Hyundai Motor's Global Marketing Strategy: "New Thinking. New Possibilities."

Kang, Wooseong,Kim, Youngchan,Yoo, Changjo Korean Marketing Association 2014 ASIA MARKETING JOURNAL Vol.16 No.1

The automotive industry plays a significant role in the global economy. One of the reasons is that this industry compasses every aspects of the value chain - from raw materials to design and development, manufacturing, sales and services, and even disposal. Thus, the industry needs significant upfront capital investment and requires years of R&D and market development. As a result, this industry is dominated by a handful of global players and it is not easy for a new entrant to enter this industry. Furthermore, success is even more difficult to achieve. How did Hyundai Motor make it in this tough marketplace? Can it continue against all odds? The CAGR for last 5 years is 12% and it stands at 6th in the world. Compared to other global brands, Hyundai has geographically well-balanced sales portfolio. The quality improvement is outstanding. The brand performance follows these quality and sales improvements. Yet, the global competition is ever intensifying. Now, it is the time to step up once more. The next strategic goal needs fundamental shift toward brand and marketing-focus. In constructing global marketing strategy, Hyundai Motor's vision is "Lifetime partner in mobility and beyond" and its goal is global top 3 brand by year 2015 through modern premium brand image and selling 5 million vehicles. The target brand positioning of Hyundai Motor is the leading position in premium dimension and stylish/modern dimension. The global brand strategy framework is based on the brand direction of "Modern Premium" and is designed to deliver core brand identity (i.e., Simple, Creative, Caring) to customers. In order to manage brand performance, Hyundai's marketing platformalso includes marketing performance management, brand performance management, and market driven organization. From this diagnosis, Hyundai Motor is well posed to build a strong brand. Nevertheless, there are still challenges ahead from consumer, technology, competitor, and macro-environment perspectives. To overcome these threats, the bases of competition for all successful automotive brands are various differentiation factors, including technology, performance, value proposition, or heritage. Hyundai Motor is well prepared so far. However, it is not tested against time yet whether Hyundai can overcome these unforeseeable major threats. Hyundai is trying to find the solution from a strong brand, while believing in "New Thinking. New Possibilities."

Informative Role of Marketing Activity in Financial Market: Evidence from Analysts' Forecast Dispersion

Oh, Yun Kyung Korean Marketing Association 2013 ASIA MARKETING JOURNAL Vol.15 No.3

As advertising and promotions are categorized as operating expenses, managers tend to reduce marketing budget to improve their short term profitability. Gauging the value and accountability of marketing spending is therefore considered as a major research priority in marketing. To respond this call, recent studies have documented that financial market reacts positively to a firm's marketing activity or marketing related outcomes such as brand equity and customer satisfaction. However, prior studies focus on the relation of marketing variable and financial market variables. This study suggests a channel about how marketing activity increases firm valuation. Specifically, we propose that a firm's marketing activity increases the level of the firm's product market information and thereby the dispersion in financial analysts' earnings forecasts decreases. With less uncertainty about the firm's future prospect, the firm's managers and shareholders have less information asymmetry, which reduces the firm's cost of capital and thereby increases the valuation of the firm. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to examine how informational benefits can mediate the effect of marketing activity on firm value. To test whether marketing activity contributes to increase in firm value by mitigating information asymmetry, this study employs a longitudinal data which contains 12,824 firm-year observations with 2,337 distinct firms from 1981 to 2006. Firm value is measured by Tobin's Q and one-year-ahead buy-and-hold abnormal return (BHAR). Following prior literature, dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts is used as a proxy for the information gap between management and shareholders. For model specification, to identify mediating effect, the three-step regression approach is adopted. All models are estimated using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to test the statistical significance of the mediating effect. The analysis shows that marketing intensity has a significant negative relationship with dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts. After including the mediator variable about analyst dispersion, the effect of marketing intensity on firm value drops from 1.199 (p < .01) to 1.130 (p < .01) in Tobin's Q model and the same effect drops from .192 (p < .01) to .188 (p < .01) in BHAR model. The results suggest that analysts' forecast dispersion partially accounts for the positive effect of marketing on firm valuation. Additionally, the same analysis was conducted with an alternative dependent variable (forecast accuracy) and a marketing metric (advertising intensity). The analysis supports the robustness of the main results. In sum, the results provide empirical evidence that marketing activity can increase shareholder value by mitigating problem of information asymmetry in the capital market. The findings have important implications for managers. First, managers should be cognizant of the role of marketing activity in providing information to the financial market as well as to the consumer market. Thus, managers should take into account investors' reaction when they design marketing communication messages for reducing the cost of capital. Second, this study shows a channel on how marketing creates shareholder value and highlights the accountability of marketing. In addition to the direct impact of marketing on firm value, an indirect channel by reducing information asymmetry should be considered. Potentially, marketing managers can justify their spending from the perspective of increasing long-term shareholder value.

How to Build a Learning Capability for Innovation? A Framework of Market-Based Learning Process

Lee, Hyun Jung,Park, Jeong Eun,Pae, Jae Hyun Korean Marketing Association 2015 ASIA MARKETING JOURNAL Vol.17 No.1

Learning organization has been an important issue in both management and marketing areas. Also learning capability is a key construct of innovation process in a firm. Especially, in marketing context, several researchers have studied market-based learning and its relation with performance. Previous studies have shown that market-based learning has a positive impact on overall firm performance. However, there has been inconsistency in the concept of market-based learning itself and its relationships with antecedents and consequences. Given this conflicting and inconsistent results of previous research, this study has two main objectives. First, this paper proposed a conceptual framework that marketbased learning has two types of processes and each types of market-based learning will generate different types of performance. Second, the mediating role of marketing capability in learning-performance link is proposed. The proposed conceptual framework shows that organizations which have marketbased learning for innovation management can enjoy ambidextrous firm performance on both side of effectiveness and efficiency via marketing capability. Moreover our research model proposes key drivers of market based organizational learning.

New Product Marketing Strategy: The Case of Binggrae's 'a Café la'

Yeu, Minsun,Lee, Doo-Hee,Kim, Sang Yong,Yoo, Shijin Korean Marketing Association 2012 ASIA MARKETING JOURNAL Vol.14 No.3

All firms require new stimulus to spurt growth. Therefore it is necessary to successfully develop new products and to employ appropriate marketing practices for the new products to enter and settle in the market. Binggrae, a Korean company that specializes in dairy and processed dairy products, introduced a ready-to-drink (RTD) coffee product, 'a Café la' to expand its business into the coffee market in 2008. Binggrae was a latecomer in the RTD coffee market but a Café la has shown an impressive average sales growth rate of 115% as of 2011 since the launch. Moreover, it is a steady bestselling coffee brand among the Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)bottle category. Binggrae found potential and opportunity in the growing coffee market and made efforts to develop a new product that can be differentiated from the existing products. The result was PET bottle coffee, which was more portable and convenient to drink than coffee products offered in cups or cans. PET bottle coffee is produced through the patented Aseptic Filing System, thus the original coffee flavor stays fresh when combined with milk and has a longer shelf life than coffee products in cups. Moreover, as the taste of coffee consumers has become more sophisticated, Binggrae developed a premium product by differentiating the product processing method and by using higher-quality Arabica beans. After launching the new product, the company also employed a well-designed communication strategy. First, Binggrae was able to confirm the level of market demand and market potential for the product by employing BTL (Below the Line) marketing strategies through the consumers' word-of-mouth. Afterwards, the company invested its resources for a full-scale ATL (Above the Line) marketing campaign. Later a Café la's TV commercial effectively portrayed the product's characteristics, and succeeded in raising consumer awareness of the product. As a result, a Café la has become the bestselling brand in the PET bottle coffee market. The successful new product marketing strategy of Binggrae'sa Café la offers many valuable implications for companies planning to launch new products in the future.

Effects of Product Number and Brand Breadth on the Evaluations of an Extended Product

Yeu, Minsun,Yuk, Hyeyeon,Kim, Boha,Yoo, Jung-Hyun,Cho, Seong Wan,Yeo, Junsang,Park, Chan Su Korean Marketing Association 2013 ASIA MARKETING JOURNAL Vol.15 No.3

This paper was motivated by two gaps in the extant literature on brand portfolio planning. First, research has shown that, as the number of products connected to a brand increases, the extended product receives more favorable evaluations. However, this result was obtained by comparing two brands with different number of products while controlling the brands' breadths. Hence one may question if the above result would hold when the brand is narrow as well as broad. Second, the literature has investigated the effect of brand breadth on the perceived fit and evaluations of an extended product within a relatively limited range ("narrow vs. broad") and not considered the case of a "very broad" brand. To address these gaps, we propose two hypotheses: 1) the effects of the number of products associated with a brand on the perceived fit and evaluations of a moderately far brand extension are moderated by the brand's breadth (H1); and 2) the relationship between a brand's breadth and a moderately far extension's perceived fit and evaluations looks like an inverse-U shape (H2). Study 1 was conducted to test H1. Study 1 employed a 2 × 2 within-subjects design in which the first factor was the number of products (small (2) or large (5)), and the second factor was brand breadth (narrow or broad). We measured brand breadth as the perceived similarity among products associated with a brand. Participants provided the perceived fit and evaluations of an extended product. Study 2 was conducted to test H2 as well as to replicate Study 1 in a more general setting and with different products. It employed a 2 × 3 within-subjects design, in which the first factor was the number of products (small (2) or large (5)), and the second factor was brand breadth (narrow, broad, or very broad). The results from two experiments support both hypotheses. This paper contributes to the literature on brand extensions in two ways. First, it broadens our understanding of the effects of product number and brand breadth on extended product evaluations by considering the two factors jointly. Second, we believe this study to be the first to present evidence that brand breadth can exert an inverted U-shape effect on the perceived fit and evaluations of an extended product. The results also offer implications for marketers. First, marketers should heed the finding that adding similar products to a narrow brand does not help the brand's extension launch. Second, the finding that the relationship between brand breadth and extended product evaluations might not be linear provides practical implications. While a narrow brand should not keep launching close extensions, nor should a broad brand continue producing far extensions to broaden its breadth. A firm with a broad corporate or family brand might want to consider introducing a new brand instead of adding dissimilar products under the brand umbrella.

Pioneering New Markets: A Case study of SevenBräu

Yoo, Shijin,Kang, Myung Soo,Kim, Minjeong Korean Marketing Association 2019 ASIA MARKETING JOURNAL Vol.20 No.4

This paper reports a case study of SevenBräu, the first company to acquire a license for small and medium scale beer manufacturing in Korea. This study explores how SevenBräu analyzed its consumers, competition, and environment to set its target market and successfully positioned itself to explore new markets in Korea. The company accomplished this through a mixture of marketing strategies with differentiated products and consumer benefits. SevenBräu has been growing fast and establishing its image as a "high-quality craft beer locally produced in a traditional way" and a "beer with regional characteristics," with young consumers (aged 20 to 35) as the main target. Such remarkable growth of SevenBräu can be attributed to factors such as: (1) product differentiation to satisfy the needs of consumers for taste, flavor, diversity, and freshness, (2) developing brands with regional characteristics and actively communicating its strategy through earned and owned media, and (3) sustainable management, considering both social value creation and environmental performance. Lastly, this case study presents challenges in the areas of brand management, value delivery network, and communication that SevenBräu needs to address in the beer market that faces increasing competition.

Measuring the Impact of Competition on Pricing Behaviors in a Two-Sided Market

Kim, Minkyung,Song, Inseong Korean Marketing Association 2014 ASIA MARKETING JOURNAL Vol.16 No.1

The impact of competition on pricing has been studied in the context of counterfactual merger analyses where expected optimal prices in a hypothetical monopoly are compared with observed prices in an oligopolistic market. Such analyses would typically assume static decision making by consumers and firms and thus have been applied mostly to data obtained from consumer packed goods such as cereal and soft drinks. However such static modeling approach is not suitable when decision makers are forward looking. When it comes to the markets for durable products with indirect network effects, consumer purchase decisions and firm pricing decisions are inherently dynamic as they take into account future states when making purchase and pricing decisions. Researchers need to take into account the dynamic aspects of decision making both in the consumer side and in the supplier side for such markets. Firms in a two-sided market typically subsidize one side of the market to exploit the indirect network effect. Such pricing behaviors would be more prevalent in competitive markets where firms would try to win over the battle for standard. While such qualitative expectation on the relationship between pricing behaviors and competitive structures could be easily formed, little empirical studies have measured the extent to which the distinct pricing structure in two-sided markets depends on the competitive structure of the market. This paper develops an empirical model to measure the impact of competition on optimal pricing of durable products under indirect network effects. In order to measure the impact of exogenously determined competition among firms on pricing, we compare the equilibrium prices in the observed oligopoly market to those in a hypothetical monopoly market. In computing the equilibrium prices, we account for the forward looking behaviors of consumers and supplier. We first estimate a demand function that accounts for consumers' forward-looking behaviors and indirect network effects. And then, for the supply side, the pricing equation is obtained as an outcome of the Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium in pricing. In doing so, we utilize numerical dynamic programming techniques. We apply our model to a data set obtained from the U.S. video game console market. The video game console market is considered a prototypical case of two-sided markets in which the platform typically subsidizes one side of market to expand the installed base anticipating larger revenues in the other side of market resulting from the expanded installed base. The data consist of monthly observations of price, hardware unit sales and the number of compatible software titles for Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 from September 1996 to August 2002. Sony PlayStation was released to the market a year before Nintendo 64 was launched. We compute the expected equilibrium price path for Nintendo 64 and Playstation for both oligopoly and for monopoly. Our analysis reveals that the price level differs significantly between two competition structures. The merged monopoly is expected to set prices higher by 14.8% for Sony PlayStation and 21.8% for Nintendo 64 on average than the independent firms in an oligopoly would do. And such removal of competition would result in a reduction in consumer value by 43.1%. Higher prices are expected for the hypothetical monopoly because the merged firm does not need to engage in the battle for industry standard. This result is attributed to the distinct property of a two-sided market that competing firms tend to set low prices particularly at the initial period to attract consumers at the introductory stage and to reinforce their own networks and eventually finally to dominate the market.

Technology Licensing Agreements from an Organizational Learning Perspective

Lee, JongKuk,Song, Sangyoung Korean Marketing Association 2013 ASIA MARKETING JOURNAL Vol.15 No.3

New product innovation is a process of embodying new knowledge in a product and technology licensing is getting popular as a means to innovations and introduction of new product to the market in today's competitive global market environment. Incumbents often rely on technology licensing to access new product opportunities created by other firms. Prior research has examined various aspects of technology licensing agreements such as specific contract terms of licensing agreements, e.g., distribution of control rights, exclusivity of licensing agreements, cross-licensing, and the scope of licensing agreements. This study aims to provide answers to an important, but under-researched question: why do some incumbents initiate more licensing agreement for exploratory learning while others do it for exploitative learning along the innovation process? We attempt to extend our knowledge of licensing agreements from an organizational learning perspective. Technology licensing as a specific form of interfirm linkages can be initiated with different learning objectives along the process of new product innovation. The exploratory stages of the innovation process such as discovery or research stages involve extensive searches to create new knowledge or capabilities, whereas the exploitative stages of the innovation process such as application or test stages near the commercialization are more focused on developing specific applications or improving their efficiency or reliability. Thus, different stages of the innovation process generate different types of learning and the resulting technological resources. We examine when incumbents as licensees initiate more licensing agreements for exploratory learning objectives and when more for exploitative learning objectives, focusing on two factors that may influence a firm's formation of exploratory and exploitative licensing agreements: 1) its past radical and incremental innovation experience and 2) its internal investments in R&D and marketing. We develop and test our hypotheses regarding the relationship between a firm's radical and incremental new product experience, R&D investment intensity and marketing investment intensity, and the likelihood of engaging in exploratory and exploitive licensing agreements. Using data collected from various secondary sources (Recap database, Compustat database, and FDA website), we analyzed technology licensing agreements initiated in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries from 1988 to 2011. The results of this study show that incumbents initiate exploratory rather than exploitative licensing agreements when they have more radical innovation experience and when they invest in R&D activities more intensively; in contrast, they initiate exploitative rather than exploratory licensing agreements when they have more incremental innovation experience and when they invest in marketing activities more intensively. The findings of this study contribute to the licensing and interfirm cooperation studies. First, this study lays a foundation to understand the organizational learning aspect of technology licensing agreements. Second, this study sheds lights on how a firm's internal investments in R&D and marketing are linked to its tendency to initiate licensing agreements along the innovation process. Finally, the findings of this study provide important insight to managers regarding which technologies to gain via licensing agreements. This study suggests that firms need to consider their internal investments in R&D and marketing as well as their past innovation experiences when they initiate licensing agreements along the process of new product innovation.

What explains the failure of Google in the Korean market? The Impact of Multicultural PR Strategy

Kim, Hyejung,Woo, Wonseok,Kang, Hyoung-goo Korean Marketing Association 2013 ASIA MARKETING JOURNAL Vol.14 No.4

The era of globalization provides us with both opportunities and threats. The success of a multinational corporation depends largely on its ability to adapt itself to new market environment. We believe that understanding and implementing multicultural PR strategy can be a key to the multinational corporations' success in foreign markets. We argue in this paper that even a global iconic company such as Google needs to focus on how to understand local consumers' needs and preferences before formulating and implementing PR strategy. Having a global hit product or service is not sufficient enough to be successful in some foreign markets. It is especially more evident in the industries where companies deal with individual consumers, and perceptions and sentiments play a large role in their purchase decisions. The objective of this research is to find out the relationship between multicultural PR strategy and business performance. Therefore, our main hypothesis is; better implementation of multicultural PR strategy by a multinational corporation will result in higher performance in the foreign markets. To prove the relationship between multicultural PR strategy and performance, we designed a framework that uses Rudan's (2004) five rules for multicultural PR strategy. It is a contribution to the business academics as there are very few studies that directly focus on and analyze the multicultural aspects of a multinational company's PR strategy. Through our research, we found strong evidence that there is a positive relationship between the level and effectiveness of a company's multicultural PR strategy and its performance in the foreign markets. This offers some meaningful implications to the managers of the multinational corporations and those who are considering going into a foreign market for the first time. We also suggested a way of measuring the implementation of multicultural PR strategy. By applying five rules for multicultural PR strategy to Google's PR activities, it allowed us to convert qualitative information into quantitative data. This kind of tool can be helpful for multinational corporations that want to evaluate their own PR activities.

Successful Brand Revitalization of Parkland through Brand Repositioning Strategy

Jeon, Jung Ok,Jung, Hyung-Shik,Lee, Sukekyu,Lee, Eun Mi Korean Marketing Association 2014 ASIA MARKETING JOURNAL Vol.16 No.3

Parkland, which is one of the pioneer brands in men's fashion in Korea, specifically suits, has recently undertaken bold brand repositioning activities to respond to the fast-changing environment and to overcome limitations in its current image positioning. As a result, in a short time period, Parkland achieved remarkable marketing and communication success. This case study explains how Parkland drew successful brand repositioning from the fierce fashion market. This study systematically analyzes the brand repositioning strategy process and implementation strategy used to resolve the conceptual and structural issues of Parkland as a mature brand. To this end, this study assesses Parkland's brand strategy focusing on brand environment and positioning. Accordingly, the study analyzes the target concept and basic direction of the brand repositioning in terms of the repositioning strategy process, and from an integrated marketing perspective, examines the specific implementation program for repositioning. Finally, the study addresses the outcomes of brand repositioning efforts as well as steps to be taken in the future.