• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.294-301
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• 2017

Purpose: The purposes of this study were to investigate food consumption practices and analyze factors that influence customer satisfaction of an HACCP applied restaurant in a highway service area. Methods: A total of 207 customer responses were used for data analysis. Statistical analyses were conducted using the SPSS program (ver. 22.0) for $x^2$-test, Pearson correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis. Results: Reasons for visiting the highway area were using the restroom (86.0%), purchasing of meals or snacks (70.1%), taking a rest (58.5%), and shopping (3.4%) and selection attributes of food sold in the highway service area were food taste (48.8%), food safety (33.3%), and waiting time for meal (10.7%). According to the results of the survey, udon (66.2%) was the most preferred meal, followed by instant noodles (56.0%), kimbap (50.7%), pork cutlet (38.2%), and bibimbap (29.0%). In addition, coffee (73.4%) was the most preferred among snacks and beverages, followed by beverages (58.9%), walnut cake (53.1%), mineral water (52.2%), and hotbar (52.2%). Satisfaction evaluation scores of foods sold in the highway service area were highest for appropriate portion size, followed by food safety, menu variety, food taste, and reasonable price. Overall customer satisfaction scores regarding the restaurant in the highway service area was 3.24 out of 5 points on average. According to the results of the multiple regressing analysis, food taste (p < 0.001) and reasonable price (p < 0.01) had significant positive effects on overall customer satisfaction. Conclusion: To enhance customer satisfaction, restaurant managers in the highway service area should implement HACCP, improve food taste, and set up a proper price for food sold at the restaurant in the highway service area.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.297-309
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• 2019

Purpose: This study examined the relationship among the use of food-related content (FRC), dietary behaviors, and dietary self-efficacy to demonstrate the need for nutrition education to help adolescents build healthy eating habits and provide evidence for developing nutrition education programs for adolescents. Methods: Three hundred and eighty-one high school students in Seoul and Gyeonggi areas participated in the study. The subjects were divided into three groups (low, medium, and high) according to the level of use of the FRC, and their general characteristics, dietary behaviors, and dietary self-efficacy were analyzed. Correlation analysis was performed between FRC usage, dietary behaviors, and dietary self-efficacy, and the mediating effects of dietary self-efficacy on the relationship between the level of the use of FRC and dietary behaviors were estimated. Results: A higher level of FRC usage was associated with an increased daily cost of eating out and snacking, but no difference was observed in the BMI range. The subjects in a group with a high level of FRC usage ate convenience store or instant foods instead of homemade meals (p = 0.033), had a late-night meal or snack (p = 0.024), and turned to emotional eating under stress (p < 0.001) more than those in the low level group. In addition, the high level group checked the nutrition facts label more carefully when purchasing processed foods (p = 0.016) and exercised at least 30 minutes daily, not considering physical education classes (p = 0.057). The higher level of FRC use, the lower the dietary self-efficacy, whereby the subscales 'environmental stimulus control efficacy' and 'affective factor control efficacy' showed complete mediating effects. Conclusion: Given that FRC has been increased recently, adolescents are in need of support to help them control and enhance their dietary self-efficacy as well as develop healthy dietary behaviors through proper nutrition education programs.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.355-372
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• 2021

Purpose: This study aimed to provide baseline data for establishing a sugar reduction policy at coffee shops by analyzing the factors that affect a coffee shop user's perception and behavioral intention of reducing sugar intake. Methods: An online survey was conducted involving 1,274 Daegu citizens aged 19-49 years, who had visited coffee shops within the last month. Results: When visiting a coffee shop, the purchase of sweet drinks was higher in the younger age group, and the addition of syrup or sugar was higher in the older age group. Of the total respondents, 42.1% were aware that some coffee shops accommodate reduced sugar requests, 57.9% perceived the need to reduce sugar in coffee shop beverages and 22.3% had purchased beverages intending to reduce their sugar intake. In addition, 59.7% knew about sugar nutrition labeling, and 68.8% perceived the need for nutrition labeling for sugar. When purchasing beverages, 35.6% checked the nutrition labeling, and 77.2% purchased alternative drinks when the sugar content was high. Guiding the choice of sweetness levels in coffee shop orders was seen to have the highest effectiveness and intention to reduce sugar intake. Moreover, the perceived need to reduce sugar intake had the most positive effect on the behavioral intention to reduce sugars in coffee shop beverages (β = 0.558, p < 0.001). Conclusion: Although the overall awareness and practice of reducing the sugar intake in coffee shop users were low, the behavioral intention to reduce sugars was positive, and this was most affected by the perception of the need to reduce sugars. Therefore, there is a need for differentiated education and promotion for each age group for recognizing the necessity and outlining methods for reducing sugar intake. Furthermore, coffee shops should reflect customer's sugar reduction needs.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.315-329
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• 2023

Purpose: This study examined the meal-kit consumption practices of adults in their 20s and 30s and analyzed the properties that should be given priority for improvement among the selection attributes to improve the quality of meal-kits. Methods: Statistical analyses were conducted using the SPSS program (ver. 28.0) for χ²-test, t-test, one-way analysis of variance, Duncan's multiple range test, factor analysis, and Importance-Satisfaction Analysis (ISA). Results: Of the 249 subjects surveyed, 85.5% had some experience of purchasing meal-kits, with significantly more females than males (p < 0.01), significantly more married people than single people (p < 0.05), significantly more employed people than unemployed people (p < 0.05). Meal-kits were purchased most frequently for meals (60.6%), from discount stores or supermarkets (44.6%), and priced between 10,000 won and 20,000 won per person (46.9%). The overall satisfaction with meal-kits was 4.1 out of 5.0 points. The frequency of purchases was Korean soup dishes (69.5%), Korean main dishes (47.4%), and Korean street snacks (46.9%). Factor analysis of the meal-kit selection attributes revealed, 4 factors: 'quality of food,' 'packaging and diversity,' 'quality of meal-kit,' and 'convenience and price.' Compared to single-person households, multi-person households placed significantly higher importance on the 'quality of food,' 'packaging and diversity,' and 'quality of meal-kit.' The factor, 'packaging and diversity' were significantly higher in the importance evaluation scores for females (p < 0.01), married people (p < 0.05), and people in their 30s (p < 0.05) among meal-kit consumers. According to the ISA results, a critical aspect that meal-kit manufacturers or sellers should strengthen is 'price.' Conclusion: Meal-kit products will need to be developed for various purposes that offer high value for money that can satisfy the consumers' needs to improve the satisfaction of meal-kit consumers.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.165-183
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• 2016

Over the past decade, there has been a rapid diffusion of technological devices and a rising number of various devices, resulting in an escalation of virtual reality technology. Technological market has rapidly been changed from smartphone to wearable devices based on virtual reality. Virtual reality can make users feel real situation through sensing interaction, voice, motion capture and so on. Facebook.com, Google, Samsung, LG, Sony and so on have investigated developing platform of virtual reality. the pricing of virtual reality devices also had decreased into 30% from their launched period. Thus market infrastructure in virtual reality have rapidly been developed to crease marketplace. However, most consumers recognize that virtual reality is not ease to purchase or use. That could not lead consumers to positive attitude for devices and purchase the related devices in the early market. Through previous studies related to virtual reality, there are few studies focusing on why the devices for virtual reality stayed in early stage in adoption & diffusion context in the market. Almost previous studies considered the reasons of hard adoption for innovative products in the viewpoints of Typology of Innovation Resistance, MIR(Management of Innovation Resistant), UTAUT & UTAUT2. However, product-based antecedents also important to increase user intention to purchase and use products in the technological market. In this study, we focus on user acceptance and resistance for increasing purchase and usage promotions of wearable devices related to virtual reality based on headgear products like Galaxy Gear. Especially, we added a variables like attitude confidence as a dimension for user resistance. The research questions of this study are follows. First, how attitude confidence and innovativeness resistance affect user intention to use? Second, What factors related to content and brand contexts can affect user intention to use? This research collected data from the participants who have experiences using virtual rality headgears aged between 20s to 50s located in South Korea. In order to collect data, this study used a pilot test and through making face-to-face interviews on three specialists, face validity and content validity were evaluated for the questionnaire validity. Cleansing the data, we dropped some outliers and data of irrelevant papers. Totally, 156 responses were used for testing the suggested hypotheses. Through collecting data, demographics and the relationships among variables were analyzed through conducting structural equation modeling by PLS. The data showed that the sex of respondents who have experience using social commerce sites (male=86(55.1%), female=70(44.9%). The ages of respondents are mostly from 20s (74.4%) to 30s (16.7%). 126 respondents (80.8%) have used virtual reality devices. The results of our model estimation are as follows. With the exception of Hypothesis 1 and 7, which deals with the two relationships between brand awareness to attitude confidence, and quality of content to perceived enjoyment, all of our hypotheses were supported. In compliance with our hypotheses, perceived ease of use (H2) and use innovativeness (H3) were supported with its positively influence for the attitude confidence. This finding indicates that the more ease of use and innovativeness for devices increased, the more users' attitude confidence increased. Perceived price (H4), enjoyment (H5), Quantity of contents (H6) significantly increase user resistance. However, perceived price positively affect user innovativeness resistance meanwhile perceived enjoyment and quantity of contents negatively affect user innovativeness resistance. In addition, aesthetic exterior (H6) was also positively associated with perceived price (p<0.01). Also projection quality (H8) can increase perceived enjoyment (p<0.05). Finally, attitude confidence (H10) increased user intention to use virtual reality devices. however user resistance (H11) negatively affect user intention to use virtual reality devices. The findings of this study show that attitude confidence and user innovativeness resistance differently influence customer intention for using virtual reality devices. There are two distinct characteristic of attitude confidence: perceived ease of use and user innovativeness. This study identified the antecedents of different roles of perceived price (aesthetic exterior) and perceived enjoyment (quality of contents & projection quality). The findings indicated that brand awareness and quality of contents for virtual reality is not formed within virtual reality market yet. Therefore, firms should developed brand awareness for their product in the virtual market to increase market share.

• Horticultural Science & Technology
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.640-647
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• 2013

This study was conducted to provide exportation strategy by surveying on preference of Japanese consumers on cut chrysanthemum exported. The survey was conducted two times by a local survey company in Japan, and the surveys were conducted largely on chrysanthemums for casual flowers and the altar. After departmentalizing Japanese consumers per groups the result were analyzed through conjoint and cluster methods, flower colors and shape were used relatively higher rate for selection criteria of flowers in every group in the case of casual flowers. Group 1 comprised of 60 year-old housewives who reside in a small city with high school diploma and annual income less than 300 million yen, and group 2 of 40 year-old housewives who are small city residents with high school diplomas and annual income of 300 million yen show higher rate of use in flower shape than colors. Another group 3 whose members are 50 year-old housewives, small city residents with high school diplomas and annual income of 600 million yen showed higher rate of use colors than the shape for selection criteria of flowers. The consumption characteristics according to the ages of the consumers showed a pronounced tendency. The 40-50 year-old housewives preferred single flowers packed with other flowers, and the 60 year-old housewives double flowers packed with only chrysanthemums. In flower color, the 50-60 year-old housewives preferred white and yellow flowers, and the 40 year-old housewives pink and yellow flowers. Therefore, there are needs for development strategy of new products considering the consumption characteristics of flower shape and color according to the ages of consumer. After analyzing the chrysanthemums for altar by departmentalization of Japanese consumers, every group showed relative higher rate of use for flower shape for selection criteria of flowers. According to the analysis on the consumption characteristics, group 1 which is comprised of 30-40 year-old housewives who reside in small city with high school diplomas and income less than 300 million yen, and the group 2 of 20 year-old housewives who reside in small city with college diplomas and annual income less than 300 million yen. They are very sensitive to the price of the products while the group 3 of 50 year-old housewives who reside in small city with high school diplomas and annual income less than 300 million yen are insensitive to the price. The 30-50 year-old housewives preferred white and pink flowers, and the 20 year-old housewives yellow and pink flowers. In flower shape, the 50 year-old housewives preferred anemone shape, the 30-40 year-old housewives double shape, and the 20 year-old housewives pompon shapes. Therefore, the white, double flowers for the 30-40 year-old housewives and the yellow, pompon flowers for the 20 year-old housewives are needed to be created at the lowest cost, while the white, anemone flowers are needed to created at higher cost with high quality. In light of these results, it is considered that we should understand the types of purchasing products through consumption characteristics of Japanese consumers. Also we should plan, create market-oriented and consumer-oriented products, and should export them in order to expand more exportation.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.27-57
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• 2008

Many consumers enjoy the challenge of purchasing a brand that matches well with their own values and personalities (for example, Ko et al., 2008; Ko et al., 2006). Therefore, the personalities of consumers can impact on the final selection of a brand and its brand personality in two ways: first, the consumers may incline to purchase a brand or a product that reflects their own personalities; second, consumers tend to choose a company that has similar brand personalities to those brands that are being promoted. Therefore, the objectives of this study are following: 1. Is there any empirical relationship between a consumer's personality and the personality of a brand that he or she chooses? 2. Can a corporate brand be differentiated by the brand personality? In short, consumers are more likely to hold favorable attitudes towards those brands that match their own personality and will most probably purchase those brands matching well with their personality. For example, Matzler et al. (2006) found that extraversion and openness were positively related to hedonic product value; and that the personality traits directly (openness) and indirectly (extraversion, via hedonic value) influenced brand effects, which in turn droved attitudinal and purchase loyalty. Based on the above discussion, the following hypotheses are proposed: Hypothesis 1: the personality of a consumer is related to the brand personality of a product/corporate that he/she purchases. Kuksov (2007) and Wernerfelt (1990) argued that brands as a symbolic language allowed consumers to communicate their types to each other and postulated that consumers had a certain value of communicating their types to each other. Therefore, how brand meanings are established, and how a firm communicate with consumers about the meanings of the brand are interesting topics for research (for example, Escalas and Bettman, 2005; McCracken, 1989; Moon, 2007). Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed: Hypothesis 2: A corporate brand identity is differentiated by the brand personality. And there are significant differences among companies. A questionnaire was developed for collecting empirical measures of the Big-Five personality traits and brand personality variables. A survey was conducted to the online access panel members through the Internet during December 2007 in Korea. In total, 500 respondents completed the questionnaire, and considered as useable. Personality constructs were measured using the Five-factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) scale and a total of 30 items were actually utilized. Brand personality was measured using the five-dimension scale developed by Aaker (1997). A total of 17 items were actually utilized. The seven-point Likert-type scale was the format of responses, for example, from 1 indicating strongly disagreed to 7 for strongly agreed. The Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) was used for an empirical testing of the model, and the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) was applied to estimate numerical values for the components in the model. To diagnose the presence of distribution problems in the data and to gauge their effects on the parameter estimates, bootstapping method was used. The results of the hypothesis-1 test empirically show that there exit certain causality relationship between a consumer's personality and the brand personality of the consumer's choice. Thus, the consumer's personality has an impact on consumer's final selection of a brand that has a brand personality matches well with their own personalities. In other words, the consumers are inclined to purchase a brand that reflects their own personalities and tend to choose a company that has similar brand personalities to those of the brand being promoted. The results of this study further suggest that certain dimensions of the brand personality cause consumers to have preference to certain (corporate) brands. For example, the conscientiousness, neuroticism, and extraversion of the consumer personality have positively related to a selection of "ruggedness" characteristics of the brand personality. Consumers who possess that personality dimension seek for matching with certain brand personality dimensions. Results of the hypothesis-2 test show that the average "ruggedness" attributes of the brand personality differ significantly among Korean automobile manufacturers. However, the result of ANOVA also indicates that there are no significant differences in the mean values among manufacturers for the "sophistication," "excitement," "competence" and "sincerity" attributes of the corporate brand personality. The tight link between what a firm is and its corporate brand means that there is far less room for marketing communications than there is with products and brands. Consequently, successful corporate brand strategies must position the organization within the boundaries of what is acceptable, while at the same time differentiating the organization from its competitors.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.39-45
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• 2011

The Korean distribution industry is gearing up for an endless competition. Greeting low growth era, less competitive parties will be challanged seriously for their survival. But for large discount stores, they have shown steady annual growth for years. However, because of the saturation for numbers of stores, the difficulty of gaining new sites, and the changes in the consumer's consumption behavior caused by the recession, now they are seeking for a new customers-based business formats. Accordingly, a large corporate comopanies made supermarkets which are belonged to affiliated companies of large corporate comopanies. They based on the strong buying power, focused on SSM(Super Super Market) ave been aggressively develop nationwide multi-stores. The point is that these stores are threatening at small and medium-sized, community-based private supermarkets. Private supermarkets and retailers, who are using existing old operation systems and their dilapidated facilities, are losing a competitive edge in business. Recent the social effects of large series of corporate supermarkets for traditional markets has been very controversial, and commercial media, academia, and industry associated with it have been held many seminars and public hearings. This may slow down the speed in accordance with the regulations, but will not be the crucial alternative. The reason for this recent surge of enterprise-class SSM up, one of the reasons is a stagnation in their offline discount mart, so they are finding new growth areas. Already in the form of large supermarkets across the country got most of the geographical centre point and is saturated with stages. Targeting small businesses that do not cover discount Mart, in order to expand business in the form of SSM is urgent. By contrast, private supermarkets are going to lose their competitiveness. The vulnerability of individual supermarkets, one of the vulnerabilities is price which economies of scale can not be realized so they are purchasing a small amount of products and difficult to get a quantity discount. The lack of organization and collaboration, and education which is not practical, caused the absencer of service-oriented situations. As a first solution, making specialty shops which are handling agricultures, fruits and vegetables and manufactured goods is recommended. Second, private supermarkets franchisees join the organization for the organization and collaboration is recomaned. It can be meet the scale of economy and can be formed a alternative business formats to a government. Third, the education is needed as a good service will get consumer's awareness. In addition, a psychological stores operating is also one way to stimulate consumer sentiment as SSM can't operate. Japan already has a better conditions of their lives through small chain expression. This study includes the vulnerabilities of private supermarkets, and suggests a competitiveness reinforcement strategies.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.115-130
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• 2011

Many online stores bring features that can build trust in their customers. More so, the number of products or content services on online stores has been increasing rapidly. Hence, personalization on online stores is considered to be an important technology to companies and customers. Recommender systems that provide favorable products and customer product reviews to users are the most commonly used features in this purpose. There are many studies to that investigated the relationship between social presence as an antecedent of trust and provision of recommender systems or customer product reviews. Many online stores have made efforts to increase perceived social presence of their customers through customer reviews, recommender systems, and analyzing associations among products. Primarily because social presence can increase customer trust or reuse intention for online stores. However, there were few studies that investigated the interactions between recommendation type, product type and provision of customer product reviews on social presence. Therefore, one of the purposes of this study is to identify the effects of personalized recommender systems and compare the role of customer reviews with product types. This study performed an experiment to see these interactions. Experimental web pages were developed with $2{\times}2$ factorial setting based on how to provide social presence to users with customer reviews and two product types such as hedonic and utilitarian. The hedonic type was a ringtone chosen from Nate.com while the utilitarian was a TOEIC study aid book selected from Yes24.com. To conduct the experiment, web based experiments were conducted for the participants who have been shopping on the online stores. Participants were a total of 240 and 30% of the participants had the chance of getting the presents. We found out that social presence increased for hedonic products when personalized recommendations were given compared to non.personalized recommendations. Although providing customer reviews for two product types did not significantly increase social presence, provision of customer product reviews for hedonic (ringtone) increased perceived social presence. Otherwise, provision of customer product reviews could not increase social presence when the systems recommend utilitarian products (TOEIC study.aid books). Therefore, it appears that the effects of increasing perceived social presence with customer reviews have a difference for product types. In short, the role of customer reviews could be different based on which product types were considered by customers when they are making a decision related to purchasing on the online stores. Additionally, there were no differences for increasing perceived social presence when providing customer reviews. Our participants might have focused on how recommendations had been provided and what products were recommended because our developed systems were providing recommendations after participants rating their preferences. Thus, the effects of customer reviews could appear more clearly if our participants had actual purchase opportunity for the recommendations. Personalized recommender systems can increase social presence of customers more than nonpersonalized recommender systems by using user preference. Online stores could find out how they can increase perceived social presence and satisfaction of their customers when customers want to find the proper products with recommender systems and customer reviews. In addition, the role of customer reviews of the personalized recommendations can be different based on types of the recommended products. Even if this study conducted two product types such as hedonic and utilitarian, the results revealed that customer reviews for hedonic increased social presence of customers more than customer reviews for utilitarian. Thus, online stores need to consider the role of providing customer reviews with highly personalized information based on their product types when they develop the personalized recommender systems.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.173-178
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• 2010

A privately held, third generation family owned company, Boom Technologies, Inc. (BTI), a provider of products and services to the electric utility, telecommunications and contractor markets, continues to make progress in exporting. Although export sales only equaled 5% of total revenue in 2008, BTI has an entire export division. Their export division's Managing Director reveals the trial and errors of a privately held company and their quest for success overseas. From its inception, BTI has always believed its greatest asset is its employees. When export sales struggled due to lack of strategy and direction, BTI hired a Managing Director for its export division. With leadership and guidance from BTI's president and from the Managing Director, they utilized the department's skills and knowledge. Structural changes were made to expand their market presence abroad and increase export sales. As a result, export sales increased four-fold, area managers in new countries were added and distribution networks were successfully cultivated. At times, revenue generation was difficult to determine due to the structure of the company. Therefore, in 1996, the export division was restructured as a limited liability company. This allowed the company to improve the tracking of revenue and expenses. Originally, 80% of BTI's export sales came from two countries; therefore, the initial approach to selling overseas was not reaching their anticipated goals of expanding their foreign market presence. However, changes were made and now the company manages the details of selling to over 80 countries. There were three major export expansion challenges noted by the Managing Director: 1. Product and Shipping - The major obstacle for BTI was product assembly. Originally, the majority of the product was assembled in the United States, which increased shipping and packaging costs. With so many parts specified in the order, many times the order would arrive with parts missing. The missing parts could equate to tens of thousands of dollars. Shipping these missing parts separately in another shipment also cost tens of thousands of dollar, plus a delivery delay time of six to eight weeks; all of which came out of the BTI's pockets. 2. Product Adaptation - Safety and product standards varied widely for each of the 80 countries to which BTI exported. Weights, special licenses, product specification requirements, measurement systems, and truck stability can all differ from country to country and can serve as a type of barrier to entry, making it difficult to adapt products accordingly. Technical and safety standards are barriers that serve as a type of protection for the local industry and can stand in the way of successfully pursuing foreign markets. 3. Marketing Challenges - The importance of distribution creates many challenges for BTI as they attempt to determine how each country prefers to operate with regard to their distribution systems. Some countries have competition from a small competitor that only produces one competing product; whereas BTI manufactures over 100 products. Marketing material is another concern for BTI as they attempt to push marketing costs to the distributors. Adapting the marketing material can be costly in terms of translation and cultural differences. In addition, the size of paper in the United States differs from those in some countries, causing many problems when attempting to copy the same layout and With distribution being one of several challenges for BTI, the company claims their distribution network is one of their competitive advantages, as the location and names of their distributors are not revealed. In addition, BTI rotates two offerings yearly: training to their distributors one year and then the next is a distributor's meeting. With a focus on product and shipping, product adaptation, and marketing challenges, the intricacies of selling overseas takes time and patience. Another competitive advantage noted is BTI's cradle to grave strategy, where they follow the product from sale to its final resting place, whether the truck is leased or purchased new or used. They also offer service and maintenance plans with a detailed cost analysis provided to the company prior to purchasing or leasing the product. Expanding abroad will always create challenges for a company. As the Managing Director stated, "If you don't have patience (in the export business), you better do something else." Knowing how to adapt quickly provides BTI with the skills necessary to adjust to the changing needs of each country and its own unique challenges, allowing them to remain competitive.