• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.25-37
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• 2013

Purpose - The structure of retailing has changed as retailers develop markets in response to business environment changes. This study aims to analyze the general situation of retailers in order to predict future global strategy using case studies of overseas expansion strategy and the Metro Group's global strategy. Research design, data, and methodology - The backgrounds to the new retail business model and retailer classification are analyzed as theoretical data. In addition, the key success point of the Metro Group's "cash and carry" strategy is analyzed as is the Metro Group's global CFAR (collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment) strategy. Finally, the plan for cooperation and precise forecasting under the Metro Group's supply chain management are analyzed from the promotion environment viewpoint. Related materials analyzed included the 2012 annual report, the Metro Group's web page, and a video interview with the executive in charge of global strategy and the new market development department. Some data were revised to avoid disrupting essential aspects of the case studies. Results - The important finding was that the Metro Group could be a world-class retail company with its successful global expansion strategy. The Metro Group's global strategy's primary goal is to have a leading business position in Eastern and Western Europe. The "cash and carry" strategy is highest priority in its overseas expansion strategy. Moreover, the Metro Group has standardized product planning capacity, which could be applied in various countries with different structural and cultural backgrounds. This is the main reason that the Metro Group could rapidly become successful in the Eastern Europe and Asian markets through its structural overseas expansion strategies. In addition, the Metro Group emphasizes the importance of supply chain management. Conclusions - First, retailers should create additional value through utilizing the domestic market, market power, and economies of scale to launch a global strategy to maximize benefits from diversification. Second, the political, economic, and cultural background of the target country needs to be understood to successfully implement the overseas expansion strategy. Third, the main factor of successful cooperation with a local partner is how quickly the company gains total understanding of the business resources and core competence of its partner. All organizations should focus on the achievement of goals in order to successfully operate the partnership. Fourth, retailers should improve their business, financial and organizational structure. Moreover, the work processes and company culture should also be improved to respond strongly in the competitive global market. Fifth, the essential point of a successful retail business is the control capacity of its branding and format. The retailer could avoid forecasting errors through supply chain management by perfectly distributing the actual amount of its inventory. In addition, the risks along the supply chain are effectively shared between the supply chain partners. Finally, the central tendency of the market is to gain in strength with this taking place across all parts of the business.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.45-59
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• 2022

Purpose - This study investigates the performance of investment strategies incorporating estimated stock market cycle based on a lead-lag relationship between business cycle and stock market cycle, thereby deriving empirical implications on risk management. Design/methodology/approach - The data period ranges from June 1953 to September 2022 and de-trended short rate, term spread, credit spread, stock market volatility are considered as major input variables to estimate business cycle and stock market cycle by applying probit model. Based on the estimated stock market cycle, two types of strategies are constructed and their performance relative to the benchmark is empirically examined. Findings Two types of strategies based on stock market cycle are considered: The first strategy is to long(short) on stocks when stock market stage is expected to be an expansion(a recession), and the second one is to long on stocks(bonds) when expecting an expansion(a recession). The empirical results show that the strategies based on stock market cycle outperforms a simple buy and hold strategy in both in-sample and out-of-sample investigation. Also the out-of-sample evidence suggests that the second strategy which is in line with asset allocation is more profitable than the first one. Research implications or Originality The strategies considered in this study are based on the estimated stock market cycle which only depends on a few easily available financial variables, thereby making easier to establish such a strategy. It implies that investors enhance investment performance by constructing a relatively simple trading strategies if they set their position on stocks or choose which asset class to buy conditioning on stock market cycle.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.29-40
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• 2020

Korean firms have been vigorously searching and exploring overseas market opportunities through export and overseas investment. As of end of 2019, there were more than 80,000 Korean overseas subsidiaries all over the world. With Korean overseas direct investment increasing recently, it became one of the important issues for overseas investors to be successful in the global market. There are a lot of studies on factors influencing the performance of overseas subsidiaries such as 'firm' and 'country' factors. This study empirically examines subsidiary performance determinants with 'industry architectures' by using a sample of 292 overseas Korean firm subsidiaries. Industry architectures are the stable but evolving sets of rules and roles through which labor is divided within a sector. This article considers how industry architectures shape success in international expansion. Industry architectures differ between countries, are not necessarily technologically determined, shape firms' capabilities and their competitive environment, and constitute a distinct level of analysis. We extract antecedents of related theory and empirically test its impact with a survey of Korean firms expanding in emerging economies. We would say this is the first study which tries to focus on industry architectures with the performance of Korean overseas subsidiaries. We find that separability and similarity of industry architectures across countries and localization of subsidiaries are robust and important predictors of success in international expansion. Our results suggest that industry architectures should be added to firm and country as an intermediate level of analysis that helps explain success in international expansion. While we established a pattern, much more remains to be done. We focus on the success of foreign operations, but we do not consider the broader benefits of going abroad, such as the learning or network effects that accrue at the level of the entire firm. The next obvious question is whether the results would differ in the developed market context. These we leave for future research to consider.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.29-47
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• 2013

Distribution channel decisions involve long-term commitments with other firms that are very difficult to change or replace. In particular, marketing channel decisions in emerging markets are much more complicated due to unfamiliar conditions and problems such as lack of market data and distribution systems. Therefore, when a company considers changing or introducing a marketing channel in an area, it is much more difficult to judge its effectiveness in an emerging market than in a developed market. In this study, we investigate the development process of a new direct marketing channel of Hongfu Fertilizer Company (hereafter Hongfu), a medium-sized Chinese fertilizer manufacturer, and propose an approach to test the feasibility of this new marketing channel in the Chinese rural market. We measure the effectiveness of Hongfu's new marketing channel from two perspectives: i) from customers' perspective through direct responses of farmers, which showed that a new channel can increase the convenience and lower the purchasing costs for the farmers, and ii) from the company's perspective, by calculating the incremental profit of the company using the expansion factor (T/Q) method, which suggested that the execution of Hongfu's strategy to expand a new marketing channel will result in an increase in profits. The results of this study contribute to the development of a methodology to test the feasibility of a new direct marketing channel in the emerging markets such as the Chinese rural market. Traditional and indirect distribution channels in emerging markets are generally not very efficient and difficult to change. Especially, in emerging markets, like the Chinese rural market, the methods of testing channel feasibility must be different from that of developed markets. Considering market situations, market experiments can be more effective then systematic market surveys in testing channel feasibility in emerging markets. This study implies that managers must learn to cope with a transition from the traditional marketing channels in emerging markets. With the development in farmers' understanding of marketing concept, the transition from traditional marketing channel is unavoidable for all firms. Farmers in China are generally very conservative, however, their buying behaviors are changing. Therefore, fertilizer companies should try to adjust in accordance with farmers' demand characteristics that the efforts to meet the economic needs of farmers with new marketing channels as well as trust building are critical in the near future.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.5-11
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• 2016

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to find the issues associated with international expansion of Korean franchisors going international and suggest lessons of proposition to reduce the failure risk in international expansion of franchise systems. Research design, data, and methodology - This is the exploratory study and structured to review (1) background to motivate the expansion of franchisors towards international market, (2) the status of Korean franchisors going international in recent years, (3) issues, (4) lessons learned from the experiences, and (5) summary. Secondary sources were reviewed to get necessary data and statistics. Results - Master franchising was the most preferred entry mode for Korean franchisors. Franchisors must understand the expenses to be incurred as well as revenues associated with international activities. Brand is the core asset of franchisor as a differentiation strategy. Conclusions - The paper indicates that even if international franchising is the unique business model for franchisors to use in little or least risk compared with other international entry modes, it needs a set of complex capabilities that much differ from those in domestic and franchisors should take a step approach to the international market with the planned and long term perspective.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.472-476
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to fully understand the present state of the domestic construction companies, and to analyze phased business types and construction management techniques in order to initiate overseas expansion. Because of the recession in the domestic construction market, a thorough and strategic perspective to constantly develop inroads into overseas market is required. So we carried out a questionnaire survey targeting the experts of the overseas construction and researcher, and consulted them in depth. The questionnaire survey was divided into three sections. The first section is the necessity of overseas construction and the reason. The second is the overseas business types classified into the way of advance in short-term and long-term phase possibility of expansion. Lastly, the importance of the phased construction management techniques and the current capacity of the domestic and the foreign business trends were scrutinized. On the basis of the consultation and surveys, we analyzed the overseas business types and the construction management types in the short-term and long-term phase.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.169-188
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• 2014

Big data seems to change knowledge management system and method of enterprises to large extent. Further, the type of method for utilization of unstructured data including image, v ideo, sensor data a nd text may determine the decision on expansion of knowledge management of the enterprise or government. This paper, in this light, attempts to figure out the prediction model of demands and supply for big data market of Korea trough data mining decision making tree by utilizing text bit data generated for 3 years on web and SNS for expansion of form for knowledge management. The results indicate that the market focused on H/W and storage leading by the government is big data market of Korea. Further, the demanders of big data have been found to put important on attribute factors including interest, quickness and economics. Meanwhile, innovation and growth have been found to be the attribute factors onto which the supplier puts importance. The results of this research show that the factors affect acceptance of big data technology differ for supplier and demander. This article may provide basic method for study on expansion of analysis form of enterprise and connection with its management activities.

• 한국디지털정책학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.323-335
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• 2005

Globalization of economy brings both opportunities and threats especially for companies in developing countries such as Korea. Globalization is an opportunity because it may expand the size of market for the company where globalization brings a threat for developing global competitiveness. If the company has already built competitive advantage in its business domain, the company can easily transfer market growth to profit improvement. However, if the company has not developed competitive advantage, globalization of economy will give a serious threat for the survivor of the company. The company might lose its own domestic market share. For the less famous brand of product or company name, international expansion is a challenging strategy. The study evaluated organizational performance of companies that try international expansion by utilizing Miles and Snow's strategy typology. We clustered organizations based on their strategy typology (prospector, analyzer, defender, and reactor) in view of the level of product diversification, new product development instances, level of localization, and autonomy of foreign subsidiary. With the strategy typology, we evaluated international strategy in view of product competitiveness, marketing strategy, human resource strategy, and organizational strategy. The regression result demonstrates that the performance of the company is significantly higher when the company employs prospector strategy. We also found out that product quality and emphasis for developed countries in international expansion are the most important factors for success.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.239-262
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• 2009

This study shed light on the status of Korean Kimchi industry in overseas markets and presented methods for promoting Kimchi industry of Gwangju Jeonnam metropolitan city and stimulating the export of Kimchi produced in Gwangju Jeonnam, a city that has come to the fore as the center of Kimchi industry, which aimed to explore the ways of ratcheting up competitiveness of Kimchi industry in the global market as Kimchi has become more likely to be globalized amid the recent "Korea Trend" boom and the growing consumption of fermented food. Therefore, methods for promoting Kimchi industry and stimulating the export of Kimchi should be explored to ensure the promotion of Kimchi industry and the stimulation of the export of Kimchi, ultimately restoring the status of Korea as the home of Kimchi, in consideration of the great spillover effect on the regional economy, through a series of measures such as the clusterization of Kimchi industry, expansion of cultural experience projects related to Kimchi for the globalization and the increased consumption of Kimchi, government support to increase Kimchi companies in size and achieve the modernization of Kimchi companies, introduction of Kimchi KS audit system and quality certification system, development of new product targeting global market and making Kimchi a high-end product, expansion of export, support of export market diversification, assurance of safety and price competitiveness of Kimchi, differentiated production and marketing strategy by means of technological research, and others.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.71-81
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• 2020

Purpose: This case study illustrates the successful entry of Saudi Aramco in the Korean market and how it grows to become one of the world's largest integrated energy enterprises. Research design, data and methodology: This case investigates diverse secondary sources to examine the entry strategy of Aramco in Korea, such as several interviews including public and anonymous dialogues, periodicals, dispatches (i.e. news articles and magazines), annual reports, industrial reports, and others. Results: The main concern for the international strategic approaching of Saudi Aramco is to enter into Korean market by joint venture with SsangYong Oil (today's S-Oil Corporation) in 1991 and finally, ending by Acquisition of S-Oil in 2015. This acquisition of local No.3 company, S-Oil, in Korea is the successful case in Asian Markets overcoming liability of foreignness. Moreover, Saudi Aramco's global distribution strategy through localization in the Korean market is appropriate given the market conditions, timing, effectiveness, and efficiency by sharing their resources and collaborating. Conclusions: It would be valuable, unique, and real story to analyze global leading company's entry and globalization strategy in overseas market. In addition, this study provides decision-makers with a significant and more strategic implication for the overseas expansion of businesses.