• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.65-88
• /
• 2008

Since the implementation of economic reforms in 1978, the Chinese economy grows rapidly at an average annul growth rate of 9% over the post two decades. Franchising has been widely recognized as an important source of entrepreneurial activity. Trust is important in that it facilitates relational exchanges by permits partners to transcend short-run inequities or risks to concentrate on long-term profits or gains. In the relationship between the franchisors and franchisees, trust has been described as an important source of competitive advantage. However, little research has been done on the factors affecting trust in Chinese franchisor-franchisee relationships. The purpose of this study is to investigate what factors affect the trust in the franchise system in China, and to provide guidelines and insights to franchisors which enter Chinese market. In this study, according to Morgan and Hunt (1994), trust is defined as the extending when one party has confidence in an exchange partner's reliability and integrity. We offered a conceptual model of the empirical study. The model shows that the factors affecting the trust include franchisor's supports, communication, satisfaction with previous outcome and conflict. We also suggested the franchisor's supports and communication like to enhance the franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome, and the franchisor's supports, communication and he franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome tend to decrease conflict. Before the formal study, a pretest involving exploratory interviews with owners from three franchisees was conducted to make sure the questionnaire was relevant and clear to the respondents. The data were collected using trained interviewers to carry out personal interviews with the aid of an unidentified, muti-page, structured questionnaire. The respondents comprised of owners, managers, and owner managers of franchisee-owned food service franchises located in Beijing, China. Even though a total of 256 potential franchises were initially contacted, the finally usable sample consisted of 125 respondents. As expected, the sampling method was successful in soliciting respondents with waried personal and firm characteristics. Self-administrated questionnaires were used for all measures. And established scales were used to measure the latent constructs in this study. The measures tapped the franchisees' perceptions of the relationship with the referent franchisor. Five-point Likert-type scales ranging from "strongly disagree" (=1) to "strongly agree" (=7) were used throughout the constructs (trust, eight items; support, five items; communication, four items; satisfaction, six items; conflict, three items). The reliability measurements traditionally employed, such as the Cronbach's alpha, were used. All the reliabilities were greater than.80. The proposed measurement model was estimated using SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 5.0 analysis package. We conducted A series of exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses to assess the convergent validity, discriminant validity, and reliability. The results indicate reasonable overall fits between the model and the observed data. The overall fit of measurement model were $X^2$= 159.699, p=0.004, d.f. = 116, GFI =.879, NFI =.898, CFI =.969, IFI =.970, TLI =.959, RMR =.058. The results demonstrated that the data reasonably fitted the model. We also examined construct reliability and reliability and average variance extracted (AVE). The construct reliability of each construct was greater than.80 and the AVE of each construct was greater than.50. According to the analysis of Structure Equation Modeling (SEM), the results of path model indicated an adequate fit of the model: $X^2$= 142.126, p = 0.044, d.f. = 115, GFI =.892, NFI =.909, CFI =.981, IFI =.981, TLI =.974, RMR =.057. As hypothesized, the results showed that it is strategically important to establish trust in a franchise system, and the franchisor's supports, communication and satisfaction with previous outcome tend to reinforce franchisee's trust. The results also showed trust seems to decrease as the experience of conflict episodes increases. And we also noticed that franchisor's supports and communication tend to enhance the franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome, and communication tend to decrease conflict. If the trust between the franchisor and franchisee can be established in a franchise system, franchising offers many benefits and reduces many costs. To manage a mutual trust of relationship with their franchisees, franchisor's should provide support effectively to their franchisees. Effective assistant services have direct effect on franchisees' satisfaction with previous outcome and trust in franchisor. Especially, franchise sales process, orientation, and training in the start-up period are key elements for success of the franchise system. Franchisor's support is an accumulated separate satisfaction evaluation with different kind of service provided by the franchisor. And providing support definitely can improve the trustworthy image of the franchisor. In the franchise system, conflicts of interests and exertions of different power sources are very common. The experience of conflict episodes seems to negatively relate to trust. Therefore, it is important to reduce the negative side of the relationship conflicts. Communication actually plays a broader role in reducing conflict and establish mutual trust in franchisor-franchisee relationship. And effective communication between franchisors and franchisees can improve franchisees' satisfaction toward the franchise system. As the diversification of Chinese markets, both franchisors and franchisees must keep the relevant, timely, and reliable communication. And it is very important to improve the quality of communication. Satisfaction with precious outcomes seems to positively relate to trust. Franchisors and franchisees that are highly satisfied with the previous outcomes that flow from their relationship will perceive their partner as advancing their goal achievement. Therefore, it is necessary for both franchisor and their franchisees to make the welfare of partner with effort. Little literature has focused on what factors affect the trust between franchisors and their franchisees in China. This study developed the hypotheses regarding the factors affecting trust in the transaction relationship. The results of data analysis supported the hypotheses strongly. There are certain limitations in this study. First, we may point out that some other factors missed in this study could be significantly important. Second, the context of this study, food service industry, limits its potential generalizability for all franchise systems. More studies in different categories of franchise system are needed to broaden its generalizability. Third, the model was tested empirically in a sample in Beijing, more empirical tests of the proposed model in other Chinese areas are needed. Finally, the analysis in this study was solely based on the perception of franchisees and the opinions of franchisors were not included.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.211-232
• /
• 2014

Recently, there is a growing interest toward social commerce using SNS(Social Networking Service), and the size of its market is also expanding due to popularization of smart phones, tablet PCs and other smart devices. Accordingly, various studies have been attempted but it is shown that most of the previous studies have been conducted from perspectives of the users. The purpose of this study is to derive user-centered CSF(Critical Success Factor) of social commerce from the previous studies and analyze the CSF perception gap between social commerce service providers and users. The CSF perception gap between two groups shows that there is a difference between ideal images the service providers hope for and the actual image the service users have on social commerce companies. This study provides effective improvement directions for social commerce companies by presenting current business problems and its solution plans. For this, This study selected Korea's representative social commerce business Ticket Monster, which is dominant in sales and staff size together with its excellent funding power through M&A by stock exchange with the US social commerce business Living Social with Amazon.com as a shareholder in August, 2011, as a target group of social commerce service provider. we have gathered questionnaires from both service providers and the users from October 22, 2012 until October 31, 2012 to conduct an empirical analysis. We surveyed 160 service providers of Ticket Monster We also surveyed 160 social commerce users who have experienced in using Ticket Monster service. Out of 320 surveys, 20 questionaries which were unfit or undependable were discarded. Consequently the remaining 300(service provider 150, user 150)were used for this empirical study. The statistics were analyzed using SPSS 12.0. Implications of the empirical analysis result of this study are as follows: First of all, There are order differences in the importance of social commerce CSF between two groups. While service providers regard Price Economic as the most important CSF influencing purchasing intention, the users regard 'Trust' as the most important CSF influencing purchasing intention. This means that the service providers have to utilize the unique strong point of social commerce which make the customers be trusted rathe than just focusing on selling product at a discounted price. It means that service Providers need to enhance effective communication skills by using SNS and play a vital role as a trusted adviser who provides curation services and explains the value of products through information filtering. Also, they need to pay attention to preventing consumer damages from deceptive and false advertising. service providers have to create the detailed reward system in case of a consumer damages caused by above problems. It can make strong ties with customers. Second, both service providers and users tend to consider that social commerce CSF influencing purchasing intention are Price Economic, Utility, Trust, and Word of Mouth Effect. Accordingly, it can be learned that users are expecting the benefit from the aspect of prices and economy when using social commerce, and service providers should be able to suggest the individualized discount benefit through diverse methods using social network service. Looking into it from the aspect of usefulness, service providers are required to get users to be cognizant of time-saving, efficiency, and convenience when they are using social commerce. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the usefulness of social commerce through the introduction of a new management strategy, such as intensification of search engine of the Website, facilitation in payment through shopping basket, and package distribution. Trust, as mentioned before, is the most important variable in consumers' mind, so it should definitely be managed for sustainable management. If the trust in social commerce should fall due to consumers' damage case due to false and puffery advertising forgeries, it could have a negative influence on the image of the social commerce industry in general. Instead of advertising with famous celebrities and using a bombastic amount of money on marketing expenses, the social commerce industry should be able to use the word of mouth effect between users by making use of the social network service, the major marketing method of initial social commerce. The word of mouth effect occurring from consumers' spontaneous self-marketer's duty performance can bring not only reduction effect in advertising cost to a service provider but it can also prepare the basis of discounted price suggestion to consumers; in this context, the word of mouth effect should be managed as the CSF of social commerce. Third, Trade safety was not derived as one of the CSF. Recently, with e-commerce like social commerce and Internet shopping increasing in a variety of methods, the importance of trade safety on the Internet also increases, but in this study result, trade safety wasn't evaluated as CSF of social commerce by both groups. This study judges that it's because both service provider groups and user group are perceiving that there is a reliable PG(Payment Gateway) which acts for e-payment of Internet transaction. Accordingly, it is understood that both two groups feel that social commerce can have a corporate identity by website and differentiation in products and services in sales, but don't feel a big difference by business in case of e-payment system. In other words, trade safety should be perceived as natural, basic universal service. Fourth, it's necessary that service providers should intensify the communication with users by making use of social network service which is the major marketing method of social commerce and should be able to use the word of mouth effect between users. The word of mouth effect occurring from consumers' spontaneous self- marketer's duty performance can bring not only reduction effect in advertising cost to a service provider but it can also prepare the basis of discounted price suggestion to consumers. in this context, it is judged that the word of mouth effect should be managed as CSF of social commerce. In this paper, the characteristics of social commerce are limited as five independent variables, however, if an additional study is proceeded with more various independent variables, more in-depth study results will be derived. In addition, this research targets social commerce service providers and the users, however, in the consideration of the fact that social commerce is a two-sided market, drawing CSF through an analysis of perception gap between social commerce service providers and its advertisement clients would be worth to be dealt with in a follow-up study.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.363-368
• /
• 2014

Purpose : The aim of this study was to appraise properties for radiation therapy techniques and effectiveness of time and economy to a patient in the case of applying flattening filter-free (3F) and flattening filter (2F) beam to the radiation therapy. Materials and Methods : Alderson rando phantom was scanned for computed tomography image. Treatment plans for intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) and stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) with 3F and 2F beam were designed for prostate cancer. To evaluate the differences between the 3F and 2F beam, total monitor units (MUs), beam on time (BOT) and gantry rotation time (GRT) were used and measured with $TrueBeam^{TM}$ STx and Surveillance And Measurement (SAM) 940 detector was used for photoneutron emitted by using 3F and 2F. To assess temporal and economical aspect for a patient, total treatment periods and medical fees were estimated. Results : In using 3F beam, total MUs in IMRT plan increased the highest up to 34.0% and in the test of BOT, GRT and photoneutron, the values in SBRT plan decreased the lowest 39.8, 38.6 and 48.1%, respectively. In the temporal and economical aspect, there were no differences between 3F and 2F beam in all of plans and the results showed that 10 days and 169,560 won was lowest in SBRT plan. Conclusion : According as the results, total MUs increased by using 3F beam than 2F beam but BOT, GRT and photoneutron decreased. From above the results, using 3F beam can decrease intra-fraction setup error and risk of radiation-induced secondary malignancy. But, using 3F beam did not make the benefits of temporal and economical aspect for a patient with the radiation therapy.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.81-99
• /
• 2010

Lately, in consumers' markets the number of new items is rapidly increasing at an overwhelming rate while consumers have limited access to information about those new products in making a sensible, well-informed purchase. Therefore, item providers and customers need a system which recommends right items to right customers. Also, whenever new items are released, for instance, the recommender system specializing in new items can help item providers locate and identify potential customers. Currently, new items are being added to an existing system without being specially noted to consumers, making it difficult for consumers to identify and evaluate new products introduced in the markets. Most of previous approaches for recommender systems have to rely on the usage history of customers. For new items, this content-based (CB) approach is simply not available for the system to recommend those new items to potential consumers. Although collaborative filtering (CF) approach is not directly applicable to solve the new item problem, it would be a good idea to use the basic principle of CF which identifies similar customers, i,e. neighbors, and recommend items to those customers who have liked the similar items in the past. This research aims to suggest a hybrid recommendation procedure based on the preference boundary of target customer. We suggest the hybrid recommendation procedure using the preference boundary in the feature space for recommending new items only. The basic principle is that if a new item belongs within the preference boundary of a target customer, then it is evaluated to be preferred by the customer. Customers' preferences and characteristics of items including new items are represented in a feature space, and the scope or boundary of the target customer's preference is extended to those of neighbors'. The new item recommendation procedure consists of three steps. The first step is analyzing the profile of items, which are represented as k-dimensional feature values. The second step is to determine the representative point of the target customer's preference boundary, the centroid, based on a personal information set. To determine the centroid of preference boundary of a target customer, three algorithms are developed in this research: one is using the centroid of a target customer only (TC), the other is using centroid of a (dummy) big target customer that is composed of a target customer and his/her neighbors (BC), and another is using centroids of a target customer and his/her neighbors (NC). The third step is to determine the range of the preference boundary, the radius. The suggested algorithm Is using the average distance (AD) between the centroid and all purchased items. We test whether the CF-based approach to determine the centroid of the preference boundary improves the recommendation quality or not. For this purpose, we develop two hybrid algorithms, BC and NC, which use neighbors when deciding centroid of the preference boundary. To test the validity of hybrid algorithms, BC and NC, we developed CB-algorithm, TC, which uses target customers only. We measured effectiveness scores of suggested algorithms and compared them through a series of experiments with a set of real mobile image transaction data. We spilt the period between 1st June 2004 and 31st July and the period between 1st August and 31st August 2004 as a training set and a test set, respectively. The training set Is used to make the preference boundary, and the test set is used to evaluate the performance of the suggested hybrid recommendation procedure. The main aim of this research Is to compare the hybrid recommendation algorithm with the CB algorithm. To evaluate the performance of each algorithm, we compare the purchased new item list in test period with the recommended item list which is recommended by suggested algorithms. So we employ the evaluation metric to hit the ratio for evaluating our algorithms. The hit ratio is defined as the ratio of the hit set size to the recommended set size. The hit set size means the number of success of recommendations in our experiment, and the test set size means the number of purchased items during the test period. Experimental test result shows the hit ratio of BC and NC is bigger than that of TC. This means using neighbors Is more effective to recommend new items. That is hybrid algorithm using CF is more effective when recommending to consumers new items than the algorithm using only CB. The reason of the smaller hit ratio of BC than that of NC is that BC is defined as a dummy or virtual customer who purchased all items of target customers' and neighbors'. That is centroid of BC often shifts from that of TC, so it tends to reflect skewed characters of target customer. So the recommendation algorithm using NC shows the best hit ratio, because NC has sufficient information about target customers and their neighbors without damaging the information about the target customers.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.41-50
• /
• 2004

This research proposes the on-stage costumes for the play Hamlet of Shakespeare performed by Yunheedan Guhri Pae - the Street Theater Troupe. Stage costumes have an important role in displaying the characteristics of each characters to the audience and has big visual effects. However, in order to design the costumes in the object viewpoints of the audience, the survey on the images of the characters who had actually watched the performance was taken place and proposed the costume design according to the results of the survey. Hamlet a: This result was applied to propose a sweater in black color, black leather pants and vest. Hamlet b: This result was applied to propose hooded coat in purple in middle level of brightness and color spectrum and yellow coat. For free image, loose pants in blue and vest in the same color tone were proposed. Gertrude a: This result was applied to use purple (violet) with reddish tone to propose the formation of a dress applying tailored suit. Gertrude b: This result was applied to propose purple gown and the one-piece dress with black laces. Ophelia a: This result was applied to propose feminine white dress and cape in purple color tone. Ophelia b: This result was applied to propose dyed and weaved clothes. Through the surveys as above, the images of each character was driven in adjectives, and using the results driven from the brightness, coloration, and color, color images were proposed. Only one costume cannot make up for the stage costumes and because it exists as an element of stage production, it is true that costumes are limited in some areas. However, that limit can become the motive of the costume. There is a limit, which the designer cannot produce the costumes as he or she had designed but I believe it is the center of the on-stage customers to display the characteristics of the characters according to the given concept. The limit of this research is the fact that because the costumes were designed so they fit the conditions already given, thus it was difficult to regard the process of designing and producing the costume as a project done according to the interaction. And in the future, if it is possible, I wish for the joint research with the people responsible for stage art to take place as a practical stage art. It was possible to produce practical costume since they were produced for actual performance and the production of costumes considering the dance steps, line of flow, and acting, was able to reduce the trial and error on stage. Through this research, I felt that the understanding and smooth interaction on diverse other areas not limited to the costume design should be taken place and believe that this was a research that proposes new research method since there had been only a few previous research regarding the on-stage costumes for actual performances. Therefore, this research had depended on the surveys given to the audiences to endow objectivity, however, I wish this research can contribute to defining effective process and methods for the on-stage costumes with more active researches with diverse methods and in diverse areas. I am sorry that the costume production for all the characters and all the scenes in Hamlet couldn't be done due to many limitations. As the following research assignment, I am planning on designing the costumes for all the scenes.

• Proceedings of the Optical Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2003.07a
• /
• pp.60-61
• /
• 2003

A new approach to reduce the computation time of genetic algorithm (GA) for making binary phase holograms is described. Synthesized holograms having diffraction efficiency of 75.8% and uniformity of 5.8% are proven in computer simulation and experimentally demonstrated. Recently, computer-generated holograms (CGHs) having high diffraction efficiency and flexibility of design have been widely developed in many applications such as optical information processing, optical computing, optical interconnection, etc. Among proposed optimization methods, GA has become popular due to its capability of reaching nearly global. However, there exits a drawback to consider when we use the genetic algorithm. It is the large amount of computation time to construct desired holograms. One of the major reasons that the GA' s operation may be time intensive results from the expense of computing the cost function that must Fourier transform the parameters encoded on the hologram into the fitness value. In trying to remedy this drawback, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been put forward, allowing CGHs to be created easily and quickly (1), but the quality of reconstructed images is not high enough to use in applications of high preciseness. For that, we are in attempt to find a new approach of combiningthe good properties and performance of both the GA and ANN to make CGHs of high diffraction efficiency in a short time. The optimization of CGH using the genetic algorithm is merely a process of iteration, including selection, crossover, and mutation operators [2]. It is worth noting that the evaluation of the cost function with the aim of selecting better holograms plays an important role in the implementation of the GA. However, this evaluation process wastes much time for Fourier transforming the encoded parameters on the hologram into the value to be solved. Depending on the speed of computer, this process can even last up to ten minutes. It will be more effective if instead of merely generating random holograms in the initial process, a set of approximately desired holograms is employed. By doing so, the initial population will contain less trial holograms equivalent to the reduction of the computation time of GA's. Accordingly, a hybrid algorithm that utilizes a trained neural network to initiate the GA's procedure is proposed. Consequently, the initial population contains less random holograms and is compensated by approximately desired holograms. Figure 1 is the flowchart of the hybrid algorithm in comparison with the classical GA. The procedure of synthesizing a hologram on computer is divided into two steps. First the simulation of holograms based on ANN method [1] to acquire approximately desired holograms is carried. With a teaching data set of 9 characters obtained from the classical GA, the number of layer is 3, the number of hidden node is 100, learning rate is 0.3, and momentum is 0.5, the artificial neural network trained enables us to attain the approximately desired holograms, which are fairly good agreement with what we suggested in the theory. The second step, effect of several parameters on the operation of the hybrid algorithm is investigated. In principle, the operation of the hybrid algorithm and GA are the same except the modification of the initial step. Hence, the verified results in Ref [2] of the parameters such as the probability of crossover and mutation, the tournament size, and the crossover block size are remained unchanged, beside of the reduced population size. The reconstructed image of 76.4% diffraction efficiency and 5.4% uniformity is achieved when the population size is 30, the iteration number is 2000, the probability of crossover is 0.75, and the probability of mutation is 0.001. A comparison between the hybrid algorithm and GA in term of diffraction efficiency and computation time is also evaluated as shown in Fig. 2. With a 66.7% reduction in computation time and a 2% increase in diffraction efficiency compared to the GA method, the hybrid algorithm demonstrates its efficient performance. In the optical experiment, the phase holograms were displayed on a programmable phase modulator (model XGA). Figures 3 are pictures of diffracted patterns of the letter "0" from the holograms generated using the hybrid algorithm. Diffraction efficiency of 75.8% and uniformity of 5.8% are measured. We see that the simulation and experiment results are fairly good agreement with each other. In this paper, Genetic Algorithm and Neural Network have been successfully combined in designing CGHs. This method gives a significant reduction in computation time compared to the GA method while still allowing holograms of high diffraction efficiency and uniformity to be achieved. This work was supported by No.mOl-2001-000-00324-0 (2002)) from the Korea Science & Engineering Foundation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2012.08a
• /
• pp.154-155
• /
• 2012

The promise of nano-crystalites (nc) as a technological material, for applications including display backplane, and solar cells, may ultimately depend on tailoring their behavior through doping and crystallinity. Impurities can strongly modify electronic and optical properties of bulk and nc semiconductors. Highly doped dopant also effect structural properties (both grain size, crystal fraction) of nc-Si thin film. As discussed in several literatures, P atoms or radicals have the tendency to reside on the surface of nc. The P-radical segregation on the nano-grain surfaces that called self-purification may reduce the possibility of new nucleation because of the five-coordination of P. In addition, the P doping levels of ${\sim}2{\times}10^{21}\;at/cm^3$ is the solubility limitation of P in Si; the solubility of nc thin film should be smaller. Therefore, the non-activated P tends to segregate on the grain boundaries and the surface of nc. These mechanisms could prevent new nucleation on the existing grain surface. Therefore, most researches shown that highly doped nc-thin film by using conventional PECVD deposition system tended to have low crystallinity, where the formation energy of nucleation should be higher than the nc surface in the intrinsic materials. If the deposition technology that can make highly doped and simultaneously highly crystallized nc at low temperature, it can lead processes of next generation flexible devices. Recently, we are developing a novel CVD technology with a neutral particle beam (NPB) source, named as neutral beam assisted CVD (NBaCVD), which controls the energy of incident neutral particles in the range of 1~300eV in order to enhance the atomic activation and crystalline of thin films at low temperatures. During the formation of the nc-/pm-Si thin films by the NBaCVD with various process conditions, NPB energy directly controlled by the reflector bias and effectively increased crystal fraction (~80%) by uniformly distributed nc grains with 3~10 nm size. In the case of phosphorous doped Si thin films, the doping efficiency also increased as increasing the reflector bias (i.e. increasing NPB energy). At 330V of reflector bias, activation energy of the doped nc-Si thin film reduced as low as 0.001 eV. This means dopants are fully occupied as substitutional site, even though the Si thin film has nano-sized grain structure. And activated dopant concentration is recorded as high as up to 1020 #/$cm^3$ at very low process temperature (＜ $80^{\circ}C$) process without any post annealing. Theoretical solubility for the higher dopant concentration in Si thin film for order of 1020 #/$cm^3$ can be done only high temperature process or post annealing over $650^{\circ}C$. In general, as decreasing the grain size, the dopant binding energy increases as ratio of 1 of diameter of grain and the dopant hardly be activated. The highly doped nc-Si thin film by low-temperature NBaCVD process had smaller average grain size under 10 nm (measured by GIWAXS, GISAXS and TEM analysis), but achieved very higher activation of phosphorous dopant; NB energy sufficiently transports its energy to doping and crystallization even though without supplying additional thermal energy. TEM image shows that incubation layer does not formed between nc-Si film and SiO2 under later and highly crystallized nc-Si film is constructed with uniformly distributed nano-grains in polymorphous tissues. The nucleation should be start at the first layer on the SiO2 later, but it hardly growth to be cone-shaped micro-size grains. The nc-grain evenly embedded pm-Si thin film can be formatted by competition of the nucleation and the crystal growing, which depend on the NPB energies. In the evaluation of the light soaking degradation of photoconductivity, while conventional intrinsic and n-type doped a-Si thin films appeared typical degradation of photoconductivity, all of the nc-Si thin films processed by the NBaCVD show only a few % of degradation of it. From FTIR and RAMAN spectra, the energetic hydrogen NB atoms passivate nano-grain boundaries during the NBaCVD process because of the high diffusivity and chemical potential of hydrogen atoms.

• Archives of design research
• /
• v.15 no.4
• /
• pp.275-284
• /
• 2002

To improve the social and economic position of the disabled people and secure their human rights, an integrated society should be buill. To build such a society, an adequate access should be provided to the movement or in using buildings or facilities. The inconveniences from social life on the part of the disabled people might not result from their impairment or disability, but from physical and social barriers in the environment surrounding them. Therefore, it is necessary to reconstruct entire systems of the society as a disabled people-friendly structure in order to remove those barriers, make them stand their own feet in our communities and freely participate in the social activities. This will eventually lead to build a society in which all people including the disabled people can use those facilities in a more convenient way. It is almost impossible for the disabled people to safely and conveniently access to and use facilities and equipments and freely move to their desired places, without any help from others in Korea. Even though, there are currently many disabled people-related convenience facilities, they have been independently built without a connection with other facilities and buildings, thus not greatly useful. Even when convenience facilities have been built, mostly they are superficially set up; therefore, in many cases, the disabled peOple cannot use those facilities. In this. research, I tried a new concept of mobile wheelchair lift design, which the disabled people can operate without restrictions, when using the public facilities. The key to this research was to develop the existing import-oriented simple functional products to a new system with functional safety and high quality orientation. Also, this research aimed at bringing an. import substitution effect, as well as preempting the mobile wheelchair lift market by advancing into overseas markets through application of new image designs in the field of disabled people aid equipments.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.76-81
• /
• 2014

Purpose: Diversity and the lachrymal duct deformities and the passage inside the nasal cavity except for anterior image such as epiphora happens during the test were able to express more precisely during the dacryoscintigraphy. Also, we thought about the necessity of a method to classify the passage into the naso-lachrymal duct from epiphora. Therefore, we are to find the validity of the method to obtain both oblique views except for anterior views. Materials and Methods: The targets of this research are 78 patients with epiphora due to the blockage at the lachrymal duct from January 2013 to August 2013. Average age was $56.96{\pm}13.36$. By using a micropipette, we dropped 1-2 drops of $^{99m}TcO4^-$ of 3.7 MBq (0.1 mCi) with $10{\mu}L$ of each drop into the inferior conjunctival fold, then we performed dynamic check for 20 minutes with 20 frames of each minute. In case of we checked the passage from both eyes to nasal cavity immediately after the dynamic check, we obtained oblique view immediately. If we didn't see the passage in either side of the orbit, we obtained oblique views of the orbit after checking the frontal film in 40 minutes. The instrument we used was Pin-hole Collimator with Gamma Camera(Siemens Orbiter, Hoffman Estates, IL, USA). Results: Among the 78 patients with dacryoscintigraphy, 35 patients were confirmed with passage into the nasal cavity from the anterior view. Among those 35 patients, 15 patients were confirmed with passage into the nasal cavity on both eyes, and it was able to observe better passage patterns through oblique view with a result of 8 on both eyes, 2 on left eye, and 1 on right eye. 20 patients had passage in left eye or right eye, among those patients 10 patients showed clear passage compared to the anterior view. 13 patients had possible passage, and 30 patients had no proof of motion of the tracer. To sum up, 21 patients (60%) among 35 patients showed clear pattern of passage with additional oblique views compared to anterior view. People responded obtaining oblique views though 5 points scale about the utility of passage identification helps make diagnoses the passage, passage delayed, and blockage of naso-lachrymal duct by showing the well-seen portions from anterior view. Also, when classifying passage to naso-lachrymal duct and flow to the skin, oblique views has higher chance of classification in case of epiphora (anterior:$4.14{\pm}0.3$, oblique:$4.55{\pm}0.4$). Conclusion: It is considered that if you obtain oblique views of the bilateral orbits in addition to anterior view during the dacryoscintigraphy, the ability of diagnose for reading will become higher because you will be able to see the areas that you could not observe from the anterior view so that you can see if it emitted after the naso-lachrymal duct and the flow of epiphora on the skin.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.61-118
• /
• 2008

The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.