• Archives of design research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.37-48
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• 2004

Keiji Kobo is a unique self-generated design research group in Japan, which was founded in 1928 when Bauhaus movement was in its peak, and which lasted ten years until the end of the Second World War, when any activity of the group became virtually impossible due to the war. With insight to see the future, the group aimed at Modern Design advocating a new spirit in architecture, and played a significant role in prosperity of Japanese Modern Design assimilating Western design trends. Pursuing of craft works for everyday life--practical furniture works--Keiji Kobo actively executed various projects to realize modern philosophy. The range of the works of this group was very large: survey, mock-up, experiment, research, exhibition, lecture, order-based sale, advertising and writing. The works of the group were oriented to serious academicism, not compromising with commercialism. Considering the peculiar political situation such as Japanese Militarism, the spirit of functionalism that the group pursued was surprisingly academical and pure. This group was relatively small and clumsy, which lasted as short as around ten years. However, strong motivation was in their seemingly quiet movements, and the influence of the group cannot be underestimated even with today's criteria. There were a number of pioneers who contributed to today's prosperity of Japan and Keiji Kobo can be estimated to be one of the pioneers in the field of design. It was found that the contemporary intellectuals hoped that the committment and activity of the group would contribute to modernization of the life quality of ordinary people. In a sense, Keiji Kobo can be estimated to be a little Japanese equivalent for Bauhaus that could not fully bloom.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.1-33
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• 2009

This research investigates the effect of brand-self identification on brand attachment and brand commitment focusing on luxury brand. Another purpose of this study is to examine how the relationships among brand identification, brand attachment and brand committment are moderated by consumers' regulatory focus. Structural Equation Modeling using 214 questionnaires was conducted to test hypothesized model. The results reveal that perceived luxury brand personality including excitement, competence, and sophistication influences brand-self identification positively, which in turn has a signifiant positive effect on the brand attachment. It is also found that consumers' emotional attachment to luxury brands has a positive influence on the luxury brand commitment while the effect of the brand-self identification on the brand commitment is not signifiant. This finding strongly supports that brand attachment and brand commitment are distinct construct, which confirms the results of the previous studies. In addition, the results show that consumers-luxury brands relationships are moderated by consumers' regulatory focus. This finding explains that prevention-focused individuals who have interdependent self-view respond to the loss caused by relationship break more sensitively compared to the promotion-focused consumers. Finally, based on the findings of this study, theoretical contribution and managerial implications are discussed.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.1-33
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• 2008

As the interest in the business-to-business(B2B) electronic commerce is increasing, many companies are participating in the B2B e-Marketplaces. The e-Marketplace is defined as the virtual market that many players take part in to transact. The e-Marketplace has an influenced on the manner in which organizational buyers and sellers interact. As a result, it is important to develop an understanding of the behaviors of firms that use these electronic marketplaces. The purpose of this study is to develop a comprehensive model for trust and commitment of B2B e-Marketplace and empirically to examine their structural relationships. Drawing from trust and commitment theory in the interorganizational relationship and B2B electronic commerce context, this study identifies network externality, interactivity, justice, quality of information sharing, institutional assurance as the determinants of trust and commitment of e-Marketplace. The proposed model hypothesized that (1) trust is a function of network externality, interactivity, justice, quality of information sharing, institutional assurance, (2) attitudinal and behavioral commitment is a function of trust, (3) behavioral commitment is a function of attitudinal commitment. The proposed model is tested using organizational-level survey data from 187 buying organizations that conduct business in MRO e-Marketplaces. The data were tested by reliability test, correlation analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and covariance structure analysis. The results indicate that (1) trust is influenced by network externality, interactivity, justice, institutional assurance, (2) attitudinal commitment and behavioral commitment is influenced by trust (3) behavioral commitment is influenced by attitudinal commitment. Also, the empirical results confirmed that trust play a strong, central role in determinging e-Marketplace commitment. The key theoretical contribution of this research is that it begins to extend interorganizational information system literature in areas such as B2B Internet e-Marketplace. Managerially, this study contributes tn the understanding of the role of B2B e-Markeplace providers in Internet situation. And Limitations of this study and guidelines for future researches are also discussed.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.113-156
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• 2016

Media scholars take a lion stake in power circle. Not only do they take a part in media policies but seize prestigious positions like board members in Korea Communication Commission(KCC). Unfortunately, though, little has been known about who they are, what qualifications they have, and whether they meet public interests. This paper attempts to unveil the mechanism of those politicized intellectuals who are specialized on the media. Two categories divided into 'representative' and 'expertise' are employed for this purpose. On the one hand, the representative means the degree of committment into such public services as participation in conferences or non-profit organizations. On the other hand, the number of research articles, books and projects belong to the expertise. Evaluation levels consist of 'excellence, good and average' were allocated to those scholars who are(were) in 'Power Hole,' where decision makings come into being. Some interesting observations were made though this study. First of all, such criteria as representative and expertise vaguely suggested by the laws were hardly fit into those intellectuals, Rarely did they commit into public service let alone showing vigilance in academic activities. Secondly, both ideological loyalty and political activities in line with the government had much to do with taking such positions. Thirdly, not surprisingly, it showed that to graduate from Seoul National University and have Ph.D. degree from U.S.A. was one of the most essential factors. In final, most of them were very good at taking advantage of the press in way of boosting their publicity. To attend at policy making processes either in form of board members or advisers is inevitable for media experts. However, as shown in this study, such qualification of public service and academic eagerness shouldn't be underestimated. Academic integrity not selling intelligence solely for private interests needs to be protected as well. The authors hope this study to provide a valuable opportunity to establish a kind of ethical standards in participating into politics.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.617-647
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• 2015

The purposes of this study was to develop a valid scale measuring organization-related anxiety and to use this scale to examine the relation of organizational anxiety to demographic variables, job satisfaction and organizational committment. A series of studies were conducted to develop a scale for organizational anxiety. Initially, the 97 items were adopted by expert ratings. A exploratory factor analysis with a sample of 435 workers yielded a preliminary version of organizational anxiety scale with 28 items. Subsequently, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with a sample of 566 workers, leaving 20 items. The final version of the organizational anxiety scale consisted of 4 sub-factors: perception of future uncertainty, perception of locus of control, interpersonal anxiety, and perception of alternatives. In this study, the examined demographic characteristics included sex, age, type of occupation, type of industry, occupational position, monthly income and educational level. Organizational effectiveness was composed of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. As mediators, organizational culture, life satisfaction, self efficacy, and social support were explored. The negative relationship was observed between organizational anxiety and organizational effectiveness. The results showed the significant differences in organizational anxiety by demographic characteristics. The mediators were explored for the relationship between organizational anxiety and job satisfaction and between organizational anxiety and organizational commitment. The negative relationship between organizational anxiety and job satisfaction was mediated by the group culture, the developmental culture, the rational culture, life satisfaction, self-efficacy, and social support. Individuals with the higher level of these mediators reported greater job satisfaction even if they experienced organizational anxiety. The partial mediation effect of the group culture, the developmental culture, the rational culture, life satisfaction, and social support was observed on the negative relationship between organizational anxiety and organizational commitment. These results implies that job satisfaction and organizational commitment can be improved with the interventions on organizational cultures, self-efficacy, and social support despite the presence of organizational anxiety. Based on these results, the implication and limitations of this study and the directions for future research discussed.

• 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.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.57-79
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• 2016

It is a rising trend that the number of users using one of the social media channels, the Social Network Service, so called the SNS, is getting increased. As per to this social trend, more companies have interest in this networking platform and start to invest their funds in it. It has received much attention as a tool spreading and expanding the message that a company wants to deliver to its customers and has been recognized as an important channel in terms of the relationship marketing with them. The environment of media that is radically changing these days makes possible for companies to approach their customers in various ways. Particularly, the social network service, which has been developed rapidly, provides the environment that customers can freely talk about products. For companies, it also works as a channel that gives customized information to customers. To succeed in the online environment, companies need to not only build the relationship between companies and customers but focus on the relationship between customers as well. In response to the online environment with the continuous development of technology, companies have tirelessly made the novel marketing strategy. Especially, as the one-to-one marketing to customers become available, it is more important for companies to maintain the relationship marketing with their customers. Among many SNS, Facebook, which many companies use as a communication channel, provides a fan page service for each company that supports its business. Facebook fan page is the platform that the event, information and announcement can be shared with customers using texts, videos, and pictures. Companies open their own fan pages in order to inform their companies and businesses. Such page functions as the websites of companies and has a characteristic of their brand communities such as blogs as well. As Facebook has become the major communication medium with customers, companies recognize its importance as the effective marketing channel, but they still need to investigate their business performances by using Facebook. Although there are infinite potentials in Facebook fan page that even has a function as a community between users, which other platforms do not, it is incomplete to regard companies' Facebook fan pages as communities and analyze them. In this study, it explores the relationship among customers through the network of the Facebook fan page users. The previous studies on a company's Facebook fan page were focused on finding out the effective operational direction by analyzing the use state of the company. However, in this study, it draws out the structural variable of the network, which customer committment can be measured by applying the social network analysis methodology and investigates the influence of the structural characteristics of network on the business performance of companies in an empirical way. Through each company's Facebook fan page, the network of users who engaged in the communication with each company is exploited and it is the one-mode undirected binary network that respectively regards users and the relationship of them in terms of their marketing activities as the node and link. In this network, it draws out the structural variable of network that can explain the customer commitment, who pressed "like," made comments and shared the Facebook marketing message, of each company by calculating density, global clustering coefficient, mean geodesic distance, diameter. By exploiting companies' historical performance such as net income and Tobin's Q indicator as the result variables, this study investigates influence on companies' business performances. For this purpose, it collects the network data on the subjects of 54 companies among KOSPI-listed companies, which have posted more than 100 articles on their Facebook fan pages during the data collection period. Then it draws out the network indicator of each company. The indicator related to companies' performances is calculated, based on the posted value on DART website of the Financial Supervisory Service. From the academic perspective, this study suggests a new approach through the social network analysis methodology to researchers who attempt to study the business-purpose utilization of the social media channel. From the practical perspective, this study proposes the more substantive marketing performance measurements to companies performing marketing activities through the social media and it is expected that it will bring a foundation of establishing smart business strategies by using the network indicators.