• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.153-172
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• 1997

The distribution sector is affected by a wide range of regulations. Many of these are related to health and safety, others are related to urban planning and environmental issues, whereas some mainly have an economic basis. But, regulations many be unduly restrictive, in which case they can drive up costs and ultimately prices, or they may, in some cases, reduce consumer choice. Unduly restrictive regulations could also increase costs indirectly, by reducing competition and thus lead to lower productivity growth. In the past few years, distribution sector has gone through drastic changes due to deregulation and market opening. Implementation of regulatory reforms served as an opportunity to change laws and systems which had been an obstacle to development of distribution sector. Market opening of distribution sector became a turning point to promote competition among domestic and foreign firms. However, for small and medium scale of the typical retail enterprises which were in no position to compete in terms of prices, additional facilities, and services, faced a threat of diminished trading area, and even of their existence. Because, large firms may have greater market power than small firms, as they can more easily extract favorable terms when procuring goods, and may also be able to deter entry by advertising outlays or access to the best sites. In addition, larger chain stores armied with sufficient capital dominated trading area and reduced customer's welfare by abusing their monopoly power when competing with other shops, and are often cited as an example of adverse effects of local monopoly. In order to minimize such adverse effects and to foster competition, regulatory reforms in distribution sector should set its goal to promote sound and stable distribution activities through market principle and restoring competition principle, and ultimately to boost customers welfare. Therefore, deregulation in distribution sector should be implemented in a way to promote customers welfare, eliminate entry barriers, and expand competition principle such as productivity and efficiency competition. However, it should be also recognized that deregulation of system alone is not enough to develop the distribution sector. To compete in a increasingly concentrated industry, small enterprises increasingly engage in co-operative arrangements, such as buying groups, strategic alliances or franchise agreements.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.115-124
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• 2015

Thermal energy storage (TES) is a technology that stores surplus thermal energy at high or low temperatures for later use when the customer needs it, not just when it is available. TES systems can help balance energy demand and supply and thus improve the overall efficiency of energy systems. Furthermore, the conversion and storage of intermittent renewable resources in the form of thermal energy can help increase the share of renewable resources in the energy mix which refers to the distribution of energy consumption from different sources, and to achieve this, it is essential to combine renewable resources with TES systems. Underground TES using rock caverns, known as cavern thermal energy storage (CTES), is a viable option for large-scale, long-term TES utilization although its applications are limited because of the high construction costs. Furthermore, the heat loss in CTES can significantly be reduced due to the heating of the surrounding rock occurred during long-term TES, which is a distinctive advantage over aboveground TES, in which the heat loss to the surroundings is significantly influenced by climate conditions. In this paper, we introduced important factors that should be considered in the shape and multiple layout design of TES caverns, and proposed guidelines for storage space design.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.17-24
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• 2007

SIP-based tightly coupled conference, which has a centrally located conference server for controlling and management, can be classified several models according to location of focus and mixer. These are centralized server model, endpoint server model, media server component model and distributed mixing model. However each model has its strength and weakness. In this paper, we propose and implement a SIP-based effective hybrid-type conference model which decreases amount of SIP signaling messages, lowers load of server media mixer, and can be easily expandable to large scale conference. In this model, when the number of participants exceeds a pre-defined limit, the conference server selects some participants which posses specific functions and let them share functions of notifications of conference state event package and media mixing. When each participant subscribes conference state event package to the server, it can indicates its possession of such functions by a specific header message. The server stores the indication to the conference information database, and later uses it to select participants for load sharing. The performance of our proposed model is evaluated by experiments.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.8B no.6
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• pp.625-632
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• 2001

The electronic stores have realized that they need to understand their customers and to quickly response their wants and needs. To be successful in increasingly competitive Internet marketplace, recommender systems are adapting data mining techniques. One of most successful recommender technologies is collaborative filtering (CF) algorithm which recommends products to a target customer based on the information of other customers and employ statistical techniques to find a set of customers known as neighbors. However, the application of the systems, however, is not very suitable for seasonal products which are sensitive to time or season such as refrigerator or seasonal clothes. In this paper, we propose a new adjusted item-based recommendation generation algorithms called the exponentially weighted collaborative filtering recommendation (EWCFR) one that computes item-item similarities regarding seasonal products. Finally, we suggest the recommendation system with relatively high quality computing time on main memory database (MMDB) in XML since the collaborative filtering systems are needed that can quickly produce high quality recommendations with very large-scale problems.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.63-84
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• 2011

There are about 1,500 small or large traditional markets in Korea. Those conventional markets have been struggling for survival in rapidly changing market environment with highly intensified competition by accelerating the entrance of the Large-scale Discount Store and Super Supermarket which are managed and supported by Large companies like Samsung and Lotte. The loosing power of conventional markets have threatened the local merchants' survival and have influenced local economics falling down. To create better value for the customers who have more preference for department store and discount stores than conventional markets, conventional markets should have market orientation, which has three sub dimensions; customer orientation, competitor orientation and inter-functional coordinations. First objective of study is to find the appropriate roles of conventional markets in local areas. Second is to find out the market orientation functions for conventional markets to be survival in local markets in the long terms. Finally, this study will suggest some policies for the appropriate types of successful conventional markets considering various local situations. To achieve those objectives, we did the following procedure. First, we review the previous reports and studies of policies for conventional markets and local economy development, and propose some pros and cons of the previous policies. Secondly, we develop a market orientation framework of conventional markets, in which we suggest the developmental types and functions of market-orientation of conventional markets in accordance with the characteristics of local market and economic conditions of local areas. Then we formulate and discuss the study's contributions, managerial implications, and directions for future policy development. Especially for the policy development, we suggest the efficiency and economical effects of policy, human being development and management system, and the role of government and protection of local merchants in the development process.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.77-96
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• 2017

Purpose - This study aims to develop correspondence strategies to the environment change in domestic retail store types. Recently, new types of retails have emerged in retail industries. Therefore, trade area platform has developed focusing on the speed of data, no longer trade area from district border. Besides, 'trade area smart' brings about change in retail types with the development of giga internet. Thus, context shopping is changing the way of consumers' purchase pattern through data capture, technology capability, and algorithm development. For these reasons, the sales estimation model has been shown to be flawed using the notion of former scale and time, and it is necessary to construct a new model. Research design, data, and methodology - This study focuses on measuring retail change in large multi-shopping mall for the outlook for retail industry and competition for trade area with the theoretical background understanding of retail store types and overall domestic retail conditions. The competition among retail store types are strong, whereas the borders among them are fading. There is a greater need to analyze on a new model because sales expectation can be hard to get with business area competition. For comprehensive research, therefore, the research method based on the statistical analysis was excluded, and field survey and literature investigation method were used to identify problems and propose an alternative. In research material, research fidelity has improved with complementing research data related with retail specialists' as well as department stores. Results - This study analyzed trade area survival and its pattern through sales estimation and empirical studies on trade areas. The sales estimation, based on Huff model system, counts the number of households shopping absorption expectation from trade areas. Based on the results, this paper estimated sales scale, and then deducted modified probability model. Conclusions - In times of retail store chain destruction and off-line store reorganization, modified Huff model has problems in estimating sales. Transformation probability model, supplemented by the existing problems, was analyzed to be more effective in competitiveness business condition. This study offers a viable alternative to figure out related trade areas' sale estimation by reconstructing new-modified probability model. As a result, the future task is to enlarge the borders from IT infrastructure with data and evidence based business into DT infrastructure.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Next Generation Computing
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.57-65
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• 2018

Conventional RF signal-based indoor localization techniques such as BLE or Wi-Fi based fingerprinting method show considerable localization errors even in small-scale indoor environments due to unstable received signal strength(RSS) of RF signals. Therefore, it is difficult to apply the existing RF-based fingerprinting techniques to large-scale indoor environments such as airports and department stores. In this paper, instead of RF signal we use the geomagnetic sensor signal for indoor localization, whose signal strength is more stable than RF RSS. Although similar geomagnetic field values exist in indoor space, an object movement would experience a unique sequence of the geomagnetic field signals as the movement continues. We use a deep neural network model called the recurrent neural network (RNN), which is effective in recognizing time-varying sequences of sensor data, to track the user's location and movement path. To evaluate the performance of the proposed geomagnetic field based indoor positioning system (IPS), we constructed a magnetic field map for a campus testbed of about $94m{\times}26$ dimension and trained RNN using various potential movement paths and their location data extracted from the magnetic field map. By adjusting various hyperparameters, we could achieve an average localization error of 1.20 meters in the testbed.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.5-24
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• 2008

Pharmaceutists are interested in drugstores which are selling, the sundries, cosmetics, medical devices, with drugs. Because drug stores without prescription issued by doctor have faced on finacial difficulties since speciality between doctors and pharmaceutists set us law. There are two types of drugstore which is a type of common drugstore, other is a type of traditional drugstore based on pharmaceuties in steady of big size of store based on studies, cosmetics and so on. Expansion of business for drugstore show us that most of customer are who are very sensitive in circumstance. Since 2,000 it has been expanded to large scale, so market analysts expect that volume of market will be increased to 10 times within 5 years. Drugstores have several kinds of merchandises which customers can take a choice for their demands, so most of customers the young generations. However, market customers will be changed to medium, and old generations as drugstores set freely. Furthermore everybody will enjoy in at drugstores effectively this reports that include of counter based on proposals and validities. This study show examples that have been executed successfully by the advanced countries, moreover big companies in domestic market have been expanding their market share for drugstore business. Through out change of circumstance surrounding drugstores, this report indicate how to induce the large drugstore with validities and trends. Since speciality of pharmaceutists and doctors executed, direction and a forecast of developing drugstores under change of distribution of them and may be suggested. I hope that this research will be helpful of interesting in drugstores, and also lot of distributors focuses on drugstores to develop the drugstores in future.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.85-111
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• 2012

Introduction : The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between perceptual characteristics of consumers and intent of relational continuance for PB(Private Brand) products in discount stores. This study was conducted as an empirical study based on survey. For the empirical study, factors of PB products as characteristics perceived by consumers such as perceived quality, store image, brand image and perceived value were deduced from preceding studies. The effect of such factors on intent of relational continuance mediated by brand trust and brand equity of PB products was structurally examined. Research Model : Based on theory analysis and hypotheses, constructed a Structural Equation Model(SEM). The research model is shown in Figure 1. Research Method : This paper is based on s qualitative study of selected literature and empirical data. The survey for empirical study was carried out on consumers in Gyeonggi and Busan between January 2012 and May 2012. 300 surveys were distributed and 253 (84.3%) of them were returned. After excluding omissions and insincere responses, 245 surveys (81.6%) were used for final analysis as effective samples. Result : First of all, the Reliability was carried out for instrument used. The lower limit of 0.7 for Cronbach's Alpha as suggested by Hair et al. (1998). And Construct validity was established by carrying out exploratory factor analysis by Varimax rotation for all. Four factor result for the consumer's perceptual characteristics of PB Products, two mediating factors and one dependent factor. All constructs included in research framework have acceptable validity and reliability. Table 1 shows the factor loading, eigen value, explained variance and Cronbach's alpha for each factor. In order to assure validity of constructs, I implemented Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), using AMOS 20.0. In confirmatory factor analysis, researcher can take control over the specification of indicators for each factor by hypothesizing that a specific factor is loaded with the relevant indicators. Moreover, CFA is particularly useful in the validation of scale for the measurement of specific construct. CFA result summarized Table 2 shows that the fit measures of all constructs fulfill the recommended level and loadings are significant. To test causal relationship between constructs in the research model, used AMOS 20.0 that provides a graphic module as method for analysing Structural Equation Modeling. The result of hypothesis test is shown in Table 3. As a result of empirical study, perceived quality, brand image and perceived value as selected attributes for PB products showed significantly positive (+) effect on brand trust and brand equity. Furthermore, brand trust and brand equity showed significantly positive (+) effect on intent of relational continuance. However, store image of discount stores selling the PB products was analyzed to have positive (+) effect on brand trust and no significant effect on brand equity. Discussion : Based on the results of this study, the relationship between overall quality, store image, brand image and value perceived by consumers about PB products and intent of relational continuance was structurally verified as being mediated by brand trust and brand equity. Looking at the results, a strategic approach that maximizes brand trust and equity value for PB products by large discount stores is required on top of basic efforts to improve quality, brand image and value of PB products in order to maximize consumer's intent of relational continuance and to continuously attract repeated purchase of products.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.39-57
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• 2012

The unabated influx of micro businesses has turned the Korean retailing market to a rat race, which causes severe financial distress for micro business owners due to heavy competition. The woes of these micro business owner's are exacerbated by the presence of large scale distributors such as Super Supermarket(SSM) and large discount stores. In summary, the Korean retail market is overburdened an uneconomically viable. Retailing has low barriers to entry which attracts unskilled labor or those with little capital. These start-ups have low opportunity costs since they would make low wages elsewhere in the economy. Thus, these owners are content with relatively low returns on their investment. These 'subsistence ventures' are maintained for economical viability rather than economic growth. These 'subsistence ventures' intensifies competition among small-scale businesses. The presence of large retail corporations also aggravates the situation. The recent stagnation of the economy has worsened the retail market in Korea. The overwhelming competition solidifies the coarse structural system and the prolonged economic sluggishness has increased the risk of insolvency for micro business owners. As the economy continues to stagnate, the imminent risk in retailing market will rise up to surface threatening economic stability. More systematic inflows and outflows of retailers are required in order to redress this structural problem. It has been empirically shown that the self-employment rate is high in Korea compared to other OECD countries. To draw the comparison of self-employment rate by industry, Korea shows high rates among transportation, whole sale, retail, education, lodging, and restaurants. In the case of the transportation and education service sectors, this high rate can be explained by the idiosyncratic nature of Korean culture. In the transportation sector, political policies favor private cap service and private freight carriers. In the education service sector, Koreans put particular emphasis on education that leads to many private institutions that outnumber other OECD countries. For these singular reasons, Korea maintains high micro business, self-employed rates particularly in retailing. A comparable nation is Japan, with its similar social, economic, cultural environment among OECD countries. Unlike Korea, Japan has much lower rates of micro business which continues to decrease. Also Korean retailers are much more destitute than Japanese. The fundamental problem of Korean retailing is the involuntary exit of these 'subsistence ventures,' micro businesses with low margins, in which a small drop in demand can lead to financial difficulties for the owner. This problem will be exacerbated when Korean babyboomers retire and join the micro business ventures. The first priority in order to cope with the severity of oversupply in retailing is to provide better opportunities for the potential self-employers. There should be viable alternatives to subsistent ventures. Strengthening the retirement program, scrutiny of exit process, reconfiguration of policy funds are the recommendations.