INVESTIGATING THE CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS OF H-MARTS IN KOREA THROUGH SWOT ANALYSIS

Purpose: A surge in demand for Halal products has been witnessed throughout Korea giving rise to a new emerging concept of ethnically owned and ethnically operated HMart. The concept of H-Marts originated out of a necessity due to a rising demand for Halal food products in Korea. Methodology: Extensive literature reviews are obtained from leading databases and the articles recorded matches or related with the keywords. Secondly, an approach incorporating a well formulated survey questionnaire in line with Kano questionnaire is developed to get H-Marts customers' perspective. After the literature was reviewed, the information was transcribed using Microsoft excel and Timko's CS coefficient. Findings: 19 H-marts variables were generated from the literature review, followed by the distribution of 200 standard survey questionnaires to three different H-mart customers. As a result, 19-variables were categorized into the SWOT matrix. The significant contribution of this study is twofold; first a lack of research attention given to H-marts in Korea, secondly, it uncovers valuable information about customer's service satisfaction of H-marts through a well-structured survey questionnaire. Thirdly this study theoretically presents 4-SWOT strategies for the executive mangers of H-Marts, which are practically considered to be valuable information for H-mart's executive managers.