• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.22
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• pp.137-165
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• 2007

It seems high time to increase productivity by adopting e-business to overcome challenges posed by both external factors including the appreciation of Korean won, oil hikes and fierce global competition and domestic issues represented by disparities between large corporations and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Seoul metropolitan and local cities, and export and domestic demand all of which weaken future growth engines in the Korean economy. The demands of the globalization era are for innovative changes in businessprocess and industrial structure aiming for creating new values. To this end, e-business is expected to play a core role in the sophistication of the Korean economy through new values and innovation. In order to examine business performance in e-business-adopting industries, this study analyzed the home shopping industry by closely looking into the financial ratios including the ratio of net profit to sales, the ratio of operation income to sales, the ratio of gross cost to sales cost, the ratio of gross cost to selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expense, and return of investment (ROI). This study, for best outcome, referred to corporate financial statements as a main resource to calculate financial ratios by utilizing Data Analysis, Retrieval and Transfer System (DART) of the Financial Supervisory Service, one of the Korea's financial supervisory authorities. First of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of net profit to sales is as following. CJ Home Shopping has registered a remarkable increase in its ratio of net profit rate to sales since 2002 while its competitors find it hard to catch up with CJ's stunning performances. This is partly due to the efficient management compared to CJ's value of capital. Such significance, if the current trend continues, will make the front-runner assume the largest market share. On the other hand, GS Home Shopping, despite its best organized system and largest value of capital among others, lacks efficiency in management. Second of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of operation income to sales is as following. Both CJ Home Shopping and GS Home Shopping have, until 2004, recorded similar growth trend. However, while CJ Home Shopping's operating income continued to increase in 2005, GS Home Shopping observed its operating income declining which resulted in the increasing income gap with CJ Home Shopping. While CJ Home Shopping with the largest market share in home shopping industryis engaged in aggressive marketing, GS Home Shopping due to its stability-driven management strategies falls behind CJ again in the ratio of operation income to sales in spite of its favorable management environment including its large capital. Companies in the Group B were established in the same year of 2001. NS Home Shopping was the first in the Group B to shift its loss to profit. Woori Home Shopping has continued to post operating loss for three consecutive years and finally was sold to Lotte Group in 2007, but since then, has registered a continuing increase in net income on sales. Third of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of gross cost to sales cost is as following. Since home shopping falls into sales business, its cost of sales is much lower than that of other types of business such as manufacturing industry. Since 2002 in gross costs including cost of sales, SG&A expense, and non-operating expense, cost of sales turned out to have remarkably decreased. Group B has also posted a notable decline in the same sector since 2002. Fourth of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of gross cost to SG&A expense is as following. Due to its unique characteristics, the home shopping industry usually posts ahigh ratio of SG&A expense. However, more than 80% of SG&A expense means the result of lax management and at the same time, a sharp lower net income on sales than other industries. Last but not least, the result of the trend analysis on ROI is as following. As for CJ Home Shopping, the curve of ROI looks similar to that of its investment on fixed assets. As it turned out, the company's ratio of fixed assets to operating income skyrocketed in 2004 and 2005. As far as GS Home Shopping is concerned, its fixed assets are not as much as that of CJ Home Shopping. Consequently, competition in the home shopping industry, at the moment, is among CJ, GS, Hyundai, NS and Woori Home Shoppings, and all of them need to more thoroughly manage their costs. In order for the late-comers of Group B and other home shopping companies to advance further, the current lax management should be reformed particularly on their SG&A expense sector. Provided that the total sales volume in the Internet shopping sector is projected to grow over 20 trillion won by the year 2010, it is concluded that all the participants in the home shopping industry should put strategies on efficient management on costs and expenses as their top priority rather than increase revenues, if they hope to grow even further after 2007.

• Korean Journal of Poultry Science
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.301-309
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• 2009

The present study was conducted to determine the effect of energy restricted (ER) diet on the expressions of lipogenic genes in liver and myogenic genes in muscle tissue of broiler chickens. Energy restriction was accomplished by providing chicks with 70% (ER70) or 85% (ER85) energy level of control diet intake. Energy restricted groups of chickens were restricted for 7 days, starting at 8 days of age. Ad libitum feeding was resumed after the restriction period, and continued through the end of the experiment. The body weight of chickens in the restricted groups gained less during the energy restriction period (P<0.05). The body weight of the ER groups were similar to the control group during the re-alimentation period. However, the body weight of the ER70 group did not catch up with that of the control group by 35 days of age. The energy restrictions during early life of chicks decreased the contents of triglycerides and cholesterol in blood (P<0.05), but those were not different among treatments after re-alimentation. The genes of fatty acid synthase (FAS) and transcription factors including SREBP and PPARγ were down regulated by restriction regimen only in ER70 (P<0.05). However, those genes were not completely recovered after re-alimentation in ER70 group. The RNA expression levels of Myo-D, Myf-5 and myogenin in all treatment groups were decreased by restriction regimen when compared with control group (P<0.05). Myogenin was highly expressed after re-alimentation, but the other genes were not different among groups. These results suggest that ER85 group shows the best growth performance by re-alimentation and the higher muscle differentiation by expressing myogenin.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.656-663
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• 2001

This study was carried out to evaluate the minerals and trace elements contents in colostrum milk produced from 30 normal healthy mothers delivery at term, 10 mothers delivery preterm and 8 pregnancy induced hypertensive mothers(PIH) and to investigate the relationship between maternal minerals intakes during pregnancy and milk contents of minerals. Five minerals(Na, K, Ca, P, Mg) and three trace elements(Fe, Zn, Cu) in colostrum were determined by ICP-AES and maternal dietary intakes during pregnancy were estimated by semiquantitative frequency questionnaire. Maternal dietary intakes of three groups during pregnancy were below the recommended allowances except protein and phosphorus. The overall mean nutrients intakes of mothers delivered preterm were the lowest among three study groups, especially phosphorus and sodium intakes of preterm mothers were significantly lower than those of normal term mothers(p < 0.05). Dietary intakes of mothers with pregnancy induced hypertension were similar to those of normal term mothers except calcium intake of pregnancy induced hypefensive mother was the lowest among three groups. While potassium and phosphorus concentrations in preterm colosalm were significantly lower than those of term milk(p < 0.05), iron contents of colostrum in preterm and PIH groups were significantly higher than term milk respectively(p < 0.07). The other minerals concentrations of colostrum produced by the preterm mothers tended to be lower than term milk. There were not significant relationships between maternal dietary intakes of minerals during pregnancy and the corresponding mineral levels of colostrum of three groups of mothers except that Pearson correlation coefficient showed positive significant relationships between the calcium intakes of PIH mothers and the colostrum milk calcium levels. These results suggest that preterm milk might be insufficient for the mineral nutrition of preterm infects in considering of the poor tissue storage of minerals and catch-up growth of preterm infects.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.171-184
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• 2006

According to ISAAA report, the global area of genetically modified (GM) crops increased more than 50 fold during the ten-year period from 1996 to 2005 with a sustained double-digit growth rate of 10%. This biotechnology adoption is one of the highest rates of technology adoption in agriculture history and this phenomenon indicates that the industrial value of the GM crops is highly perspective. In addition, the year 2010, 60% of cereal seeds in the global market would be GM or biotechnology related seeds so that the GM crop regards as the second green revolution that could provide a huge impact to food and agriculture. Nevertheless, there has not been any GM variety ever successfully commercialized in Korea and even none of the GM crops has ever been approved for safety testing by risk assessment. This seems that Korean agriculture industry might be indeed lost in the war of future seed market. However, lots of evidence show that Korean scientists have established advanced technologies and protocols to develop GM crops for last 20 years. Actually there have been many cases of successful transformation of crops that were previously known very difficult in transforming. Therefore, Korean agbiotechnology arena firmly holds an infrastructure for developing GM crops with a superior technology. Then what were the problems? Why has even a single GM crop not been commercialized in Korea? The tardiness shown by business in adopting the GM crop is caused by many factors: academical weakness, poor research funding, short knowledge of risk assessment, public concern, no successful experience, lack of professional leaders on GM variety development, lack of systems toward industrialization and inappropriate target transgenes from the beginning. In order to catch up in the race for the new green industry, each one of us in private sectors alongside academia and national research institutes needs to focus altogether on what can be done best in terms of choosing crops, investing fund and establishing a road map for commercialization of GM crops.