Soonkwan Hong

Organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB), TQM and performance at the maquiladora

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between the organizational culture (organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB)), TQM practice and organizational performance of the manquiladora companies.Design/methodology/approach – A structural equation modelling based on a cross‐sectional survey (N=230) is conducted.Findings – As multinational companies (MNCs) implement innovative management methodology such as the TQM practices, their organizational cultural elements play significant roles towards the outcome. The organizational culture, represented by OCB, significantly impacts how TQM is managed and implemented. Furthermore, the results point out “soft TQM elements” have more significant impact than “hard TQM elements” towards firms performance.Research limitations – The study includes a specific location (Maquiladora) only.Practical implications – The findings suggest that management should also focus on the intrinsic motivations of employees represented by OCB rather than the ...

The effect of organizational culture stemming from national culture towards quality management deployment

Purpose – As a multinational corporation (MNC) implements a new innovation campaign at its worldwide operations, varying degrees of success stories are reported. The extent of how an innovation campaign and methodology can be transferred from its corporate office to its overseas operations has been the subject of considerable debate. Implementing an innovation methodology such as the total quality management (TQM) can be challenged by the organizational culture unique to each operation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between organizational culture stemming from national culture and TQM implementation performance.Design/methodology/approach – In total, 186 managers of MNCs are surveyed in their cultural orientations and TQM implementation experiences. The survey result is analyzed by regressing cultural elements on TQM elements.Findings – Our result suggests that an organizations TQM practices are significantly influenced by the organization culture. However, each dimension o...

The Effective Product Placement: Finding Appropriate Methods and Contexts for Higher Brand Salience

Notwithstanding the little understanding on the product placement in movies, practitioners have misbelieved that this marketing activity eventually generates favorable attitudes toward their products/brands exposed in movies; likewise, research on product placement tends to perpetuate the practicality of the practice by using improper measures for the effectiveness of product placement. By designing a novel experiment and creating a measure for brand salience as an outcome of product placement, this article entails distinct research findings. In order to achieve a higher brand salience, product placements need to be either demonstrative or placed in negative context. Future research may contribute further by inventing an experiment design enabling researchers to grasp the interaction effects of different factors addressed in the study.

When Relationship Marketing Collides With Technology

This conceptual framework aims to query hereditary maladoption and misuse of constructs in relationship marketing studies. In spite of the critical difference between network-oriented and market-oriented relationships, studies on both streams share constructs unselectively. Moreover, although possibly atheoretical applications of constructs prevail in consumer–firm relationship studies, one construct (i.e., opportunism) has not been illuminated in the same context despite its explanatory power. Lastly, an obsolete construct (i.e., transaction-specific asset) still plays a role in the relationship marketing paradigm even though it can be substituted with better relationship holding values. These factors are discussed, and suggestions are provided for future research reflecting current advances in technology.

Invested loyalty: the impact of ubiquitous technology on the current loyalty paradigm and the potential revolution

Regarding communication and information technology advance as an impetus that may manipulate even human cognitive process, this study addresses the possibly diminishing hegemony of expectation confirmation process. With sophisticated interactive communication devices, providing virtual experiences, consumers no longer need to undergo the actual contacts with products and services to settle down in relationships because the experiences through ubiquitous technology are near reality. Once customers become able to invest their knowledge and values in the relationships with firms by means of ubiquitous technology that substantiates sensability, outsourceability, and coproduction facilitation, they will start building relational values, such as satisfaction, trust, and commitment. These relational values are expected to lead consumers to a new form of loyalty called invested loyalty. Consequently, plenty of managerial implications and research opportunities are identified. Firms utilizing ubiquitous technology need to ascertain the ease-of-use of the communication method and should be able to accommodate different types and levels of proposals from customers.

New paths in researching “alternative” consumption and well-being in marketing: alternative food consumption / Alternative food consumption: What is “alternative”? / Rethinking “literacy” in the adoption of AFC / Social class dynamics in AFC:

In line with the Fifth Transformative Consumer Research Conference held at Villanova University, USA, in 2015, we chaired a dialogical track that involved seven international researchers working on “alternative food system.” Among many other subjects that emerged from brainstorming, three overarching themes were identified as significantly important for furthering research on “alternative” consumption and well-being. Manna, Ulusoy, and Batat explore the meanings behind alternative food consumption and discuss the role of ideology and anti- and post-sociocultural structures in shaping AFC meanings. Peter, Batat, and Ulusoy propose to rethink “literacy” in the adoption of AFC and offer a framework that represents a blueprint in the definition of literacy considering the adoption of other sustainable alternative behaviors (e.g. vegetarian diet, car pooling, recycling). Finally, Vicdan, Batat, and Hong explore social class dynamics in AFC. The three essays suggest potential areas of research with a focus on alternative modes of consumption and well-being and contribute to the theoretical conceptualization in marketing theory.

Consuming the Korean: Memetic kitschization of unorthodox aesthetics in Gangnam style

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to unpack an Asian-born celebrity culture in which celebrities become everyday necessities for global consumers’ identity struggle, prototypes for global branding strategy, contents for the media industry, and agents for sociocultural transformation. Design/methodology/approach In order to better elucidate such a significant phenomenon, the authors also introduce two mostly palpable and more relevant domains of celebrity culture to global consumer culture literature − politics of aesthetics and memetics − as analytical tools. Observations and publicly available narratives are also incorporated to enhance the review and critique of the global celebrification process. Psy’s Gangnam Style (GS) is chosen as an archetype, due to its exceptionally vulgar but highly replicable nature. Findings The specific case of GS exposes three unique qualities of kitsch − exaggeration, disconcertment, and subversive sensibility − that are substantially commensurate with prototypical characteristics of globalized online memes − ordinariness, flawed masculinity, theatricality, and ludic agency. Polysemy and optimism also facilitate the celebrification process in global participatory culture. Research limitations/implications The “radical intertextuality” of online memes sustains the participatory culture in which kitsch becomes a global icon through a reproductive process. Korean popular culture cultivates reverse cosmopolitanism through a nationalistic self-orientalization strategy that paradoxically indigenizes western pop-culture and transforms power relations in global pop culture. Originality/value This paper presents further elaboration of current discourses on global-celebrity culture by incorporating popular concepts and practices, such as kitsch, meme, parody, and sharing, which synergistically advance aesthetic liberation on a global scale.

Enrollment of space into the network of sustainability

This ethnographic study, conducted at the Ecovillage at Ithaca, illuminates how spatial design configurations of a community shape the ongoing project of sustainable living. To articulate the ideological transformations of the community, actor-network theory is employed as the theoretical framework that facilitates further understanding of the sociomateriality of space and the roles spatiality plays as an actant in the network of sustainability. Soja’s spatial theory, with a focus on the agencing of space, strengthens this analysis. We demonstrate how spatial design principles create opportunities and challenges for the community members as they pre(pro)scribe privacy issues, responsibilize actors, and segregate the community from the mainstream. Amid this dynamic process for achieving sustainability, we observe and document performativity of space in the actor network.

Alternative food consumption (AFC): idiocentric and allocentric factors of influence among low socio-economic status (SES) consumers

ABSTRACT This paper explores the factors that drive consumer demands for alternative food consumption (AFC) options in western society (i.e. plant-based, organic and local diets) as means to achieve sustainability and a state of food well-being. Specifically, we propose a holistic framework in order to identify factors that influence its adoption: idiocentric (functional, ideological and experiential) and allocentric (situational, sociocultural and institutional). The proposed framework provides a basis for discussion on how marketing can contribute to the establishment of AFC in western society and contribute to sustainability and food-well-being among low socio-economic status (SES) consumers. Marketing and public policy implications of this framework are discussed in light of food consumption by low SES consumers, a target particularly vulnerable to flawed states of food well-being.

Consumption of Extremity: Cultural Proliferation of Hyper-Authenticity and the Corollary

Consumer culture theory (CCT) views identity project as a process and a practice through and by which consumers’ cultural bricolage of the self is embodied and enacted in negotiation with the hegemonic market influences, such as globalization, brands, and gendered consumption environment (Arnould and Thompson 2005). The subsumption of distinction under consumer identity project, which also manifests as an unprecedentedly important part of consumer culture, necessitates consumers’ proactive devotion to distinction-making (Firat and Venkatesh 1995) and thus interests consumer researchers. Nevertheless, the extant literature on distinction tends to stay within the normative boundary of distinction that all can conceive, perceive, simulate, and emulate, with a slight exception for gender and sexual-orientation issues (e.g., Kates 2002, 2004). Accordingly, negotiation, compromise, reconcilement, cooperation, and rapprochement have thus far been the preferred (in fact, almost required) methods to present idiosyncratic identities (Giesler 2008; Holt 2002).