• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.124-129
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• 2005

Reliability of electric power supply by power system becomes major issue as the electric power industry is recently being regulated. Also a change of environmental condition related to power supply reliability should be considered in the view of power supplier since the competition between energy-industries is strengthen. In other words, because customers may choose other energy source instead of electric power due to an expensive energy charge, enhancing recklessly the reliability of power supply might not be an essential strategy. So to effectively cope with this problem, it is necessary to perceive the reaction of customers against power supply reliability and interruption cost. This paper evaluates the annual interruption costs of customers by regional groups in Korea using a macro approach to cope with these internal and external environment. That is, the each ratio of customer's interruption costs to price of electric power charge is evaluated for public, service, agricultural, fishery, mining, manufactural, and residential consumption by every cities and provinces.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.77-85
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• 2017

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to investigate the variables that lead consumers to visit traditional markets and buy market goods. Thus, the current research examined the relationship between satisfaction and return intention as among the factors influencing loyalty. Research design, data, and methodology - This study was conducted to examine the effects of the perceived level of factors on loyalty and how it influenced consumers' visits to traditional markets in 125 adult adolescents and women living in Mok-po area. The results of the questionnaire were obtained. The statistical data of the questionnaire were verified by SPSS. Results - In this study, consumers' perception level of eight loyalty factors can be perceived by the traditional Korean market. The empirical analysis is summarized as follows. First, by selecting five representative variables influencing intention to return to traditional markets, Mok-po area consumers were affected by the intention to revisit according to the intensity of recognition level among these variables. Second, the higher the perceived level of product price, quality of access (accessibility) among the factors that consumers perceive as important factors in visiting traditional markets were heightened. Third, Mokpo residents are aware of the main important factors of visiting the market such as receiving a friendly atmosphere (image) about traditional market, market environment (hygiene and cleanliness), connection with the local economy, and customer service such as kindness, refund and return. These loyalty factors did not affect consumers' intention to revisit. In other words, image, environment, regional economic linkage, and these factors did not have a positive effect on revisit intention. Conclusions - The empirical analysis of this study suggests that factors that directly affect loyalty among the key factors that play a major role in visiting traditional markets should be identified and developed as loyalty factors. It is necessary to identify the key factors influencing the satisfaction and loyalty of traditional market users, and operate a system that systematically and comprehensively manages and evaluates them. In order to do this, the government, the local governments, and related organizations should regularly conduct loyalty and satisfaction surveys on visa recognition levels and establish strategies for dramatic improvement measures.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.37-51
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• 2016

The purposes of this study were (1) to investigate the important selection attributes of coffee brands and the relative positions of major coffee brands on the positioning map through similarities and preferences of coffee brands that customers perceive and (2) to provide Korean coffee brands with strategic information about how to differentiate themselves from existing competitors in the Chinese market. A total of 268 samples were used for data analysis that comprised frequency analysis, descriptive statistics, ALSCAL, and regression analysis. The results showed that among 8 coffee brand selection attributes the most important was atmosphere, followed by cleanness and sanitary condition, and convenient location and transportation. Friendly service, taste of coffee, price and variety of menu were next and brand was the least important among 8 selection attributes. The results of positioning map showed that Maan Coffee was evaluated the highest iin atmosphere, cleanness and sanitary condition, and convenient location and transportation compared to other coffee brands. Marketing strategies for Korean coffee franchisers (Angel-in-us Coffee and Caffe Bene) were provided for successful repositioning in the Beijing coffee market.

• Korean Business Review
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• v.13
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• pp.89-105
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• 2000

This study explores the general marketing ethics among Koreans and helps us understand bu such as bribery, unfair price increases, and so on. By examining msiness ethics in Korea. Based on a scenario approach, we focus on the ethical problems developed or identified from previous research in the western countries. We find that the people in our sample perceive the relative seriousness of ethics problemsarketing-related ethical issues, first we find the differences in how the young and old recognize business ethics. Specifically the younger generation in Korea shows less ethical reaction in general because they have not developed a long-term perspective. Moreover the older generation shows less ethical attitude towards bribery. Second, we confirm the findings in Zey-Ferrell et al (1991) that all individuals think they are more ethical than others. We also discuss other demographic variables related issues that might affect the business ethics in Korea.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.29-45
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• 2009

In the information age, cheap price of information processing and advances in personalization technology have allowed companies to enhance the relationships with their existing customers and to expand their customer base by effectively attracting new customers. However, most customers are reluctant to provide their personal information to companies. This study explores the tension between companies' desire to collect personal information to offer personalized services and their customers' privacy concerns. The psychological reactance theory suggests that when individuals feel that their behavioral choice is threatened or restricted, they are motivated to restore their freedom. Therefore, despite the expected benefits from personalized services, customers may perceive the services to be restrictive of their freedom to choose. This adverse effect may undermine the relationships between companies and their customers. We conducted experiments to explore the dynamic roles of transactional and environmental factors in motivating customers to provide personal information. We revisited online privacy issues from the perspective of psychological reactance. For the experiments, we created an online shop and randomly assigned the participants to one of the two experimental conditions-high and low levels of information requirements. The results of the experiment indicate that threatening the free choice serves as a transactional cost in online profiling. On the other hand, the expected benefits of personalization services have positive correlations with customers' willingness to provide personal information. This study explains privacy based on transactional and environmental factors. Our findings also indicate that the environmental factors such as the Internet privacy risk and trust propensity do not significantly affect the willingness to provide personal information when firms required much personal information. Implications and contributions are discussed.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.45-56
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• 2018

Purpose - Consumers perceive various risks while using food service franchise stores. Food service franchise stores offer consumers not just menus, but services, physical environment, and prices, which can be perceived as risk to consumers. This means that consumer behavior in foos service franchise stores needs to be studied based on perceived risk theory. Perceived risk consists of performance risk, financial risk, social risk, psychological risk, and time risk. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of perceived risk on satisfaction and trust, and in turn affect loyalty. The results of this study will provide guidelines for marketers to develop strategies to reduce the perceived risk of consumers. Research design, data, methodology - In order to achieve research purposes, the authors developed several hypotheses. Data were through online survey through an online survey firm. A questionnaire survey was distributed to customers who have visited the restaurant in the past three months. The survey was conducted from March 5, 2017 to October 14, 2017. A total of 1,500 people were e-mailed and 260 were returned. A total of 245 items were used in the analysis except 15 of the questionnaire. Data was analyzed by using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 21.0. Results - The findings of this study are as follows: First, performance risk, economic risk, and psychological risk had negative effects on satisfaction. Social and time risks did not affect on satisfaction. Performance risk and time risk had negative impact on trust. Second, economic, social, and psychological risks did not affect trust, but satisfaction had significant positive effect on trust and loyalty. Third, satisfaction had positive effect on loyalty. Conclusions - The implications of this study are as follows. First, food service franchise marketers should increase their customer loyalty by establishing a risk reduction strategy. Second, there are various risks to customers visiting the store. Therefore, marketers need to analyze the perceived risks of customers. Third, it is also necessary to eliminate the perceived risks of customers. In addition, a restaurant franchise company needs to find a reasonable way to reduce the material cost and present a reasonable menu price.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.219-230
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• 2010

Digital content makes big changes to our daily lives while bringing opportunities and challenges for companies. Creative firms integrate pictures, texts, videos, audios, and data by digitalization to develop new products or services and create digital experiences to promote their brands. Most articles on digital content contribute to the basic concept or development of marketing it in literature. Actually, compared with traditional value chains for common products or services, the digital content industry seems to have more potential value. Because quite a bit of digital content is free to the consumer, price is not necessarily perceived as an indicator of the quality or value of information (Rowley 2008). It becomes evident that a current theme in digital content is the issue of "value," and research on customers' perceived value of digital content is a necessity. This article argues that experiential value has an advantage in customers' evaluations of digital content. Two different but related contributions to the understanding of "value" of digital content are made here. First, based on the comparison of digital content with products and services, the article proposes two key characteristics that make experiential strategy available for digital content: intangibility and near-zero reproduction cost. On top of that, based on the discussion of the gap between company's idealized value and customer's perceived value, this article emphasizes that digital content prices and pricing of digital content is different from products and services. As a result of intangibility, prices may not reflect customer value. Moreover, the cost of digital content in the development stage may be very high while reproduction costs shrink dramatically. Moreover, because of the value gap mentioned before, the pricing polices vary for different digital contents. For example, flat price policy is generally used for movies and music (Magiera 2001; Netherby 2002), while for continuous demand, digital content such as online games and anti-virus programs involves a more complicated matter of utility and competitive price levels. Digital content companies have to explore various kinds of strategies to overcome this gap. Rethinking marketing solutions such as advertisements, images, and word-of-mouth and their effect on customers' perceived value becomes essential. China's digital content industry is becoming more and more globalized and drawing special attention from different countries and regions that have respective competitive advantages. The 2008-2009 Annual Report on the Development of China's Digital Content Industry (CCIDConsulting 2009) indicates that, with the driven power of domestic demand and governmental policy support, the country's digital content industry maintained a fast growth of some 30 percent in 2008, obviously indicating the initial stage of industry expansion. In China, anti-virus programs and other software programs which need to be updated use a quarter-based pricing policy. Customers can download a trial version for free and use it for six months or a year. If they want to use it longer, continuous payment is needed. They examine the excellence of the digital content during this trial period and decide whether to pay for continued usage. For China’s music and movie industries, as a result of initial development, experiential strategy has not been much applied, even though firms in other countries find the trial experience and explore important strategies(such as customers listening to music for several seconds for free before downloading it). For the above reasons, anti-virus program may be a representative for digital content industry in China and an exploratory study of the advantage of experiential value in customer's perceived value of digital content is done in the anti-virus market of China. In order to enhance the reliability of the survey data, this study focused on people who were experienced users of anti-virus programs. The empirical results revealed that experiential value has a positive effect on customers' perceived value of digital content. In other words, because digital content is intangible and the reproduction costs are nearly zero, customers' evaluations are based heavily on their experience. Moreover, image and word-of-mouth do not have a positive effect on perceived value, only on experiential value. That is to say, a digital content value chain is different from that of a general product or service. Experiential value has a notable advantage and mediates the effect of image and word-of-mouth on perceived value. The results of this study help provide an understanding of why free digital content downloads exist in developing countries. Customers can perceive the value of digital content only by using and experiencing it. This is also why such governments support the development of digital content. Other developing countries whose digital content business is also in the beginning stage can make use of the suggestions here. Moreover, based on the advantage of experiential strategy, companies should make more of an effort to invest in customers' experience. As a result of the characteristics and value gap of digital content, customers perceive more value in the intangible digital content only by experiencing what they really want. Moreover, because of the near-zero reproduction costs, companies can perhaps use experiential strategy to enhance customer understanding of digital content.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.69-96
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• 1991

Economic circumstances of enterprise began to change after a series of democratization measures in 1987. Accompanied with it, competitive advantage of enterprise began to change as well. By that time Korean enterprises had a competitive advantage based on low wages of labor. Abrupt and steady upsurge in wage, however, weakened competitive advantage based on low wages, upward revaluation of won currency caused by surplus in BOP strengthened upward trend in price increase of export products. An urgent problem in Korea economy is, therefore, to find 'new' competitive advantage. For the time being preserving competitiveness based on cost advantage must inevitably remain our basic strategy in industrial policy. While cost advantage in the past referred to low wage level, this cost advantage must have foundation on the improvment in producing technology, which will increase labor productivity and decrease unit cost of products. Besides, other measure to improve competitiveness can be considered such as increasing the extent of production automation, self-development of new products, and spread and strengthening subcontracting system among various enterprises. In this paper we tried to perceive how subcontracting system as a form of intercompany division of labor operates and to which direction this system proceeds responding to the recent changes in economic circumstances. Speaking more concretly, we tried to perceive how large the gap of bargaining power between mother-company and subcontracting company is and how effectively subcontracting company's technical power contributes to mother-company. Facing up to weakeening of competitiveness, how stably is the partnership between mother-company and subcontracting company established and what measures are being prepared to retore the weakened competitiveness. In conclusion the result of investigation through the questionaire on subcontracting system is positive, from which we can infer the optimistic view of restoring Korean economy's competitiveness.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.30 no.3 s.151
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• pp.470-480
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• 2006

Consumer may perceive needs of certain product information online rather than the number of pieces of information available for decision making. In addition, consumers may seek information that is more relevant to apparel category. Moreover, involved consumers intensify information seeking and seek certain information. The purpose of this study is to identify the perceived importance weight of each information cue when shopping apparel via the Internet, to investigate the differences of the perceived importance weight of product information cues in product category, and to examine the relationship between apparel involvement and the perceived importance weight of product information cues. This study employed a single-factor within-subjects design experiment that simulated online purchase situation for two product types, Jeans and a Shirt. A total of 125 college students participated in this study. Results indicated that selected information such size available, price, style, color description, item measurement, stock available, and item quality (in sequence) can be considered as global cues to judge product quality and influence purchase decision regardless of product category. The significant multivariate effects for product category on the perceived importance weight of product information cues were found. Personalization, fiber content, and fabric structure were product specific information cues. Consumers' product involvement significantly influenced the perception of information weight. Therefore, product information can be personalized based on consumer involvement

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.307-344
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• 2014

Political parties would normally claim that their campaign and communication materials have effects on voters, be it on their supporters or their opponents during election campaigns. However, such effects are assumed effects by the parties unless voters are themselves assessed about the effects of such materials on themselves. The supporters of the parties are likely to regard such campaign materials as congenial to them but this may not be so with the opposition supporters who would regard such materials as negative. Taking the third-person effect to analyze effects on the audience as the theoretical framework, this study posited that opposition members would regard the materials as negative and thus would claim that they would not have any effect on them but they would likely say that such campaign materials would have effects on own party supporters. Davison (1983) posited that individuals will perceive that negative mediated messages would have their greatest impact not "on me" or "you" but on "them,"- the third person. Research suggests that people judge others to be more influenced than they are by media, advertising, libelous messages, media violence, pornography, and television drama. The theory referred to as the Third-person effect developed on the postulation that audience members would not admit that media had any direct effect on them, but would instead believe that the media influenced others, the third person (Tewksbury, Moy, & Weis, 2004; Price, Tewksbury, & Huang, 1998). On the other hand, while people would discount the effects of negative or biased messages on themselves, they would, under the notion of the First Person Effect, readily admit to being influenced by such messages. This study was based on studying the effects of political literature on party and opposition party supporters taking the messages to be positive to one group and biased and partisan to another group. The study focuses on the assumed effects of political literature on own party and opposition party supporters. It traces the degree of influence of Malaysia's largest political party, Barisan Nasional (BN) political communication literature on its own supporters and on non-BN party supporters. While the third-person effect assumes a null or minimal effect on one's self and some or strong effect on others, the question that arises are on welcoming favorable media effects on oneself and assuming unfavorable effects on others.