• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.15-32
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• 2006

The increasing complexity of the socio-economic environments makes it less and less possible for single decision-maker to consider all relevant aspects of problem. Therefore, many organizations employ groups in decision making. In this paper, we present a multiperson decision making method using fuzzy logic with linguistic quantifier when each of group members specifies imprecise judgments possibly both on performance evaluations of alternatives with respect to the multiple criteria and on the criteria. Inexact or vague preferences have appeared in the decision making literatures with a view to relaxing the burdens of preference specifications imposed to the decision-makers and thus taking into account the vagueness of human judgments. Allowing for the types of imprecise judgments in the model, however, makes more difficult a clear selection of alternative(s) that a group wants to make. So, further interactions with the decision-makers may proceed to the extent to compensate for the initial comforts of preference specifications. These interactions may not however guarantee the selection of the best alternative to implement. To circumvent this deadlock situation, we present a procedure for obtaining a satisfying solution by the use of linguistic quantifier guided aggregation which implies fuzzy majority. This is an approach to combine a prescriptive decision method via a mathematical programming and a well-established approximate solution method to aggregate multiple objects.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.197-207
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of controlling consulting service quality in relation to the factors of success and performances of the social enterprises. In order to achieve the objective of this study, securement of market competitiveness, entrepreneurship and network activity was defined to be the factors of success and the research model and hypothesis was set according to the theoretical basis of the factors of success, performances and the quality of consulting services. The results showed that first, securement of market competitiveness, entrepreneurship and network activities as factors of success all had significant effects on performances pertaining to both profit-making and public interest, having great influence on the securement of market competitiveness of the social enterprises. Secondly, as a result of analyzing the effects of controlling the quality of consulting services in relation to the relationship between the factors of success and management performances of the social enterprises, network activity showed to have significant effect on performances pertaining to both profit-making and public interest. Through this study, the importance and the necessity of the improvement of consulting services and network activities of social enterprises were highlighted and the necessity of a new consulting principle in the consulting industry that can be specialized to social enterprises is proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.277-287
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• 2015

This paper addresses limitations of land-change modeling application in the context of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation). REDD is an international conservation policy that aims to protect forests via carbon credit generation and trading. In REDD, carbon credits are generated only if there is measurable quantied carbon sequestration activities that are additional to business-as-usual (BAU). A "reference level" is defined as simulated baseline carbon emissions for the future under a BAU scenario, and predictive land-change modeling plays an important role in constructing reference levels. It is tested in this research how predictive accuracies of two land-change models, namely Geographic Emission Benchmark (GEB) and GEOMOD, vary with respect to different spatial scales: Xishuangbanna prefecture and Yunnan province. The accuracies are measured by Figure of Merit. In this Chinese case study, it turns out that GEB's better performance is mainly due to quantity (e.g., how many hectares of forest will be converted to agricultural land?) rather than spatial allocation (e.g., where will the conversion happen?). As both quantity and allocation are crucial in REDD reference level setting it appears to be fundamental to systematically analyze accuracies of quantity and allocation independently in pursuit of accurate reference levels.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.11 no.10
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• pp.5-15
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• 2013

Purpose - With the increase in fervor to purchase luxury brands, new social problems have arisen, such as excessive preoccupation with luxury brands and high preference for forged luxury goods. Therefore, the issues related to luxury brands, termed "Luxury Syndrome," have emerged as an area of great interest for researchers and practitioners. However, previous studies neglect to categorize this preference for luxury brands. Therefore, this study aims to identify the different purchasing behaviors of consumers using the types of luxury brands preferences as parameters. Research design, data, and methodology - This study arranges a causal relationship model assuming that purchase behaviors positively (+) affect typified preference for luxury brands and purchase intentions. We administered a questionnaire survey to the purchasers who bought luxury brands from department stores to secure additional data necessary to verify the hypotheses in this study. We then processed the data using SPSS 19.0. We further analyzed the basic data using frequency and descriptive statistical analysis, and verified the measurement tools through feasibility and reliability analyses. Moreover, this study uses multiple regression analysis to verify the hypotheses. Further, this study tests the path effect between luxury brand purchase attitude and purchase behavior, with non-intrinsic preference and intrinsic preference as the mediating variables. Results - Based on the results, the impact of tendencies of conspicuous consumption and self-monitoring on non-intrinsic preference was significantly positive (+), while the impact of tendencies of pursuit of a reference group, conspicuous consumption, and self-monitoring on intrinsic preference and purchase intentions was significantly positive (+). Further, non-intrinsic and intrinsic preferences positively (+) influence purchase intentions and the impact of non-intrinsic preference took an absolute portion. However, the tendency of dependence on brands negatively (-) impacts purchase intentions. The results showed that self-monitoring and conspicuous consumption tendencies have greater effect on purchase intention, which is mediated by non-intrinsic preference. In contrast, reference group following tendency has a greater effect on purchase intention, which is mediated by intrinsic preference. Conclusions - Based on the results, the study verifies that the consumption of luxury brands in Korea has not yet entered the settling period. The tendency for conspicuous consumption and the tendency for pursuit of the reference group were relatively important aspects for the consumers who prefer luxury brands non-intrinsically and intrinsically, respectively. Especially, it was found that the purchase intentions for forged brands originate from the tendency to depend on brands. Based on these findings, this study suggests the measures to develop and mature the luxury brands market, and reinforce marketing performance at the three levels, that is, government, distributors, and manufacturers. The luxury brands manufacturers should devote themselves to the production and design of products to catch the attention of mature consumers of luxury brands. The luxury brands distributors should then raise the level of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for opinion leaders. Finally, the Government should prepare effective policies for the development of luxury brands and provide a variety of economic support.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.149-154
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• 2012

The adsorption and desorption behavior of biofilter-medium was investigated on the performance of an adsorption column. Continuous flow-isothermal adsorption experiments were performed to treat waste air containing such a VOC as ethanol under the same condition of > 90% relative humidity as the condition of the feed to a biofilter process. In case of feeding waste air containing ethanol of 1,000 ppmv (or 2,050 mg ethanol/$m^3$) to the adsorption system at the rate of 2 L/min, the onsets of its breakthrough and reaching the state of dynamic equilibrium at the exit had been delayed 10 and 3 times, respectively, later than those at the 1st stage sampling port. Moreover, in case of 2,000 ppmv (or 4,100 mg ethanol/$m^3$), they had been delayed 9 and 3 times, respectively. Thus, regardless of feeding concentration, the ratios of delaying period were observed to be quite consistent each other at the exit of the adsorption column. With regard to the period of desorption, the ratios of delaying period were consistent each other to be 1.5 for both cases. In addition, the effect of microbial activity and sterilization-process was studied on adsorption equilibrium. The ethanol concentration in the vapor phase of vials packed with sterilized granular activated carbon (GAC) was quite consistent to that with unsterilized GAC. However, the ethanol concentrations in the vapor phase of vials packed with unsterilized compost and the unsterilized mixture of GAC and compost were higher than those with sterilized compost and the sterilized mixture of GAC and compost, respectively.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.179-201
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• 2012

Since 1993, M&A activities have been frequent in Liner shipping market. This study examines the effect of M&A on stock price reaction for acquiring firms listed on the market. The study covers the period from 1993 to 2009 and uses 61 daily closing prices of the acquiring firms before and after the M&A announcement day and is analyzed through the market-adjusted model in an event study. After calculating short-term performance using abnormal returns(AR) and cumulative average abnormal returns(CAR) before and after 30 days from the day of event, the results on the test show that the firm's values slightly increased through the M&A, but it does not attest to the statistical significance. In addition, this study investigates the AR difference between estimating windows and post-event windows for the 3 cases of each period before and after 30 days, 15 days, and 7 days from the event day to analyse the impact of M&A on the addition of acquiring firm's value. Our findings suggest that the M&A between Liner shipping companies is targeted for the long-term business strategy instead of the instant rise in the value of the firm involved.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.341-366
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• 2013

The term, Mittelstand, has no exact english translation for the definition, but, today, Mittelstand refers to small and medium-sized enterprises(SME), mostly family-owned firms in Germany. The Mittelstand is called the backbone of the German economy because it drove the economic miracle after World War II. During the global recession and the euro zone's debt crisis in recent years, in which european businesses have faced the near-collapse of competitiveness particularly in manufacturing, the German exports are booming and exceeded exports of China in 2012. Most importantly, the Germany economic performance has been widely attributed to the strength of the Mittelstand. Many of countries, even some leading public companies are seeking to emulate the success of the Mittelstand. Investors evaluate that many of Germany's investable "hidden champions" are Mittelstand companies. The purpose of this study is to present some of answers to the following questions: Firstly, what makes the German Mittelstand so successful? Secondly, what does the success of the German Mittelstand mean for the Korean SMEs in global competitiveness? Thirdly, what Korean government has to do improve the global competitiveness of the Korean SMEs? Some discussions in this study mention the managerial implications for Korean exporting SMEs particularly in manufacturing. Several factors that account for the success of the German Mittelstand are technological excellence and the tradition of family-owned management, concentration on niche market and globalization, and institutional supports. There are some of important lessons to be learned from the German Mittelstand. If the purposes of Korean SMEs want to remain in the sustainable competitive advantage and withstand unforeseen economic turbulences in the future, they must be able to meet the followings: 1) Technology that meets the global standard or exceeding it 2) Competitiveness in price in the global market 3) Active involvement in the globalization process, utilizing various entry modes Innovative products at globally competitive price are a crucial point for Korean exporting SMEs to achieve their competitive edge over others in the target markets abroad. It is time for Korean SMEs to cultivate a core competence in manufacturing in order to position Korea as a global manufacturing hub with SMEs leading.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.1-10
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• 2013

Personalization aims to provide customized contents to each user by using the user's personal preferences. In this sense, the core parts of personalization are regarded as recommendation technologies, which can recommend the proper contents or products to each user according to his/her preference. Prior studies have proposed novel recommendation technologies because they recognized the importance of recommender systems. Among several recommendation technologies, collaborative filtering (CF) has been actively studied and applied in real-world applications. The CF, however, often suffers sparsity or scalability problems. Prior research also recognized the importance of these two problems and therefore proposed many solutions. Many prior studies, however, suffered from problems, such as requiring additional time and cost for solving the limitations by utilizing additional information from other sources besides the existing user-item matrix. This study proposes a novel implicit rating approach for collaborative filtering in order to mitigate the sparsity problem as well as to enhance the performance of recommender systems. In this study, we propose the methods of reducing the sparsity problem through supplementing the user-item matrix based on the implicit rating approach, which measures the trust level among users via the existing user-item matrix. This study provides the preliminary experimental results for testing the usefulness of the proposed model.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.167-183
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• 2016

This study has recognized easy payment service as one of the new types of application of information and communication technologies and proposed a modified acceptance intention model by adding perceived risk factor based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology(UTAUT) and then explored those variables that effect the acceptance intention of consumers. The results of this study can be summarized as the followings. First, expectation on the efforts, social impact have positive effect on the acceptance intention and perceived risk has negative effect on the acceptance intention but expectation on the efforts and promotion condition were found to have no effect on the acceptance intention. Second, among the factors suggested, social impact was found to have more effect of causing the acceptance intention of users than expectation on the efforts and perceived risk. Third, it was found that there is a significant association between the acceptance intention and use behavior of users of easy payment service. This means that, as was reviewed in the preceding researches, the acceptance intention affects actual acceptance behavior of users either directly or indirectly. Fourth, even though innovation resistance has regulation effect on the relationship between expectation on efforts or social impact and acceptance intention, it was found to have no regulation effect on the relationship between perceived risk and acceptance intention.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.105-111
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• 2017

With the emergence of the fourth industrial revolution, more and more attempts have been made to apply IoT technology to the manufacturing process and launch the product. In this paper, we propose IoT authentication scheme based on hash chain which can easily apply IoT device to small and medium enterprises in Korea. In the proposed method, the companies that installed IoT devices suitable for the manufacturing environment are selected to maintain the linkage between IoT devices so that product information and release information can be efficiently collected and managed during the entire manufacturing process. In addition, the proposed scheme is characterized in that it does not require an additional encryption / decryption algorithm because the authentication information of the IoT device is constructed based on a hash chain. As a result of the performance evaluation, the efficiency of the manufacturing process was improved by 18.5% and the processing of the manufacturing process with the IoT device was shortened by 20.1% on the average according to the application of the IoT device. In addition, the labor cost reduction costs in the manufacturing process decreased by an average of 30.7%.