• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.85-91
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• 2016

Purpose - Prior research has suggested that consumers typically prefer to have a larger number of options. However, preference of assortment size may depend on how depleted resources in consumers' mind are. Reduced capacity for self-regulation by resource depletion makes people rely on more intuitive and less effortful decision processing. When they are mentally depleted, people are likely to focus on the choice difficulty from large assortment, which leads to preference for the small assortment when they make a decision. It could be an important question potentially how being in a depleted mode through effortful self-regulation will influence on the evaluation of assortment size. To answer this questioner, we hypothesized that being engaged in self-regulation, as compared with not being engaged in self-regulation, will influence on the evaluation of product assortment size such as attractiveness, difficulty of choice, and anticipated regret. Research design, data, and methodology - In this study, we first manipulated self-regulatory resource availability using a self-regulation task (i.e., instructing participants to solve Sudoku puzzle vs. to solve diagram cube by filling any diagrams that they prefer into cube instead of number) and asked to indicate the difficulty of the tasks available to them ("How much difficulty did you feel when you complete the task?") Next, participants were asked to imagine that they were planning to buy a laptop at one of the two stores (small assortment: 6 options vs. large assortment: 30 options), both offering good quality of products. After reading the product descriptions, participants were instructed to consider all the information and choose a store that they would like to shop. Finally we measured the choice difficulty, evaluation of product assortments, and anticipated regret on a 7-point scale. We conducted two-way ANOVA in testing the main hypothesis that depleted consumers will show poorer subsequent self-control than non-depleted consumers when they make a decision in large assortment. Results - Compared with non-depleted participants, depleted participants showed the bigger difference from the degree of choice difficulty and product attractiveness between large and small assortments, but the result revealed only a significant interaction effect of resource depletion and assortment size on choice difficulty. Also depleted participants showed the smaller difference from the degree of anticipated regret between large and small assortments than non-depleted participants. Conclusion - Depleted individuals by a prior task are relatively effortless and intuitive form of choosing products so that they try to avoid making effortful trade-offs among choice difficulty such as large assortment, compare with non-depleted individuals. However, for anticipated regret, non-depleted individuals in small assortment anticipate more regret by excluding or at least restricting the possibility of buying attractive items or another kind of potential items than depleted individuals, regardless less choice difficulty in small option. To sum up, it is important to note that individuals are influenced by self-regulatory resources and their self-regulatory conditions contribute to the overall positive or negative impact of product assortment on choice.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.107-120
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• 2011

The increased availability of store brand suppliers now provides retailers with opportunities to create their own lines of vertically differentiated multiple store brands within a product category. As the number of store brands increase, the retailer's shelf space becomes more crowded, which may force the retailer to consider dropping some national brands from its assortment. Despite these trends, the problem of product line design in a vertically differentiated product category has been analyzed mainly from a manufacturer's perspective in the marketing literature and it is not known to what extent the findings of the existing product line design literature provide applicable strategic guidelines for the new problem faced by retailers. In this study, we address this deficiency in the literature and conduct an in-depth study of the retailer's strategic design of a line of store brands and its assortment decision within the context of retail category management. We analyze the retailer's decision about not only how to design a line of store brands but also which national brand to drop from its assortment. The results of our analysis are as follows. First, if the retailer has to drop one of national brands from its assortment, it is the best for the retailer to drop the low-quality national brand rather than the high-quality national brand. Second, the retailer has to position the high-quality store brand relatively close to the high-quality national brand, remained on its shelf, in terms of quality so as to maximize the size of retail margin from the national brand. On the other hand, the retailer should set the quality of the low-quality store brand at a lower level than that of the low-quality national brand to increase the total category demand by attracting more price sensitive consumers. By doing so, the retailer can also minimize cannibalization between two store brands. Lastly, our analysis shows that the introduction of a line of store brands improves consumer welfare by increasing real values of all products on the shelf.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.134-146
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• 2011

This paper suggests the product supply process model based on the store and production capacity, assortment planning and quick response for fast fashion retailers with BPMN. In the fast fashion industry, the standardized business process model is required to respond quickly market trends and customer requirements based on the quantitative and qualitative criteria. Thus we define the product supply processes which incorporate forecasting and assortment plan, cost and profitability of the production, store capacity based on the visual merchandising, and production capacity of the fast fashion retailers. Also we design the key performance indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of these product supply processes. The product supply process model for the fast fashion has great significance in embracing the fast fashion product development process because it presents the holistic view of the product supply process of the fast fashion and provides a performance evaluation mechanism. A case study shows that adopting the processes, a Korean fast fashion company achieves improvement in various performance indicators.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.9 no.7
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• pp.7-18
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• 2018

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine how clothing retail buyers (i.e., retail buyers, merchandisers, and storeowners), who are involved in assortment planning and retail buying use assortment criteria in their decisions. Comparisons are made between criteria used by men's wear and women's wear retail buyers as well as criteria used by male and female retail buyers. Research design, data, and methodology - A structured questionnaire was developed to collect data both in English and Korean. After conducting two pilot tests, the survey was conducted in Seoul, South Korea. Mantrala et al.'s 17 inputs of product assortment planning model with 23 assortment criteria from other previous studies were used. Results - Significant differences existed in consideration of assortment criteria between men's wear and women's wear retail buyers as well as between male and female retail buyers. Men's wear retail buyers rated the importance of sales history criteria (i.e., sales history, previous year's sales of same/similar styles) significantly lower than women's wear buyers did. Female retail buyers rated sales history criteria and weather criteria (i.e., unpredicted weather change, forecasting information of weather) significantly higher than male retail buyers did. Conclusions - This study provides guidelines for retail buyers regarding what criteria to use in what situations and how to organize assortment criteria from the most important criterion to the least one. In addition, the findings help them understand other retail buyers' buying behavior.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.15-27
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• 2018

Purpose - The purpose of the study is to examine the relationships among the following retail operations variables: retail store operations (i.e., store management, sales personnel, promotion of merchandise), success of assortment planning, firm performance (i.e., market share, overall competitive position, profitability, product quality, consumer satisfaction), and retail buyer's demographics and firm's characteristics. Research design, data, and methodology - After conducting a pilot test, the survey was conducted in Seoul, South Korea. With using the listwise deletion method, 378 usable data sets were analyzed. For data analysis, descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) methods were employed. Results - As evidenced from the path diagram, the relationship between retail store operations and the success of assortment planning is strong and significant. Retail store operations affect firm performance, though at a weaker significance than it affects the success of assortment planning. The relationship between the success of assortment planning and firm performance, is the strongest relationship observed by this research. Conclusions - The findings of this empirical study contribute to the retail/fashion buying/management field by confirming (a) the importance of assortment planning for retail firm performance and (b) the role of store operations for successful assortment planning and firm performance for fashion retailers.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.770-780
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• 2015

This study intended to explore fundamental causes affecting consumers' response actions from psychological factors in the situation of sellout occurring during shopping in online fashion stores. In addition, this study devised a virtual online shop in order to measure consumers' cognitive and emotional psychological responses they experienced when goods were sold out. The subjects involved women in 20s~30s, major customers of online shopping, and the subjects were randomly allocated to one of eight questionnaire forms (2(stockout size: high vs low)${\times}2$(product assortment similarity: similar vs. dissimilar)${\times}2$(restocking cue: included vs excluded)). The number of final data used for the analysis was 336 and through SPSS 21.0 program, two-way ANOVA and bootstrap were utilized. The analysis result was that consumers' psychological responses (emotions, psychological reactance) of online shops differed by means of varying stockout situations. The stockout size had positive effect on psychological reactance and negative emotions. On the other hand, there was no difference in positive emotions (arousal) according to stockout size. In stockout situation of online fashion store, the moderating effect of product assortment similarity and restocking cues were verified. According to the analysis result, interaction effects between stockout size and restocking cues, product stockout size and product assortment for psychological reactance were significant. Lastly, the mediation effect of psychological reactance and emotion between stockout size and behavioral response was tested. As a result, the moderated mediation effects of psychological reactance for substitute were significant when product assortment was dissimilar and restocking cue was exclude.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.32 no.8
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• pp.1274-1285
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to investigate influences of perceived price dimensions and store attributes on store choice behavior. Three major retail formats, department store, discount store, and internet shopping mall in retail industry were compared with respect to store attributes and intention to purchase fashion products. Data were obtained from 427 consumers aged 25-49 years old. The results were as follows. (1) Multidimensional aspects of the price construct were identified: price-quality schema, prestige sensitivity, price mavenism, value consciousness, price consciousness, and sales proneness. (2) Store attributes included product assortment, quality per price (Q/P), service, and symbolic image in general. However, store attribute factors of three retail formats consisted of slightly different items. Department stores presented the highest level of mean scores on product quality, customer service, and symbolic images, while internet mall exhibited highest on product variety, information comparison, and quality per price. (3) Respondents presented high level of intention to purchase fashion products at internet mall, department store, and discount store in that order. (4) Purchase intention at department store was predicted by Q/P, service, symbolic image, prestige sensitivity, product assortment, clothing consumption, and age in order. Purchase intention at discount store was influenced by assortment & Q/P, symbolic image, clothing consumption, and sales proneness, whereas internet mall was predicted by product assortment, Q/P, service, price mavenism, and price-quality schema.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.815-824
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• 2004

In academic and/or practitioner literature, the assortment planning for fashion sensitive products is rarely systematically studied, and organized in an objective format. The purpose of this study was to develop a suggested assortment planning model for women's clothing retail buyers by integrating a conceptual assortment planning model and a practical-use assortment planning model, which are also developed in this study. In developing the conceptual model, this research categorized and organized the pieces of assortment planning activities illustrated in available literature. In developing the practical-use model, ten women's dress buyers from department stores and specialty stores were interviewed. The contents of the interview dictation were classified and summarized by concepts and variables. The summary was validated by the interviewees and recontextualized for the practical-use model. Five experts compared the conceptual and practical-use models, adjusted the discrepancies, and integrated into the suggested model. In addition, a questionnaire asking review of all functional activities of the suggested model was sent to interviewees to ascertain its validity. As the result, assortment planning process was determined at abstract level as the following: (a) recognize problem, (b) search for information, (c) evaluate qualitative value of product, (d) evaluate quantitative value of product, (e) plan product selection, and (f) plan sales.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.14 no.1 s.33
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• pp.3-12
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• 1990

The purposes of this study were to determine the consumer dissatisfaction factors in the process of purchase and use of clothing, and to investigate the relationships between the dissatisfaction factors and selected variables-clothing importance, evaluative attributes, price, shopping stores. The research questionnaires selected from the pilot study were administered to 547 female subjects in the age of twenties. The dissatisfaction factors identified as a result of the factor analysis were as follows: (1) 'price' factor ($21.6\%$ of the total explained variance), (2) 'product assortment' factor ($21.5\%$), (3) 'purchase decision-making' factor ($19.9\%$), (4) 'quality' factor ($18.6\%$), (5) 'informa­tion and service' factor ($18.4\%$). By these five factors, the $34.7\%$ of the total variance were explained. The factors were validated by the multiple regression analysis. The purchase decision­making factor has the greatest explanatory power suggests that psychological aspects are more important to clothing dissatisfaction than any other objective aspects. The relationships between the dissatisfaction factors and the selected variables were found to be as follows: 1) The higher clothing importance scores, the higher product assortment related dissatisfac­tion score. 2) The higher the purchase price, the lower the price related dissatisfaction, but the higher the product assortment related dissatisfaction scores. 3) The department store and the national brand chain store shoppers had higher product assortment related dissatisfaction compared to the small retail store and discount store shoppers.

• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.1-13
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to examine the different preference as well as the factor for this preference between general internet shopping mall and feminine internet fashion shopping mall only which are subjected with women and know the satisfaction which follows hereupon. This research will help to establish the strategy to marketers who manage feminine internet fashion shopping mall. The results of this study as follows; 1. As the result of the analysis of preference factors for general internet shopping mall, it was classified with, convenient characteristic, economical efficiency, product and information characteristic, sales promotion, and customer service. Also differences among preference factors appear with following orders, economical efficiency, convenient characteristic, product and information characteristic, sales promotion, and customer service. 2. As the result of the analysis of preference factor for feminine internet fashion shopping mall, it was classified with, fashion information and style, purchase product, economical efficiency, product assortment, and customer service. Also differences among preference factors appear with following orders, fashion information style, product assortment, purchase product, economical efficiency, and customer service. 3. As the result of the analysis of preference factors, convenient characteristic and product information mostly effects to satisfy the customers who use general internet shopping mall. Also purchase product, product assortment, fashion information and style mostly effects to satisfy the customers who use feminine internet fashion shopping mall.