• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.59-65
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• 2014

Purpose - The competitiveness of logistics in the 21st century rests on ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of its local hub. While considering entry into a niche market in local logistics, it is pertinent to note that Budapest is emerging as a hub in EU enlargement in Eastern Europe. Big, small, and medium-sized businesses in Korea entered Hungary in the early 1990s since then, there has been a significant increase in Korean presence, of approximately 130 times. This study aimed to identify the key distribution issues that have emerged in relation to Eastern Europe. Research design, data, and methodology - This study indicates that 33 major Korean companies were located in Hungary, which serves as an out post to enter the European marketplace. However, Korea's exports to Hungary have declined (-32.0% in 2012) because of a loss of competitiveness against multinational corporations, due to factors such as the rise in current local distribution costs and wages. Hungary, on the other hand, through diversification and expansion of foreign trade with the non-EU markets, including Korea, is increasing its exports. Strategies of emerging countries are compared and reviewed in this study, by examining the vicissitudes of Hungary's distribution methods. Results - There are issues regarding Hungary's innovative ability. Hungary has a history of low wages and high skilled labor. However, the outflow of high-quality human resources for high-wages has become more extensive, and this underlines concerns that the CEE's trade hub is moving to neighboring countries. After the European financial crisis in 2010, the Hungarian economy is now developing, because of the IMF's measures, and it is being transformed into a trade surplus nation, while regaining distribution volumes rapidly. However, if there is continued lack of investment, the supply chain is weakened and exports decline amidst competition with TNCs or with China's distribution networks. Conclusions - It is necessary to create a new logistics approach for increasing trade between Korea and Hungary. First, Korean small and medium enterprises (SMEs) should build trust by working with advanced Hungarian talent, and they should expand into state-of-the-art fields instead of being confined to traditional sectors. Second, this study focuses on limiting and lowering their high expectations for success according to foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and the role in the CEE distribution hub Korea should try to strengthen the distribution hub with its centralized population, using better, more highly educated human resources, thereby sustaining more innovative ability. Further, the positive effects of these measures are manifested in enhanced business on both sides of Hungary, namely, the EU and non-EU nations such as Turkey and emerging markets around Europe, and a better engagement in the core placement of culture and industry. For this, Korea can contribute to, and benefit from, a Hungarian logistics center, for adopting the high-tech cluster systems and commercializing distribution technology such as RFID·USN.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.45-53
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• 2013

Purpose - The environment-friendly agricultural product market in Korea sees continual high growth. Recently, the Korean government has been actively fostering environment-friendly agriculture as an engine of future growth. Korean people have increasingly become more health-conscious and interested in food safety issues. Many distribution and retailing companies have responded with various promotional activities. However, most of these are not strategic and appear to have unsatisfactory outcomes. The main purpose of this paper is to suggest effective marketing strategies for environment-friendly agricultural products. To achieve this aim, the study empirically investigates the effects of consumer characteristics and trust on the purchase intention of environment-friendly agricultural products. Research design, data, methodology - Based on the theory of planned behavior, and previous studies related to the purchase intention and consumption of environment-friendly agricultural products, we set up five study hypotheses. These related to the demographic characteristics of consumers, purchase intention, and behavior of the products. We then set up a study model and four study hypotheses relating to health consciousness, environmental consciousness, consumer trust level, purchase intention, and behavior of the products. The data were collected using a questionnaire given to consumers living in Seoul and southern Geonggi Province. The final sample size is 403 and mean age is 44.3. SPSS 15.0 for Windows and Amos 7.0 were used as statistical analysis tools. Meaningful results were derived using frequency analysis, correlation analysis, a t-test, and structural equation modeling. Results - Empirical results of this research are as follows. (1) First, it is shown that consumers consider such attributes as intimacy and health to be important when they buy environment-friendly agricultural products. (2) We also found that consumers recognize the value of environment-friendly agricultural products as high, but their trust level as low. (3) Consumer groups consisting of married couples, with higher education, higher income, and higher age are shown to have a higher intention of buying environment-friendly agricultural products than any other consumer group. (4) It is estimated that the level of consumer trust positively affects the purchase intention of environment-friendly agricultural products. The path coefficient (.138) between consumer trust and purchase intention is statistically significant at the α = .05 level. (5). It is also estimated that environmental consciousness positively affects purchase intention. The path coefficient (.245) between environmental consciousness and purchase intention is statistically significant at the α = 0.05 level. The standardized path coefficients of consumer trust and environmental consciousness with purchase intention are .556 and .288 respectively. Therefore, consumer trust affects purchase intention more than environmental consciousness. (6) Finally, purchase intention is estimated to positively affect purchase behavior. Conclusions - Based upon empirical results, this research suggests that marketers of environment-friendly agricultural products should focus more on increasing consumer trust levels, emphasizing the training and education of employees. The government also should pay attention to a standardized certification system for environment-friendly agricultural products. Marketers of environment-friendly agricultural products should consider the consumer groups of married couples, with higher education, higher income, and higher age as a major target segment.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.72
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• pp.7-51
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• 2015

Job seeking for young adults after college in South Korea is much fierce and highly competitive. Many job seekers tend to experience despair, frustration, and insecurity in such a dire social situation. This study focuses on the job seeking experiences of younger generation people by closely examining the self-introduction letters. This work pays keen attention to the narrative strategies and portrayal of the applicants' self-described activities in these forms of letters through a detailed textual and cultural analysis. In doing so, this analysis attempts to contextualize the complex structures of feeling for the part of young job seekers as well as various social factors and pressures that influence on them.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.255-268
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• 2017

This study examines whether firms with tax avoidance of Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) performance is tempered by the extent firms engage in CEO turnovers. Considering the increasing interest in CSR activities of the firm to secure sustainable growth of national economy, this paper investigates the benefit and cost of CSR activities by combining the agency theory using the firm level data. Prior studies document that investors positively value tax avoidance. The rationale for this finding is that tax avoidance provides cash savings that can be used by firm managers to generate future shareholder wealth. Prior studies also show that investors' valuations are sensitive to the risk of future negative tax outcomes. Assuming that many types of CSR performances are low risk, low yielding uses of firm resources, we posit that higher levels of CSR performance may signal to investors that cash generated via tax avoidance has not been fully used to generate a return sufficient to offset the risk associated with aggressive tax planning strategies. Consistent with this argument, we predict and find that the positive association between CSR performance and tax avoidance is significantly weakened when firms have higher positive levels of CEO turnovers. Further, we predict and find that 'philanthropic' types of CSR activities in particular are associated with investor discounting of tax avoidance. We interpret our results as suggesting the equity market views CSR activities to be ostensibly funded through cash savings generated via tax avoidance.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.133-158
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• 2011

In 2030s, as we enter in to the era of BT (Bio-Technology) market opening up, technologies in all areas such as IT, data analysis, IC and biochemistry are necessitated. New development in technology will be based on "Convergence", especially between IT and BT. In order to have synergy effects from the convergence, those related industries and universities should be physically inter-related in an appropriate location. Until 2009, 819 industrial clusters where many Korean industries and firms are concentrated have been constructed in Korea. They have had supports from various institutions and facilities. However, few systems designed to assist "intellectual property (IP) service" for technology convergence are found in Korea. Thus, by analyzing current problems and challenges of the Korean industrial clusters, this paper suggests a possible answer to maximize the synergy from technology convergence through organic cooperation among companies in industrial clusters. This paper finds that the Korean industrial clusters need to establish IP service supporting center while suggesting its function and concept on organization structure, and work flow, which help firms to develop IP strategies. In addition, the paper provides a direction for current IP system and policies implemented by the Korean government to be more effective to small-and-medium-sized companies located in the industrial clusters.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.21-44
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• 2009

This study aims to understand the conditions for using logistics outsourcing of Korean enterprises, present existing problems, examine factors affecting utility, and analyze the pattern of logistics outsourcing based on contract term, and to ultimately contribute to enhancing competitiveness of logistics enterprises. Through the literature survey 8 factors were identified as three broad factors of corporate strategy, corporate characteristics, and environment. Factor analysis was conducted on the bases of 155 collected data among 400 distributions for 2 months from April to May in 2008. From the result of analysis, the implication and finding can be summarized into three aspects. Firstly, Korean companies value factors relative to corporate strategies as motivating factors for logistics outsourcing. Secondly, Korean companies consider logistics outsourcing depending on how to handle customers' demands and the severity of competition. Thirdly, it was found that product and organization characteristics are perceived as more important when contract term with logistics business is longer. The implications can be observed into two aspects. Firstly once the logistics outsourcing between manufacturers and logistics companies are determined, it was verified that mutual agreement, particular contracts and periodic communications can increase the outcome. Secondly the logistics outsourcing appeared to be different depending on the level of entering to foreign market and resulted in higher performance as well.

• Spatial Information Research
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.1-7
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• 2011

For desirable ubiquitous web environments, one of the R&D projects by Korean Land Spatialization Group, has been done to develop a geospatial platform for custom ized land information and geospatial services. To make a better judgement for the investment in the project, analyses for evaluating value of the platform technology and others are done to propose better strategies for the future project management and commercialization of the platform technology. Wiith review of theories and evaluation methods for the technological values, this study suggests 3 evaluating methods: cost approach methods, market approach methods, and income approach methods with focusing on the customized geospatial information platform technology. Results of the evaluation are as follows: the value(over 3,600 million won) estimated by using cost approach methods is larger than the value(over 2,200 million won) using income approach method. Based on evaluation time and methods, the estimated value of geospatial platform technology can be different. This study is performed in relatively early stage of technology developments and results of it will be a reference for commercialization of customized geospatial information platform technology.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.549-554
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• 2017

This study conducted a survey on 319 Chinese women in their 20s to 50s living in three large cities in China, with an aim to analyze the influence on the purchasing behavior and satisfaction for Korean cosmetics depending on their complex purchasing tendencies. According to the research, the rational tendency was higher when the subjects were over 40 years old and married, and the impulsive tendency was the highest in those in their 30s. There was no huge difference in regions depending on the two tendencies, while there were statistically significant differences in purchasing period, times and costs when buying cosmetics. In addition, purchasing satisfaction for cosmetics had a positive correlation with purchasing tendencies. The subjects pursued convenience in purchasing as their rational tendency was higher, while they sought the trends as their impulsive tendency was higher. Based on the results, it is expected to maximize purchasing satisfaction of Chinese female consumers depending on their purchasing tendencies, if the Korean cosmetics makers provide reliable quality assurance, product exchange and customer management services. It is also expected to help revitalize the beauty market for China as well as Southeast Asia, if the Korean cosmetics companies implement differentiated marketing strategies targeting the customers in the age group with the impulsive consumption tendency.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.385-414
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• 2011

Fans' role and influence is becoming more extensive in these days' complex and competitive sports market. This research considers fans as internal members of sports team, employee and confirms active and voluntary fan citizenship behavior's effects on team, community, and social exchange among community residents, so that an enterprise can increase accessibility from many-sided perspectives when establishing sports marketing strategy in the future. The concept of fan citizenship behavior is set up considering characteristic of sports industry based on employee's organizational citizenship behavior discussed from the internal marketing and organization theory and preliminary studies about client citizenship behavior mentioned from service industry area. Although the sixteen research hypothesis are not fully supported. The results are summarized as follows. These findings give theoretical and marketing implication to future researcher and marketer. First, fan's positive aspect is confirmed which is different from general consumer by examining fan citizenship behavior's effect on teal value in the sports industry. Second, it was confirmed that the team needs marketing strategies about not only relationship between each individual fan, but also interaction between fans in the future. Third, it was confirmed that direct fan's behavior as well as individual fan's cognitive area have effects on team's and social value.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.191-209
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to identify whether franchisee-perceived franchisor's proactiveness, innovativeness and risk-taking affect franchisee-perceived affective commitment with franchisor, and the affective commitment affects franchisee-perceived external representation and service delivery. Based on total 280 samples obtained from owners or managers of franchise fast-food restaurants in located in Yeongnam province, the research findings are as follows. Firstly, the innovativeness and risk-taking positively affect the affective commitment. Secondly, the affective commitment positively affects external representation and service delivery. But proactiveness does not affect the affective commitment significantly. These findings imply that firstly, franchisor should investigate consumer trends periodically and develop new successful menus and services more than competitors do, and implement new marketing techniques innovatively towards these menus and services. Secondly, franchisor had better adopt high return/risk strategies because of deepened competition and do bold decisions of price change etc. Also, in order to increase proactiveness, franchisor needs to launch new menus and services earlier than competitors and occupy market in advance, which strengthens affective commitment with franchisees. Thirdly, in order to increase affective commitment with franchisees, franchisor needs to match franchisor's value with franchisee's value and same value means same objective. Lastly, limitations and further research directions are also discussed.