• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.29-43
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• 2016

The Lean Startup, a methodology for minimizing failure rate of startups, has been receiving attention since its publication in 2011. Although it has been receiving enormous attention as an effective methodology of startups' growth and the emergence of unicorn companies, it is undeniable that the theoretical research and cases on this topic have not been fully accumulated in Korea. Progress of management theory has been made when combining the theory and case studies. In this paper, we thus excavated the 'Cardoc' case, which has applied the lean startup concept to the entire process of service and customer development from the inception of its product design. The following are the findings of the case. First, for the successful application of lean startup, it is essential that all team members to understand the lean startup concept and are willing to apply it thoroughly to the business management. Second, the prompt launching of MVP(Minimum Viable Product) is more important than table discussion. Third, it is crucial to select the appropriate key metrics and analytic tools for effective learning. Fourth, startup must scale up promptly as soon as it verifies the product-market fit through the BML(Build-Measure-Learn) iteration cycle. Fifth, all new business expansion should be lean. Cardoc is currently testing new MVPs in order to move onto the next scale-up process with huge investments in newly added segments. This study is meaningful in that it elaborates the representative case of a Korean startup that has applied the lean startup strategy under the circumstance of insufficient discussion of Korean startup cases in comparison with growing attention both in concept development and case accumulation abroad. We hope that this paper can be a stepping stone for future relevant research on the implementation of lean startup methodology in Korea.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.217-235
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• 2010

In franchise industry, territorial restraint is a system that imposes exclusive right to franchisers in a certain business area. To the franchisers, this system guarantees monopoly profits in a local market and exclusive rights during the contract periods. In such a way, franchisee generates a big revenue at once on the basis of franchiser's initial investment such as interior cost and franchise fee, it must have supervised franchiser's moral hazard for the territorial restraint agreement. Rather than territorial restraint can be a system to give exclusive right to franchiser's so that they neglect their own sales and too much rely on headquarter's brand and marketing activities without their own efforts. This paper assesses the implication of territorial restraint by examining the effect on brand extension, degree of contract termination. Drawing on research in transaction cost agreement and opportunism, the authors suggest that franchisee is highly likely to launch similar brand which is not effected on previous contract when territorial restraint is set out in the contract system. Moreover, the authors find that the degree of contract termination will be high in the existence of territorial restraint due to the franchisee's opportunism. The results imply that territorial restraint induces franchisee's opportunistic strategy more aggressively so that the possibility of brand extension or new brand launching will be increased. At the same time, franchisee is aggressively seeking for the reason for contract termination due to the pursuit of its profit maximization. Based on some empirical findings, this paper concludes with policy implications and some necessary fields of future studies desirable.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.386-396
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of push, pull and push-pull interactive factors for CFMC (Contract Foodservice Management Company)'s internationalization. The study was a quantitative study part in mixed methods (QUAL ${\rightarrow}$ quan) which was mainly qualitative study and quantitative study. Mail survey was carried out for quantitative study. For study subjects, 1,281 persons who completed 'Food Service Management Professional Program' of 'Y' University were selected as a population because the program was mainly for CFMC's workers. The analysis methods used in this study were frequency analysis, factor analysis, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis with SPSS 17.0. Push factors had the saturation in domestic market and the manager's purpose (fac.1) and the investment for internationalization (fac.2). Pull factors had the company's external environment for internationalization (fac.3) and the global network and spread of culture (fac.4). Push-pull interactive factors had the information about foreign market (fac.5), the procedure and budget of overseas expansion (fac.6) and the national network and size of domestic market (fac.7). Internal dynamics factors had the deterrents for internationalization (fac.8) and the enablers for internationalization (fac.9). The result showed that the company's external environment in pull factors had positive effects on the deterrents for internationalization. The global network and the spread of culture had positive effects on the enablers for internationalization. The information about foreign market in push-pull interactive factors had positive effects on the deterrents and enablers for internationalization. The national network and the size of domestic market had positive effects on the enablers for internationalization. The deterrents and enablers for internationalization had positive effects on the level of internationalization, and the deterrents had more effects on the level of internationalization than the enablers did (${\beta}$= .492 > .177).

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.165-183
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• 2016

Over the past decade, there has been a rapid diffusion of technological devices and a rising number of various devices, resulting in an escalation of virtual reality technology. Technological market has rapidly been changed from smartphone to wearable devices based on virtual reality. Virtual reality can make users feel real situation through sensing interaction, voice, motion capture and so on. Facebook.com, Google, Samsung, LG, Sony and so on have investigated developing platform of virtual reality. the pricing of virtual reality devices also had decreased into 30% from their launched period. Thus market infrastructure in virtual reality have rapidly been developed to crease marketplace. However, most consumers recognize that virtual reality is not ease to purchase or use. That could not lead consumers to positive attitude for devices and purchase the related devices in the early market. Through previous studies related to virtual reality, there are few studies focusing on why the devices for virtual reality stayed in early stage in adoption & diffusion context in the market. Almost previous studies considered the reasons of hard adoption for innovative products in the viewpoints of Typology of Innovation Resistance, MIR(Management of Innovation Resistant), UTAUT & UTAUT2. However, product-based antecedents also important to increase user intention to purchase and use products in the technological market. In this study, we focus on user acceptance and resistance for increasing purchase and usage promotions of wearable devices related to virtual reality based on headgear products like Galaxy Gear. Especially, we added a variables like attitude confidence as a dimension for user resistance. The research questions of this study are follows. First, how attitude confidence and innovativeness resistance affect user intention to use? Second, What factors related to content and brand contexts can affect user intention to use? This research collected data from the participants who have experiences using virtual rality headgears aged between 20s to 50s located in South Korea. In order to collect data, this study used a pilot test and through making face-to-face interviews on three specialists, face validity and content validity were evaluated for the questionnaire validity. Cleansing the data, we dropped some outliers and data of irrelevant papers. Totally, 156 responses were used for testing the suggested hypotheses. Through collecting data, demographics and the relationships among variables were analyzed through conducting structural equation modeling by PLS. The data showed that the sex of respondents who have experience using social commerce sites (male=86(55.1%), female=70(44.9%). The ages of respondents are mostly from 20s (74.4%) to 30s (16.7%). 126 respondents (80.8%) have used virtual reality devices. The results of our model estimation are as follows. With the exception of Hypothesis 1 and 7, which deals with the two relationships between brand awareness to attitude confidence, and quality of content to perceived enjoyment, all of our hypotheses were supported. In compliance with our hypotheses, perceived ease of use (H2) and use innovativeness (H3) were supported with its positively influence for the attitude confidence. This finding indicates that the more ease of use and innovativeness for devices increased, the more users' attitude confidence increased. Perceived price (H4), enjoyment (H5), Quantity of contents (H6) significantly increase user resistance. However, perceived price positively affect user innovativeness resistance meanwhile perceived enjoyment and quantity of contents negatively affect user innovativeness resistance. In addition, aesthetic exterior (H6) was also positively associated with perceived price (p<0.01). Also projection quality (H8) can increase perceived enjoyment (p<0.05). Finally, attitude confidence (H10) increased user intention to use virtual reality devices. however user resistance (H11) negatively affect user intention to use virtual reality devices. The findings of this study show that attitude confidence and user innovativeness resistance differently influence customer intention for using virtual reality devices. There are two distinct characteristic of attitude confidence: perceived ease of use and user innovativeness. This study identified the antecedents of different roles of perceived price (aesthetic exterior) and perceived enjoyment (quality of contents & projection quality). The findings indicated that brand awareness and quality of contents for virtual reality is not formed within virtual reality market yet. Therefore, firms should developed brand awareness for their product in the virtual market to increase market share.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2017

Analysis of future business or investment opportunities, such as business feasibility analysis and company or technology valuation, necessitate objective estimation on the relevant market and expected sales. While there are various ways to classify the estimation methods of these new sales or market size, they can be broadly divided into top-down and bottom-up approaches by benchmark references. Both methods, however, require a lot of resources and time. Therefore, we propose a data-based intelligent demand forecasting system to support evaluation of new business. This study focuses on analogical forecasting, one of the traditional quantitative forecasting methods, to develop sales forecasting intelligence systems for new businesses. Instead of simply estimating sales for a few years, we hereby propose a method of estimating the sales of new businesses by using the initial sales and the sales growth rate of similar companies. To demonstrate the appropriateness of this method, it is examined whether the sales performance of recently established companies in the same industry category in Korea can be utilized as a reference variable for the analogical forecasting. In this study, we examined whether the phenomenon of "mean reversion" was observed in the sales of start-up companies in order to identify errors in estimating sales of new businesses based on industry sales growth rate and whether the differences in business environment resulting from the different timing of business launch affects growth rate. We also conducted analyses of variance (ANOVA) and latent growth model (LGM) to identify differences in sales growth rates by industry category. Based on the results, we proposed industry-specific range and linear forecasting models. This study analyzed the sales of only 150,000 start-up companies in Korea in the last 10 years, and identified that the average growth rate of start-ups in Korea is higher than the industry average in the first few years, but it shortly shows the phenomenon of mean-reversion. In addition, although the start-up founding juncture affects the sales growth rate, it is not high significantly and the sales growth rate can be different according to the industry classification. Utilizing both this phenomenon and the performance of start-up companies in relevant industries, we have proposed two models of new business sales based on the sales growth rate. The method proposed in this study makes it possible to objectively and quickly estimate the sales of new business by industry, and it is expected to provide reference information to judge whether sales estimated by other methods (top-down/bottom-up approach) pass the bounds from ordinary cases in relevant industry. In particular, the results of this study can be practically used as useful reference information for business feasibility analysis or technical valuation for entering new business. When using the existing top-down method, it can be used to set the range of market size or market share. As well, when using the bottom-up method, the estimation period may be set in accordance of the mean reverting period information for the growth rate. The two models proposed in this study will enable rapid and objective sales estimation of new businesses, and are expected to improve the efficiency of business feasibility analysis and technology valuation process by developing intelligent information system. In academic perspectives, it is a very important discovery that the phenomenon of 'mean reversion' is found among start-up companies out of general small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as stable companies such as listed companies. In particular, there exists the significance of this study in that over the large-scale data the mean reverting phenomenon of the start-up firms' sales growth rate is different from that of the listed companies, and that there is a difference in each industry. If a linear model, which is useful for estimating the sales of a specific company, is highly likely to be utilized in practical aspects, it can be explained that the range model, which can be used for the estimation method of the sales of the unspecified firms, is highly likely to be used in political aspects. It implies that when analyzing the business activities and performance of a specific industry group or enterprise group there is political usability in that the range model enables to provide references and compare them by data based start-up sales forecasting system.

• Korean Business Review
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• v.17
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• pp.153-183
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• 2004

The Gaisong Merchants can be regarded to playa pioneering role to activate the Korea's trade with foreign countries. In the early period of Yi-Dynasty, the Gaisong Merchants focused on personal trade, but in the middle period of Yi-Dynasty, they entered to the realm of governmental trade. Furthermore, their business activities widened to various forms of trades, for example, smuggling. Utilizing accumulated capital, Gaisong merchants expanded their trading activities to their neighboring countries such as Japan and China. In recent times, it is necessary for modem Korean companies to diversify risks through the establishment of corporations for production, marketing and R&D abroad or through joint venture, M&A and strategic alliance with foreign companies in order to reduce the risks originated from volatile economic and political situations. In this study, we utilize tools of comparative study to compare Gaisong Merchants' foreign trade strategies with those of modem companies such as AMOREPACIFIC, HANILCEMENT and SHINDORICO. The purpose of the paper is to test the hypothesis that modem Korean companies grew up by following the cases of Gaisong Merchants' business activities. We summarize our main findings as follows. First, both Gaisong Merchants and modem Korean companies have common functional core capability in the field of marketing, manufacturing technology, R&D, and human resources development. Second, both Gaisong Merchants and modem Korean companies have common organizational core capability. Third, both Gaisong Merchants and modem Korean companies have common infrastructures such as planning, finance, accounting and MIS. It constitutes the infrastructure of Korea's foreign trade sector. Fourth, both Gaisong Merchants and modem companies have common organizational culture in the field of management policy and philosophy. Actually, those factors are evaluated to be driving forces of Koera's success in foreign trade. In conclusion, the business activities of Gaisong Merchants who represented the peculiarity of Korean business spirit are partially inherited to current Korean business management. The value system and behavior pattern of modern Korean companies is succeeded from the spirit of Gaisong Merchants and it playa major role to specify the identity of Korean business administration.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.39-69
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• 2013

Business value of information technology has been the biggest interest of all such as practitioners and scholars for decades. Information technology is considered as the driving force or success factor of firm agility. The general assumption is that organizations making considerable efforts in IT investment are more agile than the organizations that are not. However, IT that should help the strategies of the firm that can hinder business or impede agility of the firm occasionally. In other words, it is still unknown if IT helps the agility of the firm or bothers it. Therefore, we note that contrary aspects of IT such as promotion and hindrance of firm agility have been observed frequently and theorize the relationships between them. In other words, we propose a rationale that firms should need to develop superior firm-wide IT capability to manage IT resources successfully in order to realize agility. Thus, this paper theorizes two IT capabilities, including technical IT capability and managerial IT capability as key factors impacting firm agility and firm performance. Further, we operationalize firm agility into two sub-types, including operational adjustment agility and market capitalizing agility. The data from 171 firms was analyzed using PLS approach. The results showed that technical IT capability has positive impact on firm agility and managerial IT capability had positive moderating effects between technical IT capability and firm agility. In addition, it was identified that top management championship positively moderates between agility and firm performance. Finally, it was indicated that firm agility was a very important causal variable of firm performance. Our study provides more exquisite and practical empirical evidences in the relationship between IT capability and firm agility by proposing applicable solution although IT has some contradicting effects on firm agility. Our findings suggest many useful implications to agility related researches in relatively primitive stage and working level officers in organizations.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.169-201
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• 2011

There was a new wave in grocery business with development of information and technology, thus a movement from traditional stores to online stores, In order to expand the scale of traditional supermarket and to satisfy the customers' needs, they provide offline and online services simultaneously. This paper is based on the previous studies which had been researched in developed countries from late 1990s to early 2000s and the purpose of this study is to introduce the idea and operation system of e-Grocery business. Moreover, we suggest the alternatives on delivery service methods in order to satisfy the customers' needs through analyzing the current condition of e-Grocers in Korea. According to the result of this study, Korean e-Grocers offer only attended home delivery services. In our opinion, Korean supermarkets have to take hybrid model which Tesco.com is using. There are some alternatives to increase the profits of Korean e-Grocers and to provide better services to their customers as follows: As an alternatives for delivery services, picking service is the easiest and cheapest way to apply for supermarkets. This is very useful for working women and also it is possible to order by smartphone recently. They can order the goods to the closest local supermarkets from working place, and then they pick them up on the way home from working off. In order to improve the quality of delivery services, to use the reception box will be the way to provide better services to the customers. The reception box is a way to protect the quality of goods such as fresh-cut product, which require the freshness through the temperature adjustment, and also to keep the safety of ordered goods through locking system Through this system, supermarkets are able to use attended or unattended services under the customers' satisfaction. However, using the reception box is expensive, so shared reception box will be an alternative. As an alternative for development of e-Grocery business, the advertisement for e-Grocery business has to be supported in order to attract potential customers in e-Grocery business. Furthermore, the main concerns of e-Grocery business such as the sanitation and safety of goods, and convenience must be guaranteed in order to keep the loyal customers and to attract new customers.

• The Korean Journal of Petroleum Geology
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.27-33
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• 2006

The possibility of oil reserve has been conformed because the oil has been produced by 450 barrel per day in the West Korea Bay basin of the North Korea. There is also possibility of giant oil reserve since it is geographically close to one of the biggest oil fields of Bohai Basin, China. Based on the on-going oil exploration and the present condition of investment, the areas of ongoing oil exploration are three: West Korea Bay B&C prospect explored by Swedish Taurus, the north of West Korea Bay and Anju basin explored by Canadian SOCO, and East Korea Bay explored by Australian Beach Petroleum. However, there is little or no possibility of oil reserve in the rest sea areas of three. Even though oil reserves were discovered in the some parts of land areas such as Kilju and Myungcheon, it was presumed to have no economical efficiency. Geology in West Korea Bay off the North Korea is similar to that in Bohai Bay off China. The basement consists of thick carbonate rock of the Late Proterozoic and Early Paleozoic overlain by Mesozoic ($6,000{\sim}10,000\;m$) and Cenozoic ($4,000{\sim}5,000\;m$) units. Source rocks are Jurassic black shale (3,000 m or more), Cretaceous black shale ($1,000{\sim}2,000\;m$), and pre-Mesozoic carbonates (several thousand meters). Reservoir rocks are Mesozoic-Cenozoic sandstone with high porosity and pre-Mesozoic fractured carbonate rocks. Petroleum raps are of the anticline, fault sealed, buried hill, and stratigraphic types. It absolutely needs to take up a positive attitude, the activation of ocean science and technology exchange, and the joint research and development of modern MT (Marine Technology) considering the state of establishing new international ocean order forcing on building up 200 nautical mile EEZ (exclusive economic zone) among coastal nations. Both South and North Koreas should extend the ocean jurisdiction and contiguity, and MT development dealing with the same sea areas. It is more urgent problem to find a way to have the North Korea participated in, and then to develop ocean management and ocean industry individually.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.44
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• pp.333-361
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• 2016

In general, content business companies include animation industry can have benefits, which they have higher incomes when they obtain wider markets. Therefore, they pursue to have diverse windows for content distribution or to reach the foreign markets for dealing their content products with potential customers. It have the greatest value. They can re-invest the incomes to produce their new products, and they can enhance the international competitiveness of their next products. As the results, the companies can have more incomes and wider markets in next business, and it will be the effectiveness of the good cycle of the animation industry. Animation industry has being undergone of its structure changes, more economical chances and viewers' attitudes changes through the all over the industry because of the acceptance of new digital technology. To response the changes or have the new chances from the changes, they should to review the existing system and the law concerned with the animation business as well as having the diverse new plans for supporting the industry like a construction of the online marketplace of Korean animation. It would make the Korean animation companies to meet foreign customers easily by making lower the entrance barrier of the foreign markets. Current Korean government needs to estimate the value of the Korean animation accurately and objectively by concerning its surroundings to support efficiently. However, it is very difficult to estimate the value of the content rightly because of its' intangible and subjective matter. For this, they should analyze the all the data of the information of the Korean animation content by accumulate, open to the public and manage. So if the government makes online marketplace for the Korean animation, which all the Korean animation companies get in, it would be a solution of estimating the value of the Korean animation rightly. In addition, it will be used as the role of archive of the government to lead the industry successfully. As a point of the small size of the Korean animation companies, they are government dependable because of its low budget, so they strongly expect the government to do the right role as the unique knowledge distributor. Therefore, the Korean animation online marketplace would make not only big companies, but also small companies to have the chances to increase the value of their content in the global markets by themselves without economic burdens.