the types of financial industries, and managers have to consider them when marketing financial products in more effective ways. For example, It will be necessary for marketing managers to study different important factors which affect customer satisfaction, repeat purchase, degree of risk-taking, and possibility of cross-selling according to the types of financial industries. I also suggested six hypothetical propositions for the future research.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.111-122
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to survey the successful cases of small and medium Business Systematization Cognition by examining their entrepreneurial characteristics and analysing the factors affecting their success. To that end, previous studies on the association types of small businesses were studied. A research model was developed, and research hypotheses for an empirical analysis were established upon it. Suh et al. (2010) insist on the importance of Small Business Systematization in Korea but also show that small business performance is suffering: they are too small to stand alone. That is why association is so crucial for them: they must stand together. Unfortunately, association is difficult, as they have few specific links and little motivation. Even in franchising networks, association tends to be initiated by big franchisers, not small ones. In that sense, association among small businesses is crucial for their long-term survival. With this in mind, this study examines how they think and feel about the issue of 'Industrial Classification', how important Industrial Classification is to their business success, and what kinds of problems it raises in the markets. This study seeks the different cognitions among the association types of small businesses from the perspectives of participation motivation, systematization expectation, policy demand level, and management performance. We assume that different industrial classification types of small businesses will have different cognitions concerning these factors. There are four basic industrial classification types of small businesses: retail sales, restaurant, service, and manufacturing. To date, most of the studies in this area have focused on collecting data on the external environments of small businesses or performing statistical analyses on their status. In this study, we surveyed 4 market areas in Busan, Masan, and Changwon in Korea, where business associations consist of merchants, shop owners, and traders. We surveyed 330 shops and merchants by sending a questionnaire or visiting. Finally, 268 questionnaires were collected and used for the analysis. An ANOVA, T-test, and regression analyses were conducted to test the research hypotheses. The results demonstrate that there are differences in cognition depending upon the industrial classification type. Restaurants generally have a higher cognition concerning job offer problems and a lower cognition concerning their competitiveness. Restaurants also depend more on systematization expectation than do the other industrial classification types. On the policy demand level, restaurants have a higher cognition. This study identifies several factors that are contributing to management performance through differences in cognition that depend upon association type: systematization expectation and policy demand level have positive effects on management performance; participation motivation has a negative effect on management performance. We confirm also that the image factors of different cognitions are linked to an awareness of the value of systematization and that these factors show sequential and continual patterns in the course of generating performances. In conclusion, this study carries significant implications in its classifying of small businesses into the four different associational types (retail sales, restaurant, services, and manufacturing). We believe our study to be the first one to conduct an empirical survey in this subject area. More studies in this area will likely use our research frameworks. The data show that regionally based industrial classification associations such as those in rural cities or less developed areas tend to suffer more problems than those in urban areas. Moreover, restaurants suffer more problems than the norm. Most of the problems raised in this study concern the act of 'associating itself'. Most associations have serious difficulties in associating. On the other hand, the area where they have the least policy demand is that of service types. This study contributes to the argument that associating, rather than financial assistance or management consulting, promotes the start-up and managerial performance of small businesses. This study also has some limitations. The main limitation is the number of questionnaires. We could not survey all the industrial classification types across the country because of budget and time limitations. If we had, we could have produced many more useful results and enhanced the precision of our analysis. The history of systemization is very short and the number of industrial classification associations is relatively low in Korea. We should keep in mind, though, that this is very crucial to systemization entrepreneurs starting their businesses, as it can heavily affect their chances of success. Being strongly associated with each other might be critical to the business success of industrial classification members. Thus, the government needs to put more effort and resources into supporting the drive of industrial classification members to become more strongly associated.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.65-88
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• 2008

Since the implementation of economic reforms in 1978, the Chinese economy grows rapidly at an average annul growth rate of 9% over the post two decades. Franchising has been widely recognized as an important source of entrepreneurial activity. Trust is important in that it facilitates relational exchanges by permits partners to transcend short-run inequities or risks to concentrate on long-term profits or gains. In the relationship between the franchisors and franchisees, trust has been described as an important source of competitive advantage. However, little research has been done on the factors affecting trust in Chinese franchisor-franchisee relationships. The purpose of this study is to investigate what factors affect the trust in the franchise system in China, and to provide guidelines and insights to franchisors which enter Chinese market. In this study, according to Morgan and Hunt (1994), trust is defined as the extending when one party has confidence in an exchange partner's reliability and integrity. We offered a conceptual model of the empirical study. The model shows that the factors affecting the trust include franchisor's supports, communication, satisfaction with previous outcome and conflict. We also suggested the franchisor's supports and communication like to enhance the franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome, and the franchisor's supports, communication and he franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome tend to decrease conflict. Before the formal study, a pretest involving exploratory interviews with owners from three franchisees was conducted to make sure the questionnaire was relevant and clear to the respondents. The data were collected using trained interviewers to carry out personal interviews with the aid of an unidentified, muti-page, structured questionnaire. The respondents comprised of owners, managers, and owner managers of franchisee-owned food service franchises located in Beijing, China. Even though a total of 256 potential franchises were initially contacted, the finally usable sample consisted of 125 respondents. As expected, the sampling method was successful in soliciting respondents with waried personal and firm characteristics. Self-administrated questionnaires were used for all measures. And established scales were used to measure the latent constructs in this study. The measures tapped the franchisees' perceptions of the relationship with the referent franchisor. Five-point Likert-type scales ranging from "strongly disagree" (=1) to "strongly agree" (=7) were used throughout the constructs (trust, eight items; support, five items; communication, four items; satisfaction, six items; conflict, three items). The reliability measurements traditionally employed, such as the Cronbach's alpha, were used. All the reliabilities were greater than.80. The proposed measurement model was estimated using SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 5.0 analysis package. We conducted A series of exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses to assess the convergent validity, discriminant validity, and reliability. The results indicate reasonable overall fits between the model and the observed data. The overall fit of measurement model were $X^2$= 159.699, p=0.004, d.f. = 116, GFI =.879, NFI =.898, CFI =.969, IFI =.970, TLI =.959, RMR =.058. The results demonstrated that the data reasonably fitted the model. We also examined construct reliability and reliability and average variance extracted (AVE). The construct reliability of each construct was greater than.80 and the AVE of each construct was greater than.50. According to the analysis of Structure Equation Modeling (SEM), the results of path model indicated an adequate fit of the model: $X^2$= 142.126, p = 0.044, d.f. = 115, GFI =.892, NFI =.909, CFI =.981, IFI =.981, TLI =.974, RMR =.057. As hypothesized, the results showed that it is strategically important to establish trust in a franchise system, and the franchisor's supports, communication and satisfaction with previous outcome tend to reinforce franchisee's trust. The results also showed trust seems to decrease as the experience of conflict episodes increases. And we also noticed that franchisor's supports and communication tend to enhance the franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome, and communication tend to decrease conflict. If the trust between the franchisor and franchisee can be established in a franchise system, franchising offers many benefits and reduces many costs. To manage a mutual trust of relationship with their franchisees, franchisor's should provide support effectively to their franchisees. Effective assistant services have direct effect on franchisees' satisfaction with previous outcome and trust in franchisor. Especially, franchise sales process, orientation, and training in the start-up period are key elements for success of the franchise system. Franchisor's support is an accumulated separate satisfaction evaluation with different kind of service provided by the franchisor. And providing support definitely can improve the trustworthy image of the franchisor. In the franchise system, conflicts of interests and exertions of different power sources are very common. The experience of conflict episodes seems to negatively relate to trust. Therefore, it is important to reduce the negative side of the relationship conflicts. Communication actually plays a broader role in reducing conflict and establish mutual trust in franchisor-franchisee relationship. And effective communication between franchisors and franchisees can improve franchisees' satisfaction toward the franchise system. As the diversification of Chinese markets, both franchisors and franchisees must keep the relevant, timely, and reliable communication. And it is very important to improve the quality of communication. Satisfaction with precious outcomes seems to positively relate to trust. Franchisors and franchisees that are highly satisfied with the previous outcomes that flow from their relationship will perceive their partner as advancing their goal achievement. Therefore, it is necessary for both franchisor and their franchisees to make the welfare of partner with effort. Little literature has focused on what factors affect the trust between franchisors and their franchisees in China. This study developed the hypotheses regarding the factors affecting trust in the transaction relationship. The results of data analysis supported the hypotheses strongly. There are certain limitations in this study. First, we may point out that some other factors missed in this study could be significantly important. Second, the context of this study, food service industry, limits its potential generalizability for all franchise systems. More studies in different categories of franchise system are needed to broaden its generalizability. Third, the model was tested empirically in a sample in Beijing, more empirical tests of the proposed model in other Chinese areas are needed. Finally, the analysis in this study was solely based on the perception of franchisees and the opinions of franchisors were not included.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.149-161
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• 2014

The export of domestic public services to overseas markets contains many potential obstacles, stemming from different export procedures, the target services, and socio-economic environments. In order to alleviate these problems, the business incubation platform as an open business ecosystem can be a powerful instrument to support the decisions taken by participants and stakeholders. In this paper, we propose an ontology model and its implementation processes for the business incubation platform with an open and pervasive architecture to support public service exports. For the conceptual model of platform ontology, export case studies are used for requirements analysis. The conceptual model shows the basic structure, with vocabulary and its meaning, the relationship between ontologies, and key attributes. For the implementation and test of the ontology model, the logical structure is edited using Prot$\acute{e}$g$\acute{e}$ editor. The core engine of the business incubation platform is the simulator module, where the various contexts of export businesses should be captured, defined, and shared with other modules through ontologies. It is well-known that an ontology, with which concepts and their relationships are represented using a shared vocabulary, is an efficient and effective tool for organizing meta-information to develop structural frameworks in a particular domain. The proposed model consists of five ontologies derived from a requirements survey of major stakeholders and their operational scenarios: service, requirements, environment, enterprise, and county. The service ontology contains several components that can find and categorize public services through a case analysis of the public service export. Key attributes of the service ontology are composed of categories including objective, requirements, activity, and service. The objective category, which has sub-attributes including operational body (organization) and user, acts as a reference to search and classify public services. The requirements category relates to the functional needs at a particular phase of system (service) design or operation. Sub-attributes of requirements are user, application, platform, architecture, and social overhead. The activity category represents business processes during the operation and maintenance phase. The activity category also has sub-attributes including facility, software, and project unit. The service category, with sub-attributes such as target, time, and place, acts as a reference to sort and classify the public services. The requirements ontology is derived from the basic and common components of public services and target countries. The key attributes of the requirements ontology are business, technology, and constraints. Business requirements represent the needs of processes and activities for public service export; technology represents the technological requirements for the operation of public services; and constraints represent the business law, regulations, or cultural characteristics of the target country. The environment ontology is derived from case studies of target countries for public service operation. Key attributes of the environment ontology are user, requirements, and activity. A user includes stakeholders in public services, from citizens to operators and managers; the requirements attribute represents the managerial and physical needs during operation; the activity attribute represents business processes in detail. The enterprise ontology is introduced from a previous study, and its attributes are activity, organization, strategy, marketing, and time. The country ontology is derived from the demographic and geopolitical analysis of the target country, and its key attributes are economy, social infrastructure, law, regulation, customs, population, location, and development strategies. The priority list for target services for a certain country and/or the priority list for target countries for a certain public services are generated by a matching algorithm. These lists are used as input seeds to simulate the consortium partners, and government's policies and programs. In the simulation, the environmental differences between Korea and the target country can be customized through a gap analysis and work-flow optimization process. When the process gap between Korea and the target country is too large for a single corporation to cover, a consortium is considered an alternative choice, and various alternatives are derived from the capability index of enterprises. For financial packages, a mix of various foreign aid funds can be simulated during this stage. It is expected that the proposed ontology model and the business incubation platform can be used by various participants in the public service export market. It could be especially beneficial to small and medium businesses that have relatively fewer resources and experience with public service export. We also expect that the open and pervasive service architecture in a digital business ecosystem will help stakeholders find new opportunities through information sharing and collaboration on business processes.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.5-9
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• 2014

Purpose - The purpose of this study was to compare and contrast the applicability and effectiveness of both teukyakmeip contracts of Korea and consignment contracts of the United State to demonstrate the effectiveness and practicability of teukyakmeip in Korea. These are popular contract agreements between large retailers and their suppliers and vendors. In recent years, teukyakmeip was critically examined and scrutinized by the politicians, the media, and the public of Korea. Consequently, this paper focusesheavily on identifying and analyzing different types of contract agreements between large retailers and their suppliers that currently exist in Korea and compares and contrasts those analyzed contract agreements with teukyakmeip. The article also comparesand contrasts teukyakmeip with the consignment agreements of the United States to identify similarities and differences. Research design, data, and methodology - This study is a descriptive study and has used personal interviews to collect and analyze the data. This study also fits the definition of the case study wherein it is entirely focused on investigating a real-life event: analyzing and examining contract agreements in the distribution industry. Both randomly selected management and vendor representatives from the three major department stores, Lotte, Hyundai, and Shinsegae, in Korea were interviewed between July and September 2013. The analysis of the consignment agreement was conducted based on existing secondary data. Results - Although the evidence of the abuse of teukyakmeip and consignment by large retailers from both countries clearly exists, the findings suggestthat both contract agreements would remain as the most relevant and effective legal contracts between large retailers and their suppliers. Based on the comparisonanalysis of teukyakmeip and consignment, both contracts indicated that suppliers are fully responsible for inventory and inventory management. If sales person is necessary for promoting special product, then suppliers are responsible for providing a sales person and their wages under both contracts. However, American department stores, those located outside urban area, tend to use their own employees to perform special product and sales promotion. The retailersare fully responsible for any interior or floor design or redesign of the retail store to accommodate the products from vendors under consignment; however, both suppliers and retailers share the cost of designing and redesigning the interior to accommodate vendors'products under teukyakmeip. Suppliers are responsible for pricing and supplying the quantity of the products under both agreements. Both contracts allow special sales commission as long as vendors agreed. Vendors use this special commissionto introduce their new products or apply market penetration strategy. Conclusions -The findings of this study showed the changing pattern of contract agreements between large retailers and their suppliers from both countries. Furthermore, this study evidently generated policy implications of teukyakmeip which recently became the major social issue in Korea and attracted many policymakers to gain political points by criticizing the teukyakmeip system and the large retailers. The findings of the study would be valuable to policy makers in making appropriate decisions and to large retailers and vendors in making beneficial agreements. The major implication of this study is that teukyakmeip and consignment agreements include very similar or almost identical characteristics, and they are popular among department stores and suppliers. The issue of abolishing teukyakmeip in Korea needs to be examined cautiously because teukyakmeip is the best one available at the moment, and the study suggests that no one benefits from abolishing this system.

• Archives of design research
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• v.20 no.3 s.71
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• pp.61-72
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• 2007

Having started with "Space War", the first game produced by MIT in the 1960's, the gaming industry expanded rapidly and grew to a large size over a short period of time: the brand new games being launched on the market are found to contain many different elements making up a single content in that it is often called the 'the most comprehensive ultimate fruits' of the design technologies. This also translates into a large increase in the number of things which need to be considered in developing games, complicating the plans on the financial budget, the work force, and the time to be committed. Therefore, an approach for analyzing the elements which make up a game, computing the importance of each of them, and assessing those games to be developed in the future, is the key to a successful development of games. Many decision-making activities are often required under such a planning process. The decision-making task involves many difficulties which are outlined as follows: the multi-factor problem; the uncertainty problem impeding the elements from being "quantified" the complex multi-purpose problem for which the outcome aims confusion among decision-makers and the problem with determining the priority order of multi-stages leading to the decision-making process. In this study we plan to suggest AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) so that these problems can be worked out comprehensively, and logical and rational alternative plan can be proposed through the quantification of the "uncertain" data. The analysis was conducted by taking FPS (First Person Shooting) which is currently dominating the gaming industry, as subjects for this study. The most important consideration in conducting AHP analysis is to accurately group the elements of the subjects to be analyzed objectively, and arrange them hierarchically, and to analyze the importance through pair-wise comparison between the elements. The study is composed of 2 parts of analyzing these elements and computing the importance between them, and choosing an alternative plan. Among these this paper is particularly focused on the Delphi technique-based objective element analyzing and hierarchy of the FPS games.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2018

The 4th Industrial Revolution is making a big change for our company like the tsunami. The CPS system, which is represented by the digital age, is based on the data accumulated in the physical domain and is making business that was not imagined in the past through digital technology. As a result, the business model of the 4th Industrial Revolution era is different from the previous one. In this study, we analyze the trends and the issues of business innovation theory research. Then, the business innovation model of the digital age was compared with the previous period. Based on this, we have searched for a business model suitable for the 4th Industrial Revolution era. The existing business models have many difficulties to explain the model of the digital era. Even though more empirical research should be supported, Michael Porter's diamond model is most suitable for four cases of business models by applying them. Type A sharing outcome with customer is a model that pay differently according to the basis of customer performance. Type B Value Chain Digitalization model provides products and services to customers with faster and lower cost by digitalizing products, services and SCM. Type C Digital Platform is the model that brings the biggest ripple effect. It is a model that can secure profitability by creating new market by creating the sharing economy based on digital platform. Finally, Type D Sharing Resources is a model for building a competitive advantage model by collaborating with partners in related industries. This is the most effective way to complement each other's core competencies and their core competencies. Even though numerous Unicorn companies have differentiated digital competitiveness with many digital technologies in their respective industries in the 4th Industrial Revolution era, there is a limit to the number of pieces to be listed. In future research, it is necessary to identify the business model of the digital age through more specific empirical analysis. In addition, since digital business models may be different in each industry, it is also necessary to conduct comparative analysis between industries

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.1-13
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• 2018

Landscape Architecture is a minority manpower field that requires wide knowledge and experience. Therefore, the service market is narrower than other fields, and education service for practitioners is lacking. The purpose of this study is to propose e-learning content development methodology that can provide customized landscaping practical education according to the level of education and increase the economic efficiency of the development process. First, in theoretical review, the ADDIE model was modified to select the curriculum development model that pursues efficiency and introduced the concept of reusing learning objects in the SCORM-based model. In particular, to overcome the problems presented in the precious studies, the analysis and design stages have been strengthened and faculty designers with integrated knowledge of Landscape Architecture and ICT have led the overall phase. The actual development process is based on a step by step procedure--analysis of landscaping practitioners needs and environments, etc., teaching and learning procedures and the design of activities considering contents reuse, the first development such as actual shooting and editing, and the second development reusing the first development content--and was done in the order of evaluation and revision of professionalism and satisfaction. As a result of the study, the space-based courses composed of modular learning objects were first developed as 216 courses in 8 subjects, as 208 courses in 3 subjects in total, in which the modularized learning object are crossed and combined in units and difficulty-based courses were second developed in 216 courses with 3 subjects in total. As a result of the evaluation the satisfaction assessment of the overall satisfaction was 4.20 and the average value of the eight measures was 3.97, both being close to 4.0. For the professional assessment, the scores of 8 subjects were very high at 84.8 to 96.4 points. in context, the scores of 5 subjects were equal to from 89.9 to 96.4 points. In conclusion, as the study was conducted based on a clear understanding of the digital characteristics of e-learning contents and general characteristic of the landscaping industry, it was possible to develop a curriculum by developing a course composed of modular learning objects and reusing learning objects by unit. In particular, it has been proven to be effective in conveying professional knowledge and experiences via general procedures and provided an opportunity to overcome some analog problems that may occur in offline education. In the future, further studies need to be done by expanding the content and by focusing on segmented subjects.

• 한국벤처창업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.04a
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• pp.45-75
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• 2006

How much influence does a business plan have on a corporate performance? Whilst previous studies and literatures all assert a strong correlation between the two, very few have actually conducted practical analyses to support that. This study takes an empirical approach in its analysis of Korea' s small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) with the view to finding an answer to the question. A business plan' s components, which have to date been suggested only in theory and in concept, have been selected through the study of literatures and preliminary examination. The selected components were then narrowed down into five factors of productivity, implementation, operational direction, product/service and customer accessibility by applying factor analysis. With which items to measure corporate performance is also an important question as results differ depending on which measurement items were used. For the purpose of this study, corporate performance was classified into effectiveness, adaptability and efficiency to measure how greatly each is influenced by the components of a business plan. Results show that effectiveness and adaptability have a positive (+) influence on corporate performance. The regression model seems to explain effectiveness particularly well. However, different directions of influences were showed in explain power of the research model were not high. And it can be interpreted that implementation of the plan is as important as the establishment of it. Thus a good corporate performance is to be had only under an excellent plan and following an excellent implementation. In most of the companies surveyed, business plans were established regularly led by the intense involvement of the CEO. Such plans were then used in internal operations, such as guiding operational direction and measuring corporate performance. Unlike general expectations, relatively few companies used them in financing from external sources such as banks or venture capitals. These findings are different from previous studies conducted in this field. Also, as market uncertainty was pointed out as the biggest obstacle to business planning. a manager must pay more attention to acquiring external information and knowledge so as to minimize it.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.30 no.12 s.159
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• pp.1697-1707
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• 2006

Relentless advances in information technology are constantly transforming market dynamics of the retail industry. RFID is an emerging innovative technology that can reduce labor costs, improve inventory control and increase sales by effective business processes. Apparel retailers need to recognize the benefits of RFID and identify critical success factors. By focusing on apparel retailers, this study attempts (1) to identify the reality of RFID associated with benefits; and (2) to prospect the implementation of RFID in apparel retailing. We conducted a focus group interview with selected six panels who were experts of retail industry in the United States to obtain data regarding RFID attributes. Content analysis was used to generate related excerpts and classify 31 attributes of RFID benefits from the meaningful 173 responses. For experience of RFID, retailers were familiar with RFID technology and expressed the belief that RFID basically would support an existing retail system for speed to markets. However, retailers addressed the level of experience with RFID technology that they were still in the early adoption stage among few innovative companies. The content analysis identified five dimensions of RFID benefits for apparel retailing: Visibility and Velocity, Revenue Enhancement, Customer Service, Security, and Employee Productivity. This result lends support to the belief that RFID has a significant potential to streamline supply chain management, store operation and customer service for apparel retailing. This study provides intellectual and managerial implications far practitioners and researchers by postulating the effective use of RFID in the apparel retail industry.