• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.315-325
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• 2021

The value and importance of Gamification has intensified as the way Gamification is applied to social networking applications has added to users' interest and involvement to the product. Gamification entails the adoption of gaming techniques and modes of thinking in non-gaming domains to elicit user engagement. To this end, the paper draws on Gamification's analytical model, Octalysis, with the aim of identifying user loyalty of the three major Chinese social networking applications and extracting their characteristics. In this regard, the first task in the advancement of the study is to establish an understanding of the components and characteristics of Gamification within the context of available examples. Next, a questionnaire survey covering China's three dominant social applications, WeChat, QQ, and Xiaohongshu, is administered and their user loyalty is examined through Octalysis's eight analytical frameworks. By virtue of analysis, the results demonstrate that the three elements of game mechanics, Point, Badge, and Leadboard, which are external to the game, fail to sustain the user loyalty, but are merely a means to an end. Only by including a combination of social application features, contents and user needs can Gamification considerations be maximized to ensure that users are subjectively engaged with the product.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.148-162
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• 1993

There is much speculation that modern capi-talist society is undergoing fundamental and qualitative chnge towards flexible specialization. The purpose of this study is to examine this hypothesis. This paper focusses on: the idea of flexible specialization; the significance of this transition; industrial district; and the implicati-ons of this new production system for Korean industrial space. Main arguments of this study are as follows: First, as all different groups of researchers apply the idea of flexible specialization according to their own specifications, the current debate on this topic is not much fruitful. Not surpri-singly, the concept of flexible specialization has overlapped with subocontracting. This intergration of subcontracting into flexible specialization systems, however, is inappropriate because the two concepts have different historical contexts. The other cause of this controversy is its inherent weekness, conceptual ambiguity. Thus, today's flexibility becomes tomorrow's rigidity. Secondly, transition towards flexible speciali-zation has only been partially achieved even in advanced capitalist countries. The application of dualistic explanatory framework, such as rigidity versus flexibiity, mass production versus small-lot multi-product production, and de-skilling versus re-skilling, has resulted in great exaggeration of the transformation, from Fordism to post-Fordism. There is no intermediary part between two places. Considering that the workers allocated to the Fordist mass production assembly line are not as large as one might imagine, the shift from mass to flexible production has only limited implications for the transformation of capitalist economy. Thirdly, 'industrial district' contorversy has contributed to highlighting the importance of small firms and areas as production space. The agglomeration of small firms in specific areas is common in Korea, but it is quite different from the industrial district based on flexible specialization. The Korean phenomenon stems from close interactions with its major parent firm rather than interactions between flexible, specialized, autonomous and technology-intensive smll firms. Most Korean subcontractors are still low-skilled, labour-intensive, and heavily dependent on their mojor parent firms. Thus, the assertion that the Seoul Metropolitan Area adopts flexible specialization has no base. Fourthly, the main concern of flexible speciali zation is small firms. However, the corporate organization that needs product diversification and technological specialization is oligopolistic large corporations typified by multinational corporations. It is because of this that most of these organizations are adoptiong Fordist mass production methods. The problem of product diversification will be resolved naturally if economic internationalization progresses further. What is more important for business success is the quality and price competitiveness of firms rather than product diversification. Lastly, in order to dispel further misunderst-anding on this issue, it is imparative that the conceptual ambiguity is resolved most urgently. This study recommends adoption of more speci-fied and direct terminology (such as, factory automation, computer design, out-sourcing, the exploitation of part-time labor, job redesign) rather than that of ideological ones (such as, Taylorism, Fordism, neo-Taylorism, neo-Fordism, post-fordism, flexible specialization, peripheral post-Fordism). As the debates on this topic just started, we still have long way to go until consensus is reached.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-27
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• 2011

In an attempt to cope with widespread, dynamic, and accelerating changes in both internal and external business environments, companies often utilize information technologies such as SCM(Supply Chain Management). To date, SCM research has mainly focused on the effects of dynamic factors on SCM success and emphasized adoption strategies and critical success factors. Consequently, the effects of more static factors such as interdependency between SCM partners have been largely ignored. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine the effects of both dynamic and static factors on SCM performance by controlling for information quality and partnership quality. The five factors examined in this study include innovative ness, mutual dependency, quality of information, partnership quality, and SCM performance. All factors were examined from the perspective of part suppliers, except the mutual dependency which was examined from two aspects: supplier's dependency on customer and customer's dependency on supplier. Data was collected through five hundred survey questionnaires distributed to the part supplier companies that have implemented SCM systems for at least one year. As a result, a total of 170 valid responses were obtained. A structural equation research model was fitted using SAS 9.1.3 and SMART-PLS 2.0. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, innovativeness positively affected SCM information quality. SCM partnership quality, and ultimately SCM performance. The path coefficient between innovativeness and information quality was 0.387, with a t-value of 3.528. Innovativeness also had a positively direct effect on partnership quality. The path coefficient was 0.351 with a t-value of 3.366. The total effect of innovativeness on partnership quality was significant, although its indirect effect on partnership quality by altering information quality was negligible. The total indirect effect of innovativeness on SCM performance by affecting information quality and partnership quality was significant with a p-value of 0.014. Innovativeness played an important role in determining SCM performance. Second, mutual dependency showed no significant effect on SCM information quality. This result contradicts the earlier assertion that the more dependent two companies are, the more accurate and timely the information they exchange ought to be. This study showed that this may not be the case; a partner may provide information of poor quality even when it is strongly dependent on the other. Mutual dependency showed significant effect on partnership quality. However, when the mutual dependency perceived by suppliers was divided into two parts, one being a supplier's dependency on its customer company and the other being a customer's dependency on the supplier, the latter showed a significant impact on the perceived SCM partnership quality. This result indicates that a customer company can hardly improve the partnership quality perceived by suppliers by making them more dependent. It improves only when the suppliers perceive that their partners, typically having more bargaining power, are more dependent on them. The overall effect of mutual dependency of any kind on SCM performance, however, was not significant. Although mutual dependency has been mentioned as an important static factor influencing almost every aspect of cooperation on a supply chain, its influences may not be as significant as it was initially perceived to be. Third, the correlation between information quality and partnership quality was 0.448 with a p-value of less than 0.001. Information quality had a path coefficient of 0.256 to partnership quality with a t-value of 2.940. The quality of information exchanged between partners may have an impact on their partnership quality. Fourth, information quality also had a significant impact on SCM performance with a path coefficient of 0.325 with a t-value of 3.611. In this study, SCM performance was divided into four categories: product quality, cost saving, service quality, and order fulfillment. Information quality has Significant impacts on product quality, cost saving and service quality, but not on order fulfillment. Fifth, partnership quality, as expected, had a significant impact on SCM performance. The path coefficient was 0.403 with a t-value of 3.539. Partnership quality, like information quality, had positive impacts on product quality, cost saving and service quality, but showed no impact on order fulfillment. It seemed that order fulfillment is the hardest category of performance that SCM can satisfy. One major limitation of this study is that it surveyed only the suppliers. To better understand the dual aspects of SCM, it is important to survey both suppliers and the assemblers, especially in pairs. This research, to our best knowledge, was the first attempt to study the level of dependency between the two groups by measuring the dual aspects of SCM and studying mutual dependency from the categories of suppliers and assemblers each.. In the future, a more comprehensive and precise measurement of SCM characteristics needs to be achieved by examining from both the supplier's and assembler's perspectives.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.493-513
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• 2014

With the development of related technologies, Location-Based Services (LBS) are growing fast and being used in many ways. Past LBS studies have focused on adoption of LBS because of the fact that LBS users have privacy concerns regarding revealing their location information. Meanwhile, the number of LBS users and revenues from LBS are growing rapidly because users can get some benefits by revealing their location information. Little research has been done on how LBS affects consumers' information search behavior in product purchase. The purpose of this paper is examining the effect of LBS information filtering on buyers' uncertainty and their information search behavior. When consumers purchase a product, they try to reduce uncertainty by searching information. Generally, there are two types of uncertainties - knowledge uncertainty and choice uncertainty. Knowledge uncertainty refers to the lack of information on what kinds of alternatives are available in the market and/or their important attributes. Therefore, consumers having knowledge uncertainty will have difficulties in identifying what alternatives exist in the market to fulfil their needs. Choice uncertainty refers to the lack of information about consumers' own preferences and which alternative will fit in their needs. Therefore, consumers with choice uncertainty have difficulties selecting best product among available alternatives.. According to economics of information theory, consumers narrow the scope of information search when knowledge uncertainty is high. It is because consumers' information search cost is high when their knowledge uncertainty is high. If people do not know available alternatives and their attributes, it takes time and cognitive efforts for them to acquire information about available alternatives. Therefore, they will reduce search breadth. For people with high knowledge uncertainty, the information about products and their attributes is new and of high value for them. Therefore, they will conduct searches more in-depth because they have incentive to acquire more information. When people have high choice uncertainty, people tend to search information about more alternatives. It is because increased search breadth will improve their chances to find better alternative for them. On the other hand, since human's cognitive capacity is limited, the increased search breadth (more alternatives) will reduce the depth of information search for each alternative. Consumers with high choice uncertainty will spend less time and effort for each alternative because considering more alternatives will increase their utility. LBS provides users with the capability to screen alternatives based on the distance from them, which reduces information search costs. Therefore, it is expected that LBS will help users consider more alternatives even when they have high knowledge uncertainty. LBS provides distance information, which helps users choose alternatives appropriate for them. Therefore, users will perceive lower choice uncertainty when they use LBS. In order to test the hypotheses, we selected 80 students and assigned them to one of the two experiment groups. One group was asked to use LBS to search surrounding restaurants and the other group was asked to not use LBS to search nearby restaurants. The experimental tasks and measures items were validated in a pilot experiment. The final measurement items are shown in Appendix A. Each subject was asked to read one of the two scenarios - with or without LBS - and use a smartphone application to pick a restaurant. All behaviors on smartphone were recorded using a recording application. Search breadth was measured by the number of restaurants clicked by each subject. Search depths was measured by two metrics - the average number of sub-level pages each subject visited and the average time spent on each restaurant. The hypotheses were tested using SPSS and PLS. The results show that knowledge uncertainty reduces search breadth (H1a). However, there was no significant correlation between knowledge uncertainty and search depth (H1b). Choice uncertainty significantly reduces search depth (H2b), but no significant relationship was found between choice uncertainty and search breadth (H2a). LBS information filtering significantly reduces the buyers' choice uncertainty (H4) and reduces the negative relationship between knowledge uncertainty and search breadth (H3). This research provides some important implications for service providers. Service providers should use different strategies based on their service properties. For those service providers who are not well-known to consumers (high knowledge uncertainty) should encourage their customers to use LBS. This is because LBS would increase buyers' consideration sets when the knowledge uncertainty is high. Therefore, less known services have chances to be included in consumers' consideration sets with LBS. On the other hand, LBS information filtering decrease choice uncertainty and the near service providers are more likely to be selected than without LBS. Hence, service providers should analyze geographically approximate competitors' strength and try to reduce the gap so that they can have chances to be included in the consideration set.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.35-52
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• 2023

Recently, as the non-face-to-face environment has developed due to COVID-19 and environmental pollution, the importance of online digital healthcare is increasing, and venture start-ups and activities such as health care, telemedicine, and digital treatments are also actively underway. This study conducted the impact on the acceptability of digital healthcare smartwatches with an integrated approach of the expanded integrated technology acceptance model (UTAUT2) and the behavioral inference model (BRT). The most advanced integrated technology acceptance model for innovative technology acceptance research was used to identify major factors such as utility expectations, social effects, convenience, price barriers, lack of alternatives, and behavioral intentions. For the study, about 410 responses from ordinary people in their teens to 60s across the country were collected, and based on this, the hypothesis was verified using structural equations after testing reliability and validity of the data. SPSS 23 and AMOS 23 were used for research analysis. Studies have shown that personal innovation has a significant impact on the reasons for acceptance (use value, social impact, convenience of use), attitude, and non-use (price barriers, lack of alternatives, and barriers to use). These results are the same as the results of previous studies that confirmed the influence of the main value of innovative ICT on user acceptance intention. In addition, the reason for acceptance had a significant effect on attitude, but the effect of the reason for non-acceptance was not significant. It can be analyzed that consumers are interested in new ICT products and new services, but purchase them more carefully and selectively. This study has evolved from the acceptance analysis of general-purpose consumer innovation technology to the acceptance analysis of consumer value in smartwatch digital healthcare, which is a new and important area in the future. Industrially, it can contribute to the product's purchase and marketing. It is hoped that this study will contribute to increasing research in the digital healthcare sector, which will play an important role in our lives in the future, and that it will develop into in-depth factors that are more suitable for consumer value through integrated approach models and integrated analysis of consumer acceptance and non-acceptance.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.165-183
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• 2016

Over the past decade, there has been a rapid diffusion of technological devices and a rising number of various devices, resulting in an escalation of virtual reality technology. Technological market has rapidly been changed from smartphone to wearable devices based on virtual reality. Virtual reality can make users feel real situation through sensing interaction, voice, motion capture and so on. Facebook.com, Google, Samsung, LG, Sony and so on have investigated developing platform of virtual reality. the pricing of virtual reality devices also had decreased into 30% from their launched period. Thus market infrastructure in virtual reality have rapidly been developed to crease marketplace. However, most consumers recognize that virtual reality is not ease to purchase or use. That could not lead consumers to positive attitude for devices and purchase the related devices in the early market. Through previous studies related to virtual reality, there are few studies focusing on why the devices for virtual reality stayed in early stage in adoption & diffusion context in the market. Almost previous studies considered the reasons of hard adoption for innovative products in the viewpoints of Typology of Innovation Resistance, MIR(Management of Innovation Resistant), UTAUT & UTAUT2. However, product-based antecedents also important to increase user intention to purchase and use products in the technological market. In this study, we focus on user acceptance and resistance for increasing purchase and usage promotions of wearable devices related to virtual reality based on headgear products like Galaxy Gear. Especially, we added a variables like attitude confidence as a dimension for user resistance. The research questions of this study are follows. First, how attitude confidence and innovativeness resistance affect user intention to use? Second, What factors related to content and brand contexts can affect user intention to use? This research collected data from the participants who have experiences using virtual rality headgears aged between 20s to 50s located in South Korea. In order to collect data, this study used a pilot test and through making face-to-face interviews on three specialists, face validity and content validity were evaluated for the questionnaire validity. Cleansing the data, we dropped some outliers and data of irrelevant papers. Totally, 156 responses were used for testing the suggested hypotheses. Through collecting data, demographics and the relationships among variables were analyzed through conducting structural equation modeling by PLS. The data showed that the sex of respondents who have experience using social commerce sites (male=86(55.1%), female=70(44.9%). The ages of respondents are mostly from 20s (74.4%) to 30s (16.7%). 126 respondents (80.8%) have used virtual reality devices. The results of our model estimation are as follows. With the exception of Hypothesis 1 and 7, which deals with the two relationships between brand awareness to attitude confidence, and quality of content to perceived enjoyment, all of our hypotheses were supported. In compliance with our hypotheses, perceived ease of use (H2) and use innovativeness (H3) were supported with its positively influence for the attitude confidence. This finding indicates that the more ease of use and innovativeness for devices increased, the more users' attitude confidence increased. Perceived price (H4), enjoyment (H5), Quantity of contents (H6) significantly increase user resistance. However, perceived price positively affect user innovativeness resistance meanwhile perceived enjoyment and quantity of contents negatively affect user innovativeness resistance. In addition, aesthetic exterior (H6) was also positively associated with perceived price (p<0.01). Also projection quality (H8) can increase perceived enjoyment (p<0.05). Finally, attitude confidence (H10) increased user intention to use virtual reality devices. however user resistance (H11) negatively affect user intention to use virtual reality devices. The findings of this study show that attitude confidence and user innovativeness resistance differently influence customer intention for using virtual reality devices. There are two distinct characteristic of attitude confidence: perceived ease of use and user innovativeness. This study identified the antecedents of different roles of perceived price (aesthetic exterior) and perceived enjoyment (quality of contents & projection quality). The findings indicated that brand awareness and quality of contents for virtual reality is not formed within virtual reality market yet. Therefore, firms should developed brand awareness for their product in the virtual market to increase market share.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.1-27
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• 2012

Many companies have recently become interested in using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook as a new channel to communicate with their customers. For example, companies often offer "special deals" (e.g., coupons, discounts, free samples, etc.) to their customers who participate in promotions or events on social networking sites. Companies often make important announcements on their products or services on social networking sites. By doing so, customers are encouraged to continue to have relationships with companies on social networking sites and to recommend the companies' presence on social networking sites to other potential customers. Moreover, customers who keep close relationships with companies on social networking sites often provide the companies with valuable suggestions and feedback. For instance, Starbucks has more than 2 million followers on Twitter, and often receive suggestions and feedback for their product offerings and services from the followers on Twitter. Although companies realize potential benefits of using social networking sites as a channel to communicate with their customers, it appears that many companies have difficulty forging long-lasting relationships with customers on social networking sites. It is often reported that many customers who had followed companies on Twitter later stopped following them for various reasons. Therefore, it is an important issue to understand what motivates customers to continue to keep relationships with companies on social networking sites. Nonetheless, due attention has yet paid to this issue until recently. This study intends to contribute to our understanding on customers' intention to continue to follow companies on Twitter and to spread positive word-of-mouth about companies on Twitter. Specifically, we identify seven potential factors that customers perceive as important in evaluating their experience with companies on Twitter. The seven factors include similarity, receptivity, interactivity, ubiquitous connectivity, enjoyment, usefulness and transparency. We posit that the seven perception factors can affect the two types of satisfaction, emotional and cognitive, which can in turn influence on customers' intention to follow companies on Twitter and to spread positive word-of-mouth about companies on Twitter. Research hypotheses formulated in this study were tested with data collected from a questionnaire survey administered to customers who had been following companies on Twitter. The data was analyzed with the partial least square (PLS) approach to structural equation modeling. The results of data analysis based on 177 usable responses were generally supportive of our predictions for the effects of the seven factors identified and the two types of satisfaction. In particular, out results suggest that emotional satisfaction was strongly influenced by perceived similarity, perceived receptivity, perceived enjoyment, and perceived transparency. Cognitive satisfaction was significantly influenced by perceived similarity, perceived interactivity, perceived enjoyment, and perceived transparency. While cognitive satisfaction was found to have significant and positive effects on both continued following and word-of-mouth intentions, emotional satisfaction had a significant and positive effect only on word-of-mouth intention.

• Journal of Science of Art and Design
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• v.12
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• pp.5-41
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• 2007

As public attention on Well-being culture increases, it is now considered to be a new trend of modern society. The purpose of this study is to publicize the necessity of design products which are advanced in quality and encourage the use of it. The researcher judged that study on design of lighting product to adopt well-being trend is in preliminary level and aims to research on the tendency of well-bing trend and lighting design which the consumer of this age is demanding. As the result of changes in modern consumption trend, design is considered to be a factor of capricious cultural phenomenon. In addition to this, as high technology such as ubiquitous develops with the degitalisation and informatization, the consumer are paying attention to dynamic products rather than static products or products which respond to external stimulus. Products which adopt well-being trend pursuing nature friendly life are particularly preferred It means that not only the basic function of products but also design which satisfy the five sense is required. Modern consumers use products in various way. However, the pro-environmental and human-centered tendency is tried only in very limited area and general study on this matter is extremely rare. This study analyzes the factors which intercepts the adoption of well-being trend to lighting products and seeks for an alternative to solve the problem. Interaction design with well-being trend was adopted to lighting design and the result presented that there is a possibility to differentiate existing lighting design by adding interaction design to the existing lighting design. Therefore, the need for further study on this matter is presented.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.221-228
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• 2018

With an increase in demand for the high added value of shipbuilding and marine industry based on the information and communications technology (ICT), software technology has become more important than ever in the industry. In this paper, we present the result of our preliminary investigation on the current software development environment in the shipbuilding and marine industry in order to develop reusable software component, which can enhance the competitiveness of software development. The investigation is performed based on the survey answers from 34 developers who are working in different shipbuilding and marine companies. The questionnaire is composed of items to gather the information of each company such as the number of employees and product domain, and actual software development environment such as operating system, programming languages, deployment format, obstacles for developing components, and the adoption of software development methods and tools. According to the results of the survey, the most important consideration to select their development platform was the number of available utilities and the technical supports, followed by performance, price and security problems. In addition, the requirements of various platforms supporting and the higher reliability, and the limitations of low development cost and manpower made it difficult for them to develop reusable software components. Finally, throughout the survey, we find out that only 15% of developers used software development processes and managed the quality to systematically develop their software products, therefore, shipbuilding and marine companies need more technical and institutional support to improve their ability to develop high qualified software.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.1364-1370
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• 2006

Recently, Adopting Accounting Information Systems(AIS) has spread rapidly for efficient and rational making decision in the business organization. There are many types of AIS. These are from simple package to integrated packages which are including HR, Product, Sales and Distribute. In case of big enterprises, ERP systems have been implemented and attention is now being directed as to AIS module. AIS module is not easy to change its form, therefore this module need to be considered enough when it comes to the corporations. However there we few standard fer this module as a successful information systems. This study analyze critical factors of certain companies when the companies were implementing AIS and based on this analysis, this study suggest a framework for successful implementation of AIS Using Case Study. 42 AIS adopted companies are surveyed and their factors' correlations are analyzed by mean analysis and factor analysis in this study. As a result of this study, when a company adopt AIS, criteria or particularities for the adoption are more important than environment of the company. Thus, it is significant to empirically prove previous studies' factors relation and importance relations for successful AIS implementation through empirical method in this study.