Daekwan Kim

Information System Innovations and Supply Chain Management: Channel Relationships and Firm Performance

This study explores how innovations surrounding supply chain communication systems (SCCS) affect channel relationships and market performance. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, the study hypothesizes that certain SCCS innovations can be viewed as firm resources that enhance channel capabilities, which in turn affect a firm’s market performance. The empirical research is based on 184 responses from a survey with U.S. supply chain and logistics managers using structural equation modeling as the analytic method. The results suggest that the effect of applied technological SCCS innovations on channel capabilities is mediated by interfirm systems integration. In contrast, administrative SCCS innovations enhance information exchange and coordination activities directly. Furthermore, the influence of applied technological innovations for SCCS is not strong enough to affect either responsiveness of the partnership or firm performance, whereas administrative innovations for SCCS affect both.

Drivers and Performance Outcomes of Relationship Learning for Suppliers in Cross-Border Customer-Supplier Relationships: The Role of Communication Culture

Recently, relationship learning between supply chain members has drawn a great deal of attention in the literature. In the context of the international electronics supply chain, which is characterized by cultural differences and complexity of products, relationship learning is difficult to achieve and relies largely on close collaboration between partners. The authors build on the resource-based view of the firm and adopt a communication culture theory to examine drivers and performance outcomes of relationship learning in cross-border relationships in the electronics industry. They propose a research framework in which a firms innovativeness orientation, trust, information technology advancement, and technological uncertainty are determinants of relationship learning. In the framework, they introduce the communication cultures of the supplier and buyer as a moderator. Using 246 electronics suppliers in relationships with international original equipment manufacturer customers, the authors empirically show that innovativeness orientation, trust, and technological uncertainty affect relationship learning positively. Furthermore, the communication cultures of the supplier and buyer moderate the effects of innovativeness orientation and technological uncertainty. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications.

Status Consumption and Price Sensitivity

This paper describes a study of status consumption and price sensitivity. The pervasive desire for social prestige motivates consumers to pay higher prices for goods that confer status. We suggest that three constructs—involvement, innovativeness, and brand loyalty—mediate this relationship. We test a model using data from 409 U.S. college students. Status consumption does influence price sensitivity; and this influence is largely, but not totally, mediated by involvement, innovativeness, and brand loyalty. The results are consistent with previous studies and theories regarding these variables and attest to the importance of status consumption in consumer behavior. Understanding how such psychological constructs interact to produce their effects improves consumer theory and marketing practice.

Systems Collaboration and Strategic Collaboration: Their Impacts on Supply Chain Responsiveness and Market Performance*

Recognizing the importance of interfirm collaboration and recent advancement of information technology (IT) to enhance joint decision making between firms, this study conceptualizes systems collaboration and strategic collaboration as two essential types of interfirm collaboration. The study then simultaneously examines the multiple roles of systems collaboration and strategic collaboration, and how they directly and indirectly influence a firms supply chain responsiveness and market performance. Hypotheses are tested on survey data collected from 184 firms. Results suggest that the sequential relationships among IT competency, interfirm collaboration, and supply chain responsiveness have significant market performance implications.

Information technology and organizational performance within international business to business relationships: A review and an integrated conceptual framework

Purpose – Advanced information technology (IT) changes the way companies manage cross‐border supply chains. This paper examines the role of IT in the context of international business to business (B2B) relationship and its contribution to supply chain performance.Design/methodology/approach – This literature review paper develops a conceptual model of IT‐mediated relationships in international supply chain relationships. The framework integrates transaction cost economics and resource‐based theory perspectives and argues that IT capabilities facilitate supply chain performance, deter partners opportunism and this process is mediated by B2B processes. Moreover, environmental, relational, cultural and country level moderators are examined.Findings – It is suggested that IT capabilities contribute directly to improved organizational process such as coordination, transaction specific investment, absorptive capacity and monitoring. These in turn contribute to strategic and operational performance outcomes. Ag...

Knowledge Transfer Between Multinational Corporations' Headquarters and Their Subsidiaries: Influences on and Implications for New Product Outcomes

A multinational corporations (MNCs) competitive advantage depends increasingly on control over intangible resources, such as knowledge and relational capital. Although prior research has suggested that cross-border knowledge transfer in MNCs is critical to their new product outcomes, the conditions under which such knowledge transfer can serve to induce positive outcomes remain unclear. This study builds on resource-based theory to suggest that knowledge and MNC network strength are the two critical firm resources individually and collectively influencing new product outcomes. Because MNCs are subject to the pressures on various environmental changes, the authors rely on the contingency theory to examine when knowledge transfer works in differential global market and technological turbulence. The results of a survey of MNC headquarters show that the impacts of cross-border knowledge transfer on new product outcomes are not always positive, depending on the levels of network strength and environmental turbulence.

Price Sensitivity and Innovativeness for Fashion Among Korean Consumers

Price sensitivity is how consumers react to price levels and to price changes. Consumer innovativeness is a tendency to welcome and to adopt new products. Researchers (e.g., R. E. Goldsmith & S. J. Newell, 1997) consider innovative consumers relatively more price insensitive than other consumers, so there should be a negative correlation between measures of these constructs. The results of the present study supported the psychometric soundness of a self-report measure of price sensitivity among 860 Korean consumers and replicated earlier findings of the negative correlation between the 2 constructs.

Drivers and Performance Outcomes of Supplier Innovation Generation in Customer–Supplier Relationships: The Role of Power‐Dependence

While innovations generated by supply channel relationships, as opposed to individual partners, play an increasingly important role in the success of all supply chain partners, there has been a dearth of research in the literature on how supply chain relationships cultivate the process of such innovation generation. We explore supplier market knowledge acquisition, relationship learning, systems collaboration, and technological uncertainty as antecedents of supplier innovation generation, which is in turn hypothesized to positively affect the relationship performance of the supplier. Furthermore, supplier dependence on the buyer is investigated as a moderator of the effects of such antecedents on supplier innovation generation. Empirical tests, which used a sample of 236 Taiwanese executives, supported most of the hypotheses, and some implications of the results are discussed.

The internationalization of US Internet portals: does it fit the process model of internationalization?

Although the theory of the gradual internationalization of firms has been widely studied and supported by researchers, very little is known about the internationalization of electronic commerce firms. This study conducted a case study on Yahoo! Inc., AOL, Lycos, and AltaVista. Spearman correlation and Kendall’s tau analyses along with two proxy psychic distance indices were deployed to investigate whether the gradual internationalization theory can be applied to electronic commerce firms. The results reveal that the gradual internationalization of Internet firms is better supported by the sociocultural distance index than the cultural distance index. Some implications of findings are also discussed along with other characteristics of the internationalization of the Internet portal firms.

The impact of supply chain integration on brand equity

Purpose – As measuring returns on intangible assets has become more and more crucial in the contemporary business environment, this study seeks to explore the impact of a firms supply‐chain specific intangible assets on firm performance, drawing on the dynamic capabilities view of the firm.Design/methodology/approach – As an exploratory study that links supply chain activities with firm brand, the study investigates how a firms supply chain characteristics, such as interfirm activity integration, interfirm system integration, and supply chain responsiveness, affect brand equity and ultimately firm performance, based on responses from 184 US supply chain managers.Findings – The results of the study indicate that both interfirm system integration and supply chain responsiveness have a direct positive effect on brand equity. However, the effect of interfirm activity integration on brand equity is totally mediated by supply chain responsiveness.Research limitations/implications – The study relied on a singl...