• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.149-161
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• 2014

The export of domestic public services to overseas markets contains many potential obstacles, stemming from different export procedures, the target services, and socio-economic environments. In order to alleviate these problems, the business incubation platform as an open business ecosystem can be a powerful instrument to support the decisions taken by participants and stakeholders. In this paper, we propose an ontology model and its implementation processes for the business incubation platform with an open and pervasive architecture to support public service exports. For the conceptual model of platform ontology, export case studies are used for requirements analysis. The conceptual model shows the basic structure, with vocabulary and its meaning, the relationship between ontologies, and key attributes. For the implementation and test of the ontology model, the logical structure is edited using Prot$\acute{e}$g$\acute{e}$ editor. The core engine of the business incubation platform is the simulator module, where the various contexts of export businesses should be captured, defined, and shared with other modules through ontologies. It is well-known that an ontology, with which concepts and their relationships are represented using a shared vocabulary, is an efficient and effective tool for organizing meta-information to develop structural frameworks in a particular domain. The proposed model consists of five ontologies derived from a requirements survey of major stakeholders and their operational scenarios: service, requirements, environment, enterprise, and county. The service ontology contains several components that can find and categorize public services through a case analysis of the public service export. Key attributes of the service ontology are composed of categories including objective, requirements, activity, and service. The objective category, which has sub-attributes including operational body (organization) and user, acts as a reference to search and classify public services. The requirements category relates to the functional needs at a particular phase of system (service) design or operation. Sub-attributes of requirements are user, application, platform, architecture, and social overhead. The activity category represents business processes during the operation and maintenance phase. The activity category also has sub-attributes including facility, software, and project unit. The service category, with sub-attributes such as target, time, and place, acts as a reference to sort and classify the public services. The requirements ontology is derived from the basic and common components of public services and target countries. The key attributes of the requirements ontology are business, technology, and constraints. Business requirements represent the needs of processes and activities for public service export; technology represents the technological requirements for the operation of public services; and constraints represent the business law, regulations, or cultural characteristics of the target country. The environment ontology is derived from case studies of target countries for public service operation. Key attributes of the environment ontology are user, requirements, and activity. A user includes stakeholders in public services, from citizens to operators and managers; the requirements attribute represents the managerial and physical needs during operation; the activity attribute represents business processes in detail. The enterprise ontology is introduced from a previous study, and its attributes are activity, organization, strategy, marketing, and time. The country ontology is derived from the demographic and geopolitical analysis of the target country, and its key attributes are economy, social infrastructure, law, regulation, customs, population, location, and development strategies. The priority list for target services for a certain country and/or the priority list for target countries for a certain public services are generated by a matching algorithm. These lists are used as input seeds to simulate the consortium partners, and government's policies and programs. In the simulation, the environmental differences between Korea and the target country can be customized through a gap analysis and work-flow optimization process. When the process gap between Korea and the target country is too large for a single corporation to cover, a consortium is considered an alternative choice, and various alternatives are derived from the capability index of enterprises. For financial packages, a mix of various foreign aid funds can be simulated during this stage. It is expected that the proposed ontology model and the business incubation platform can be used by various participants in the public service export market. It could be especially beneficial to small and medium businesses that have relatively fewer resources and experience with public service export. We also expect that the open and pervasive service architecture in a digital business ecosystem will help stakeholders find new opportunities through information sharing and collaboration on business processes.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.73-85
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• 2013

Nowadays, in today's information society, the importance of the knowledge service using the information to creative value is getting higher day by day. In addition, depending on the development of IT technology, it is ease to collect and use information. Also, many companies actively use customer information to marketing in a variety of industries. Into the 21st century, companies have been actively using the culture arts to manage corporate image and marketing closely linked to their commercial interests. But, it is difficult that companies attract or maintain consumer's interest through their technology. For that reason, it is trend to perform cultural activities for tool of differentiation over many firms. Many firms used the customer's experience to new marketing strategy in order to effectively respond to competitive market. Accordingly, it is emerging rapidly that the necessity of personalized service to provide a new experience for people based on the personal profile information that contains the characteristics of the individual. Like this, personalized service using customer's individual profile information such as language, symbols, behavior, and emotions is very important today. Through this, we will be able to judge interaction between people and content and to maximize customer's experience and satisfaction. There are various relative works provide customer-centered service. Specially, emotion recognition research is emerging recently. Existing researches experienced emotion recognition using mostly bio-signal. Most of researches are voice and face studies that have great emotional changes. However, there are several difficulties to predict people's emotion caused by limitation of equipment and service environments. So, in this paper, we develop emotion prediction model based on vision-based interface to overcome existing limitations. Emotion recognition research based on people's gesture and posture has been processed by several researchers. This paper developed a model that recognizes people's emotional states through body gesture and posture using difference image method. And we found optimization validation model for four kinds of emotions' prediction. A proposed model purposed to automatically determine and predict 4 human emotions (Sadness, Surprise, Joy, and Disgust). To build up the model, event booth was installed in the KOCCA's lobby and we provided some proper stimulative movie to collect their body gesture and posture as the change of emotions. And then, we extracted body movements using difference image method. And we revised people data to build proposed model through neural network. The proposed model for emotion prediction used 3 type time-frame sets (20 frames, 30 frames, and 40 frames). And then, we adopted the model which has best performance compared with other models.' Before build three kinds of models, the entire 97 data set were divided into three data sets of learning, test, and validation set. The proposed model for emotion prediction was constructed using artificial neural network. In this paper, we used the back-propagation algorithm as a learning method, and set learning rate to 10%, momentum rate to 10%. The sigmoid function was used as the transform function. And we designed a three-layer perceptron neural network with one hidden layer and four output nodes. Based on the test data set, the learning for this research model was stopped when it reaches 50000 after reaching the minimum error in order to explore the point of learning. We finally processed each model's accuracy and found best model to predict each emotions. The result showed prediction accuracy 100% from sadness, and 96% from joy prediction in 20 frames set model. And 88% from surprise, and 98% from disgust in 30 frames set model. The findings of our research are expected to be useful to provide effective algorithm for personalized service in various industries such as advertisement, exhibition, performance, etc.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.231-252
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• 2021

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a key technology that will change the future the most. It affects the industry as a whole and daily life in various ways. As data availability increases, artificial intelligence finds an optimal solution and infers/predicts through self-learning. Research and investment related to automation that discovers and solves problems on its own are ongoing continuously. Automation of artificial intelligence has benefits such as cost reduction, minimization of human intervention and the difference of human capability. However, there are side effects, such as limiting the artificial intelligence's autonomy and erroneous results due to algorithmic bias. In the labor market, it raises the fear of job replacement. Prior studies on the utilization of artificial intelligence have shown that individuals do not necessarily use the information (or advice) it provides. Algorithm error is more sensitive than human error; so, people avoid algorithms after seeing errors, which is called "algorithm aversion." Recently, artificial intelligence has begun to be understood from the perspective of the augmentation of human intelligence. We have started to be interested in Human-AI collaboration rather than AI alone without human. A study of 1500 companies in various industries found that human-AI collaboration outperformed AI alone. In the medicine area, pathologist-deep learning collaboration dropped the pathologist cancer diagnosis error rate by 85%. Leading AI companies, such as IBM and Microsoft, are starting to adopt the direction of AI as augmented intelligence. Human-AI collaboration is emphasized in the decision-making process, because artificial intelligence is superior in analysis ability based on information. Intuition is a unique human capability so that human-AI collaboration can make optimal decisions. In an environment where change is getting faster and uncertainty increases, the need for artificial intelligence in decision-making will increase. In addition, active discussions are expected on approaches that utilize artificial intelligence for rational decision-making. This study investigates the impact of artificial intelligence on decision-making focuses on human-AI collaboration and the interaction between the decision maker personal traits and advisor type. The advisors were classified into three types: human, artificial intelligence, and human-AI collaboration. We investigated perceived usefulness of advice and the utilization of advice in decision making and whether the decision-maker's personal traits are influencing factors. Three hundred and eleven adult male and female experimenters conducted a task that predicts the age of faces in photos and the results showed that the advisor type does not directly affect the utilization of advice. The decision-maker utilizes it only when they believed advice can improve prediction performance. In the case of human-AI collaboration, decision-makers higher evaluated the perceived usefulness of advice, regardless of the decision maker's personal traits and the advice was more actively utilized. If the type of advisor was artificial intelligence alone, decision-makers who scored high in conscientiousness, high in extroversion, or low in neuroticism, high evaluated the perceived usefulness of the advice so they utilized advice actively. This study has academic significance in that it focuses on human-AI collaboration that the recent growing interest in artificial intelligence roles. It has expanded the relevant research area by considering the role of artificial intelligence as an advisor of decision-making and judgment research, and in aspects of practical significance, suggested views that companies should consider in order to enhance AI capability. To improve the effectiveness of AI-based systems, companies not only must introduce high-performance systems, but also need employees who properly understand digital information presented by AI, and can add non-digital information to make decisions. Moreover, to increase utilization in AI-based systems, task-oriented competencies, such as analytical skills and information technology capabilities, are important. in addition, it is expected that greater performance will be achieved if employee's personal traits are considered.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.19-31
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• 2021

This study tried to identify the characteristics of college students' entrepreneurial intentions in the entertainment industry, focusing on existing literature studies. Based on this, it was intended to suggest realistic educational alternatives for university student start-ups and implications for start-up management to university start-up officials and those in charge of national start-up support policy. Therefore, the implications of this study are as follows. First, technology(item) for idea creation education, which is an essential element in the entertainment industry, how to connect ideas and products, technology methods that can increase content value, and user characteristics education within the entertainment industry will need to be continued. In addition, along with the idea education, it is necessary to increase the understanding of start-up business management such as financing, human resource management, marketing, and operation management, and furthermore, confidence education should be provided so that the possibility of success in an entertainment start-up and a sense of adventure in a new job can be developed. Second, the space and equipment necessary for start-up (club room, student start-up room, entertainment-related equipment, etc.) should be provided centering on the opinion survey of students who are interested in starting a business, and various regulations of universities and government for student start-up should be relaxed. will have to In addition, education for the formation of entrepreneurial knowledge inside and outside of the school, special lectures and consultations by experts, and on-the-spot education, etc., should be made to create more practical entrepreneurial knowledge. something to do. Third, for students wishing to start a business in the entertainment industry, it is necessary to inform their families about the field situation of the entertainment industry accurately so that their children can develop a positive perception rather than a negative perception when choosing a business field. In addition, by promoting various successful cases of college students to their families after starting a business, families should be encouraged so that their children can develop a challenging spirit about starting a business. Fourth, it should be possible to form continuous clubs or gatherings with friends who wish to start a business in the entertainment industry, and furthermore, an opportunity to listen to the opinions of friends who actually started a business through these meetings should be provided. In addition, the meeting and the formation of friends should create a place for discussion about writing a business plan, how to succeed in starting a business, and management of startups, and psychological stimulation activities should be conducted so that each other's will to start a business arises. Fifth, various knowledge related to start-up (methods for securing funds, management of start-up organizations, grasping information about the market in which they want to start a business, etc.) should be cultivated, and how to write a business plan for the various entertainment industry fields they want to start up. You will also need to train them to be practical. Also, based on this knowledge formation, students themselves should be able to respond to risks and changes that may occur in entrepreneurship. Lastly, it is necessary to increase the understanding of business start-up management, and various psychological stimulation activities are needed to make the confidence and fear of starting a business disappear.

• 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-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.285-301
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• 2020

Looking at the problem of aging in the nation from a demographic perspective, it is not a problem of the overall population, but of the structure of the population. It is the baby boomer and post-baby boomers, the largest population in the country. Baby boomers were born between 1955 and 1963, and currently have a population of 7001,333, which is 13.6 percent (as of 2015). The Post-Baby Boomer generation was born between 1964 and 1974, with a total population of 9,567,171, accounting for 18.8 percent of the total population. In particular, baby boomers and post-baby boomers (32.4% of the total population) have begun to retire or will retire soon. The average life expectancy continues to increase due to the development of medical technology, and the falling birth rate of newborns and the declining population of the production population are darkening the domestic economy. In a policy proposal aimed at easing the nation's falling economic growth rate, women's participation rate is as high as Sweden and men's efforts to increase it as high as Japan's, while the elderly rate is desirable to maintain Korea's high level. This is because the expansion of the elderly generation's participation in economic activities could ease a sharp drop in economic growth and reduce the burden of supporting the elderly population. The study, based on this social problem awareness and problem solving plan, looks at the relationship between career orientation and satisfaction in start-up education based on the diverse career base of active seniors, and also suggests the importance of customized start-up education on the diversity of active seniors by clarifying the relationship between them, and suggests the desirable direction of senior start-up policy design, funding, and start-up education. Based on the theoretical background, the concept of five factors was defined: active senior, career-oriented, satisfaction level of start-up education, willingness to start a business, and the concept definition of an active senior, which is particularly key to the baby boomers in their 50s and 60s, is generally regarded as a source of consumption or welfare benefits, but in this study, the concept of active start-up is reflected in the domestic start-up market by young people in their 40s, 50s and 60s. As a result of a hypothesis test. Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 5: Career orientation has been verified to affect the willingness to start a business and the behavior of preparation for a start-up. Hypothesis 3: The willingness to start a business has been verified as having an effect between startup preparation actions. Hypothesis 4: The satisfaction level of start-up education has been verified to affect start-up preparation behavior. However, hypothesis 2: The satisfaction level of education for start-ups does not affect the willingness to start a business. Such results can be inferred that satisfaction in start-up education does not have a direct effect on the will to start a business and increases the will to start a business through the influence of personal career orientation.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.27-55
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• 2008

Due to the increasing and intensifying competition in the Internet shopping market, it has been recognized as very important to develop an effective policy and strategy for acquiring loyal customers. For this reason, web site designers need to know if a new Internet shopping mall(ISM) will be accepted. Researchers have been working on identifying factors for explaining and predicting user acceptance of an ISM. Some studies, however, revealed inconsistent findings on the antecedents of user acceptance of a website. Lack of consideration for individual differences in user ability is believed to be one of the key reasons for the mixed findings. The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and several studies have suggested that individual differences in ability plays an moderating role on the relationship between the antecedents and user acceptance. Despite the critical role of user ability, little research has examined the role of user ability in the Internet shopping mall context. The purpose of this study is to develop a user acceptance model that consider the moderating role of user ability in the context of Internet shopping. This study was initiated to see the ability of the technology acceptance model(TAM) to explain the acceptance of a specific ISM. According to TAM. which is one of the most influential models for explaining user acceptance of IT, an intention to use IT is determined by usefulness and ease of use. Given that interaction between user and website takes place through web interface, the decisions to accept and continue using an ISM depend on these beliefs. However, TAM neglects to consider the fact that many users would not stick to an ISM until they trust it although they may think it useful and easy to use. The importance of trust for user acceptance of ISM has been raised by the relational views. The relational view emphasizes the trust-building process between the user and ISM, and user's trust on the website is a major determinant of user acceptance. The proposed model extends and integrates the TAM and relational views on user acceptance of ISM by incorporating usefulness, ease of use, and trust. User acceptance is defined as a user's intention to reuse a specific ISM. And user ability is introduced into the model as moderating variable. Here, the user ability is defined as a degree of experiences, knowledge and skills regarding Internet shopping sites. The research model proposes that the ease of use, usefulness and trust of ISM are key determinants of user acceptance. In addition, this paper hypothesizes that the effects of the antecedents(i.e., ease of use, usefulness, and trust) on user acceptance may differ among users. In particular, this paper proposes a moderating effect of a user's ability on the relationship between antecedents with user's intention to reuse. The research model with eleven hypotheses was derived and tested through a survey that involved 470 university students. For each research variable, this paper used measurement items recognized for reliability and widely used in previous research. We slightly modified some items proper to the research context. The reliability and validity of the research variables were tested using the Crobnach's alpha and internal consistency reliability (ICR) values, standard factor loadings of the confirmative factor analysis, and average variance extracted (AVE) values. A LISREL method was used to test the suitability of the research model and its relating six hypotheses. Key findings of the results are summarized in the following. First, TAM's two constructs, ease of use and usefulness directly affect user acceptance. In addition, ease of use indirectly influences user acceptance by affecting trust. This implies that users tend to trust a shopping site and visit repeatedly when they perceive a specific ISM easy to use. Accordingly, designing a shopping site that allows users to navigate with heuristic and minimal clicks for finding information and products within the site is important for improving the site's trust and acceptance. Usefulness, however, was not found to influence trust. Second, among the three belief constructs(ease of use, usefulness, and trust), trust was empirically supported as the most important determinants of user acceptance. This implies that users require trustworthiness from an Internet shopping site to be repeat visitors of an ISM. Providing a sense of safety and eliminating the anxiety of online shoppers in relation to privacy, security, delivery, and product returns are critically important conditions for acquiring repeat visitors. Hence, in addition to usefulness and ease of use as in TAM, trust should be a fundamental determinants of user acceptance in the context of internet shopping. Third, the user's ability on using an Internet shopping site played a moderating role. For users with low ability, ease of use was found to be a more important factors in deciding to reuse the shopping mall, whereas usefulness and trust had more effects on users with high ability. Applying the EML theory to these findings, we can suggest that experienced and knowledgeable ISM users tend to elaborate on such usefulness aspects as efficient and effective shopping performance and trust factors as ability, benevolence, integrity, and predictability of a shopping site before they become repeat visitors of the site. In contrast, novice users tend to rely on the low elaborating features, such as the perceived ease of use. The existence of moderating effects suggests the fact that different individuals evaluate an ISM from different perspectives. The expert users are more interested in the outcome of the visit(usefulness) and trustworthiness(trust) than those novice visitors. The latter evaluate the ISM in a more superficial manner focusing on the novelty of the site and on other instrumental beliefs(ease of use). This is consistent with the insights proposed by the Heuristic-Systematic model. According to the Heuristic-Systematic model. a users act on the principle of minimum effort. Thus, the user considers an ISM heuristically, focusing on those aspects that are easy to process and evaluate(ease of use). When the user has sufficient experience and skills, the user will change to systematic processing, where they will evaluate more complex aspects of the site(its usefulness and trustworthiness). This implies that an ISM has to provide a minimum level of ease of use to make it possible for a user to evaluate its usefulness and trustworthiness. Ease of use is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the acceptance and use of an ISM. Overall, the empirical results generally support the proposed model and identify the moderating effect of the effects of user ability. More detailed interpretations and implications of the findings are discussed. The limitations of this study are also discussed to provide directions for future research.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.239-248
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• 2010

This paper describes a collaborative project between academia and industry which focused on improving the marketing and product development strategies for two private label apparel brands of a large regional department store chain in the southeastern United States. The goal of the project was to revitalize product lines of the two brands by incorporating student ideas for new solutions, thereby giving the students practical experience with a real-life industry situation. There were a number of key players involved in the project. A privately-owned department store chain based in the southeastern United States which was seeking an academic partner had recognized a need to update two existing private label brands. They targeted middle-aged consumers looking for casual, moderately priced merchandise. The company was seeking to change direction with both packaging and presentation, and possibly product design. The branding and product development divisions of the company contacted professors in an academic department of a large southeastern state university. Two of the professors agreed that the task would be a good fit for their classes - one was a junior-level Intermediate Brand Management class; the other was a senior-level Fashion Product Development class. The professors felt that by working collaboratively on the project, students would be exposed to a real world scenario, within the security of an academic learning environment. Collaboration within an interdisciplinary team has the advantage of providing experiences and resources beyond the capabilities of a single student and adds "brainpower" to problem-solving processes (Lowman 2000). This goal of improving the capabilities of students directed the instructors in each class to form interdisciplinary teams between the Branding and Product Development classes. In addition, many universities are employing industry partnerships in research and teaching, where collaboration within temporal (semester) and physical (classroom/lab) constraints help to increase students' knowledge and experience of a real-world situation. At the University of Tennessee, the Center of Industrial Services and UT-Knoxville's College of Engineering worked with a company to develop design improvements in its U.S. operations. In this study, Because should be lower case b with a private label retail brand, Wickett, Gaskill and Damhorst's (1999) revised Retail Apparel Product Development Model was used by the product development and brand management teams. This framework was chosen because it addresses apparel product development from the concept to the retail stage. Two classes were involved in this project: a junior level Brand Management class and a senior level Fashion Product Development class. Seven teams were formed which included four students from Brand Management and two students from Product Development. The classes were taught the same semester, but not at the same time. At the beginning of the semester, each class was introduced to the industry partner and given the problem. Half the teams were assigned to the men's brand and half to the women's brand. The teams were responsible for devising approaches to the problem, formulating a timeline for their work, staying in touch with industry representatives and making sure that each member of the team contributed in a positive way. The objective for the teams was to plan, develop, and present a product line using merchandising processes (following the Wickett, Gaskill and Damhorst model) and develop new branding strategies for the proposed lines. The teams performed trend, color, fabrication and target market research; developed sketches for a line; edited the sketches and presented their line plans; wrote specifications; fitted prototypes on fit models, and developed final production samples for presentation to industry. The branding students developed a SWOT analysis, a Brand Measurement report, a mind-map for the brands and a fully integrated Marketing Report which was presented alongside the ideas for the new lines. In future if the opportunity arises to work in this collaborative way with an existing company who wishes to look both at branding and product development strategies, classes will be scheduled at the same time so that students have more time to meet and discuss timelines and assigned tasks. As it was, student groups had to meet outside of each class time and this proved to be a challenging though not uncommon part of teamwork (Pfaff and Huddleston, 2003). Although the logistics of this exercise were time-consuming to set up and administer, professors felt that the benefits to students were multiple. The most important benefit, according to student feedback from both classes, was the opportunity to work with industry professionals, follow their process, and see the results of their work evaluated by the people who made the decisions at the company level. Faculty members were grateful to have a "real-world" case to work with in the classroom to provide focus. Creative ideas and strategies were traded as plans were made, extending and strengthening the departmental links be tween the branding and product development areas. By working not only with students coming from a different knowledge base, but also having to keep in contact with the industry partner and follow the framework and timeline of industry practice, student teams were challenged to produce excellent and innovative work under new circumstances. Working on the product development and branding for "real-life" brands that are struggling gave students an opportunity to see how closely their coursework ties in with the real-world and how creativity, collaboration and flexibility are necessary components of both the design and business aspects of company operations. Industry personnel were impressed by (a) the level and depth of knowledge and execution in the student projects, and (b) the creativity of new ideas for the brands.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.171-183
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• 2012

In the development of technologies, the exhibition industry has received much attention from governments and companies as an important way of marketing activities. Also, the exhibitors have considered the exhibition as new channels of marketing activities. However, the growing size of exhibitions for net square feet and the number of visitors naturally creates the competitive environment for them. Therefore, to make use of the effective marketing tools in these environments, they have planned and implemented many promotion technics. Especially, through smart environment which makes them provide real-time information for visitors, they can implement various kinds of promotion. However, promotions ignoring visitors' various needs and preferences can lose the original purposes and functions of them. That is, as indiscriminate promotions make visitors feel like spam, they can't achieve their purposes. Therefore, they need an approach using STP strategy which segments visitors through right evidences (Segmentation), selects the target visitors (Targeting), and give proper services to them (Positioning). For using STP Strategy in the smart exhibition environment, we consider these characteristics of it. First, an exhibition is defined as market events of a specific duration, which are held at intervals. According to this, exhibitors who plan some promotions should different events and promotions in each exhibition. Therefore, when they adopt traditional STP strategies, a system can provide services using insufficient information and of existing visitors, and should guarantee the performance of it. Second, to segment automatically, cluster analysis which is generally used as data mining technology can be adopted. In the smart exhibition environment, information of visitors can be acquired in real-time. At the same time, services using this information should be also provided in real-time. However, many clustering algorithms have scalability problem which they hardly work on a large database and require for domain knowledge to determine input parameters. Therefore, through selecting a suitable methodology and fitting, it should provide real-time services. Finally, it is needed to make use of data in the smart exhibition environment. As there are useful data such as booth visit records and participation records for events, the STP strategy for the smart exhibition is based on not only demographical segmentation but also behavioral segmentation. Therefore, in this study, we analyze a case of the promotion methodology which exhibitors can provide a differentiated service to segmented visitors in the smart exhibition environment. First, considering characteristics of the smart exhibition environment, we draw evidences of segmentation and fit the clustering methodology for providing real-time services. There are many studies for classify visitors, but we adopt a segmentation methodology based on visitors' behavioral traits. Through the direct observation, Veron and Levasseur classify visitors into four groups to liken visitors' traits to animals (Butterfly, fish, grasshopper, and ant). Especially, because variables of their classification like the number of visits and the average time of a visit can estimate in the smart exhibition environment, it can provide theoretical and practical background for our system. Next, we construct a pilot system which automatically selects suitable visitors along the objectives of promotions and instantly provide promotion messages to them. That is, based on the segmentation of our methodology, our system automatically selects suitable visitors along the characteristics of promotions. We adopt this system to real exhibition environment, and analyze data from results of adaptation. As a result, as we classify visitors into four types through their behavioral pattern in the exhibition, we provide some insights for researchers who build the smart exhibition environment and can gain promotion strategies fitting each cluster. First, visitors of ANT type show high response rate for promotion messages except experience promotion. So they are fascinated by actual profits in exhibition area, and dislike promotions requiring a long time. Contrastively, visitors of GRASSHOPPER type show high response rate only for experience promotion. Second, visitors of FISH type appear favors to coupon and contents promotions. That is, although they don't look in detail, they prefer to obtain further information such as brochure. Especially, exhibitors that want to give much information for limited time should give attention to visitors of this type. Consequently, these promotion strategies are expected to give exhibitors some insights when they plan and organize their activities, and grow the performance of them.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.31-54
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• 2007

The exchange between buyers and sellers in the industrial market is changing from short-term to long-term relationships. Long-term relationships are governed mainly by formal contracts or informal agreements, but many scholars are now asserting that controlling relationship by using formal contracts under environmental dynamism is inappropriate. In this case, partners will depend on each other's flexibility or interdependence. The former, flexibility, provides a general frame of reference, order, and standards against which to guide and assess appropriate behavior in dynamic and ambiguous situations, thus motivating the value-oriented performance goals shared between partners. It is based on social sacrifices, which can potentially minimize any opportunistic behaviors. The later, interdependence, means that each firm possesses a high level of dependence in an dynamic channel relationship. When interdependence is high in magnitude and symmetric, each firm enjoys a high level of power and the bonds between the firms should be reasonably strong. Strong shared power is likely to promote commitment because of the common interests, attention, and support found in such channel relationships. This study deals with environmental dynamism in high-tech industry. Firms in the high-tech industry regard it as a key success factor to successfully cope with environmental changes. However, due to the lack of studies dealing with environmental dynamism and supply chain commitment in the high-tech industry, it is very difficult to find effective strategies to cope with them. This paper presents the results of an empirical study on the relationship between environmental dynamism and supply chain commitment in the high-tech industry. We examined the effects of consumer, competitor, and technological dynamism on supply chain commitment. Additionally, we examined the moderating effects of flexibility and dependence of supply chains. This study was confined to the type of high-tech industry which has the characteristics of rapid technology change and short product lifecycle. Flexibility among the firms of this industry, having the characteristic of hard and fast growth, is more important here than among any other industry. Thus, a variety of environmental dynamism can affect a supply chain relationship. The industries targeted industries were electronic parts, metal product, computer, electric machine, automobile, and medical precision manufacturing industries. Data was collected as follows. During the survey, the researchers managed to obtain the list of parts suppliers of 2 companies, N and L, with an international competitiveness in the mobile phone manufacturing industry; and of the suppliers in a business relationship with S company, a semiconductor manufacturing company. They were asked to respond to the survey via telephone and e-mail. During the two month period of February-April 2006, we were able to collect data from 44 companies. The respondents were restricted to direct dealing authorities and subcontractor company (the supplier) staff with at least three months of dealing experience with a manufacture (an industrial material buyer). The measurement validation procedures included scale reliability; discriminant and convergent validity were used to validate measures. Also, the reliability measurements traditionally employed, such as the Cronbach's alpha, were used. All the reliabilities were greater than.70. A series of exploratory factor analyses was conducted. We conducted confirmatory factor analyses to assess the validity of our measurements. A series of chi-square difference tests were conducted so that the discriminant validity could be ensured. For each pair, we estimated two models-an unconstrained model and a constrained model-and compared the two model fits. All these tests supported discriminant validity. Also, all items loaded significantly on their respective constructs, providing support for convergent validity. We then examined composite reliability and average variance extracted (AVE). The composite reliability of each construct was greater than.70. The AVE of each construct was greater than.50. According to the multiple regression analysis, customer dynamism had a negative effect and competitor dynamism had a positive effect on a supplier's commitment. In addition, flexibility and dependence had significant moderating effects on customer and competitor dynamism. On the other hand, all hypotheses about technological dynamism had no significant effects on commitment. In other words, technological dynamism had no direct effect on supplier's commitment and was not moderated by the flexibility and dependence of the supply chain. This study makes its contribution in the point of view that this is a rare study on environmental dynamism and supply chain commitment in the field of high-tech industry. Especially, this study verified the effects of three sectors of environmental dynamism on supplier's commitment. Also, it empirically tested how the effects were moderated by flexibility and dependence. The results showed that flexibility and interdependence had a role to strengthen supplier's commitment under environmental dynamism in high-tech industry. Thus relationship managers in high-tech industry should make supply chain relationship flexible and interdependent. The limitations of the study are as follows; First, about the research setting, the study was conducted with high-tech industry, in which the direction of the change in the power balance of supply chain dyads is usually determined by manufacturers. So we have a difficulty with generalization. We need to control the power structure between partners in a future study. Secondly, about flexibility, we treated it throughout the paper as positive, but it can also be negative, i.e. violating an agreement or moving, but in the wrong direction, etc. Therefore we need to investigate the multi-dimensionality of flexibility in future research.