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

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

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.60-75
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to look for useful implications in its next application or similar planning by assessing visitors' recognition of International Garden Exposition Suncheon Bay Korea 2013. To do this, blogs acknowledged as powerful communication media in modern information society were used. After searching for blogs related to International Garden Exposition Suncheon Bay Korea in the portal site ranked first in the domestic market share, this study classified 300 cases. This study was able to grasp the consciousness as bloggers gave descriptions of information and impressions and experiences of spaces without making any adjustments. The survey results are as follows: First, Dutch gardens were the most preferred, followed by Korean gardens, Chinese gardens and French gardens; in general, visitors were not satisfied with the national gardens. Inquiry is needed into the method of determining diverse cultural identity rather than a sample garden type through blogs delivering regret regarding the world gardens. Second, the survey results showed that the level of awareness of designers' gardens was low. This study judges that more emphasis should be placed on their roles as places speaking for the original purpose of the garden exposition which introduces gardening art and design through experimental design. Third, it was understood that many bloggers were deeply impressed by ephemeral landscapes like the change in landscape consequent on the elapse of time, distinctive atmosphere, and detailed-landscapes. These aspects are important landscape elements, and those elements should be addressed with weight in a subsequent study. Fourth, the most impressive places are 'Suncheon Lake Garden' and 'Bridge of Dreams', which are establishing themselves as icons of International Garden Exposition Suncheon Bay Korea 2013. However, relatively, public attitude towards the world gardens and designers' gardens are weak. Fifth, bloggers were providing a variety of information like transportation, events schedules, ticket purchasing & prices, discount information, etc. Ticket price was commented on the most, and most of the bloggers thought ticket prices were 'expensive'. This study understands such a phenomenon as a result of the general population's non-establishment of the perception that it's proper to view gardens at visitors' own expense. Generally, bloggers expressed satisfaction with International Garden Exposition Suncheon Bay Korea 2013, but with criticism as well. Their criticism included disappointing matters, to be improved upon and wishes without any distortion, providing meaningful implications deserving reference for similar cases. In this context, a blogger could be called a citizen-reviewer while a blog could be referred to as 'a field of informal discourse' for the public. As a research method of this study, blogs are difficult to interpret as they are subjective and personal, and have limited data analysis through their quantifications; however, blogs as methods of recognition survey are channels for varied, concrete and detailed awareness which are hard to grasp through a questionnaire survey or interviews. This study judges that such an aspect of a blog could be a useful means of grasping and reflecting upon visitors' attitude in future studies.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.192-207
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• 2020

Profitability of upland crops is better than paddy crops and proportion of upland is increasing. However, there is a lack of infrastructures for upland irrigation. The object of this study were to develop water supply scenarios using individual and collective agricultural wells to evaluate economic feasibility to consider geographical analysis of upland farms and water supply facilities. Cheongyang, Dangjin, Yesan, and Goesan were selected as study areas where four different crops of red pepper, chinese cabbage, apple, and bean, respectively, were mainly produced in Chungcheong province. As a result, B/C ratio was estimated as 1.49, 1.36, 1.90, and 0.71 in using individual wells scenario, and 1.45, 1.20, 1.91, and 0.65 in using collective wells scenario for red pepper, chinese cabbage, apple, and bean. It turned out that change of price effected on economic feasibility a lot for crops with low production income. As a result of evaluating economic feasibility by number of plots for developing collective well, there was no effect of economy of scale for red pepper and chinese cabbage. In case of collectivizating more than 20 upland plots, effect of economy of scale appeared for apple and bean. In conclusion, development of water using high value crops including red pepper and apple, and effect of collective well requires additory analysis of .spatial distribution of farms.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.105 no.1
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• pp.149-156
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• 2016

Forest museums can be defined as facilities for the collection, exhibition, and education of the forest or forest related artifacts or data. This study was performed to measure the educational value of Gyeongnam state forest museum's forest and its environment. The tool used was the Contingent Valuation Methods (CVM) which is well known as a value estimation tool of environmental goods. The study for the value estimation is performed from April, 2014 to October of the same year through selection of the subject, decision of proposed price, and orientation of the survey staffs and total of 386 surveys were used in analysis. The value estimation tool used the DBDC logit model and the input parameters were number of visit (time), degree of environmental education (contri), the environment conservation effort of the respondent (execu), the education level of the respondent (edu), and income of the respondent (inc) and trimmed mean (WTPtruncated) was used. The estimated value of flora and environment education per each person per visit is 23,338 won. When applied to the average annual visitors deducted from 2010 to 2014, which is 430,000 per year, the environmental value that Gyeongnam state forest museum is providing to visitors each year is about 10 billion won. The result of this study is significant to propose the value of forest education and environment that the forest museum is offering to the visitors in the current currency. This is an evidence to directly determine the value of the forest museum and therefore proposing an opportunity change the recognition toward the forest and environment education.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.30
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• pp.85-115
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• 2012

The private security industry has expanded in proportion to economic developments throughout the world, largely because the existing security services provided by the government do not satisfy demands of various economic entities and people in the society for better security service. Therefore, it would not be unfair to say that security services by private sectors are decided by its quality, price, and customers' needs. A refined management system, however, is essential to assess qualification of security companies and their service quality, given the nature of public goods of security service. Despite the steady growth of private security industry in Korea, however, it has been continuously criticized that its security management system for better qualification of security guards, training, and private security companies have not been fully updated enough to guarantee good quality. This paper aims to gain insights to effective policy formation in the Korean private security industry, through reviewing the licensing system of private security guards and the Approved Contractor Scheme (hereinafter the ACS) in the UK- that has on one hand systematically regulated private security industry, but on other hand has enforced public-private cooperation by laying significant stress on autonomy of private security companies. The distinctive characteristic of the UK policy for the private security is that the Security Industry Authority (hereinafter the SIA), an independent authority, is leading development of the private security industry of the UK through specialized private security regulation and enhanced service quality. In addition, the UK is developing quality of security service with transparent financial management and recruitment of good quality security guards by adopting not only substantially specified regulations and standards, but the voluntary ACS system. Moreover, the SIA analyzes customers' demands for security service specializing the policy for private security through conducting a variety of surveys. With the analysis of the UK private security system, this paper suggests that the Korean government change from a non-specialized private security regulation system by the National Police Agency to an independently specialized private security authority like the SIA and adopt the compulsory licensing and the ACS system of the UK.

• Journal of Korean Ophthalmic Optics Society
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.107-116
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• 2000

This study is of investigation of refraction error, spectacles and contact lenses wearing state, visual acuity test, ophthalmologic common sense and vision care, using questionnaire study for 850 male and female high school students in Kunsan and Chongup City, Cheolla North Province. The results are as follows: 1. Among the 823 answerers, emmetropia is 18%, myopia is 55.1%, and hyperopia is 7%, respectively. 2. Among the 837 answerers, 381 students(45.5%) wear spectacles or contact lenses. Among the 381 students who wear spectacles or contact lenses, 78% wear only spectacles, 4% wear only contact lenses and 18% wears spectacles sometimes or contact lenses sometimes. 3. The places where the answerers had visual acuity test to wear spectacles or contact lenses are optical shop(64.7%), hospital(28.3%), unchecked(4.2%) and the others(2.7%). The places where the answerers had visual acuity test to change their spectacles or contact lenses are optical shop(82%), hospital(28.3%), unchecked(6.6%) and the others(1.9%). 4. As for the period of visual acuity test, from 6 months to one year is 54.1%, within 6 months is 9.2%, from one year to two years is 29.5%, and more than two years is 7.2%. 5. The contact lens wearers purchased their contact lenses at optical shops(94%) and at hospital(6%). 6. The reasons why they like wearing contact lenses are their appearance(51.2%), convenience in physical excercise(23.l%), lighter weight than spectacles(9.8%) and the others(15.7%). 7. As for the spectacles frame they like, plastic frame is 24.4%, gold or silver plated frame is 43.4%, coloured frame is 32.1%. 8. As for the considerations in choosing spectacles frame, their design is 37%, their quality is 36%, their price is 14.7% and their brand is 12.5%. 9. As for the period for changing spectacles, 10.5% is within 6 months, 57.3% is 6months to 1 year, 22.4% is 1 year to 2 months and 9.6% is more than 2 years. 10. There is a false fact, in Korea, that even though one has his poor eyesight, not wearing custom is helpful for the eyesight recovery. As for their conviction of the false fact, 10.5% of the answerers have 100% conviction, 22.5% of them have 22.5% conviction, 49.5% of them have 50% conviction and 17.5% of them don't have any conviction. 11. 48.5% of the answerers are interested in their vision care while 51.5% of them are not interested at all. As for the way of vision care, the vision-care way to keep enough distant when they are watching TV, when they are using computers and when they are reading, is 49% while the vision-care way such as hypogastric breathing or eye massage is 11%. And alimentotherapy is 4% and the rest who are not interested in vision care is 36%. 12. When they come to an age, the students who want vision correction operation are 45.9% while the students who do not want it are 27%. The students who do not have any idea about the operation are 27.1%

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.241-254
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• 2011

Financial time-series forecasting is one of the most important issues because it is essential for the risk management of financial institutions. Therefore, researchers have tried to forecast financial time-series using various data mining techniques such as regression, artificial neural networks, decision trees, k-nearest neighbor etc. Recently, support vector machines (SVMs) are popularly applied to this research area because they have advantages that they don't require huge training data and have low possibility of overfitting. However, a user must determine several design factors by heuristics in order to use SVM. For example, the selection of appropriate kernel function and its parameters and proper feature subset selection are major design factors of SVM. Other than these factors, the proper selection of instance subset may also improve the forecasting performance of SVM by eliminating irrelevant and distorting training instances. Nonetheless, there have been few studies that have applied instance selection to SVM, especially in the domain of stock market prediction. Instance selection tries to choose proper instance subsets from original training data. It may be considered as a method of knowledge refinement and it maintains the instance-base. This study proposes the novel instance selection algorithm for SVMs. The proposed technique in this study uses genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize instance selection process with parameter optimization simultaneously. We call the model as ISVM (SVM with Instance selection) in this study. Experiments on stock market data are implemented using ISVM. In this study, the GA searches for optimal or near-optimal values of kernel parameters and relevant instances for SVMs. This study needs two sets of parameters in chromosomes in GA setting : The codes for kernel parameters and for instance selection. For the controlling parameters of the GA search, the population size is set at 50 organisms and the value of the crossover rate is set at 0.7 while the mutation rate is 0.1. As the stopping condition, 50 generations are permitted. The application data used in this study consists of technical indicators and the direction of change in the daily Korea stock price index (KOSPI). The total number of samples is 2218 trading days. We separate the whole data into three subsets as training, test, hold-out data set. The number of data in each subset is 1056, 581, 581 respectively. This study compares ISVM to several comparative models including logistic regression (logit), backpropagation neural networks (ANN), nearest neighbor (1-NN), conventional SVM (SVM) and SVM with the optimized parameters (PSVM). In especial, PSVM uses optimized kernel parameters by the genetic algorithm. The experimental results show that ISVM outperforms 1-NN by 15.32%, ANN by 6.89%, Logit and SVM by 5.34%, and PSVM by 4.82% for the holdout data. For ISVM, only 556 data from 1056 original training data are used to produce the result. In addition, the two-sample test for proportions is used to examine whether ISVM significantly outperforms other comparative models. The results indicate that ISVM outperforms ANN and 1-NN at the 1% statistical significance level. In addition, ISVM performs better than Logit, SVM and PSVM at the 5% statistical significance level.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.9-16
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• 2018

Hangover after drinking is different from person to person symptoms and degree, but usually thirst, fatigue, headache, general boredom, gastrointestinal disorder, vomiting, diarrhea, deficiency of vitamin appears. This hanging phenomenon is caused by the action of precursors such as ethyl acetate and acetaldehyde, which are the by products of fermentation contained in alcohol and alcohol accumulated in hepatocytes and body. In order to solve the hangover phenomenon, the same Origin as polysaccharide Polydeoxyribonucleotide, which is a nucleic acid-sugar-phosphate complex, which is a semen or testicular extract in salmon extract, and a water soluble salmon extract powder having the same structure and lower price than Polydeoxyribonucleotide And D-Glucuronic acid and N-Acetyl glucosamine. It has excellent biocompatibility, viscoelasticity and moisturizing power. It has effect on reduction of body water loss and skin moisture content in hangover phenomenon. It is antioxidant and skin moisturizing effect Hyaluronic acid was irradiated with gamma rays, and the composition was prepared by using the salmon extract powder and the main raw material. The ethanol degradation, the acetaldehyde reduction amount, the blood acetaldehyde concentration and the acetic acid concentration were measured to evaluate the alcoholysis effect, Skin moisture evaporation rate To examine the evaluation unit water content of the skin was improved determine whether the antioxidant and provide skin moisturizing effect. The addition of ethanol extracts of salmon extracts showed a decrease of 5 to 7 times compared with no addition, and a decrease of 3 to 5 times of acetaldehyde. In addition, the change of acetaldehyde concentration and acetic acid concentration in blood showed a rapid decrease compared to the no - added control group. In addition, when the raw material of hyaluronic acid was used, skin moisture content was high and skin moisture evaporation amount was decreased. Therefore, hyaluronic acid, which is a polysaccharide polymer, has excellent viscoelasticity and moisturizing ability, It is considered to provide antioxidant and skin moisturizing effect. Therefore, it can be said that the composition containing salmon extract powder and hyaluronic acid as a main ingredient is effective for the hangover phenomenon which occurs after drinking.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.45-70
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• 2009

This article investigates which types of the strategies announced by the listed firms contribute to enhancing the long-term performance of the companies. Since 2002, Korean Exchange adopted the "faire disclosure policy" which mandates that all publicly traded companies must disclose material information to all investors at the same time. Thanks to the policy, Korean investors can, now, easily access the board's decision on management strategies on the same day the decision is made. If the companies trustfully carry out their announced strategies, we can decide which types of strategies actually enhance or deteriorate the long-term performance, simply by comparing the announced strategies and the firm's performance. The sample companies are confined to 60 firms that became listed in the KOSDAQ market through back-door listing from 2003 to 2005. Using only the newly listed companies, we can avoid the interference on the long-term performance of the strategies pursued before the event date. This often holds true, for many companies radically modify their strategies after the listing. Furthermore, the back-door listing companies serve our purpose better than IPO companies do, because the former tend to have a variety of announcement within a given period of time beginning the listing date. Using these sample companies, this article analyzes the effect on one year buy-and-hold returns and abnormal buy-and-hold returns after the listing of the various types of strategies announced during the same period of time. The results show that those evidences of restructuring such as 'reduction of capital' and 'resignation of incumbent board members', actually contribute to the increase in adjusted long-term stock returns. Those strategies which can be view as evidence of new investment such as 'increase in tangible assets', 'acquisition of other companies', do also helps the stockholders better off. On the contrary, 'increase in bank loans', 'changes of CEO' and 'merger' deteriorate the equity value. The last findings let us to presume that the back-door listing companies appear to use the bank loans for value-reducing activities; the change in CEO is not a sign of restructuring, but rather a sign of failure of the restructuring; another merger carried out after back-door listing itself is also value-reducing activity. This article's findings on reduction of capital, merger and bank loans oppose the results of the former empirical studies which analyze only the short-term effect on stock price. Therefore, more long-term performance studies on public disclosures are in order.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.131-154
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• 2013

New internet technologies have created a revolutionary new platform which allows consumers to make decision about product price and quality quickly and provides information about themselves through the transcript of online reviews. By expressing their feelings toward products or services on virtual opinion platforms, users extend their influence into cyberspace as electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM). Existing research indicates that an impact of eWOM on the consumer decision process is influential. For both academic researchers and practitioners, investigating this phenomenon of information sharing in online website is essential given the increasing number of consumers using them as sources of purchase decisions. It is worthwhile to examine the extent to which opinion seekers are willing to accept and adopt online reviews and which factors encourage adoption. Discerning the most motivating aspects of information adoption in particular, could help electronic marketers better promote their brand and presence on the internet. The objectives of this study are to investigate how online WOM influences a persons' purchase decision by discovering which factors encourage information adoption. Especially focused on the self-efficacy, this research investigates how self-efficacy affects on information usefulness and adoption of online information. Although people are exposed to same review or comment about product or service, some accept the reviews while others do not. We notice that accepting online reviews mainly depends on the person's preference or personal characteristics. This study empirically examines this issue by using cognitive dissonance theory. Specifically, in the movie industry, we address few questions-is always positive WOM generating positive effect? What if the movie isn't the person's favorite genre? What if the person who is very self-assertive so doesn't take other's opinion easily? In these cases of cognitive dissonance, is always WOM generating same result? While many studies have focused on one direct of WOM which indicates positive (or negative) informative reviews or comments generate positive (or negative) results and more (or less) profits, this study investigates not only directional properties of WOM but also how people change their opinion towards product or service positive to negative, negative to positive through the online WOM. An experiment was conducted quantitatively by using a sample of 168 users who have experience within the online movie review site, 'Naver Movie'. Users were required to complete a survey regarding reviews and comments taken from the real movie page. The data reflected user's perceptions of online WOM information that determined users' adoption level. Analysis results provide empirical support for the proposed theoretical perspective. When user can't agree with the opinion of online WOM information, in other words, when cognitive dissonance between online WOM information and users' preference occurs, perceived self-efficacy significantly decreases customers' perception of usefulness. And this perception of usefulness plays an important role in determining users' intention to adopt online WOM information. Most of researches have been concentrated on characteristics of online WOM itself such as quality or vividness of information, credibility of source and direction of online WOM, etc. for describing effect of online WOM, but our results suggest that users' personal character (e.g., self-efficacy) plays decisive role for acceptance of online WOM information. Higher self-efficacy means lower possibility to accept the information that represents counter opinion because of cognitive dissonance, whereas the people that have lower self-efficacy are willing to accept the online WOM information as true and refer to purchase decision. This study suggests a model for understanding role of direction of online WOM information. Also, our result implicates the importance of online review supervision and personalized information service by confirming switching opinion negative to positive is more difficult than positive to negative through the online WOM information. This implication would help marketers to manage online reviews of their products or services.