• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2013

This case focuses on Shanghai Tang, the first truly Chinese luxury brand that appeals to both Westerners and, more recently, to Chinese consumers worldwide. A visionary and wealthy businessman Sir David Tang created this company from scratch in 1994 in Hong Kong. Its story, spanned over almost two decades, has been fascinating. It went from what best a Chinese brand could be in the eyes of Westerners who love the Chinese culture, to a nearly-bankrupted company in 1998, before being acquired by Richemont, the second largest luxury group in the world. Since then, its turnaround has been spectacular with a growing appeal among Chinese luxury consumers who represent the core segment of the luxury industry today. The main objective of this case study is to formally examine how Shanghai Tang overcame its downfall and re-emerged as one the very few well- known Chinese luxury brands. More specifically, this case highlights the ways with which Shanghai Tang made a transitional change from a brand for Westerners who love the Chinese culture, to a brand for both, Westerners who love the Chinese culture and Chinese who love luxury. A close examination reveals that Shanghai Tang has followed the brand identity concept that consists of two major components: functional and emotional. The functional component for developing a luxury brand concerns all product characteristics that will make a product 'luxurious' in the eyes of the consumer, such as premium quality of cachemire from Mongolia, Chinese silk, lacquer, finest leather, porcelain, and jade in the case of Shanghai Tang. The emotional component consists of non-functional symbolic meanings of a brand. The symbolic meaning marks the major difference between a premium and a luxury brand. In the case of Shanghai Tang, its symbolic meaning refers to the Chinese culture and the brand aims to represent the best of Chinese traditions and establish itself as "the ambassador of modern Chinese style". It touches the Chinese heritage and emotions. Shanghai Tang has reinvented the modern Chinese chic by drawing back to the stylish decadence of Shanghai in the 1930s, which was then called the "Paris of the East", and this is where the brand finds inspiration to create its own myth. Once the functional and emotional components assured, Shanghai Tang has gone through a four-stage development to become the first global Chinese luxury brand: introduction, deepening, expansion, and revitalization. Introduction: David Tang discovered a market gap and had a vision to launch the first Chinese luxury brand to the world. The key success drivers for the introduction and management of a Chinese luxury brand are a solid brand identity and, above all, a creative mind, an inspired person. This was David Tang then, and this is now Raphael Le Masne de Chermont, the current Executive Chairman. Shanghai Tang combines Chinese and Western elements, which it finds to be the most sustainable platform for drawing consumers. Deepening: A major objective of the next phase is to become recognized as a luxury brand and a fashion or design authority. For this purpose, Shanghai Tang has cooperated with other well-regarded luxury and lifestyle brands such as Puma and Swarovski. It also expanded its product lines from high-end custom-made garments to music CDs and restaurant. Expansion: After the opening of his first store in Hong Kong in 1994, David Tang went on to open his second store in New York City three years later. However this New York retail operation was a financial disaster. Barely nineteen months after the opening, the store was shut down and quietly relocated to a cheaper location of Madison Avenue. Despite this failure, Shanghai Tang products found numerous followers especially among Western tourists and became "souvenir-like" must-haves. However, despite its strong brand DNA, the brand did not generate enough repeated sales and over the years the company cumulated heavy debts and became unprofitable. Revitalizing: After its purchase by Richemont in 1998, Le Masne de Chermont was appointed to lead the company, reposition the brand and undertake some major strategic changes such as revising the "Shanghai Tang" designs to appeal not only to Westerners but also to Chinese consumers, and to open new stores around the world. Since then, Shanghai Tang has become synonymous to a modern Chinese luxury lifestyle brand.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.523-537
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• 2023

This study encompassed the responses of 284 elementary school teachers, focusing on their teaching experiences, readiness, and needs for science education concerning the risk posed by science and technology. The key findings are summarized as follows. First, a significant portion of teachers lacked prior experience in addressing risks associated with science and technology within their science education practices. Second, a greater number of teachers were aware of the inclusion of risk-related content in the 2022 revised science curriculum's achievement standards than those who were not. Third, in terms of teachers' understanding of risk perception, risk assessment, and risk management, they demonstrated a relatively high level of understanding of risk perception but a lower level of understanding of risk assessment. Fourth, most teachers had not undergone any formal education or training related to risk. Fifth, among the 10 objectives of risk education, teachers displayed the highest competence in teaching "information use" and "action skills," while their lowest competence was observed in "interpreting probabilities" and "evaluating risk assessment." Sixth, a majority of teachers believe that it is important to teach about the risks posed by science and technology in school science classes, with "action skills," "information use," and "decision-making skills" being considered the most important and "action skills," "information use," and "influence of mass media" being regarded as the most urgent. However, teachers anticipated difficulties in addressing risk in school science classes, including a lack of relevant educational materials, a lack of understanding of teaching theories related to risk education, and the relationship between science curriculum content and achievement standards. Seventh, as a result of calculating the educational needs for each of the 10 goals of risk education, "influence of risk perception," "decision-making skills," "action skills," and "evaluate risk assessment" were the priority needs of elementary school teachers.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.109-115
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• 2022

As the 4th industrial revolution progresses, foreign countries are promoting smart manufacturing innovation through digital transformation as a priority task early on to secure a competitive edge in the manufacturing industry. In response, the Korean government is also promoting a policy to enhance the competitiveness of small and medium-sized manufacturing companies by promoting digital transformation in the corporate sector to meet the global trend of the 4th industrial revolution era. Manufacturing powerhouses such as Germany and Japan see manufacturing as a key sector in digital transformation and are leading related policies, while emerging countries such as China are also promoting manufacturing innovation strategies such as building digital infrastructure and creating a digital innovation ecosystem. Korea is promoting the 'Korean-style smart factory dissemination and expansion strategy' by transforming Germany's manufacturing innovation strategy for smart factory supply to suit the domestic situation. However, the policy to supply smart factories so far has been conducted with support from individual companies under the leadership of the government, and most of the smart factories are at the basic level, and it is evaluated that there are limitations such as the lack of manpower to operate smart factories. In addition, while the current policy focuses on expanding the supply of smart factories in SMEs, it is necessary to establish a smart manufacturing system through linkages between large and small businesses in order to achieve the original goal of establishing a smart manufacturing system. Therefore, it can be said that from the standpoint of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), who are consumers of smart factories, it can be said that the digital transformation policy can achieve the expected results only when appropriate incentives are provided for the introduction of smart factories in a situation where management resources such as funds, technology, and human resources are lacking. In addition, it is judged that the uncertainty of the performance of digital investment always exists, and as long as large and small companies are maintained as an ecosystem of delivery and subcontracting, there is very little incentive for small and medium-sized manufacturing companies to voluntarily invest in or advance digital transformation. Therefore, the digital transformation policy of small and medium-sized manufacturing companies in the future has practical significance in that it suggests that there is a need to seek ways to attract SMEs' digital-related voluntary investment.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.149-164
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• 2023

Today, when innovation and creativity become increasingly important, management of human resources is a key factor for corporate performance and competitive advantage. Corporate are implementing and introducing various types of support methods for members to achieve goals and improve organizational performance. Organizational culture and organizational trust affect the cognitive and emotional state of members. Furthermore, it can bring about changes in organizational performance such as job stress and job satisfaction. From an institutional point of view, work-life balance is also a major factor affecting organizational performance. The imbalance between work and life leads to a decline in organizational performance, such as decreased morale and dissatisfaction with work. In relation to work-life balance, the low birth rate problem intensified and the importance began to emerge. Therefore, the government has implemented various policy support for workers' work-life balance, and the "52-hour workweek" is a representative example. This study analyzed the effect of organizational culture applying the competitive value model on workers' job stress. In addition, the mediating effects of overtime work per week and organizational trust were analyzed. Job stress corresponds to a prerequisite stage that affects job commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover intention. However, research measuring job stress by organizational performance is insufficient. In addition, there are few studies analyzing the relationship between overtime and organizational performance. Considering this, it is necessary to understand the influence relationship. The results of the study are as follows. First, a hierarchical culture increases the job stress of workers. On the other hand, innovation-oriented, relationship-oriented, and competition-oriented corporate culture reduce job stress. Second, a hierarchical culture has reduced trust in the organization, and other organizational cultures have increased trust in the organization. Third, relationship-oriented and competition-oriented organizational culture reduced overtime. Innovation-oriented, hierarchical-oriented culture increased overtime Fourth, organizational trust and overtime have the effect of mediating organizational culture and job stress. Based on these analysis results, this study presented academic and political implications.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.67-83
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• 2023

The social venture start-up phenomenon is found from the perspectives of social enterprise and for-profit enterprise. This study aims to fundamentally explore the start-up phenomenon of social ventures from these two perspectives. Considering the lack of prior research that researched both social and commercial perspectives at the same time, this paper analyzed using grounded theory approach of Strauss & Corbin(1998), an inductive research method that analyzes based on prior research and interview data. In order to collect data for this study, eight corporate representatives currently operating social ventures were interviewed and data and phenomena were analyzed. This progressed to a theoretical saturation where no additional information was derived. The analysis results of this study using the grounded theory approach are as follows. As a result of open coding and axial coding, 147 concepts and 70 subcategories were derived, and 18 categories were derived through the final abstraction process. In the selective coding, 'expansion of social venture entry in the social domain' and 'expansion of social function of for-profit companies' were selected as key categories, and a story line was formed around this. In this study, we saw that it is necessary to conduct academic research and analysis on the competitive factors required for companies that pursue the values of two conflicting relationships, such as social ventures, to survive with competitiveness. In practice, concepts such as collaboration with for-profit companies, value combination, entrepreneurship competency and performance improvement, social value execution competency reinforcement, communication strategy, for-profit enterprise value investment, and entrepreneur management competency were derived. This study explains the social venture phenomenon for social enterprises, commercial enterprises, and entrepreneurs who want to enter the social venture field. It is expected to provide the implications necessary for successful social venture startups.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.77-90
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• 2023

This study aims to investigate the potential of alternative credit assessment through Social Networking Sites (SNS) as a complementary tool to conventional loan review processes. It seeks to discern the impact of SNS usage characteristics and loan product attributes on credit loan repayment. To achieve this objective, we conducted a binomial logistic regression analysis examining the influence of SNS usage patterns, loan characteristics, and personal attributes on credit loan conditions, utilizing data from Company A's credit loan program, which integrates SNS data into its actual loan review processes. Our findings reveal several noteworthy insights. Firstly, with respect to profile photos that reflect users' personalities and individual characteristics, individuals who choose to upload photos directly connected to their personal lives, such as images of themselves, their private circles (e.g., family and friends), and photos depicting social activities like hobbies, which tend to be favored by individuals with extroverted tendencies, as well as character and humor-themed photos, which are typically favored by individuals with conscientious traits, demonstrate a higher propensity for diligently repaying credit loans. Conversely, the utilization of photos like landscapes or images concealing one's identity did not exhibit a statistically significant causal relationship with loan repayment. Furthermore, a positive correlation was observed between the extent of SNS usage and the likelihood of loan repayment. However, the level of SNS interaction did not exert a significant effect on the probability of loan repayment. This observation may be attributed to the passive nature of the interaction variable, which primarily involves expressing sympathy for other users' comments rather than generating original content. The study also unveiled the statistical significance of loan duration and the number of loans, representing key characteristics of loan portfolios, in influencing credit loan repayment. This underscores the importance of considering loan duration and the quantity of loans as crucial determinants in the design of microcredit products. Among the personal characteristic variables examined, only gender emerged as a significant factor. This implies that the loan program scrutinized in this analysis does not exhibit substantial discrimination based on age and credit scores, as its customer base predominantly consists of individuals in their twenties and thirties with low credit scores, who encounter challenges in securing loans from traditional financial institutions. This research stands out from prior studies by empirically exploring the relationship between SNS usage and credit loan repayment while incorporating variables not typically addressed in existing credit rating research, such as profile pictures. It underscores the significance of harnessing subjective, unstructured information from SNS for loan screening, offering the potential to mitigate the financial disadvantages faced by borrowers with low credit scores or those ensnared in short-term liquidity constraints due to limited credit history a group often referred to as "thin filers." By utilizing such information, these individuals can potentially reduce their credit costs, whereas they are supposed to accrue a more substantial financial history through credit transactions under conventional credit assessment system.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.273-284
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• 2024

This study investigates the impact of international oil price fluctuations on overseas construction orders secured by domestic and foreign companies. The analysis employs statistical data spanning the past 20 years, encompassing international oil prices, overseas construction orders from domestic firms, and new overseas construction orders from the top 250 global construction companies. The correlation between these variables is assessed using correlation coefficients(R), determination coefficients(R²), and p-values. The results indicate a strong positive correlation between international oil prices and overseas construction orders. The correlation coefficient between domestic overseas construction orders and oil prices is found to be 0.8 or higher, signifying a significant influence. Similarly, a high correlation coefficient of 0.76 is observed between oil prices and new orders from leading global construction companies. Further analysis reveals a particularly strong correlation between oil prices and overseas construction orders in Asia and the Middle East, potentially due to the prevalence of oil-related projects in these regions. Additionally, a high correlation is observed between oil prices and orders for industrial facilities compared to architectural projects. This suggests an increase in plant construction volumes driven by fluctuations in oil prices. Based on these findings, the study proposes an entry strategy for navigating oil price volatility and maintaining competitiveness in the overseas construction market. Key recommendations include diversifying project locations and supplier bases; utilizing hedging techniques for exchange rate risk management, adapting to local infrastructure and market conditions, establishing local partnerships and securing skilled local labor, implementing technological innovations and digitization at construction sites to enhance productivity and cost reduction The insights gained from this study, coupled with the proposed overseas expansion strategies, offer valuable guidance for mitigating risks in the global construction market and fostering resilience in response to international oil price fluctuations. This approach is expected to strengthen the competitiveness of domestic and foreign construction firms seeking success in the international arena.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.99-123
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• 2019

The software industry is a high value-added industry in the knowledge information age, and its importance is growing as it not only plays a key role in knowledge creation and utilization, but also secures global competitiveness. Among various SW available in today's business environment, Open Source Software(OSS) is rapidly expanding its activity area by not only leading software development, but also integrating with new information technology. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to empirically examine and analyze the effect of factors on the switching behavior to OSS. To accomplish the study's purpose, we suggest the research model based on "Push-Pull-Mooring" framework. This study empirically examines the two categories of antecedents for switching behavior toward OSS. The survey was conducted to employees at various firms that already switched OSS. A total of 268 responses were collected and analyzed by using the structural equational modeling. The results of this study are as follows; first, continuous maintenance cost, vender dependency, functional indifference, and SW resource inefficiency are significantly related to switch to OSS. Second, network-oriented support, testability and strategic flexibility are significantly related to switch to OSS. Finally, the results show that willingness to secures SW competitiveness has a moderating effect on the relationships between push factors and pull factor with exception of improved knowledge, and switch to OSS. The results of this study will contribute to fields related to OSS both theoretically and practically.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.91-107
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• 2024

This study attempted to empirically verify the possibility of K-content for Chinese people who have recently slowed down due to restriction of movement and political and diplomatic conflicts, although it is a very meaningful market for Korea's content industry and tourism industry. As a result of the study, each item of K-content experience, national image, tourism attitude, and visit intention was derived as one factor, and only the national image factor was derived as two factors: 'functional image' and 'cultural image'. As a result of examining the influence relationship between them established based on previous studies focusing on the derived factors, all five research hypotheses were adopted. K-content experience was found to have a significant influence on both factors of the national image. It was found that it had a greater influence on cultural image factors than functional image factors, cultural image factors were found to have a greater influence on tourism attitudes, K-content experiences had a significant effect on tourism attitudes, and tourism attitudes had a significant effect on visit intentions. Based on the results of this study, it was once again confirmed that the national image even comtually bees an important factor for linking to practical tourism behavior, and in this respect, "culture" is an important key factor that can lead to practical tourism and visits. Previous national images indicate that if the functional aspect of the country was more emphasized, it is now necessary to focus more on the importance of culture than on the functional aspect. As the K-content experience has a significant effect on tourism attitude, it can have a positive effect on the formation of a positive tourism attitude that can lead to actual tourism behavior, so various efforts will be needed to form an active tourism attitude using K-content in the future. As the content and target scope of K-content are expanded and diversified, specific strategies for each sub-market using cultural contents in various fields should be established and implemented.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.47-66
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• 2023

The purpose of this study was to develop an educational smart app for classes by reconstructing some of the teaching-learning contents of the clothing preparation planning within the 'clothing preparation planning and selection' curriculum unit. To this end, a teaching-learning process plan was planned for the classes, a smart app was developed for classes, and feedback from home economics teachers and app development experts was received for the developed app. The main composition of the developed app consists of five steps. The first step is to set up a profile using a real photo, ZEPETO or Galaxy emoji, or iPhone Memoji. In the second step, students make a list of clothes by figuring out the types, quantities and conditions of their exisitng wardrobe items. Each piece of clothing is assigned an individual registration number, and stduents can take pictures of the front and back, along with describing key attributes such as type, color, season-appropriateness, purchase date, and current status. Step three guides students in deciding which garments to retain and which to discard. Building on the clothing inventory from the previous step, students classify items to keep and items to dispose of. In Step 4, Deciding How to Arrange Clothing, students decide how to arrange clothing by filling out an alternative scorecard. Through this process, students can learn in advance the subsection of resource management and self-reliance, laying the foundationa for future learning in 'Practice of Rational Consumption Life'. Lastly, in the fifth stage of determining the disposal method, this stage is to develop practical problem-oriented classes on how to dispose of the clothes to be discarded in the thirrd stage by exploring various disposal methods, engaging in group discussions, and sharing opinions. This study is meaningful as a case study as an attempt to develop a smart app for education by an instructor to align teaching plans and educational content with achievement standards for the class. In the future, upgrades will have to be made through user application.