Under the market economy of capitalism, several limitations reveal the inequity and redistribution problem of wealth, inefficiency of over-manufacturing and over-consumption, pollution of the natural environment, and the constraint of human liberty and dignity. The new challenge of symbiotic relationships that encourage individual corporations coincides with the need to practice social responsibility and share values to overcome these limitations. Social economy and the social enterprises that simultaneously pursue the making of corporate private profits and the realization of social values have been suggested and disseminated as alternative social value creators. Furthermore, the concept of a sharing economy, which refers to the sharing of things rather than owning them, is growing traction as a new paradigm of capitalism. However, these efforts of social enterprises have fallen short against the conflicts between private profit and social values. This study deals with the case of a start-up social corporation, "Purun Bike Sharing Inc.," which is based on a regional sharing economy business model about bike rental services that use Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This corporation pursues harmonic management to achieve a balance between private profit and social value. Its corporate mission is to achieve sharing, coexistence, and contribution for public welfare. This mission is a possible idea for use in the local community network as a core key for sustainable social enterprises. The model can also be an alternative approach to overcome the structural friction in the social corporation. This study considers the case of Purun Bike Sharing as a sustainable way to practice a sharing economy business model based on a regional cooperation network, which can be combined with social value, and to apply ICT to a sharing economy system. It also examines the definition and current state of social enterprises and the sharing economy, and the cases of the sharing economy business model for the review of prior research.
One of the new roles of modern retail stores is to supply consumers with a memorable experience. In Korea, enhancing a store's environment so that customers remember a unique shopping experience is recognized as a sound strategy for strengthening the store's competitiveness. Motivated by this incentive, awareness of the experience-store concept is starting to increase in various categories of the retail industry. However, many experience stores, except in a few cases, have yet to derive a significant profit, explaining why Korean consumers are somewhat unfamiliar with, yet fascinated by, the experience stores that now exist in the country. Consumer satisfaction directly, and indirectly, affects a company's future profit and potential financial gain; customer satisfaction also affects loyalty. Therefore, knowing the significant factors that increase satisfaction and loyalty is essential for any company, in any field, to be able to effectively differentiate itself from the competition. Intrigued by increased competition opportunities, most Korean companies have adopted experience-store marketing strategies. When establishing the most effective processes for increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage of a new concept, companies should consider certain factors that influence consumers' ability to accept new concepts and ideas. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is a theory that models how people accept new concepts. TAM proposes the following two factors that influence a person's decisions about how, and when, he or she will use a new product: "perceived usefulness" and "perceived ease of use." Much of the existing research has suggested that a person's character also affects the process for accepting new ideas. Such personal character attributes as individual preferences, self-confidence, and a person's values, traits, and/or skills affect the process for willingly consenting to try something new. It will be meaningful to establish how the TAM theory's components, as well as personal character, affect individuals accepting the experience-store concept. To that end, as it pertains to an experience store, the first goal of the study is to examine the influence of innovative factors (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) on satisfaction and loyalty. The second objective is to define the moderate effect of consumers' personal characteristics on the model. The proposed model was tested on 149 respondents who were engaged in leisure sports activities and bought sports outdoor garments and equipment. According to the study's findings, the satisfaction and loyalty of an experience store can be explained by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, with the study's results demonstrating the stronger of the two factors being "perceived ease of use." The study failed to explain the effects of a person's character on the model. In conclusion, when the companies that operate the experience stores execute their marketing and promotion strategies, they should stress the stores' "ease of use" product components. Additionally, it can be extrapolated from the study data that since the experience-store idea is still relatively unfamiliar to Korean consumers, most customers are not yet able to evaluate, nor take a position regarding, their respective attitudes toward experience stores.
Extant studies have explained that firm's innovations including technological product and process innovations contribute to its competitive advantage and growth, thereby supporting competitiveness and growth of industry. These studies, however, have focused mainly on the role and effect of technological change that is primarily measured by the patent numbers and R&D intensity. Aside from these traditional streams, there has been growing interest on the impact by various dimensions of innovation including non-technological innovations. Apart from the discussions on the dimensions and scope of innovation, stages or processes of innovation also have been studied. Extant studies on innovation process model, however, has limited its interests in the structure of the transformation of knowledge. This study have established a comprehensive model embracing operational and financial performance to investigate the causal paths between innovation and firm performance. Using multi-level generalized linear model with path analysis, this study have found results as follows: First, the processes from innovative activities to innovation output and outcomes including operational and financial performance at firm level were verified. Secondly, the influence of innovation decreases gradually as the distance away from the direct outputs of the innovation increase in the direction of financial outcomes. Third, the effect of innovation on the sales growth rate is higher for small businesses than for medium-sized businesses. The effect of innovation on the profit rate, however, is significant only for medium-sized businesses. For large businesses, innovation has no positive significant impact on any financial performance at all. Fourth, Fourth, the appropriability of innovation has positive impacts on innovative performance, patent applications, and operational performance.
Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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v.35
no.2
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pp.57-63
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2012
Software release planning model of software product lines was formulated as a precedence-constrained multiple 0-1 knapsack problem. The purpose of the model was to maximize the total profit of an entire set of selected features in a software product line over a multi-release planning horizon. The solution approach is a dynamic programming procedure. Feasible solutions at each stage in dynamic programming are determined by using backward dynamic programming approach while dynamic programming for multi-release planning is forward approach. The pre-processing procedure with a heuristic and reduction algorithm was applied to the single-release problems corresponding to each stage in multi-release dynamic programming in order to reduce the problem size. The heuristic algorithm is used to find a lower bound to the problem. The reduction method makes use of the lower bound to fix a number of variables at either 0 or 1. Then the reduced problem can be solved easily by the dynamic programming approaches. These procedures keep on going until release t = T. A numerical example was developed to show how well the solution procedures in this research works on it. Future work in this area could include the development of a heuristic to obtain lower bounds closer to the optimal solution to the model in this article, as well as computational test of the heuristic algorithm and the exact solution approach developed in this paper. Also, more constraints reflecting the characteristics of software product lines may be added to the model. For instance, other resources such as multiple teams, each developing one product or a platform in a software product line could be added to the model.
Shin Sun Young;Shin Sang-Chul;Moon Tae Hee;Sohn So Young
Journal of KIISE:Information Networking
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v.32
no.2
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pp.220-235
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2005
Internet Service Quality has been constantly the center of attention to Internet Service Providers. The KII project plan (Korea Information Infrastructure) aims to build broadband backbone networks mainly through optical fiber cables and ATM switches and to Provide the government ministries, local authorities and non-profit organizations with high-speed, highly capable broadband access to these networks at reasonable rates. The KB service model, however, is different from other Internet Service models much in the same way SP (Service Provider) and NP (Network Provider) differ from each other. In this paper, we evaluate KII service according to various customer satisfaction indicators under the methodologies and categories as put forth in both the ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index) and SEM (Structural Equation Model). We use a structural equation model (SEM) to demarcate the Korea Information Infrastructure Customer Satisfaction Index (KIICSI) in relation to network service quality. The results of our study suggest some strategies for the KII Project need to be modified and effectively implemented in order to increase the satisfaction level of the KII customers.
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) designated the Emission Control Area (ECA) in Northern Europe to reduce the NOx and SOx emissions from ships in the coastal areas. This study used Network slack-based measure (SBM) Data Envelopment Model (DEM) and Bootstrop Truncated Regression (BTR) model to analyze the ECA's impact on ferry companies' financial performances based on the financial data from eight ferry carriers in Northern Europe, the Mediterranean and North America from 2004 to 2017. To alleviate the problem of arbitrary variable selection in DEA, the variable selection criteria proposed by Dyson et al. (2001) were applied; the size of the company was considered through the Network SBM DEA model; and the company's profit-generating process was divided into stages to measure financial performance in more detail. In addition, the BTR model was applied to derive results that minimize the bias of the data. The study found that ECA regulations did not always negatively affect the shipping companies' financial performance. Rather, a steady increase in efficiency was observed for Northern European ferry companies which were subject to the strongest regulations. For North American ferry companies, government subsidies were found to have a significant impact on efficiency, and relatively small impact on efficiency due to the ECA and oil prices. For the Mediterranean ferry companies, efficiency values have decreased since the implementation of ECA regulation despite the lowest level of regulation in the region.
Shipping companies earn profits through cargo transportation, and therefore, investment decisions to purchase ships are more important than anything else. Nevertheless, the cash flow discount method was mainly used in the economic analysis method, which assumes that all situations are static. This study shows that the real option model is useful in the economic analysis of ship investment. This economic analysis took into account the irreversibility of investment and uncertainty of benefits. In particular, this study used a binary option price determination model among real options. In addition, the simulation was conducted using actual investment data of A shipping company. As a result of the analysis, the investment value of used ships according to the net present value method was analyzed as negative (-), but the investment value in the real option model reflecting the flexibility of decision-making was evaluated as having positive (+) economic feasibility. It was analyzed that economic feasibility is affected by profit volatility and discount rate. Therefore, this study is expected to help shipping companies make more flexible decisions by using the real option model along with the existing net present value method when making ship investment decisions.
Internet commerce has been growing at a rapid pace for the last decade. Many firms try to reach wider consumer markets by adding the Internet channel to the existing traditional channels. Despite the various benefits of the Internet channel, a significant number of firms failed in managing the new type of channel. Previous studies could not cleary explain these conflicting results associated with the Internet channel. One of the major reasons is most of the previous studies conducted analyses under a specific market condition and claimed that as the impact of Internet channel introduction. Therefore, their results are strongly influenced by the specific market settings. However, firms face various market conditions in the real worlddensity and disutility of using the Internet. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of various market environments on a firm's optimal channel strategy by employing a flexible game theory model. We capture various market conditions with consumer density and disutility of using the Internet.
shows the channel structures analyzed in this study. Before the Internet channel is introduced, a monopoly manufacturer sells its products through an independent physical store. From this structure, the manufacturer could introduce its own Internet channel (MI). The independent physical store could also introduce its own Internet channel and coordinate it with the existing physical store (RI). An independent Internet retailer such as Amazon could enter this market (II). In this case, two types of independent retailers compete with each other. In this model, consumers are uniformly distributed on the two dimensional space. Consumer heterogeneity is captured by a consumer's geographical location (ci) and his disutility of using the Internet channel (${\delta}_{N_i}$).
shows various market conditions captured by the two consumer heterogeneities.
(a) illustrates a market with symmetric consumer distributions. The model captures explicitly the asymmetric distributions of consumer disutility in a market as well. In a market like that is represented in
(c), the average consumer disutility of using an Internet store is relatively smaller than that of using a physical store. For example, this case represents the market in which 1) the product is suitable for Internet transactions (e.g., books) or 2) the level of E-Commerce readiness is high such as in Denmark or Finland. On the other hand, the average consumer disutility when using an Internet store is relatively greater than that of using a physical store in a market like (b). Countries like Ukraine and Bulgaria, or the market for "experience goods" such as shoes, could be examples of this market condition.
summarizes the various scenarios of consumer distributions analyzed in this study. The range for disutility of using the Internet (${\delta}_{N_i}$) is held constant, while the range of consumer distribution (${\chi}_i$) varies from -25 to 25, from -50 to 50, from -100 to 100, from -150 to 150, and from -200 to 200.
summarizes the analysis results. As the average travel cost in a market decreases while the average disutility of Internet use remains the same, average retail price, total quantity sold, physical store profit, monopoly manufacturer profit, and thus, total channel profit increase. On the other hand, the quantity sold through the Internet and the profit of the Internet store decrease with a decreasing average travel cost relative to the average disutility of Internet use. We find that a channel that has an advantage over the other kind of channel serves a larger portion of the market. In a market with a high average travel cost, in which the Internet store has a relative advantage over the physical store, for example, the Internet store becomes a mass-retailer serving a larger portion of the market. This result implies that the Internet becomes a more significant distribution channel in those markets characterized by greater geographical dispersion of buyers, or as consumers become more proficient in Internet usage. The results indicate that the degree of price discrimination also varies depending on the distribution of consumer disutility in a market. The manufacturer in a market in which the average travel cost is higher than the average disutility of using the Internet has a stronger incentive for price discrimination than the manufacturer in a market where the average travel cost is relatively lower. We also find that the manufacturer has a stronger incentive to maintain a high price level when the average travel cost in a market is relatively low. Additionally, the retail competition effect due to Internet channel introduction strengthens as average travel cost in a market decreases. This result indicates that a manufacturer's channel power relative to that of the independent physical retailer becomes stronger with a decreasing average travel cost. This implication is counter-intuitive, because it is widely believed that the negative impact of Internet channel introduction on a competing physical retailer is more significant in a market like Russia, where consumers are more geographically dispersed, than in a market like Hong Kong, that has a condensed geographic distribution of consumers.