• Proceedings of the Korean DIstribution Association Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.53-83
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• 2005

This study focuses on finding out the determinants of relational quality between the supplier and the retailer in the Chinese cosmetics market. A total of 72 questionnaires were collected by surveying beauty shops which mainly do business with the foreign cosmetics suppliers in Shanghai area. The findings support the premise that a retailer's trust in a supplier is positively related to the retailer's commitment. Supplier's ability, guanxi and cultural sensitivity have positive impacts on trust. Formalization, supplier's specific investment and cultural sensitivity affect commitment positively. But the formalization is not significantly related to the retailer's trust. The guanxi is not found to be significantly related to the retailer's commitment yet.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.1-29
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• 2006

This study focuses on finding out the determinants of relational quality between the supplier and the retailer in the Chinese cosmetics market. A total of 72 questionnaires were collected by surveying beauty shops which mainly do business with the foreign cosmetics suppliers in Shanghai area. The findings support the premise that a retailer's trust in a supplier is positively related to the retailer's commitment. Supplier's ability, guanxi and cultural sensitivity have positive impacts on trust. Formalization and cultural sensitivity affect commitment positively. But the formalization is not significantly related to the retailer's trust. The guanxi is not found to be significantly related to the retailer's commitment yet. Finally, the authors discuss some theoretical contributions, managerial implications. And then, they present limitations of this study and the future research directions.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.97-109
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• 2011

As a marketing vehicle to survive in intensified retailing competition, retailer brand development has been adopted by retailers in Korea. As evidence, the retailer brand share of a major retailer, Tesco Korea, has grown from 20% in 2007 to 22.8% in the first half of 2008. It means that retailers have provided more and more retailer brand foods for customers. With the growing accessibility to retailer brand foods, it would be expected that the number of retailer brand food claims will increase. Customers have increasingly exposed to a variety of marketing activities conducted by retailers. When buying the retailer brand foods, customers tend to be affected by marketing activities of retailers. Despite the fact that customers trust retailers and then, buy their brand foods, in case of food accidents caused by production process, customers have to seek compensation from a retailer brand supplier. Of course, a retailer tends to shift its responsibility to its suppliers. Accordingly, it is not easy for customers to solve food claims. The research, therefore, aims at exploring the relationship between the buying-decision processes of retailer brand customers and which side takes legal responsibility for food claims. To effectively achieve the research aim, the author adopted a quantitative and a qualitative research technique, in order to supplement the disadvantages of each method. Before field research, based on the developed research model, the author pre-tested questionnaire with 10 samples, amended, and handed out to 400 samples. Amongst them, 316 questionnaires are available. For a focus group interview, 9 participants were recruited, who are students, housewives, and full-time workers, aged from 20s to 40s. Through the focus group interview as well as the questionnaire results, it was found that most customers were influenced by a retailer or store image in a customer's mind, retailer reputation and promotional activities. Surprisingly, customers think that the name of a retailer is a more important factor than who produces retailer brand foods, even though many customers check a retailer brand supplier, when making a buying-decision. Rather than retailer brand suppliers, customers trust retailers. That is why they purchase retailer brands. Nevertheless, production-related food claims is not involved with retailers. In fact, it would be difficult for customers to distinguish whether a food claim is related to selling or manufacturing processes. Based on research results, from a customer perspective, the research suggests that the government should require retailers to take the whole responsibility for retailer brand food claims, preventing retailers from passing the buck to retailer brand suppliers. In case of food claims, in order for customers to easily get the compensation, it is necessary to reconsider the current system. If so, retailers have to fully get involved in retailer brand production stage, and further, the customer awareness of retailer brands will be improved than ever before. Retailers cannot help taking care of the whole processes of retailer brand development, because of responsibility. As a result, the process to seek compensation for food claims might become easier, and further, the protection of customer right might be improved.

• Korean Business Review
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• v.15
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• pp.25-45
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• 2002

The purpose of study is to examine how tour wholesaler's relationship characteristics to tour retailer affect trust, commitment, and repurchase intention in the distribution channel of travel industry. There are several detailed purposes of this study. First, this study is to grasp the factors of tour wholesaler's relationship characteristics to tour retailer. Secondly, this study is to examine how tour wholesaler's relationship characteristics to tour retailer affect trust and commitment. Thirdly, this study is to examine how trust on tour wholesaler, which is divided into two levels, firm and salesperson in charge, affects each other and commitment. Fourthly, this study is to examine how trust on tour wholesaler finn and salesperson in charge and commitment affect repurchase intention. Fifthly, this study is to suggest more efficient basis for marketing strategies to C.E.O or officer in charge of decision making of tour wholesaler, and help them to make right decisions. Managerial implications can be drawn from this study. One is that it is recognized that tour wholesaler's relationship characteristics to tour retailer consist of those to tour wholesaler finn such as reputation, physical characteristics, communication and those to salesperson in charge such as expertise, likability, similarity, frequent contact affect trust and commitment positively. Therefore, C.E.O and officer in charge of decision making of tour wholesaler should set up marketing strategies to get positive results at both levels, a finn and a salesperson. The other is that it is important that a tour wholesaler should manage their tour retailer with relationship oriented methods such as building trust, and make every endeavor to retain long term relationship with tour retailer.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.65-93
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• 2011

This paper aims to explore how relational constructs(supplier's idiosyncratic investment, retailer's dependence, and dyadic communication) impact the buyer's trust across the relationship lifecycle. Companies make great efforts to create trust and maintain long-term relationship with buyers. Buyer and supplier relationships evolve through distinct lifecycles. In each phase, buyers and suppliers exhibit different patterns of behaviour. Also, they have different attitudes toward, and expectation of, one another. In this study, the final outcome investigated is long-term orientation from the buyer's perspective. Data were collected from 296 survey questionnaires of retailers engaging in Crops Protected Material industry in Korea. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to purify the measurement scales. And structural equation analysis and Chow test were used to test the hypotheses. The result indicates that the effect of retailer's dependence on the trust is greatest. Especially, the effect of dependence is growing as the relationship has developed. Supplier's idiosyncratic investment increases trust in the early phase, while it is not found to affect trust in the maturity phase. In the early phase, the determination of trust begins to be increasingly influenced by partner's relationship investment only because other clues are not observed yet. Reciprocal communication has a positive effect on trust, and long-term orientation is directly influenced by retailer's trust. Communication's effect is greater in the build-up phase than in the maturity phase. A limitation of this study is the unequal sample size in each of the relationship phases. Literature has suggested that the effects of relational constructs on outcomes are different across relationship phases. This study shows that different relational constructs have different effects on trust depending upon the relationship phase.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.35-70
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• 2010

In this study, we examined distribution channel relationship by using the idea of Cheong, which is a unique feeling an positive role in Korean society. Companies make great efforts to maintain long-term relationship with buyers. Understanding distinctive relationship system of each culture should precede these efforts to bring effective results. So we considered how Cheong, a meaningful factor in Korean distribution channel, affects relationship quality and performance. As a result of research analysis from 272 survey questionnaires of retailers, engaging in Crops Protected Material industry in Korea, supplier's idiosyncratic investment, retailer's Cheong, and dependence of retailers on suppliers have positive effects on relationship quality. Supplier's idiosyncratic investment and cognitive factors have the highest influence and Cheong, an emotional factor, follows. Dependence, a motivational factor has the least influence. We confirmed that retailer's cooperation and long-term orientation are directly influenced by retailer's commitment. Active cooperation of the retailer, a partner of a distribution channel, is regarded as an essential factor for supplier's effective business. Retailer's commitment increased that cooperation. Retailer's trust and commitment also decreased relationship conflicts. The results of this study imply that companies should increase idiosyncratic investment to improve relationship quality. But increasing idiosyncratic investment is limited because it requires monetary investment. Therefore companies need to recognize the importance of Cheong, revealed as a new factor, improving relationship quality and to make the best use of it. In this study, we contributed theoretically by examining the role of Cheong, and introducing its distribution discipline. We also make practical suggestions about supplier's relationship management.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.229-238
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• 2003

The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of firm's various kind of characteristics on the oust in the supply chains between the textile makers and the retailers. Based on the preceding literature review. six hypotheses are proposed. To test the proposed hypotheses, data were collected utilizing questionnaires from 68 retailers(fashion shop). To analyze the data the SPSSWin statistical package was employed. Two(H4 and H6) out of six hypotheses were accepted, the others were rejected. According to the results, the greater the impact of the shared value and the reputation for the retailers on the textile maker is, the stronger the trust of the retailers in the textile maker is. Based on the research results, we can conclude that the trust management is a very important factor in the supply chains between the textile makers and the retailers.

• 한국경영정보학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.473-478
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• 2007

As customers' participation in B2C e-commerce increases, customers are getting more involved in the delivery of services, which may even go beyond the completion of service transactions. To examine such proactive extra-role online customer behavior, we delve into organizational citizenship behavior framework, which has been recently extended to examine customer citizenship behavior (CCB) in the service market area. Although CCB is vital for online retailing success, MIS and e-commerce research efforts have generally focused on the customer's customer coproduction that are customer in-role behaviors. Moreover, although the effect of information created by anonymous strangers on other customers increase, interpersonal trust research have focused on only the relationship between a seller and a customer. Therefore, this study attempts to answer two research questions: What are motivational factors that affect CCB? How differently do the two kinds of interpersonal trusts (trust in online retailer and trust in customers) influence customers?

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.67-95
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the transference of trust process, an important factor to consumer's purchase decision-making. Even though several researchers have discussed the trust transference process, there is no research related to this concept. Specifically we have focused on the transference of trust from the retailer to low involvement private label (PL) products. PL products were chosen as transference of trust occurs under ambiguity due to lack of information about the product and their manufacturer. PL products provide relatively less information than national brand (NB) products. In addition, retailers have been rapidly expanding their PL product categories. To identify the theoretical and empirical limitations of prior studies, we discuss several theories explaining the transference of trust: 'Balance theory' and 'availability heuristic' in transference of cognitive trust; 'affective transference' and 'affect as information' in transference of affective trust. An empirical test was performed. A self completion questionnaire was developed and administered to a convenience sample of PL users. 206 usable questionnaire were received. The results show that the transference of trust plays a mediating role linking the retailer to the manufacturer and to the product. Although our model, which included the transference process of trust as a mediating effect, did not improve the competitive model, the coefficients of the respective paths were found to be better. This study confirms the transference of cognitive trust from the retailer to both the manufacturer and the product, but not for affective trust. We offer the explanation that PL products may tend to have affective trust resulting from brand familiarity but not to their PL manufacturers.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.537-553
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• 2015

Recently, some fashion retailers have initiated sustainable actions in the form of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to address consumers' social concerns. This study intends to combine the concept of CSR motivation attributions with brand extension literature in order to examine how consumers' trust of a parent brand affects their CSR motivation attributions and ultimately their attitudes towards parent-brand CSR activities and sustainable extension lines. A self-administered online survey was conducted using scenarios describing a fast fashion retailer introducing a sustainable line. Data from 303 female U.S. consumers, aged between 18 and 34 years, were used for the statistical analysis. Data analyses were conducted using SPSS 21.0 for descriptive analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and regression analysis. The results revealed that all hypotheses were supported. The findings show that consumers' trust of a parent brand has an indirect impact on positive attitudes towards the parent brand's CSR activities as well as the sustainable extension product line, mediating positive evaluations of the brand's social CSR motivations. In addition, this study suggests consumers' prior trust of the parent brand is a variable that affects consumers' evaluation of CSR motivation sincerity. Marketing suggestions and thoughts based on the findings of this study were provided.