• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.6
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• pp.152-171
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• 2002

This study analyses the avatar service, which is recognized as an alternative strategy of animation industry. The research questions of this study are following: (1) How have the avatar services been developed and what are the present dominant types? (2) Which structural characteristics of e-business environment are needed for the success of avatar services? (3) What is the economic characteristics of avatar business model? To solve these research questions, the basic conditions and the structural characteristics of avatar services have been investigated. In the first place, two forms of avatar service are classified. One is the internet service site whole primary service is to provide chatting service based on avatar service. The other is the portal site in which many kinds of products and services are presented as bundles to meet the needs of internet users. So avatar service is one of bundles which those portal sites are providing with. In this study, the big five internet service sites are selected based on the profits they earned through the sales of avatar service. The result of analysis is that the pricing strategy of those big five sites is very different from those of traditional off-line markets. The pricing mechanism are based on the value which internet users endow with the avatar items, not based on the costs of making the products. Avatar is the representative informative goods. The informative goods have the original cost structures, constant fixed costs and zero marginal costs, so the providers of avatar services make much of the subjective values of consumers. The sayclub, which is the most successful avatar service site and earn the average sales of 3 billing won a month, takes the aggressive strategy of pricing avatar items at highest price in the industry. The avatar service providers which make lots of profits are planning of making differentiate the services, introducing well-known brand items and star-named items. Nevertheless, the fact that the members of the sayclub are not decreasing means that the network effect of the site is so strongly manifest. Moreover, the costs the members have paid for the avatar items are so big not as to switch from one site to the other site, it can be very costly. These switching costs are endemic in high-technology industries and digital contents industries. It can be so large that switching suppliers is virtually unthinkable, a situation known as 'lock-in'. When switching costs are substantial, competition can be intense to attract new customers, since, one they are locked in, they can be a substantial source of profit. The consumers of avatar items have switching costs if they subscribe for the new avatar service site. The switching costs can be subscription costs as well as the costs of giving up the items they already paid for. One common example of switching costs involves specialized supplies, as with inkjet printer cartridges. In this example, the switching cost is the purchase of a new printer. The market is competitive ex ante, but since cartridges are incompatible, it is monopolized dx post. So the providers of printer/cartridges set pricing printer so cheap and cartridges expensive. On the contrary, since the avatar service can be successful with the strong network effect, the providers of avatar services have to compete aggressively for new customers. So they allow the subscription at a low price(almost marginal cost) in the early market. The network effect can be maximized when the members are sufficiently growing. The providers which have the monopoly power with sufficient subscribers. begin to raise the prices over the lifetime of the product and make profits.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.177-180
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• 2010

Purpose: As PET test came to be covered by the pay system of medical insurance (July 1, 2006) and the needs for it becoming increased for laboratory purpose, it became necessary to purchase expensive medical equipments to solve those problems. However, as most of equipments that are operated by cyclotron are very expensive as to amount from tens of millions up to hundreds of millions of won, it is difficult to purchase those equipments from the point of medical organizations. It may be possible to self manufacture those equipments with least costs if their parts functions that meets the operators demands. The Nuclear Medicine department of National Cancer Center (NCC) is trying to manufacture and use equipments that can be made with least costs, including introducing 2 medical equipments that can improves the operator's works. Materials and Methods: Example 1: Self production of radioisotope($^{18}F$) divider was fabricated. The NCC's Nuclear Medicine department acquired one acrylic panel, seven 3-way valve, tubing etc. that can be found in the market to make the main body of divider in cooperation with biomedical engineering, and placed them inside hot cell, and installed switching box outside of hot cell to make it possible to control them from outside. This main body of divider were placed in radioisotope transfer line that are manufactured in the cyclotron. Example 2: Self production of $^{18}F$-FDG automated divider was fabricated. The NCC's Nuclear Medicine department used cavro pump syringe that consists the main body of divider in cooperation with biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering developed programs that divides a certain amount. $^{18}F$-FDG automated divider is placed inside hot cell, and cable chords were used in the equipment, and then it was connected to PC outside hot cell to make it possible to control the $^{18}F$-FDG automated divider. Results: From the NCC's Nuclear Medicine department tests that were carried out from March, 2007 until now, we found out that radioisotope can be sent to radiopharmaceuticals composite module we want, and from the tests that are carried out at NCC's Nuclear Medicine department using $^{18}F$-FDG automated divider since August, 2009 it was possible to distribute radiopharmaceuticals into vial intended. Conclusion: Through the two examples above, we found out that costs can be reduced by self manufacturing expensive equipments from NCC's cyclotron room with least costs. Also, it decreased radiation exposure dose on workers, and set up problem solving processes in cooperation with lots of parties related.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.79-88
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• 2015

This study focused on the idea that consumers who are dissatisfied with their body form tend to be more interested in weight control behavior. This research connects this relationship with consumers' risk perception on the internet and consequent decision hesitation behavior. Empirical results extracted three factors of weight control behavior: diet, physical treatment, and medication and exercise. Weight control behavior was different by gender but not by age. Consumers who were dissatisfied with their body form were likely to do exercise, but other types of dissatisfaction (weight dissatisfaction and height dissatisfaction) were not significantly related to weight control behavior. Weight dissatisfaction influenced perceived size risk significantly when shopping online. Diet, physical treatment, and medication had significant influence on perceived size risk when shopping online. Perceived size risk had significant influence on decision delay and offline switch behavior. This study took a convergence approach, which connects consumer characteristics with online shopping behavior.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.215-223
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• 2007

On-Line Shopping mall is becoming important strategic environment that decide corporation's competitive advantages because of that can achieve quality of customer service and offer speed elevation through both-way communication effectively. Accordingly, as interest about electronic commerce rises, various research had been gone. But, most researches are applying off-line market's quality of service measurement tool just as it is doing not consider special quality of internet. Consider and prescribe by system quality, and saw that thing with grasp relation with customer satisfaction along with qualify of service is important for factor that environmental element influences in customer satisfaction as existing commercial transaction in this research hereupon. That is, wished to present quality strategy necessary to examine whether some quality factor of system quality and quality of service affects more customer satisfaction, and satisfy various customer's needs accordingly after ermine whether it are switching and some relation that search purchase alteration availability of market that is different from loyalty which recommend internet shopping mall to another person who is system quality factor and quality of service factor and customer satisfaction factor actively.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.15-30
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• 2021

Purpose: Year of 2020, COVID-19 has been changing the people's everyday life to ways never been thought of before all over the world. The IT and electronic industry, the methods of supplying goods and services have been changed from contact to un-tact environments based on un-tact systems very rapidly. COVID-19 has been striking the tourism and the travel industry, especially the airline and hotel industry of which services are provided by human. For the passenger service of airliner, automation has been propelled and un-tact style of service has become mainstreams except cabin service since 2000's. For passenger transportation, due to traffic regulations and exclusions etc., switching to new ways is not easy. However, under the new environment made by COVID-19, kiosk check-in, web check-in and mobile check-in has become more important. In this study, the characteristics of airline customers using mobile goods are investigated to find ways to raise the rate of utilizing mobile check-in and to increase the efficiency of boarding process. Research design, data, and methodology: Considering the COVID-19 environment, survey was done by online research company. The research model is designed to integrate the user characteristics and usage/purchase motive and technology acceptance theory. Especially considering infectious diseases prevention, concern of safety is adopted as one of the usage motive variable. Results: Extraversion or conscientiousness characteristics prefers counter check-in(contact service), while openness characteristics prefers mobile check-in(un-tact service). Concern of safety for infectious disease shows strong non-preference on counter check-in. Conclusions: Regarding service type regardless of type of the industry, automation and un-tact have been mainstreams due to high costs of labor, efficiency and standardization issue, etc., and COVID-19 has given impetus to them. For airliner, un-tact service including boarding process service has been more and more important. To raise the rate of un-tact service use, the characteristics of the user should be analyzed first. The study results indicate that for extraversion or conscientiousness, some kinds of methods to induce them to use un-tact service more are needed.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.157-176
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• 2012

Brand switching data frequently used in market structure analysis is adequate to analyze non- durable goods, because it can capture competition between specific two brands. But brand switching data sometimes can not be used to analyze goods like automobiles having long term duration because one of main assumptions that consumer preference toward brand attributes is not changed against time can be violated. Therefore a new type of data which can precisely capture competition among durable goods is needed. Another problem of using brand switching data collected from actual purchase behavior is short of explanation why consumers consider different set of brands. Considering above problems, main purpose of this study is to analyze market structure for durable goods with consideration set. The author uses exploratory approach and latent class clustering to identify market structure based on heterogeneous consideration set among consumers. Then the relationship between some factors and consideration set formation is analyzed. Some benefits and two demographic variables - age and income - are selected as factors based on consumer behavior theory. The author analyzed USA automotive market with top 11 brands using exploratory approach and latent class clustering. 2,500 respondents are randomly selected from the total sample and used for analysis. Six models concerning market structure are established to test. Model 1 means non-structured market and model 6 means market structure composed of six sub-markets. It is exploratory approach because any hypothetical market structure is not defined. The result showed that model 1 is insufficient to fit data. It implies that USA automotive market is a structured market. Model 3 with three market structures is significant and identified as the optimal market structure in USA automotive market. Three sub markets are named as USA brands, Asian Brands, and European Brands. And it implies that country of origin effect may exist in USA automotive market. Comparison between modal classification by derived market structures and probabilistic classification by research model was conducted to test how model 3 can correctly classify respondents. The model classify 97% of respondents exactly. The result of this study is different from those of previous research. Previous research used confirmatory approach. Car type and price were chosen as criteria for market structuring and car type-price structure was revealed as the optimal structure for USA automotive market. But this research used exploratory approach without hypothetical market structures. It is not concluded yet which approach is superior. For confirmatory approach, hypothetical market structures should be established exhaustively, because the optimal market structure is selected among hypothetical structures. On the other hand, exploratory approach has a potential problem that validity for derived optimal market structure is somewhat difficult to verify. There also exist market boundary difference between this research and previous research. While previous research analyzed seven car brands, this research analyzed eleven car brands. Both researches seemed to represent entire car market, because cumulative market shares for analyzed brands exceeds 50%. But market boundary difference might affect the different results. Though both researches showed different results, it is obvious that country of origin effect among brands should be considered as important criteria to analyze USA automotive market structure. This research tried to explain heterogeneity of consideration sets among consumers using benefits and two demographic factors, sex and income. Benefit works as a key variable for consumer decision process, and also works as an important criterion in market segmentation. Three factors - trust/safety, image/fun to drive, and economy - are identified among nine benefit related measure. Then the relationship between market structures and independent variables is analyzed using multinomial regression. Independent variables are three benefit factors and two demographic factors. The result showed that all independent variables can be used to explain why there exist different market structures in USA automotive market. For example, a male consumer who perceives all benefits important and has lower income tends to consider domestic brands more than European brands. And the result also showed benefits, sex, and income have an effect to consideration set formation. Though it is generally perceived that a consumer who has higher income is likely to purchase a high priced car, it is notable that American consumers perceived benefits of domestic brands much positive regardless of income. Male consumers especially showed higher loyalty for domestic brands. Managerial implications of this research are as follow. Though implication may be confined to the USA automotive market, the effect of sex on automotive buying behavior should be analyzed. The automotive market is traditionally conceived as male consumers oriented market. But the proportion of female consumers has grown over the years in the automotive market. It is natural outcome that Volvo and Hyundai motors recently developed new cars which are targeted for women market. Secondly, the model used in this research can be applied easier than that of previous researches. Exploratory approach has many advantages except difficulty to apply for practice, because it tends to accompany with complicated model and to require various types of data. The data needed for the model in this research are a few items such as purchased brands, consideration set, some benefits, and some demographic factors and easy to collect from consumers.

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

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

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.83-90
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• 2016

Purpose - This study focuses on new type distribution channel that named as Omnichannel. Omnichannel is developed from Multichannel which is used in many distribution channels to buy or selling goods. Omnichannel basically needs an Information and Communications Technologies(ICT) to use, so researcher conduct a Technology Acceptance Model(TAM) to research model. Customer-brand relationship was used as dependent variable to focus on the role of Omnichannel. Research design, data, and methodology - The subject of this study is customer who purchase goods or service through omnichannel. Based on the literature from the preceding research analysis of TAM and customer-brand relationship, this study was constructed by the reference to previous studies, final research model design for figure out casual relationship among perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, omnichannel use and customer-brand relationship. From 2016 February 3 to March 17, questionnaire survey targeted customers who use online and offline channels. 273 questionnaire survey had conducted, then, 252 survey data were available for empirical analysis. Researcher provide descriptive statistics for checking generality. Cronbach's alpha value was used to check the reliability of data. Exploratory factor analysis was used for purification of values and eigenvalue checking. After EFA, Confirmatory factor analysis was used to prepare structural equation modeling with executing structural equation modeling for confirming hypothesis which developed by researcher. Results - The main results of this empirical study are as follows. First, omnichannel's perceived ease of use has positive significant effect on perceived usefulness(estimate: 0.579). Moreover, omnichannel's perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness has positive significant effect on omnichannel use(estimate: 0.325,0.648). Second, using omnichannel has positive significant effect on brand-customer relationship(estimate: 0.521). Every hypothesis adopted as researcher designed. This study found out the intermediate relationship between perceived ease of use and omnichannel use by investigating hypothesis. Conclusions - Base on the empirical result, this study confirmed that TAM theory perceived has relation with omnichannel. First, factors of TAM has positive effect on omnichannel use, so it highlights the important role of customer based interface and usefulness. Especially, perceived usefulness has high indirect influence on ease of use and use of omnichannel. It seems that when customers try to decide use or not use omnichannel, customers focus on percept benefits from omnichannel. Thus, a provider should applicate attractive price table, accurate product or service information and high switching cost strategy to emphasize the usefulness of omnichannel. Second, using omnichannel enhances the relationship between customers and brand, because there are more time and frequency to serve customers. It is important because good relationship between customers can increase the future's financial performance through word of mouse, positive brand image and loyalty to brand or company. Finally, despite of empirical result and implications, this study has limitations. First, there are only a few previous studies about omnicahnnel, so literature reviews are restricted. While set up the factors which can affect the use of omnichannel, next study should be considered with broader theories or models(ex: contingency theory). Second, omnichannel has developed from multichannel, so comparative analysis is needed between these methods because there is a possibility about different forte character of each distribution system on customer's consuming patterns.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.141-156
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• 2008

Market structure analysis is a very useful tool to analyze the competition boundary of the brand or the company. But most of the studies in market structure analysis, the concern lies in nondurable goods such as candies, soft drink and etc. because of the their availability of the data. In the field of durable goods, the limitation of the data availability and the repurchase time period constrain the study. In the analysis of the automobile market, those of views might be more persuasive. The purpose of this study is to analyze the structure of automobile market based on some idea suggested by prior studies. Usually the buyers of the automobile tend to buy upper tier when they buy in the next time. That kind of behavior make it impossible to analyze the structure of automobile market under the level of automobile model. For that reason I tried to analyze the market structure in the brand or company level. In this study, consideration data was used for market structure analysis. The reasons why we used the consideration data are summarized as following. Firstly, as the repurchase time cycle is too long, brand switching data which is used for the market analysis of nondurable good is not avaliable. Secondly, as we mentioned, the buyers of the automobile tend to buy upper tier when they buy in the next time. We used survey data collected in the U.S.A. market in the year of 2005 through questionaire. The sample size was 8,291. The number of brand analyzed in this study was 9 among 37 which was being sold in U.S.A. market. Their market share was around 50%. The brands considered were BMW, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, Honda, Mercedes, and Toyota. �� ratio was derived from frequency of the consideration set. Actually the frequency is different from the brand switch concept. In this study to compute the �� ratio, the frequency of the consideration set was used like a frequency of brand switch for convenience. The study can be divided into 2 steps. The first step is to build hypothetical market structures. The second step is to choose the best structure based on the hypothetical market structures, Usually logit analysis is used for the choice best structure. In this study we built 3 hypothetical market structure. They are type-cost, cost-type, and unstructured. We classified the automobile into 5 types, sedan, SUV(Sport Utility Vehicle), Pickup, Mini Van, and Full-size Van. As for purchasing cost, we classified it 2 groups based on the median value. The median value was $28,800. To decide best structure among them, maximum likelihood test was used. Resulting from market structure analysis, we find that the automobile market of USA is hierarchically structured in the form of 'automobile type - purchasing cost'. That is, result showed that automobile buyers considered function or usage first and purchasing cost next. This study has some limitations in the analysis level and variable selection. First, in this study only type of the automobile and purchasing cost were as attributes considered for purchase. Considering other attributes is very needful. Because of the attributes considered, only 3 hypothetical structure could be analyzed. Second, due to the data, brand level analysis was tried. But model level analysis would be better because automobile buyers consider model not brand. To conduct model level study more cases should be obtained. That is for acquiring the better practical meaning, brand level analysis should be conducted when we consider the actual competition which occurred in the real market. Third, the variable selection for building nested logit model was very limited to some avaliable data. In spite of those limitations, the importance of this study lies in the trial of market structure analysis of durable good.

• Journal of the Korea Knowledge Information Technology Society
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.11-23
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• 2018

This paper empirically investigates the factors that influence the consumer choice of an app market based on the rational choice theory. The app market is the only channel where a consumer can buy smartphone apps, which give various functional convenience and are considered to be a major contributor to the proliferation of smartphones. Analyses of 281 questionnaires show that usability and structural guarantees as benefit factors significantly influence the app market choice. From the cost perspectives, both monetary and non-monetary conversion costs are found to significantly influence the app market choice. On the other hand, customer trust, information quality, and market image were found to have no significant effect on app market selection. In particular, Korean app market platform providers (KT, LG U +) seem to be superior in terms of structural guarantees, such as customer center operation and damage compensation regulations, compared to overseas app market platform operators (Google). However, in the case of the Google App Market, it is pre-installed on all Android phones, so it is not inconvenient to install additional apps to use other app market. This is disadvantageous to domestic app market platform operators, and it is necessary to establish a policy solution point. In terms of operator costs, both monetary and non-monetary conversion costs have a significant impact on app market choice. In particular, non-monetary conversion costs have a negative impact on Korean app market platform operators. It can be explained that the service expectation level of the domestic app market is low and it is recognized that the time cost factor such as membership is large for new users to use. It seems to be necessary to improve the domestic app market business. Meanwhile, extant research on smartphone apps focuses on the purchase of apps themselves, but not on the selection of the app market itself. In order to fill in this gap, this study focuses on the determinants of app market selection, including the characteristics of an app market and the switching costs.