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The purpose of this paper is to assess the relative importance of country-of-origin (COO) and its dimensions – country of design (COD), country of technology (COT), and country of manufacture (COM) – in comparison to store image in terms of consumer product evaluation and purchase intention of store brands. The authors also explore consumer regulatory focus effects.

Empirical data were collected from 270 young Korean adults. Two scenarios were given using two high-involvement store brands, an electronic product and clothing product that have hedonic and utilitarian elements. Data analysis was conducted using AMOS structural equation modeling software.

COO affects product evaluation and purchase intention and store image affects purchase intention. By product, store image influences product evaluation and purchase intention (electronics). COO directly influences purchase intention (clothing). By COO dimensions, overall COD weakly affects product evaluation. COT affects electronic product evaluation but directly affects clothing purchase intention. Promotion-focused consumers use COO for product evaluation, with store image directly affecting purchase intention. Promotion-focused consumers consider COD, an affective dimension, and COM in product evaluations. Prevention-focused consumers did not consider COO, but consider store image for product evaluation. Prevention-focused consumers consider utilitarian COT and COM dimensions during product evaluation.

This is the first paper to consider the simultaneous effect of COO (and its dimensions) and store image on product evaluation and purchase intention. It is also the first to consider the regulatory focus theory with regards to COO and store image evaluative and purchase intention criteria.

This paper presents a case study examining delivery service preference of electronic commerce products. With the increasing of electronic commerce and home shopping market, parcel delivery service market has been growing annually by more than 10% in Korea. However, the quality of delivery service and profitability are gradually decreased due to the price competition. A survey conducted by Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry revealed that nearly half of the respondents selected delivery accuracy and time as major factors in delivery service, implying that online consumers consider service factors such as delivery time more important rather than delivery cost. In this research, a stated preference survey with 16 scenarios was conducted for online consumers to examine delivery preference depending on the type and value of products that they purchased online. The analysis results show that online consumers have a willingness to pay extra cost for rapid delivery or want lower price although it is much slow. It implies that current uniformed delivery cost of online products can be differentiated with different prices for different consumers and products. In addition, the study shows that different online products have different value of time, 27 won per hour on average.

In an earlier paper (House, 1973) the structural characteristics of manufacturing industries, as indicated by the number of competitors in relation to the size of the market, were related to their performance in Kenya for 1963. The index of concentration was constructed so that account was taken of the influence of foreign competition in the home market. This factor is relatively large in some markets of a developing country and could not be ignored as it has been in most other studies of the developed world. The results showed both a positive and continuous relationship between a measure of performance and the index of concentration. In addition, it proved impossible to establish any independent influence on performance of a proxy measure for the capital requirements barrier to entry, which has been found to be important in other studies (Bain, 1951; Mann, 1966).

Elsevier and OCLC have agreed to make all 1100‐plus Elsevier Science journals available electronically. A planned service called Elsevier Electronic Subscriptions will offer libraries complete electronic editions either in addition to or instead of paper ones. There will also be the option to use OCLC's SiteSearch system, which allows building, maintaining and searching databases locally, and OCLC's Guidon graphical user interface. This year will comprise a pilot scheme at five sites in North America, and the service should then launch commercially if the trials go well. On offer will be Group 4 facsimile images of pages plus searchable text and tables of contents. The scheme builds on Elsevier's TULIP project, extending the scope to cover all journals.

This paper aims to address the supplier selection problem based on a developed framework capturing the essence of the supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model, sustainability and providing services to customers. Specifically, the authors consider planning, manufacturing, delivery, sustainability and customer service attributes to evaluate and select suppliers.

Relevant literature is reviewed, a framework capturing the essence of major supply chain functions was developed and suitable measurement attributes were identified. An integrated fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution method are employed to obtain the final ranking of the attributes and suppliers. The proposed methodology is illustrated through a real case of an Indian automobile company.

The authors observed that planning, manufacturing, customer service, sustainability and delivery are preferred in decreasing order to select component suppliers for an automotive company. The impact of suppliers on planning and manufacturing is most important to consider while assessing suppliers. Interestingly, concerns about sustainability and delivery are the least cared factors when selecting suppliers. The top five criteria contain measures of operational efficiency rather than purchasing cost.

This paper proposes and demonstrates a supplier selection framework harmonizing supply chain functions of the SCOR model, sustainability and customers service that adds a valuable wing to literature that expounds on the connection of purchasing strategy to corporate strategy. A case study in an automotive company throws unique and valuable managerial implications for purchasing and supply chain performance.

In this chapter, we examine the multifaceted challenges that feminist labor organizations face in decommodifying the lives and labor of poor and working-class women. Using an in-depth case study of domestic worker organizing in South Korea, we find that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the National House Managers Cooperative and the Korean Women Workers Association became entangled in hegemonic state projects that linked support for women’s basic livelihoods to the proliferation of part-time, informal domestic work in the context of widespread crises. To challenge the discriminatory and market-driven logics of state-driven social protection efforts, these NGOs have advanced an emancipatory agenda to improve the working conditions, labor rights, and social dignity of domestic workers through consciousness-raising grassroots organizing methods and contentious policy advocacy campaigns. Their social movement transformation goals, however, have been constrained by the relative organizational isolation and limited organizational capacity of feminist labor NGOs in a broader context of neoliberal precaritization and gender-stratified labor markets. The myriad dilemmas facing domestic worker organizing in an era of global hegemonic market rule highlight the need to develop new political imaginaries to contest gender and economic injustice.

At present, the majority of industrial robots are not well suited to the specific needs of the food industry. Additionally, the high cost of robotic systems means that it is currently difficult for food manufacturers to financially justify the use of this technology. This paper aims to examine the unique requirements of the food industry with regards to robot manipulator design and outlines the design features of a low‐cost robotic arm developed specifically for use in food production.

Considerations for the design of the robot arm in addition to industrial requirements for hygienic design, low cost, fast pick and place speed, safety for operation alongside human workers and ease of reprogramming are discussed in detail.

A successful manipulator design must consider functional requirements relevant to food production from the very outset of the design process. The principal three requirements are those of ease of cleaning, speed and low cost.

The availability of low‐cost industrial robots specifically designed for food production might encourage a wider adoption of robotics and automation in the food industry and would benefit food manufacturers by reducing production costs and increasing competitiveness in what is becoming an increasingly difficult market.

This paper is of value to engineers and researchers developing robotic manipulators for use in the food industry.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how and why accountants who moved from accounting firms to public service adapted their identities to reduce insecurity. The literature on accountant identity highlights insecurity caused by promotion criterion to partnership, which requires accountants to win new work for their employers and leads to overtime, as a serious problem which has permeated the accounting profession. However, there have been few studies that explore whether accountants who moved to the public service, where they have stronger job security and can enjoy work-life balance, have resolved the insecurity problem, although a neoliberalism turn accompanied by New Public Management-style reforms has increased the number of accountants in public service. Therefore, the authors of the current study aim to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the identity transitions of South Korean (hereafter Korean) accountants who joined the public service.

The authors theorise the nature of the process of identity adaptation with conceptual tools from Pierre Bourdieu, such as habitus and capital, and examine whether the accountants took a “vision-of-division” or a “di-vision” strategy in the public service to secure their identity. For this purpose, the authors interviewed accountants and their non-accountant colleagues, and investigated other written sources, such as newspaper articles and business cards.

The authors found that Korean accountants in Big-4 firms dealt with the same insecurity issues as accountants in western countries and perceived public service as an attractive alternative to remove this insecurity. However, accountants who joined the public service found themselves confronted with different types of problems, such as accounting/costing work being regarded as demeaning, which made their identity insecure. Therefore, some accountants took a di-vision strategy that makes the difference between themselves and typical public servants less visible by avoiding accounting/costing work, using bureaucratic designations and de-emphasising their accounting credentials. Accountants took this strategy because the symbolic value of their accountancy qualifications grew weaker over time, due to the increase in the number of qualified accountants, and because the public service field valued bureaucratic habitus and capital more highly than those of the accountants.

From a methodological aspect, the authors collected participants’ business cards and analysed which designations/credentials they chose in order to create a certain perception. This analysis helped the authors understand how accountants work on their identity by de-emphasising accounting credentials to secure their identity in an organisational field. In a theoretical dimension, the current study argues that the symbolic capital of accounting credentials is dependent on the organisational and social context in line with Bourdieu, and, contrary to Bourdieu, on the supply and demand in the professional labour market.