Lessons from Haitai Distribution Inc’s experience in Korea

Owing to the rapid growth of hypermarket/discount store formats since 1996, Korean retailing has suddenly attracted the significant attention from researchers. Before the emergence of large scale retailers such as E-Mart, Lotte Mart and Tesco Korea, there were the two retail formats who led the Korean retailing in the modern retailing history: department store and supermarket formats. Nevertheless, there has been little literature concerned about the two retail formats as a case study, while some authors have paid their attention to hypermarket/discount store formats. In addition, when mentioning the development process of retailing history, it is less likely that authors have made an effort to illustrate supermarket retailing history. In order to regard supermarket retailing as part of the Korean retailing, it is interesting to look at a representative supermarket retailer, Haitai, who was one of the subsidiaries of Haitai chaebol. Based on supermarket retailing, the company which was established as a joint venture in 1974 led a supermarket retailing in the Korean modernised retailing history. Before analysing whether Haitai failed or not, the definition of failure should be illustrated. With regard to the term, failure, in the academic world, authors have interchangeably used the following terms: failure, divestment, closure, organisational restructuring, and exit. To collect research data as a case study, the author adopted an in-depth interview method. The research is based on research interviews with 13 ex-staff who left after Haitai went bankruptcy, from store management department to merchandise department. By investigating Haitai’s experiences through field interviews, the research found that Haitai restructured organisational decision-making process at the early stage when companies started to modernise organisational charts, benchmarking sophisticated retailing knowledge through the strategic alliance with a Japanese retailer. In respect of buying s