한국생산성학회

Fashion is no longer just meeting the basic needs of human life, but it is becoming an important medium for expressing individuality, identity, and taste of individuals, and even for expressing a country's culture. Despite the economic downturn, people's interest in fashion and the fashion industry has not diminished, and in many ways it is expanding. According to the data released by the Korea Federation of Textile Industries, the size of the domestic fashion market was 43.187 trillion won in 2016, 42.47 trillion won in 2017, 43.2181 trillion won in 2018, and 41.64 trillion won in 2019. This amount is more than 40 trillion won, including 2018 which is the largest year compared to the past 20 years. The types that make up the fashion industry also vary in casual, sports clothes, suits, and baby clothes, and for the fashion industry to continue to diversify and develop the kinds that meet the needs of the times, it must be accompanied by steady efforts of domestic fashion companies. In the long run, in order for the government to create the necessary policies related to the fashion industry or seek ways of innovation in the company itself, it must be preceded by analyzing the cost inefficiency of the company and identifying the detailed causes of inefficiency. In addition, the analysis of inefficiency should be preceded by the major companies leading the fashion industry, and efforts to improve the efficiency of the major companies can be actively used as examples of small companies. Therefore, this study analyzed the efficiency of 19 KOSPI and KOSDAQ listed companies, which represent the Korean fashion industry. It was targeted for four years from 2016 to 2019, and aims to measure the directional cost efficiency using the directional distance function using the Data Environment Analysis (DEA). It also analyzes the association between measured cost efficiency and value added, and further decomposes the measured cost efficiency into technology efficiency and allocation efficiency. As a result of measuring cost efficiency, the overall average cost efficiency of 19 entities over the period 2016–1919 was 0.540, with significant cost inefficiency for each entity. Looking at the overall average by year, 2016 was 0.577 and 2017 and 2018 seemed to improve gradually as a result of 0.513, 0.514, respectively, but cost efficiency rose again to 0.556 in 2019, still requiring steady efforts to narrow the gap and the figure of cost inefficiency of companies. In addition, this study analyzed the association with the average cost-effectiveness of 2016-2019 by ranking 19 companies in the order of high average added value for the four years of 2016-2019. As a result, high added value does not necessarily mean good cost efficiency. It can be seen that companies with very high added value are also operating with very low efficiency apart from added value. As a result, companies need to focus not only on increasing value added, but on improving inefficiency, which is prevalent in companies that can be seen as visible side effects. In this work, we analyze the causes of this inefficiency improvement and decompose the measured cost efficiency into technology efficiency and allocation efficiency using directional functions to present implications. As a result, it has been shown that the main cause of inefficiency lies in technology inefficiency. As a result of this study, measures should be actively sought to reduce inefficiency prevalent in fashion companies, such as innovation in organizational culture, efficient input of resources, and effective government policies.