• Title/Summary/Keyword: Business environments

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An Empirical Investigation Into the Effect of Organizational Capabilities on Service Innovation in Knowledge Intensive Business Firms (지식서비스기업의 서비스 혁신에 영향을 미치는 조직의 역량에 관한 연구)

  • Yoon, Bo Sung;Kim, Yong Jin;Jin, Seung Hye
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.23 no.1
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    • pp.87-106
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    • 2013
  • In the service-oriented economy, knowledge and skills are considered core resources to secure competitive advantages and service innovation. Knowledge management capability, which facilitates to produce, share, accumulate and reuse knowledge, becomes as important as knowledge itself to create service value. Along with knowledge management capability, dynamic capability and operational capability are the key capabilities related to managing service delivery processes. Previous studies indicated that these three capabilities are related to service innovation. Although separately investigate the relationship between the three capabilities. The purpose of this study is 1) to define variables that have effects on service innovation including knowledge management capability, dynamic capability and operational capability, and 2) to empirically test to identify relationship among variables. In this study, knowledge management capability is defined as the capability to manage knowledge process. Dynamic capability is regarded as the firm's ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments. Operational capability refers to a high-level routine that, together with its implementing input flows, confers upon an organization's management a set of decision options for producing significant outputs of a particular type. The proposed research model was tested against the data collected through the survey method. The survey questionnaire was distributed to the managers who participated in an educational program for management consulting. Each individual who answered the questionnaire represented a knowledge based service firm. About 212 surveys questionnaires were sent via e-mail or directly delivered to respondents. The number of useable responses was 93. Measurement items were adapted from previous studies to reflect the characteristics of the industry each informant worked in. All measurement items were in, 5 point Likert scale with anchors ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). Out of 93 respondents, about 81% were male, 82% of respondents were in their 30s. In terms of jobs, managers were 39.78%, professions/technicians were 24.73%, researchers were 12.90%, and sales people were 10.75%. Most of respondents worked for medium size enterprises (47,31%) in their, less than 30 employees (46.24%) in their number of employees, and less than 10 million USD (65.59%) in terms of sales volume. To test the proposed research model, structural equation modeling (SEM) technique (SPSS 16.0 and AMOS version 5) was used. We found that the three organizational capabilities have influence on service innovation directly or indirectly. Knowledge management capability directly affects dynamic capability and service innovation but indirectly affect operational capability through dynamic capability. Dynamic capability has no direct impact on service innovation, but influence service innovation indirectly through operational capability. Operational capability was found to positively affect service innovation. In sum, three organizational capabilities (knowledge management capability, dynamic capability and operational capability) need to be strategically managed at firm level, because organizational capabilities are significantly related to service innovation. An interesting result is that dynamic capability has a positive effect on service innovation only indirectly through operational capability. This result indicates that service innovation might have a characteristics similar to process innovation rather than product orientation. The results also show that organizational capabilities are inter-correlated to influence each other. Dynamic capability enables effective resource management, arrangement, and integration. Through these dynamic capability affected activities, strategic agility and responsibility get strength. Knowledge management capability intensify dynamic capability and service innovation. Knowledge management capability is the basis of dynamic capability as well. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed further in the conclusion section.

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A Study on the Effect of Location-based Service Users' Perceived Value and Risk on their Intention for Security Enhancement and Continuous Use: With an Emphasis on Perceived Benefits and Risks (위치기반서비스 사용자의 지각된 가치와 위험이 보안강화의도와 지속이용의도에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구: 지각된 혜택과 위험을 중심으로)

  • Park, Kyung Ah;Lee, Dae Yong;Koo, Chulmo
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.24 no.3
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    • pp.299-323
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    • 2014
  • The reason location based service is drawing attention recently is because smart phones are being supplied increasingly. Smart phone, basically equipped with GPS that can identify location information, has the advantage that it can provide contents and services suitable for the user by identifying user location accurately. Offering such diverse advantages, location based services are increasingly used. In addition, for use of location based services, release of user's personal information and location data is essentially required. Regarding personal information and location data, in addition to IT companies, general companies also are conducting various profitable businesses and sales activities based on personal information, and in particular, personal location data, comprehending high value of use among personal information, are drawing high attentions. Increase in demand of personal information is raising the risk of personal information infringement, and infringements of personal location data also are increasing in frequency and degree. Therefore, infringements of personal information should be minimized through user's action and efforts to reinforce security along with Act on the Protection of Personal Information and Act on the Protection of Location Information. This study aimed to improve the importance of personal information privacy by empirically analyzing the effect of perceived values on the intention to strengthen location information security and continuously use location information for users who received location-based services (LBS) in mobile environments with the privacy calculation model of benefits and risks as a theoretical background. This study regarded situation-based provision, the benefit which users perceived while using location-based services, and the risk related to personal location information, a risk which occurs while using services, as independent variables and investigated the perceived values of the two variables. It also examined whether there were efforts to reduce risks related to personal location information according to the values of location- based services, which consumers perceived through the intention to strengthen security. Furthermore, it presented a study model which intended to investigate the effect of perceived values and intention of strengthening security on the continuous use of location-based services. A survey was conducted for three hundred ten users who had received location-based services via their smartphones to verify study hypotheses. Three hundred four questionnaires except problematic ones were collected. The hypotheses were verified, using a statistical method and a logical basis was presented. An empirical analysis was made on the data collected through the survey with SPSS 12.0 and SmartPLS 2.0 to verify respondents' demographic characteristics, an exploratory factor analysis and the appropriateness of the study model. As a result, it was shown that the users who had received location-based services were significantly influenced by the perceived value of their benefits, but risk related to location information did not have an effect on consumers' perceived values. Even though users perceived the risk related to personal location information while using services, it was viewed that users' perceived value had nothing to do with the use of location-based services. However, it was shown that users significantly responded to the intention of strengthening security in relation to location information risks and tended to use services continuously, strengthening positive efforts for security when their perceived values were high.

The Competition Policy and Major Industrial Policy-Making in the 1980's (1980년대 주요산업정책(主要産業政策) 결정(決定)과 경쟁정책(競爭政策): 역할(役割)과 한계(限界))

  • Choi, Jong-won
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.13 no.2
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    • pp.97-127
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    • 1991
  • This paper investigates the roles and the limitations of the Korean antitrust agencies-the Office of Fair Trade (OFT) and the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) during the making of the major industrial policies of the 1980's. The Korean antitrust agencies played only a minimal role in three major industrial policy-making issues in the 1980's- the enactment of the Industrial Development Act (IDA), the Industrial Rationalization Measures according to the IDA, and the Industrial Readjustment Measures on Consolidation of Large Insolvent Enterprises based on the revised Tax Exemption and Reduction Control Act. As causes for this performance bias in the Korean antitrust system, this paper considers five factors according to the current literature on implementation failure: ambiguous and insufficient statutory provisions of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act (MRFTA); lack of resources; biased attitudes and motivations of the staff of the OFT and the FTC; bureaucratic incapability; and widespread misunderstanding about the roles and functions of the antitrust system in Korea. Among these five factors, bureaucratic incompetence and lack of understanding in various policy implementation environments about the roles and functions of the antitrust system have been regarded as the most important ones. Most staff members did not have enough educational training during their school years to engage in antitrust and fair trade policy-making. Furthermore, the high rate of staff turnover due to a mandatory personnel transfer system has prohibited the accumulation of knowledge and skills required for pursuing complicated structural antitrust enforcement. The limited capability of the OFT has put the agency in a disadvantaged position in negotiating with other economic ministries. The OFT has not provided plausible counter-arguments based on sound economic theories against other economic ministries' intensive market interventions in the name of rationalization and readjustment of industries. If the staff members of antitrust agencies have lacked substantive understanding of the antitrust and fair trade policy, the rest of government agencies must have had serious problems in understanding the correst roles and functions of the antitrust system. The policy environment of the Korean antitrust system, including other economic ministries, the Deputy Prime Minister, and President Chun, have tended to conceptualize the OFT more as an agency aiming only at fair trade policy and less as an agency that should enforce structural monopoly regulation as well. Based on this assessment of the performance of the Korean antitrust system, this paper evaluate current reform proposals for the MRFT A. The inclusion of the regulation of conglomerate mergers and of business divestiture orders may be a desirable revision, giving the MRFTA more complete provisions. However, given deficient staff experties and the unfavorable policy environments, it would be too optimistic and naive to expect that the inclusion of these provisions alone could improve the performance of the Korean antitrust system. In its conclusion, this paper suggests several policy recommendations for the Korean antitrust system, which would secure the stable development and accumulation of antitrust expertise for its staff members and enough understanding and conformity from its environments about its antitrust goals and functions.

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Using the METHONTOLOGY Approach to a Graduation Screen Ontology Development: An Experiential Investigation of the METHONTOLOGY Framework

  • Park, Jin-Soo;Sung, Ki-Moon;Moon, Se-Won
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.20 no.2
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    • pp.125-155
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    • 2010
  • Ontologies have been adopted in various business and scientific communities as a key component of the Semantic Web. Despite the increasing importance of ontologies, ontology developers still perceive construction tasks as a challenge. A clearly defined and well-structured methodology can reduce the time required to develop an ontology and increase the probability of success of a project. However, no reliable knowledge-engineering methodology for ontology development currently exists; every methodology has been tailored toward the development of a particular ontology. In this study, we developed a Graduation Screen Ontology (GSO). The graduation screen domain was chosen for the several reasons. First, the graduation screen process is a complicated task requiring a complex reasoning process. Second, GSO may be reused for other universities because the graduation screen process is similar for most universities. Finally, GSO can be built within a given period because the size of the selected domain is reasonable. No standard ontology development methodology exists; thus, one of the existing ontology development methodologies had to be chosen. The most important considerations for selecting the ontology development methodology of GSO included whether it can be applied to a new domain; whether it covers a broader set of development tasks; and whether it gives sufficient explanation of each development task. We evaluated various ontology development methodologies based on the evaluation framework proposed by G$\acute{o}$mez-P$\acute{e}$rez et al. We concluded that METHONTOLOGY was the most applicable to the building of GSO for this study. METHONTOLOGY was derived from the experience of developing Chemical Ontology at the Polytechnic University of Madrid by Fern$\acute{a}$ndez-L$\acute{o}$pez et al. and is regarded as the most mature ontology development methodology. METHONTOLOGY describes a very detailed approach for building an ontology under a centralized development environment at the conceptual level. This methodology consists of three broad processes, with each process containing specific sub-processes: management (scheduling, control, and quality assurance); development (specification, conceptualization, formalization, implementation, and maintenance); and support process (knowledge acquisition, evaluation, documentation, configuration management, and integration). An ontology development language and ontology development tool for GSO construction also had to be selected. We adopted OWL-DL as the ontology development language. OWL was selected because of its computational quality of consistency in checking and classification, which is crucial in developing coherent and useful ontological models for very complex domains. In addition, Protege-OWL was chosen for an ontology development tool because it is supported by METHONTOLOGY and is widely used because of its platform-independent characteristics. Based on the GSO development experience of the researchers, some issues relating to the METHONTOLOGY, OWL-DL, and Prot$\acute{e}$g$\acute{e}$-OWL were identified. We focused on presenting drawbacks of METHONTOLOGY and discussing how each weakness could be addressed. First, METHONTOLOGY insists that domain experts who do not have ontology construction experience can easily build ontologies. However, it is still difficult for these domain experts to develop a sophisticated ontology, especially if they have insufficient background knowledge related to the ontology. Second, METHONTOLOGY does not include a development stage called the "feasibility study." This pre-development stage helps developers ensure not only that a planned ontology is necessary and sufficiently valuable to begin an ontology building project, but also to determine whether the project will be successful. Third, METHONTOLOGY excludes an explanation on the use and integration of existing ontologies. If an additional stage for considering reuse is introduced, developers might share benefits of reuse. Fourth, METHONTOLOGY fails to address the importance of collaboration. This methodology needs to explain the allocation of specific tasks to different developer groups, and how to combine these tasks once specific given jobs are completed. Fifth, METHONTOLOGY fails to suggest the methods and techniques applied in the conceptualization stage sufficiently. Introducing methods of concept extraction from multiple informal sources or methods of identifying relations may enhance the quality of ontologies. Sixth, METHONTOLOGY does not provide an evaluation process to confirm whether WebODE perfectly transforms a conceptual ontology into a formal ontology. It also does not guarantee whether the outcomes of the conceptualization stage are completely reflected in the implementation stage. Seventh, METHONTOLOGY needs to add criteria for user evaluation of the actual use of the constructed ontology under user environments. Eighth, although METHONTOLOGY allows continual knowledge acquisition while working on the ontology development process, consistent updates can be difficult for developers. Ninth, METHONTOLOGY demands that developers complete various documents during the conceptualization stage; thus, it can be considered a heavy methodology. Adopting an agile methodology will result in reinforcing active communication among developers and reducing the burden of documentation completion. Finally, this study concludes with contributions and practical implications. No previous research has addressed issues related to METHONTOLOGY from empirical experiences; this study is an initial attempt. In addition, several lessons learned from the development experience are discussed. This study also affords some insights for ontology methodology researchers who want to design a more advanced ontology development methodology.

Studies on Determinant Factors of SCM Performance: From the Supplier Perspective (SCM 성과 결정요인에 관한 통합적 연구: 공급업체 관점으로)

  • Park, Kwang-Oh;Chang, Hwal-Sik
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.21 no.1
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    • pp.1-27
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    • 2011
  • In an attempt to cope with widespread, dynamic, and accelerating changes in both internal and external business environments, companies often utilize information technologies such as SCM(Supply Chain Management). To date, SCM research has mainly focused on the effects of dynamic factors on SCM success and emphasized adoption strategies and critical success factors. Consequently, the effects of more static factors such as interdependency between SCM partners have been largely ignored. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine the effects of both dynamic and static factors on SCM performance by controlling for information quality and partnership quality. The five factors examined in this study include innovative ness, mutual dependency, quality of information, partnership quality, and SCM performance. All factors were examined from the perspective of part suppliers, except the mutual dependency which was examined from two aspects: supplier's dependency on customer and customer's dependency on supplier. Data was collected through five hundred survey questionnaires distributed to the part supplier companies that have implemented SCM systems for at least one year. As a result, a total of 170 valid responses were obtained. A structural equation research model was fitted using SAS 9.1.3 and SMART-PLS 2.0. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, innovativeness positively affected SCM information quality. SCM partnership quality, and ultimately SCM performance. The path coefficient between innovativeness and information quality was 0.387, with a t-value of 3.528. Innovativeness also had a positively direct effect on partnership quality. The path coefficient was 0.351 with a t-value of 3.366. The total effect of innovativeness on partnership quality was significant, although its indirect effect on partnership quality by altering information quality was negligible. The total indirect effect of innovativeness on SCM performance by affecting information quality and partnership quality was significant with a p-value of 0.014. Innovativeness played an important role in determining SCM performance. Second, mutual dependency showed no significant effect on SCM information quality. This result contradicts the earlier assertion that the more dependent two companies are, the more accurate and timely the information they exchange ought to be. This study showed that this may not be the case; a partner may provide information of poor quality even when it is strongly dependent on the other. Mutual dependency showed significant effect on partnership quality. However, when the mutual dependency perceived by suppliers was divided into two parts, one being a supplier's dependency on its customer company and the other being a customer's dependency on the supplier, the latter showed a significant impact on the perceived SCM partnership quality. This result indicates that a customer company can hardly improve the partnership quality perceived by suppliers by making them more dependent. It improves only when the suppliers perceive that their partners, typically having more bargaining power, are more dependent on them. The overall effect of mutual dependency of any kind on SCM performance, however, was not significant. Although mutual dependency has been mentioned as an important static factor influencing almost every aspect of cooperation on a supply chain, its influences may not be as significant as it was initially perceived to be. Third, the correlation between information quality and partnership quality was 0.448 with a p-value of less than 0.001. Information quality had a path coefficient of 0.256 to partnership quality with a t-value of 2.940. The quality of information exchanged between partners may have an impact on their partnership quality. Fourth, information quality also had a significant impact on SCM performance with a path coefficient of 0.325 with a t-value of 3.611. In this study, SCM performance was divided into four categories: product quality, cost saving, service quality, and order fulfillment. Information quality has Significant impacts on product quality, cost saving and service quality, but not on order fulfillment. Fifth, partnership quality, as expected, had a significant impact on SCM performance. The path coefficient was 0.403 with a t-value of 3.539. Partnership quality, like information quality, had positive impacts on product quality, cost saving and service quality, but showed no impact on order fulfillment. It seemed that order fulfillment is the hardest category of performance that SCM can satisfy. One major limitation of this study is that it surveyed only the suppliers. To better understand the dual aspects of SCM, it is important to survey both suppliers and the assemblers, especially in pairs. This research, to our best knowledge, was the first attempt to study the level of dependency between the two groups by measuring the dual aspects of SCM and studying mutual dependency from the categories of suppliers and assemblers each.. In the future, a more comprehensive and precise measurement of SCM characteristics needs to be achieved by examining from both the supplier's and assembler's perspectives.

A Study of the Impact of Digital Capability and Personal Ability on the Intent to Continue Economic Activity : Focused on the Adjustment Effect of the Role Model (디지털 역량과 개인적 역량이 경제활동 지속 의도에 미치는 영향: 롤 모델의 조절 효과 중심으로)

  • Kim, Sang Jin;Ha, Kyu Soo
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.16 no.5
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    • pp.125-141
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    • 2021
  • The rapidly changing social structure of the digital environment is having a significant impact on economic activities. That is also an important issue for Individuals who want to sustain economic activities and countries that support policies. Non-face-to-face industries have been revitalized due to the problem of human capital utilization attributed to aging population, the real economic recession caused by Corona 19, contraction of face-to-face economic activities, reduction of employment, and job instability. Accordingly, digital media contents based economic activities have become commonplace, and the government's main policy issue is to use human capital effectively for media contents based economic activities. Adaptation to the digital environment has become a necessity, not a choice, for those who wish to continue to be in employment. Therefore, this study analyzed the effects of digital and individual abilities on intention to sustain the economic activity and verified the modulation effect of the role model. In order to achieve the purpose of this research, an online survey was conducted on men and women aged 20 to 80 nationwide, and 382 of the 385 collected questionaires were analyzed. The SPSS 23.0 program was used to analyze this study, and the questionaire questions were measured using the Likert 5-point scale. As a result of the analysis, first, the ability to utilize media contents in digital capacity has a positive impact on the intention to sustain economic activity, and that the higher the ability to utilize the latest digital media contents such as SNS, the more likely the intention to sustain economic activity. Secondly, it was found that the financial strength of individuals' abilities was affected by the negative impact, and that the experiences were affected by positive(+) impact on the intention to sustain economic activity. Thirdly, the social environment has no significant effect on the intention to sustain economic activity. Fourth, it was found that family support amongst social support has a positive impact on the intention to sustain economic activity, and that various emotional support for families has increased intention to sustain economic activity. Fifth, the role model was found to have a positive(+) impact on economic sustainability, while the ability to utilize media content and family support played a modulating role on economic sustainability. Therefore, as a result of this research, the government's policy support for employment and entrepreneurship is required in accordance with digital media content based digital education and human structure in order to sustain economic activities.

A Comparative Study on Travelers' Online Travel Agency(OTA) selection attributes and revisit selection attributes (여행자의 온라인여행사(OTA) 선택속성과 재방문 시 선택속성에 관한 비교연구)

  • Yang, Chan-Yeol
    • Management & Information Systems Review
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    • v.37 no.4
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    • pp.175-193
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    • 2018
  • As a new type of business model in the market competition situation of tour companies, this study has developed to the online form of the travel industry to the business form which is the combination of the electronic commerce function and the mobile service process in the provision of the simple web-site, This study explores the difficulties of change for the development of the travel industry from the point of view that recognition is not a simple marketing strategy diversification means but a change of recognition as a business model for expanding new markets or creating new markets. The factors affecting the choice of online travel agent (OTA) and the factors that influence the choice of online travel agency were analyzed. Were used for the empirical survey. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors influencing the choice of online travel agents who have experience with or experience using online travel agency (OTA), what factors are important to them, and how they differ in importance when visiting again. The results of this study are as follows: First, there was a significant difference between the first and second visitors of online travel agencies. The results of this study were as follows: Attitude toward resolving complaints, convenience of change and cancellation, delivery of tickets and documents, convenience of complaints, The emphasis should be on establishing and strengthening service environments such as the speed of updating the latest information, the simplicity of the booking procedure, the degree of satisfaction of the past, the ability of employees to handle their work, the safety of various payment methods and settlement, The results of this study are as follows: First, the satisfaction of the online travel agency is influenced by the selection factors of the selected online tour agency, and the A/S such as the convenience of prompt delivery, Environmental factors contributed to satisfaction. It is suggested that the systematic service structure such as customer satisfaction and ease of use is a necessary marketing strategy for survival and development of online travel agencies. It is suggested that the marketing concentration strategy with the first visitors as the target market is effective and this is a part of the marketing strategy for the survival of online travel agencies.

Mediating Effect of Customer Orientation and Customer Satisfaction Between Entrepreneurship and Financial Performance: Focusing on the Beauty Service Industry (기업가정신과 재무적 성과 간의 고객지향성, 고객만족의 매개효과: 미용 서비스산업 중심으로)

  • Kwak, jinman;Lee, sehee
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.16 no.6
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    • pp.197-211
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    • 2021
  • In the service industry the types are diversifying and the scale of service companies is greatly improving. Such a phenomenon is caused by economic growth and technological development diversifying consumer needs creating demand for new services maturing the service industry and intensifying competition among companies in the form of global competition. It can be said that this is because it is necessary to improve competitiveness by utilizing the economy of scale. Research is needed on the impact of entrepreneurship on various outcome variables in order for service organization managers to respond quickly to diverse and rapidly changing environments and achieve organizational outcomes and corporate goals of management outcomes. The purpose of this study was to empirically analyze the relationship in which the entrepreneurial spirit of a manager influences the relationship between customer orientation, which is an organizational result, customer satisfaction, and financial result, which is a management result. In order to verify such research, the questionnaire was composed of one business owner questionnaire, two employee questionnaires, and two customer questionnaires. The questionnaire was distributed to a total of 400 companies, and the questionnaires of 340 companies were collected. Of these, 303 companies, excluding the questionnaires of 37 companies with many dishonest or missing values, were used for hypothesis testing. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, entrepreneurship had a positive (+) effect on customer orientation, supporting the hypothesis. Second, customer orientation showed a positive (+) effect on customer satisfaction, supporting the hypothesis. Third, customer satisfaction showed a positive (+) effect on financial outcomes, supporting the hypothesis. Fourth, it was found that entrepreneurship influences customer satisfaction through customer orientation, and customer satisfaction affects financial outcomes. It turns out that customer orientation between entrepreneurship and customer satisfaction is completely mediated, and customer satisfaction is completely mediated by customer orientation and financial outcomes. The relationship between entrepreneurship and management improved employee behavior and attitudes, which is an individual outcome, and this change was found to improve customer satisfaction, which is an organizational outcome. It makes frequent contact with customers in the process of servicing them. Employee roles are important at service contacts and influence service purchases. Employees facing customers through service contacts act as a decisive factor in maintaining a continuous relationship with customers. Within a beauty service company, it is necessary to create a customer-oriented environment among workers. It suggests that customer-oriented companies and employees can anticipate their desires and provide products or services of superior value to achieve greater customer satisfaction and a competitive advantage. In addition, it was clarified that customer satisfaction has an aspect relationship with financial management, which is a management result. Therefore, it is suggested that the entrepreneurial spirit is an important factor for the management of a beauty service company to secure competitiveness and improve results.

Evolution of Relationship Marketing in the New Reality: Focused on the Pervasiveness of Digital New Media and the Enlargement of Customer Participation (21세기 새로운 현실에서 Relationship Marketing의 진화: 디지털 뉴미디어 환경의 보편화와 고객 참여의 고도화를 중심으로)

  • Lim, Jong Won;Cho, Ho Hyeon;Lee, Jeong Hoon
    • Asia Marketing Journal
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    • v.13 no.4
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    • pp.105-137
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    • 2012
  • After relationship marketing emerged as a new approach in the marketing field in the 1980s, it has been widely studied in the United States, Europe and Asia. Rapid environmental changes and global competition has made it inevitable for companies to consider their relationships with the environment more closely. Under these circumstances, relationship marketing has held a position as a pivotal paradigm in the field of strategy as well as in marketing. In addition, relationship marketing has overcome the limitations of a traditional marketing research while providing richer implications in company's marketing activities. The paradigm shift to relationship marketing has brought fundamental changes in a marketing point of view. First, in philosophical aspects, unlike past research which focused solely on customer satisfaction, organizational relationship parameters which focuses on trust and commitment has become key elements of successful relationship marketing while shifts in thoughts naturally take place from adaptive marketing to strategic marketing. Second, in structural aspects, the relational mechanism of governance such as network structure with a variety of relational partners has emerged as a new marketing organization from the previous simple structure focusing on the micro-economic, marketbased trading between seller and customer. Third, in behavioral aspects, it proposed the strategic course of the action of gaining an advantage over the competition on the individual firm level by focusing on building long-term relationships and considering partnership with the components in the entire marketing system, rather than with one-time transaction-centric action between a seller and a customer. Fourth, in the aspects of marketing performance, marketing performance was sought through the long-term and cooperative relationship with various stakeholders, including customers in the marketing system, focusing on the overall competitive advantage based on relationship rather than individual performance of individual companies' marketing activities, such as market share and customer satisfaction. However, studies of relationship marketing were mostly centered in interorganizational relationships focusing on the relational structure and properties of commercial sector in the marketing system. Paradoxically, the circumstance of the consumer's side that must be considered is evolving again in relationship marketing. In structural aspects, a community, as the new relationship governance structure in the digital environment, and in behavioral aspects, the changing role of consumer participation demanding big changes in the digital environment engaged in the marketing system. The possibility of building a relationship marketing community for common value creation is presented in terms of organization of consumers with the focus on changing marketing environment and marketing system according to the new realities of the 21st century- the popularity of digital environments and the diffusion of customer participation. Therefore, future research of relationship marketing must seek for a truly integrated model including all of the existing structure and properties of the research oriented relationship from both the commercial and consumer sector.

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An Empirical Study on Motivation Factors and Reward Structure for User's Createve Contents Generation: Focusing on the Mediating Effect of Commitment (창의적인 UCC 제작에 영향을 미치는 동기 및 보상 체계에 대한 연구: 몰입에 매개 효과를 중심으로)

  • Kim, Jin-Woo;Yang, Seung-Hwa;Lim, Seong-Taek;Lee, In-Seong
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.20 no.1
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    • pp.141-170
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    • 2010
  • User created content (UCC) is created and shared by common users on line. From the user's perspective, the increase of UCCs has led to an expansion of alternative means of communications, while from the business perspective UCCs have formed an environment in which an abundant amount of new contents can be produced. Despite outward quantitative growth, however, many aspects of UCCs do not meet the expectations of general users in terms of quality, and this can be observed through pirated contents and user-copied contents. The purpose of this research is to investigate effective methods for fostering production of creative user-generated content. This study proposes two core elements, namely, reward and motivation, which are believed to enhance content creativity as well as the mediating factor and users' committement, which will be effective for bridging the increasing motivation and content creativity. Based on this perspective, this research takes an in-depth look at issues related to constructing the dimensions of reward and motivation in UCC services for creative content product, which are identified in three phases. First, three dimensions of rewards have been proposed: task dimension, social dimension, and organizational dimention. The task dimension rewards are related to the inherent characteristics of a task such as writing blog articles and pasting photos. Four concrete ways of providing task-related rewards in UCC environments are suggested in this study, which include skill variety, task significance, task identity, and autonomy. The social dimensioni rewards are related to the connected relationships among users. The organizational dimension consists of monetary payoff and recognition from others. Second, the two types of motivations are suggested to be affected by the diverse rewards schemes: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation occurs when people create new UCC contents for its' own sake, whereas extrinsic motivation occurs when people create new contents for other purposes such as fame and money. Third, commitments are suggested to work as important mediating variables between motivation and content creativity. We believe commitments are especially important in online environments because they have been found to exert stronger impacts on the Internet users than other relevant factors do. Two types of commitments are suggested in this study: emotional commitment and continuity commitment. Finally, content creativity is proposed as the final dependent variable in this study. We provide a systematic method to measure the creativity of UCC content based on the prior studies in creativity measurement. The method includes expert evaluation of blog pages posted by the Internet users. In order to test the theoretical model of our study, 133 active blog users were recruited to participate in a group discussion as well as a survey. They were asked to fill out a questionnaire on their commitment, motivation and rewards of creating UCC contents. At the same time, their creativity was measured by independent experts using Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Finally, two independent users visited the study participants' blog pages and evaluated their content creativity using the Creative Products Semantic Scale. All the data were compiled and analyzed through structural equation modeling. We first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to validate the measurement model of our research. It was found that measures used in our study satisfied the requirement of reliability, convergent validity as well as discriminant validity. Given the fact that our measurement model is valid and reliable, we proceeded to conduct a structural model analysis. The results indicated that all the variables in our model had higher than necessary explanatory powers in terms of R-square values. The study results identified several important reward shemes. First of all, skill variety, task importance, task identity, and automony were all found to have significant influences on the intrinsic motivation of creating UCC contents. Also, the relationship with other users was found to have strong influences upon both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Finally, the opportunity to get recognition for their UCC work was found to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation of UCC users. However, different from our expectation, monetary compensation was found not to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation. It was also found that commitment was an important mediating factor in UCC environment between motivation and content creativity. A more fully mediating model was found to have the highest explanation power compared to no-mediation or partially mediated models. This paper ends with implications of the study results. First, from the theoretical perspective this study proposes and empirically validates the commitment as an important mediating factor between motivation and content creativity. This result reflects the characteristics of online environment in which the UCC creation activities occur voluntarily. Second, from the practical perspective this study proposes several concrete reward factors that are germane to the UCC environment, and their effectiveness to the content creativity is estimated. In addition to the quantitive results of relative importance of the reward factrs, this study also proposes concrete ways to provide the rewards in the UCC environment based on the FGI data that are collected after our participants finish asnwering survey questions. Finally, from the methodological perspective, this study suggests and implements a way to measure the UCC content creativity independently from the content generators' creativity, which can be used later by future research on UCC creativity. In sum, this study proposes and validates important reward features and their relations to the motivation, commitment, and the content creativity in UCC environment, which is believed to be one of the most important factors for the success of UCC and Web 2.0. As such, this study can provide significant theoretical as well as practical bases for fostering creativity in UCC contents.