Retailer Brand Development and Handling Processes: A Comparative Study of Tesco Korea and Local Korean Retailers

This research began with the question: why is the retailer brand market share of Tesco Korea higher than that of local Korean retailers? Of the foreign grocery retailers who have expanded into Korea, Tesco has achieved the most outstanding performance, with the highest retailer brand share in the market. After the withdrawal of Wal-Mart and Carrefour from Korea in 2006, Tesco Korea has been positioned as the successful foreign retailer. Accordingly, how the retail operation of Tesco Korea differs from that of the local Korean retailers attracted the author’s interest, specifically in terms of the development and handling processes of the retailer brand. Rather than examining the customer perceptions of both Tesco Korea and the domestic Korean retailers, the researcher concentrated on identifying the differences between both parties from the point of view of their retailer brand program operations. Based on in-depth interviews with retailers and suppliers, store observations, the author’s own experience in retailer brand development, and company documentation, this research explored the differences between Tesco Korea and domestic Korean retailers in how they develop and handle their own brands. Tesco Korea has taken advantage of retailing know-how, that is, retailer brand development skills created by Tesco UK. With the help of Tesco UK, the retailer brand development process of Tesco Korea is differentiated in a number of areas from that of the local Korean retailers. The flows of retailing know-how from Tesco UK to Tesco Korea has also influenced the whole retailer brand market in Korea, as well as stimulated the local Korean retailers to improve their retailer brand development skills. The entry of retailers with advanced retailer brand development knowledge into markets where retailer brands are less well developed is a catalyst in promoting retailer brand markets, and in intensifying retail competition. Also, the retailer brand development know-how of domestic retailers is enhanced by imitating or benchmarking foreign retailers. This research suggests that retailer brand share is related to the degree to which retailers are proactively involved in the development and handling processes for retailer brand product ranges, as well as to how sophisticated or advanced their knowledge of the retailer brand development process is. Advanced development and handling skills make a considerable contribution to increasing retailer brand share in markets with a lower share or no presence of retailer brands

A Program Optimization Method for Embedded Software Developed Using Open Sources

Program optimization or software optimization is the process of modifying a software system to make some aspect of it work more efficiently or use fewer resources. When developing software for embedded systems, open source libraries are usually used. An Embedded software built using a variety of open software and libraries is apt to have too many unused codes because open source libraries contain many functions and features to be used in various applications. In this paper, we describe the process of a library optimization method to reduce memory consumption for the user interface software of a set-top box product. The overall optimization process uses freeware tools developed for the Linux operating system. We devised an optimization technique to compensate for operation imperfections in the target system. The original Qt library of 19.57 MB was optimized to be 7.26 MB in program image size. In the case of the DirectFB library, 3.2 MB was reduced to 2.4 MB. The optimization process can be applied to any embedded software that are developed with open source libraries or sources

Why Do Local South Korean Market Leaders Supply Retailer Grocery Brands?

This article examines why many of the leading South Korean brand manufacturers produce retailer brand products within their major product categories. The reasons identified include pressure from retailers, protection of other national brand product ranges, maintenance or improvements in working relationships, protection of other distribution channels, savings in marketing budgets, diversification of product lines, and changing competitive structures. Evidence is also provided of the dynamic nature of decision making relating to retail brand supply across the whole portfolio of brands which the manufacturer offers, rather than in respect of individual product brands or markets, the focus of much existing work

AN EMPIRICAL DIPOLE POLARIZABILITY FOR He FROM A FIT TO SPECTROSCOPIC DATA YIELDING ANALYTIC EMPIRICAL POTENTIALS FOR ALL ISOTOPOLOGUES OF HeH+

All available spectroscopic data for all stable isotopologues of HeH$^+$ are analyzed with a direct-potential-fit (DPF) procedure that uses least-squares fits to experimental data in order to optimize the parameters defining an analytic potential. Since the coefficient of the leading ($1/r^4$) inverse-power term is $C_4 = alpha^{rm He}/2$, when treated as a free parameter in the fit, it provides an independent empirical estimate of the polarizability of the He atom. The fact that the present model for the long-range behaviour includes accurate theoretical $C_6$, $C_7$ and $C_8$ coefficients (which are held fixed in the fits) should make it possible to obtain a good estimate of this quantity. The Boltzmann constant $k_B$, a fundamental constant that can define temperature, is directly related to the dipole polarizability $alpha$ of a gas by the expression $~{textstyle k_B =frac{alpha}{3epsilon_0}left(frac{epsilon_r+2}{epsilon_r-1}right)frac{p}{T} }~$, %% in which $epsilon_0$ is the permitivity of free space, and $epsilon_r$ is the relative dielectric permitivity at pressure $p$ and temperature $T$. If $k_B$ can be determined with greater precision, it can be used to define temperature based on a fundamental constant, rather than based on the rather arbitrary triple point of water, which is only known to 5 digits of precision. $alpha$ for He is known theoretically to 8 digits of precision, but an empirical value lags behind. This work, examines the question of how precisely $alpha^{rm He}$ can be determined from a DPF to spectroscopic HeH$^+$ data, where the limiting long-range tail of the analytic potential has the correct form implied by Rydberg theory: $alpha^{rm He}/2r^4$. Although the highest observed vibrational level is bound by over 1000 cm$^{-1}$, our current fits determine an empirical $C_4 = alpha^{{rm He}}/2$ with an uncertainty of only 0.6%. It has been shown that with more precise spectroscopic data near the dissociation, $alpha^{{rm He}}$ can be determined with high enough precision to determine a more precise $k_B$ and hence redefine temperature more accuratelyfootnote{Dattani N S. & Puchalski M. (2015) textit{Physical Review Letters} (in press)}

Tau functions as Widom constants

We define a tau function for a generic Riemann-Hilbert problem posed on a union of non-intersecting smooth closed curves with jump matrices analytic in their neighborhood. The tau function depends on parameters of the jumps and is expressed as the Fredholm determinant of an integral operator with block integrable kernel constructed in terms of elementary parametrices. Its logarithmic derivatives with respect to parameters are given by contour integrals involving these parametrices and the solution of the Riemann-Hilbert problem. In the case of one circle, the tau function coincides with Widom's determinant arising in the asymptotics of block Toeplitz matrices. Our construction gives the Jimbo-Miwa-Ueno tau function for Riemann-Hilbert problems of isomonodromic origin (Painlev\'e VI, V, III, Garnier system, etc) and the Sato-Segal-Wilson tau function for integrable hierarchies such as Gelfand-Dickey and Drinfeld-Sokolov.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figure

Adaptive Navigation Control for Swarms of Autonomous Mobile Robots

This paper was devoted to developing a new and general coordinated adaptive navigation scheme for large-scale mobile robot swarms adapting to geographically constrained environments. Our distributed solution approach was built on the following assumptions: anonymity, disagreement on common coordinate systems, no pre-selected leader, and no direct communication. The proposed adaptive navigation was largely composed of four functions, commonly relying on dynamic neighbor selection and local interaction. When each robot found itself what situation it was in, individual appropriate ranges for neighbor selection were defined within its limited sensing boundary and the robots properly selected their neighbors in the limited range. Through local interactions with the neighbors, each robot could maintain a uniform distance to its neighbors, and adapt their direction of heading and geometric shape. More specifically, under the proposed adaptive navigation, a group of robots could be trapped in a dead-end passage,but they merge with an adjacent group to emergently escape from the dead-end passage. Furthermore, we verified the effectiveness of the proposed strategy using our in-housesimulator. The simulation results clearly demonstrated that the proposed algorithm is a simple yet robust approach to autonomous navigation of robot swarms in highlyclutteredenvironments. Since our algorithm is local and completely scalable to any size, it is easily implementable on a wide variety of resource-constrained mobile robots andplatforms. Our adaptive navigation control for mobile robot swarms is expected to be used in many applications ranging from examination and assessment of hazardous environments to domestic applications