• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2001

Recently, Internet based Electronic Commerce is recognized as one of the alternatives for strengthening sales power of small and medium companies. However, small and medium manufacturers can't adjust properly to the new environment because they are in short of money, personnel, and technology. To cope with this problem, this paper deals with the development of virtual manufacturing agent to support sales agent. The sales activity of most of parts manufacturing companies is based on orders of buyers. The process of promotion, receipt and selection of orders of the parts manufacturing is closely coupled with the load status of the production lines. On deciding whether to accept an order or not, as well as negotiating with buyers, sales person needs information such as load and schedule of production lines, manufacturability of the order. Therefore, the functions of virtual manufacturing agents manufacturability analysis, process planning, and scheduling are key features in developing an agent of sales activity for the parts manufacturing business. While most of research on virtual manufacturing system so far is focused on the simulation of each product, this paper deals with the development of agent assisting internet-based product sales by supporting production information promptly. The pilot system of virtual manufacturing agent is implemented using KQML-based agent template and Java-based expert system shell for a small molding company.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.7 no.5S
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• pp.1649-1656
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• 2000

In this paper, We describe a design of sales agent for support for negotiation during sales support on the Internet within Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) solutions. First, We propose an multi-agent system which can effectively search complex product on the WWW. And we represent databases and case-bases and propose a CBR cycle for sales agent. We then implement some of them in a prototype for a sales agent and a case study is shown where preliminary approaches are used to negotiate with a customer about his demands and available produucts in a CBR-based Electronic Commerce solution.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.193-213
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• 2002

The sales activity of most of small manufacturing companies is based on orders of buyers. The process of promotion, negotiation, receipt and selection of orders of the manufacturers is closely coupled with the load status of the production lines. The decision on whether to accept an order or not, or the selection of optimal order set among excessive orders is entirely dependent on the schedule of production lines. However, in the real world, since the production scheduling activity is mainly performed by human experts, most of small manufacturers are suffer from being unable to meet due dates, lack of rapid decision on the acceptance of new order. Recently, Internet based Electronic Commerce is recognized as one of the alternatives for strengthening sales power of small and medium companies. However, small and medium manufacturers can't adjust properly to the new environment because they are in short of money, personnel, and technology. To cope with this problem, this paper deals with development of part sales agent coupled with virtual manufacturing in Internet environment that consist of selection agent, advertisement agent, selection agent, negotiation agent, and virtual manufacturing system. This paper develops a time-bounded negotiation mechanism for small and medium manufacturers in agent-based automated negotiation between customers and negotiation agents. Furthermore, to select optimal order set maximized profit, we first formulate the order selection problem with mixed integer programming, but the computation time of IP is not acceptable for real world scale problem. To overcome this problem and dynamic nature of virtual manufacturing, we suggest a genetic algorithm approach, which shows a reasonable computation time for real world case and good incremental problem solving capability.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.53-63
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• 2016

Purpose - This study examines the effects of the influence strategies on sales representative and headquarter trust, and investigates how sales representative trust plays a mediating role in the relationship between influence strategies and headquarter trust. For these purposes, a structural model which consists of several constructs was developed. In this model, influence strategies that consist of relational influence strategies (information exchange, recommend, promise) and mandatory influence strategies (legal plea, request, threat) were proposed to affect the sales representative trust and in turn, increase the headquarter trust. Thus, this study proposed that sale representative trust plays a core mediating role in the relationship between relational and mandatory influence strategies and headquarter trust in B2B food materials distribution context. Research design, data, and methodology - For these purposes, the authors collected the data from 208 B2B specialized complex agents. We used the 2,200 B2B specialized complex agents which trade with CJ, Ottogi, and Daesang firms and supply food materials to restaurant, school cafeteria, supermarket and traditional market as a sample frame. Once we identified 330 B2B specialized complex agent owners, CEOs, and/or Directors who had agreed to participate in this study, we dropped off a questionnaire at each B2B specialized complex agent and explained the purpose of this study. The survey was conducted from October 1, 2015 to December 15, 2015. A total of 230 questionnaires were collected. Of these collected questionnaires, 28 questionnaires excluded since they had not been fully completed. The data were analyzed using frequency test, reliability test, measurement model analysis, and structural equation modeling with SPSS and SmartPLS 2. Results - First, information exchange, recommendation, and promise of relational influence strategies had positive effects on sales representative trust. The threat of mandatory influence strategies had a negative effect on sales representative trust, but legal plea and request did not have a significant effect on sales representative trust. Second, information exchange and recommendation of relational influence strategies had positive effects on headquarter trust, but promise did not. Also, legal plea, request, and threat of mandatory influence strategies did not have a significant effect on headquarter trust. Third, this findings show that sales representative trust plays a partial mediator between information exchange and headquarter trust, and threat and headquarter trust, and a full mediator between promise and headquarter trust, and recommendation and headquarter trust. Conclusions - The aim of this study was to examine the effects how diverse dimensions of relational and mandatory influence strategies relate to sales representative trust and headquarter trust. To do so, we integrated the influence strategies and the trust transfer theory to hypothesize that various influence strategies increase sales representative and headquarter trust. The findings of this study suggest that headquarter firms should establish and enforce proper influence strategies guidelines to make clear what proper actions sales representatives should implement in relationship with B2B specialized complex agents. Also, relational and mandatory influence strategies must be regarded as a long-term and ongoing strategy that eventually build a long-term orientation with B2B specialized complex agents and guarantee a company's sustainable growth and success.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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• v.11D no.1
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• pp.241-246
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• 2004

The importance of electronic commerce system has been growing rapidly due to development of information technology and acceleration of enterprise e-business. Electronic commerce system must provide convenient interface, easy and fast searching function, and product information satisfied customer's. A study about the system that used a reasoning technique and an Agent technology for this is required. In this paper, we designs electronic commerce system with customer preference and sales agent which is composed of case-based reasoning and rule-based reasoning for high customer satisfaction. Also, we were shown on an appropriateness of a proposal system by an experiment.

• Proceedings of the Korea Association of Information Systems Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.1-20
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• 2003

In this research, we developed a Multi-Agent based Negotiation Support System to be able to increase the competitive power of a company in dynamic environment and correspond to various orders of customers by diffusion of electronic commerce. The system uses the agent technology that is being embossed as new paradigm in dynamic environment and flexible system framework. The multi-agent technology is used to solve these problem through cooperation of agent. The system consists of six sub agents: mediator, manufacturability analysis agent, process planning agent, scheduling agent, selection agent, negotiation-strategy building agent. In this paper, the proposed Multi-Agent based Negotiation Support System takes aim at the automation of transaction process from ordering to manufacturing plan through the automation of negotiation that is the most important in order-taking transaction.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.763-783
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• 2015

Online customer reviews (i.e., electronic word-of-mouth) has gained considerable interest over the past years. However, a knowledge gap exists in explaining the mechanisms among the factors that determine the product sales in online retailing environment. To fill the gap, this study adopts a principal-agent perspective to investigate the effect of customer reviews and customer incentives on product sales in online retail stores. Two customer review factors (i.e., average review ratings and the number of reviews) and two customer incentive factors (i.e., price discounts and special shipping offers) are used to predict product sales in regression analysis. The sales ranking data collected from the video game titles at Amazon.com are used to analyze the direct effects of the four factors and the interaction effects between customer review and customer incentive factors to product sales. Result reveals that most relationships exist as hypothesized. The findings support both the direct and interaction effects of customer reviews and incentive factors on product sales. Based on the findings, discussions are provided with regard to the academic and practical contributions.

• International Journal of Quality Innovation
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.57-77
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• 2008

The $21^{st}$ century is a new century of environmental protection. Environmental protection is one of the most important subject matters yet to come. Moreover, as the public pays more attention to environmental problems, enterprises should increase their investment in environmental management. Therefore, determining the investment level for environmental management and allocating the investment to associated environmental management activities has become a major task. The principal and agent theory and sales response functions are used for analysis in this research. The allocation of capital investment in environmental management is found to have significant impact on the aggregate sales response, aggregate profit and investment level. Therefore, in preparing the budget for environmental management, enterprises should focus on investment allocation decisions, determine the investment level and allocation method using integrated means, and apply submarket data in the allocation decision-making process. In other words, in setting the investment level, executive management should take managers' willingness into consideration. In allocating capital investment, managers should identify the optimal allocation method based on submarket characteristics.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.360-373
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is establishing how to build the area of local agents and regional offices in the oil company using GIS technique by reviewing on the spatial distribution pattern and characteristics of the sales area of oil products. Location-allocation and spatial interaction model are cooperated in order to establish sales area of petroleum products distribution system. Location-allocation model is used in the capital region where local agents are concentrated on like Kyoung-gi local agent. Spatial interaction model is used in the rest of the area in Korea to analyze the sales range of the regional offices in oil company. Each office made a big difference in registered cars and population because of the level of petroleum consumption in each sales area.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.1-8
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• 2002

The sales activity of most of small manufacturing companies is based on orders of buyers. The process of promotion, receipt and selection of orders of the manufacturers is closely coupled with the load status of the production lines. The decision on whether to accept an order or not, or the selection of optimal order set among excessive orders is entirely dependent on the schedule of production lines. However, in the real world, since the production scheduling activity is mainly performed by human experts, most of small manufacturers are suffer from being unable to meet due dates, lack of rapid decision on the acceptance of new order. To cope with this problem, this paper deals with the development of an agent for selecting an optimal order set automatically. The main engine of selection agent is based on the typical job-shop scheduling model since our target domain is the injection molding company. To solve the problem, we have formulated it as IP (Integer Program) model, and it has been successfully implemented by ILOG and selection agent. And we have suggested an architecture of an agent for tackling web based order selection problems.