• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.28-36
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• 2009

While existing literature has focused extensively on the strengths and weaknesses of the Chaebol and their ownership and governance, there have been few studies of Korean non-Chaebol firms. However, Lee, Lee and Pennings (2001) did not specifically investigate the competitive strategies that non-Chaebol firms use to survive against the Chaebol in the domestic Korean market. The motivation of this paper is to document, through four exploratory case studies, the successful competitive strategies of non-Chaebol Korean companies against the Chaebol and then offer some propositions that may be useful to other entrepreneurial firms as well as public policy makers. Competition and cooperation as conceptualized by product similarity and cooperative inter.firm relationship respectively, are major dimensions of firm.level marketing strategy. From these two dimensions, we develop the following $2{\times}2$ matrix, with 4 types of competitive strategies for non-Chaebol companies against the Chaebol (Fig. 1.). The non-Chaebol firm in Cell 1 has a "me-too" product for the low-end market while conceding the high-end market to a Chaebol. In Cell 2, the non-Chaebol firm partners with a Chaebol company, either as a supplier or complementor. In Cell 3, the non-Chaebol firm engages in direct competition with a Chaebol. In Cell 4, the non-Chaebol firm targets an unserved part of the market with an innovative product or service. The four selected cases such as E.Rae Electronics Industry Company (Co-exister), Intops (Supplier), Pantech (Competitor) and Humax (Niche Player) are analyzed to provide each strategy with richer insights. Following propositions are generated based upon our conceptual framework: Proposition 1: Non-Chaebol firms that have a cooperative relationship with a Chaebol will perform better than firms that do not. Proposition 1a; Co-existers will perform better than Competitors. Proposition 1b: Partners (suppliers or complementors) will perform better than Niche players. Proposition 2: Firms that have no product similarity with a Chaebol will perform better than firms that have product similarity. Proposition 2a: Partners (suppliers or complementors) will perform better than Co.existers. Proposition 2b: Niche players will perform better than Competitors. Proposition 3: Niche players should perform better than Co-existers. Proposition 4: Performance can be rank.ordered in descending order as Partners, Niche Players, Co.existers, Competitors. A team of experts was constituted to categorize each of these 216 non-Chaebol companies into one of the 4 cells in our typology. Simple Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) in SPSS statistical software was used to test our propositions. Overall findings are that it is better to have a cooperative relationship with a Chaebol and to offer products or services differentiated from a Chaebol. It is clear that the only profitable strategy, on average, to compete against the Chaebol is to be a partner (supplier or complementor). Competing head on with a Chaebol company is a costly strategy not likely to pay off for a non-Chaebol firm. Strategies to avoid head on competition with the Chaebol by serving niche markets with differentiated products or by serving the low-end of the market ignored by the Chaebol are better survival strategies. This paper illustrates that there are ways in which small and medium Korean non-Chaebol firms can thrive in a Chaebol environment, though not without risks. Using different combinations of competition and cooperation firms may choose particular positions along the product similarity and cooperative relationship dimensions to develop their competitive strategies-co-exister, competitor, partner, niche player. Based on our exploratory case-study analysis, partner seems to be the best strategy for non-Chaebol firms while competitor appears to be the most risky one. Niche players and co-existers have intermediate performance, though the former do better than the latter. It is often the case with managers of small and medium size companies that they tend to view market leaders, typically the Chaebol, with rather simplistic assumptions of either competition or collaboration. Consequently, many non-Chaebol firms turn out to be either passive collaborators or overwhelmed competitors of the Chaebol. In fact, competition and collaboration are not mutually exclusive, and can be pursued at the same time. As suggested in this paper, non-Chaebol firms can actively choose to compete and collaborate, depending on their environment, internal resources and capabilities.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.33-51
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• 2019

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to provide practical implications for Korean companies searching for new market opportunities. From the experimental analysis, the impact of country image on product-country image and purchase intention of Korean products are measured. In addition, this study disaggregates the impacts of country image and product-country image and purchase intention among ethnic groups in South Africa for searching further useful implications. Design/methodology - To examine South African consumers' country image and product-country image towards Korean products, data were collected between June and July 2019 through an online questionnaire, and 335 questionnaires were used for analysis. Firstly, the multivariate analysis was conducted to examine the general tendency of South African consumers' perceptions of country image to Korea, product-country image, and purchase intention among three ethnic group consumers. Then in order to verify the country image model and hypotheses of the study, we analyzed the structural models for each of the three ethnic groups and compared the sizes of the path coefficients for each groups. To compare the difference of path coefficients across ethnic groups, configural invariance, metric invariance, and scalar invariance tests were conducted sequentially. Findings - In the black and white ethnic groups, the country image had a statistically significant impact on product-country image, but it did not affect the purchase intention to Korean products. The product-country image showed a statistically significant impact on the purchase intention to Korean products in both ethnic group. However, in the coloured ethnic group consumer, the country image had a significant effect on the product-country image, but it did not affect the purchase intention of Korean products. In addition, the product-country image did not have a significant influence on the purchase intention of coloured ethnic group consumers unlike black and white ethnic group consumers. The results of this study suggest that even though differences in terms of the impact of CoI on PCI and PI were investigated for the sample of white, coloured, and black respondents, the groups seemed to respond in a reasonably comparable manner. Originality/value - South Africa occupies more than 20% of Africa's total GDP in sub-Saharan Africa and is a hub for Southern African logistics as a hub for Korean companies to enter Africa. However, it is rare to find a study focused on the determinants of consumer behavior in South Africa. In particular, this study disaggregates the impacts of country image and product-country image on consumer behavior across ethnic groups in South Africa. Therefore, this study could provide practical implications for Korean firms which desire to diversify their export markets and pioneer future markets.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.19-28
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• 2017

Collaborative filtering (CF) is a system that interprets the relationship between a user and a product and recommends the product to a specific user. The CF model is advantageous in that it can recommend products to users with only rating data without any additional information such as contents. However, there are many cases where a user does not give a rating even after consuming the product as well as consuming only a small portion of the total product. This means that the number of ratings observed is very small and the user rating matrix is very sparse. The sparsity of this rating data poses a problem in raising CF performance. In this paper, we concentrate on raising the performance of latent factor model (especially SVD). We propose a new model that includes product similarity information and co occurrence information in SVD. The similarity and concurrence information obtained from the rating data increased the expressiveness of the latent space in terms of latent factors. Thus, Recall increased by 16% and Precision and NDCG increased by 8% and 7%, respectively. The proposed method of the paper will show better performance than the existing method when combined with other recommender systems in the future.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.42-49
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• 2000

This paper presents a solid modeling system that enables real time co-operative modeling and discussion on m between geographically separated designers. The modeling system is implemented using CORBA architecture and integrated in WWW with Java technology. The server objects use a commercial solid modeling kernel to provide modeling features and access database including product model data. The client is implemented using Java2 platform so that enables end-users access the system with web-browsers.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.21-26
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• 1995

Electrochemical reduction of oxygen has been carried out at glassy carbon electrode and carbon ultramicroelectrode, the surface of which is modified with a new Co(Ⅱ)-Schiff base complex, Co(Ⅱ)-3,4-bis(salicylidene diimine)toluene in 1 M KOH solution. The results obtained from cyclic voltammetric and chronoamperometric experiments are consistent with the formation of the reasonably stable superoxide ions as a primary electron transfer reaction product. The exchange rate constant obtained for oxygen reduction is about 0.02 cm/s.

• Natural Product Sciences
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.70-74
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• 1999

In the course of a search for tumor necrosis factor $(TNF)-{\alpha}$ inhibitory compounds from medicinal plants, we identified neolignans, honokiol and magnolol, from the alcoholic extract of Magnolia offcinalis as active inhibitory principles. These compounds dose-dependently inhibited $TNF-{\alpha}$ production without displaying cytotoxicity and their inhibitory activities measured by $IC_{50}$ values were 53.7 and $61.4\;{\mu}M$, respectively.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.163-168
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• 1991

A new angiogenesis inhibitor, FR-118487 was obtained by chemical modification of FR-111142 which was isolated from the fermentation products of Scolecobasidium arenarium F-2015. The antiangiogenic activity of FR-118487 was compared with that of the parent compound, FR-111142. In the endothelial cell proliferation test in vitro and the angiogenesis in the chick embryo chorioal-lantoic membrane assay, FR-118487 had about 5∼10 times stronger antiangiogenic activities than FR-111142. In addition, FR-118487 inhibited the angiogenesis in the rabbit corneal assay and suppressed the solid tumor growth in mice. These findings showed that FR-118487 would be a unique antiangiogenic agent with promising antitumor activity.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.113-117
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• 2003

$Co_{78-x}Pt_xB_{10}Si_{12}$ alloys were produced using the melt-spin process in order to study the crystallization behavior and ensuing magnetic properties of the $Co_{78-x}Pt_xB_{10}Si_{12}$ (Co-Pt) amorphous alloys as a function of the Pt content. We showed that when $\chi$ $>$ 15 well below its stoichiometric composition, CoPt crystallized in the amorphous alloy, thus greatly altering the crystallized microstructure and magnetic properties during annealing. Below this composition, the main crystallization product was Co with Pt dissolved in its lattice. In spite of the nucleation of CoPt with high magnetic anisotropy, the highest coercivity was obtained when x was 15. It was also concluded that the Pt addition deteriorated the glass stability, triggering the devitrification at a progressively lower temperature.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.405-411
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• 2000

Electrochemical and spectroelectrochemical studies of cobalt-Schiff (Co-SB) base complexes, Co(salen) [N-N'-bis(salicylaldehyde)-ethylenediimino cobalt(II)] and Co(salophen) [N-N'-bis(salicylaldehyde)-1,2-pheny-lenediimino cobalt(II)], have been c arried out to test them as oxygen reduction catalysts. Both compounds were found to form an adduct with oxygen and exhibit catalytic activities for oxygen reduction. Comparison of spec-tra obtained from electrooxidized complexes with those from Co-SB complexes equilibrated with oxygen in-dicates that the latter are consistent with the postulated complex formed with oxygen occupying the coaxial ligand position, namely, Co(III)-SB·O2 - .The catalysis of oxygen reduction is thus achieved by reducing Co(III) in the oxygen-Co-SB adduct, releasing the oxygen reduction product, e.g., O2 - ., from the Co(II)-SB complex.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF PACKAGING SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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• v.18 no.1_2
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• pp.1-8
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• 2012

Kimchi, a Korean fermented vegetable is packaged without pasteurization and distributed with live bacteria actively working to produce lactic acid and carbon dioxide gas in the product. The $CO_2$ production consisting of two distinct phases of initial fast and later slow rates depends on kimchi type, salt content and storage temperature. The $CO_2$ produced from kimchi is accumulated in the product package causing volume expansion and pressure buildup. The dependence of $CO_2$ production rate on salt content and storage temperature has been published formerly and can be used for estimating the package volume and pressure under a variety of storage conditions. As methods to alleviate the problems from the produced $CO_2$, package designs with controlled diffusion pinhole, high $CO_2$ permeable film or $CO_2$ absorber have been tried by several researchers. Properly designed packages adopting the device or tool were shown to have high dissolved $CO_2$ in kimchi without volume expansion and pressure buildup, giving good sensory quality with carbonic taste. Advantages and limitations of each method have been discussed.