Policy Resistance Case Study Focused on Government’s Intervention in the Conflict Between Big-Box Stores and Traditional Market in Korea Based on Systems Thinking Approach

Abstract

Rapid expansion of big-box store in developing country caused typical archetypal change in market structure: Success to the Successful, because big-box stores armed with modernized infrastructure and management capability are absorbing the once customers of the traditional market like a black hole. Facing rapid change in market structure and surmounting pleas from traditional market merchants, government took an inevitable intervention with law regulating the big-box store’s business and improving traditional market’s competence building. Not so long, however, did government confront policy resistance from both sides: Still ongoing polarization of both side’s sales. This study articulates behavior over time of market structure with causal loop diagrams of which causalities are extracted from literatures. This study provides significant contribution to policy makers and traditional markets’ merchants in other developing countries like India and China, as well as Korea.