• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.201-219
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• 2014

The Republic of Korea in the real economy to a knowledge economy, and a center of creativity and imagination in the creative economy is changing the paradigm. As the core of creating economic, creative industries with the technology and information play an important role in the industry individuals. In order to solve the problem of the polarization of the economy and high youth unemployment rate of Korea, to recognize the role of the creative industries, as objection part, dimensions pan-national and one creative companies in industries of Mobile Apps various policies that support has been promoted. Support these policies to be able to contribute to the establishment of the success of mobile apps one-person creating company, we performed this study targeting one-person company that creates mobile apps area, we conducted a demonstration study of success factors, and thus more effective and efficient in an attempt to seek out support measures. In this study, we derive a research 4 hypothesis about the success factors of one creative enterprise through literature discussion, a study was made on the basis of empirical data of one-person company that creates mobile apps. The results of the analysis, first, if the development rate of the mobile application technology is fast and a new competition associated product is appeared, it was possible to find a tendency to be higher at the performance quantitative companies. Second, if the founder is a founding for the benefit and rewarding work and come to terms with the risk, it was possible to discover tends to be higher achievement quantitative. Third, if one-person company select a target market with capture intensively, it was possible to find a tendency for higher qualitative results. Fourth, it could be found that the reliability of the contact frequency of the network related performance business environment these characteristics enterprise management strategy and act as a significant modulatory effect. Provision of information relating to management and entrepreneurship education to be one creative enterprise is required, these results suggest that there is a provision continuing need for the opportunity to be able to meet and network and reliable variety have. In this study, to take advantage to promote the elimination measures that can increase the likelihood of success of the company of institutions to support one company that creates knowledge-based, such as in the field of mobile application.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.131-159
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• 2014

Corporate rebranding has been evident in the qualitative corporate rebranding studies as an imposed organizational change that induces mixed reactions and ambivalent attitudes among consumers. Corporate rebranding for the established and familiar corporate brands leads to more ambivalent attitudes as these companies represent larger targets for disparaging information. Consumers are found to hold both positive and negative reactions toward companies and brands that they are familiar with. Nevertheless, the imposed change assumption and ambivalent attitude, in particular corporate rebranding, have never been widely explored in the quantitative corporate rebranding studies. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive empirical examination of the ambivalence towards rebrandingrebranded brand attitude-purchase intention relationships. The author proposes that corporate rebranding for familiar corporate brands is a double-edged sword that not only raises the expectation for better performance, but also induces conflicted and ambivalent attitudes among consumers. These consumers' ambivalent attitudes are influenced by both the parent brands-related and general attitude factors which further affect their rebranded brand attitude and purchase intention. A total of 156 useable questionnaires were collected from Malaysian working adults; and two established Malaysian airfreight operators were utilized as the focal parent brands. The study found a significant impact of prior parent brand attitudes on ambivalence towards rebranding (ATR). The parent brand attitudes served as anchors in influencing how new information was processed (Mazaheri et al., 2011; Sherif & Hovland, 1961) and closely related to behavioral intention (Prislin & Quellete, 1996). The ambivalent attitudes experienced were higher when individuals held both positive and negative reactions toward the parent brands. Consumers also held higher ambivalent attitudes when they preferred one of the parent brands; while disliked the other brand. The study also found significant relationships between the lead brand and the rebranded brand attitude; and between the partner brands and ATR. The familiar but controversial partner brand contributed significantly to the ambivalent attitudes experienced; while the more established lead brand had significant impact on the rebranded brand attitude. The lead and partner brands, though both familiar, represented different meanings to consumers. The author attributed these results to the prior parent brand attitudes, the skepticism and their general ambivalence toward the corporate rebranding. Both general attitude factors (i.e. skepticism and general ambivalence towards rebranding) were found to have significant positive impacts on ATR. Skeptical individuals questioned the possibility of a successful rebranding (Chang, 2011) and were more careful with their evaluations toward 'too god to be true' or 'made in heaven' pair of companies. The embedded general ambivalent attitudes that people held toward rebranding could be triggered from the associative network by the ambiguous situation (Prislin & Quellete, 1996). In addition, the ambivalent rebranded brand attitude was found to lower down purchase intention, supporting Hanze (2001), Lavine (2001) and van Harreveld et al. (2009)'s studies. Ambivalent individuals were found to prefer delay decision making by choosing around the mid-ranged points in 'willingness to buy' scale. The study provides several marketing implications. Ambivalence management is proven to be important to corporate rebranding to minimize the ambivalent attitudes experienced. This could be done by carefully controlling the parent brands-related and general attitude factors. The high ambivalent individuals are less confident with their own conflicted attitudes and are motivated to get rid of the psychological discomfort caused by these conflicted attitudes (Bell & Esses, 2002; Lau-Gesk, 2005; van Harreveld et al., 2009). They tend to process information more deeply (Jonas et al., 1997; Maio et al., 2000; Wood et al., 1985) and pay more attention to message that provides convincible arguments. Providing strong, favorable and convincible message is hence effective in alleviating consumers' ambivalent attitudes. In addition, brand name heuristic could be utilized because the rebranding strategy sends important signal to consumers about the changes that happen or going to happen. The ambivalent individuals will pay attention to both brand name heuristic and rebranding message in their effort to alleviate the psychological discomfort caused by ambivalent attitudes. The findings also provide insights to Malaysian and airline operators for a better planning and implementation of corporate rebranding exercise.

• 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.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.177-207
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• 2012

Today's consumers perceive consumption as a representation of themselves. It is not simply an act that fulfills a consumer's physical and practical needs. Even in terms of life quality, consumers increasingly want to achieve an emotional and sensible experience through consumption. Consumers now make decisions based on their need to express their position in relation to other people, pursue emotional satisfaction, and try to improve the quality of life. Culture-art products that meet such internal and external demands of consumers have made significant improvements in both quantity and quality, because of the social interest and policy support. The recognition of personal and social values of culture and arts has brought about interest in and need for culture-art products. Businesses have agilely embraced such change and actively implemented various marketing strategies utilizing culture and arts. For example, businesses began to sponsor artists who produce culture-art products while building facilities for cultural and art performances or exhibitions. Businesses have also provided performances and exhibitions free-of-charge or at affordable prices. As a result, the supply in the market has started to exceed its demand as is often the case in many of other markets. However, such imbalance has occurred not because of over-supply but because of a lack of demand. Given these circumstances, the government and culture and art related organizations, which had mainly concentrated on the supply side, started to recognize the importance of creating personal and social values in culture and arts. As a result, the government and various organizations are now creating various strategies that include policy measures to achieve their new found goal. Unfortunately however, such efforts are not meeting the expectations. Focusing on above-mentioned circumstances and problems, this study aims to find measures to create demand for culture-art products in the internal conditions of those who consume culture-art products. In other words, given that the demand for culture-art products has not increased despite all external conditions to encourage consumption, this study aims to find the reasons in consumers' value judgment on culture-art products. Though there were recent studies on culture-art products that applied consumer behavior on marketing theories, most of them focused on peripheral aspects such as people's motivation for or satisfaction from watching culture-art events. Hence, there is a need to understand what kind of value consumers perceive from culture-art products and how such value cognition leads to consumption in a comprehensive manner. This study acts as follow-up to a separate study entitled "Qualitative Study about Value Cognition and Benefits of Consumer on Culture-Art Products". The current study aims to extend practical implications that enhance the effectiveness of marketing strategies among the producing and policy agencies in the industry. The purpose of this study is to investigate dimensions of value cognition, benefits and attributes of culture-art products, and identify the effects of consumer value cognition on benefits and attributes. The questionnaire was developed based on the conceptual structure of qualitative research and previous researches. It was composed of value cognition, benefits, attributes of culture-art products and demographic variables. This survey was conducted on-line and off-line among a total of 662 persons ranging from their teens to their 50's who were living in Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, various metropolitan cities, and small and medium-sized cities. The data collected was analyzed by factor analysis and path analysis using SPSS WIN 18.0 and AMOS 16.0. This empirical study found that the dimensions of value cognition of culture-art products were categorized into personal goods, aesthetic goods and public property. This shows that the consumers perceive culture-art products as products that are worthy enough to pay the costs not just for personal benefits but also for their social values. Also the formation of value cognition for culture-art products requires special conditions unlike that for physical consumer goods and services, which simply require marketing stimuli. The dimensions of benefits pursued by consuming culture-art products were found to be composed of four types - pursuit of aesthetic benefits, pursuit of actual benefits, pursuit of emotional benefits, and pursuit of conspicuous character. This result implies that people consume culture-art products not just to pursue pleasure from emotional and intelligent satisfaction as well as social relations, but also to seek the needs and benefits embodied at a social level. The dimensions of attributes of culture-art products had seven different factors, - environmental, price, evaluation, people, artwork, composition, and personal relations - which is plentiful. This is because the attributes of culture-art products are very complicated compared to other consumer goods or services. Since culture-art products include not just cultural or artistic works but also all physical, human, environmental, and systemic elements of the products in a comprehensive manner, consumers perceive everything they experience in the process of consuming culture-art products as part of the products. The dimensions of value cognition was found to affect attributes of the products, mostly using pursued benefits as a mediating factors. This result is consistent with the result of qualitative research, and proves that applying the means-end chain theory in the reverse direction is reasonable. The result can be interpreted that consumers' value cognitions for culture-art products turns into actual benefits leading to consumers' decisions. Furthermore, this result reveals that when consumers choose culture-art products, they take into account the attributes of culture-art products depending on the benefits they pursue. These results confirm that despite their conceptual and abstract attributes, culture-art products have values that contribute to actual benefits for individual consumers and society. Hence, value cognition generates benefits to be pursued and this in turn affects the consumers' choices of attributes on products. Based on the conceptual structure of consumers' value cognitions on culture-art products and its dimensions, it is possible to find detailed methods to provide opportunities for education and training to form and reinforce positive value cognition on culture-art products. And through those methods, it will be possible to develop attributes of culture-art products according to the dimensions of pursued benefits, and allow conceptual products become the subject to valuable consumption in real life. These results provide theoretical understanding of consumer behavior in culture marketing and useful information to culture-art producers, companies that use culture and art, and government agencies that use culture-art as a mean to improve the public perception of quality of life. As a follow up on this study, there should be experimental studies that can develop criteria visualizing the demands of consumers who purchase culture-art products and identify their detailed attributes. Studies that compare characteristics of different areas within the culture-art product category and in-depth studies on a specific area or genre will also be needed. In order to develop marketing strategies for culture-art products, studies on the formation and reinforcement of positive value cognition on culture-art products and education for the development of consumer demand as well as on the development and differentiation of attributes of culture-art products depending on types of consumer groups should also follow.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.155-183
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• 2008

Current trend of audit is to check the physical aspects of developed information system, such as checking the budget constraints, time constraints or functional fluency etc. However, ultimate goal of information system is to help the organization to achieve the competency over their competitors. Also, there are three different interest groups in system auditing, like audit requesting group, audited group and audit group, who may have different points of interests in auditing. Current auditing process, however, ignores this point, and so does not check the differences between three groups. This study tries to develop new auditing method to cure these two problems. Contributions of this study may be summarized as follows. First, Introduce the new indexes that can check the possibility that the information system may contribute the competency of organization. Also check the feasibility of indexes through Fuzzy AHP. Second, Divide the audit related person into three groups, and their different needs toward the information system was analyzed. Third, Analyze and compare the main interests of three groups, and weights of each groups to each indexes were calculated. Fourth, Fuzzy theory was applied to quantify the qualitative answers, which may minimize the ambiguity of questionnaire replies.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.18 no.10
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• pp.1722-1728
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• 2008

The natural course of chronic hepatitis B (CH-B) virus infection is reportedly variable, and the long-term outcomes in hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-negative chronic hepatitis B infection are distinct from HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis. However, the molecular virological factors that contribute to the progression of liver disease in the south Indian setting remain largely unclear. We prospectively studied 679 consecutive patients for HBsAg, HBeAg, anti-HBe, and HBV DNA by qualitative PCR. Randomly selected samples were subjected to bidirectional sequencing to reveal core/precore variants. Of the total 679 chronic HBV cases investigated, 23% (154/679) were replicative HBV carriers. Furthermore, amongst the 560 HBV DNA samples analyzed, 26% (146/560) were viremic. Among the 154 HBeAg positive cases, HBV DNA was positive in 118 cases (77%), significantly (p<0.001) higher than the anti-HBe positive (7%) (28/406) cases. Significant increase in liver disease (p<0.01) with ALT enzyme elevation (p<0.001) was observed in both HBe and anti-HBe viremic cases. Interestingly, low frequencies of mutations were seen in the precore region of the HBV strains studied. HBV precore and core promoter variants were less often detected in subjects with "e" negative chronic HBV infection and, therefore, may not have a prognostic role in determining liver disease sequelae in this part of tropical India.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.63-73
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• 2016

The purpose of this research is to investigate and analyze the attitudes and images of middle school students toward invention. This aims to provide basic data on qualitative improvement invention education. The results of this research are as follows: First, as for middle school students, the level of emotion and interest attitude toward invention is higher than elementary school students. The image of invention is positive but difficult (M=3.70). Second, as the overall attitude to invention according to gender of middle school students shows a consistent invention attitude, the attitude formation on invention during elementary school time is found to be important. The overall image of invention according to gender is shown to be significantly different (p<0.05). Third, the overall attitude on invention according to the grade of middle school students does not show a statistically significant difference (p>0.05). As for the ranking according to factors on attitude depending on grades, cognitive attitude is followed by emotional attitude, attitude of interest, and practical attitude. The overall image of invention according to the grade of middle school students does not show a statistically significant difference (p>0.05). This is determined as a result of the large pressure acting on the study from middle school. Finally, the acts of invention such as idea, creation, imagination, creativity are considered as important as the results of analysis of the words of the invention. Invention is analyzed to contribute to developing new products, providing convenience in life, social development, usefulness in real life, and alleviating inconvenience.

• Korean Journal of Adult Nursing
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.701-711
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• 2013

Purpose: The plan proposed by the Ministry of Health and Welfare in 2012 did not reflect the position of nurses and focused only on how to increase the number of nurses. There is a need for coming up with a specific and viable alternative plan considering the qualitative aspect of nursing, delegation of nursing tasks, the in-death analysis of the reasons for leaving the nursing profession, and the legal standards based on varying nursing tasks. Methods: Drawing on a review of existing literature, this report was written to examine policy directions and the factors that influence the institutional environment that regulates the supply and demand of the nursing workforce in Korea. Results: Implementing the government's plan for introducing a new type of nurse, the registered practical nurse, which generally requires a two-year associate's degree, must be reconsidered. Also, a concrete plan to make use of unemployed nurses and to close the salary gap between nurses working at hospitals in cities and those working at hospitals in rural areas must be prepared. Furthermore, there is a need for introducing a new rating system aimed at boosting the quality of nursing care in small-and medium-sized hospitals, thereby increasing the number of nursing professionals who provide high quality care. Conclusion: In preparation for expected poor quality of care and looming unemployment crisis due to the increase in the number of nursing professionals, a practical and concrete plan for the supply and demand of the nursing workforce should be made. The Korean Nurses Association should mount a profession-wide campaign to make the government formulate a new and viable policy on the supply and demand of the nursing workforce.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.720-732
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• 2001

Skeletal muscle is of major economic importance since it is finally converted to meat for consumers. The increase in meat production with low costs of production may be achieved by optimizing muscle growth, whereas a high meat quality requires, among other factors, the optimization of intramuscular glycogen and fat stores. Thus, research in energy metabolism aims at controling muscle metabolism, but also liver and adipose tissue metabolism in order to optimize energy partitioning in favour of muscles. Liver is characterized by high anabolic and catabolic rates. Metabolic enzymes are regulated by nutrients through short-term regulation of their activities and long-term regulation of expression of their genes. Consequences of liver metabolic regulation on energy supply to muscles may affect protein deposition (and hence growth) as well as intramuscular energy stores. Adipose tissues are important body reserves of triglycerides, which result from the balance between lipogenesis and lipolysis. Both processes depend on the feeding level and on the nature of nutrients, which indirectly affect energy delivery to muscles. In muscles, the regulation of rate-limiting nutrient transporters, of metabolic enzyme activities and of ATP production, as well as the interactions between nutrients affect free energy availability for muscle growth and modify muscle metabolic characteristics which determine meat quality. The growth of tissues and organs, the number and the characteristics of muscle fibers depend, for a great part, on early events during the fetal life. They include variations in quantitative and qualitative nutrient supply to the fetus, and hence in maternal nutrition. During the postnatal life, muscle growth and characteristics are affected by the age and the genetic type of the animals, the feeding level and the diet composition. The latter determines the nature of available nutrients and the rate of nutrient delivery to tissues, thereby regulating metabolism. Physical activity at pasture also favours the orientation of muscle metabolism, towards the oxidative type. Consequently, breeding systems may be of a great importance during the postnatal life. Research is now directed towards the determination of individual tissue and organ energy requirements, a better knowledge of nutrient partitioning between and within organs and tissues. The discovery of new molecules (e. g. leptin), of new molecular mechanisms and of more powerful techniques (DNA chips) will help to achieve these objectives. The integration of the different levels of knowledge will finally allow scientists to formulate new types of diets adapted to sustain a production of high quality meat with lower costs of production.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.129-151
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to develop and verify the effectiveness of consultant development program enhancing 'authentic parental competence' of the mothers with preschool and school-age children. The objects of this study were 14 mothers with preschool and school-age children. In order to examine the changes of the mother's parental competence, t-test and qualitative analysis on in-depth interviews were conducted. The results of this study were as follows. First, this program had a positive effect on all the sub-factors of mother's 'authentic parental competence'. Second, mothers mentioned that they changed their parenting competence(change of parenting knowledge, beginning of reflective attitude on their parental role), self-system competence(understanding and respective attitude for the mother herself, self-awareness as a spouse, sweet glances and warm understanding as a parent), social competence(sympathetic understanding of her acquaintances, attempt a role as consultant) after this program. Based on these results, the implications and limitations were also discussed.