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A Study on the Meaning and Strategy of Keyword Advertising Marketing

  • Park, Nam Goo
    • Journal of Distribution Science
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    • v.8 no.3
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    • pp.49-56
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    • 2010
  • At the initial stage of Internet advertising, banner advertising came into fashion. As the Internet developed into a central part of daily lives and the competition in the on-line advertising market was getting fierce, there was not enough space for banner advertising, which rushed to portal sites only. All these factors was responsible for an upsurge in advertising prices. Consequently, the high-cost and low-efficiency problems with banner advertising were raised, which led to an emergence of keyword advertising as a new type of Internet advertising to replace its predecessor. In the beginning of 2000s, when Internet advertising came to be activated, display advertisement including banner advertising dominated the Net. However, display advertising showed signs of gradual decline, and registered minus growth in the year 2009, whereas keyword advertising showed rapid growth and started to outdo display advertising as of the year 2005. Keyword advertising refers to the advertising technique that exposes relevant advertisements on the top of research sites when one searches for a keyword. Instead of exposing advertisements to unspecified individuals like banner advertising, keyword advertising, or targeted advertising technique, shows advertisements only when customers search for a desired keyword so that only highly prospective customers are given a chance to see them. In this context, it is also referred to as search advertising. It is regarded as more aggressive advertising with a high hit rate than previous advertising in that, instead of the seller discovering customers and running an advertisement for them like TV, radios or banner advertising, it exposes advertisements to visiting customers. Keyword advertising makes it possible for a company to seek publicity on line simply by making use of a single word and to achieve a maximum of efficiency at a minimum cost. The strong point of keyword advertising is that customers are allowed to directly contact the products in question through its more efficient advertising when compared to the advertisements of mass media such as TV and radio, etc. The weak point of keyword advertising is that a company should have its advertisement registered on each and every portal site and finds it hard to exercise substantial supervision over its advertisement, there being a possibility of its advertising expenses exceeding its profits. Keyword advertising severs as the most appropriate methods of advertising for the sales and publicity of small and medium enterprises which are in need of a maximum of advertising effect at a low advertising cost. At present, keyword advertising is divided into CPC advertising and CPM advertising. The former is known as the most efficient technique, which is also referred to as advertising based on the meter rate system; A company is supposed to pay for the number of clicks on a searched keyword which users have searched. This is representatively adopted by Overture, Google's Adwords, Naver's Clickchoice, and Daum's Clicks, etc. CPM advertising is dependent upon the flat rate payment system, making a company pay for its advertisement on the basis of the number of exposure, not on the basis of the number of clicks. This method fixes a price for advertisement on the basis of 1,000-time exposure, and is mainly adopted by Naver's Timechoice, Daum's Speciallink, and Nate's Speedup, etc, At present, the CPC method is most frequently adopted. The weak point of the CPC method is that advertising cost can rise through constant clicks from the same IP. If a company makes good use of strategies for maximizing the strong points of keyword advertising and complementing its weak points, it is highly likely to turn its visitors into prospective customers. Accordingly, an advertiser should make an analysis of customers' behavior and approach them in a variety of ways, trying hard to find out what they want. With this in mind, her or she has to put multiple keywords into use when running for ads. When he or she first runs an ad, he or she should first give priority to which keyword to select. The advertiser should consider how many individuals using a search engine will click the keyword in question and how much money he or she has to pay for the advertisement. As the popular keywords that the users of search engines are frequently using are expensive in terms of a unit cost per click, the advertisers without much money for advertising at the initial phrase should pay attention to detailed keywords suitable to their budget. Detailed keywords are also referred to as peripheral keywords or extension keywords, which can be called a combination of major keywords. Most keywords are in the form of texts. The biggest strong point of text-based advertising is that it looks like search results, causing little antipathy to it. But it fails to attract much attention because of the fact that most keyword advertising is in the form of texts. Image-embedded advertising is easy to notice due to images, but it is exposed on the lower part of a web page and regarded as an advertisement, which leads to a low click through rate. However, its strong point is that its prices are lower than those of text-based advertising. If a company owns a logo or a product that is easy enough for people to recognize, the company is well advised to make good use of image-embedded advertising so as to attract Internet users' attention. Advertisers should make an analysis of their logos and examine customers' responses based on the events of sites in question and the composition of products as a vehicle for monitoring their behavior in detail. Besides, keyword advertising allows them to analyze the advertising effects of exposed keywords through the analysis of logos. The logo analysis refers to a close analysis of the current situation of a site by making an analysis of information about visitors on the basis of the analysis of the number of visitors and page view, and that of cookie values. It is in the log files generated through each Web server that a user's IP, used pages, the time when he or she uses it, and cookie values are stored. The log files contain a huge amount of data. As it is almost impossible to make a direct analysis of these log files, one is supposed to make an analysis of them by using solutions for a log analysis. The generic information that can be extracted from tools for each logo analysis includes the number of viewing the total pages, the number of average page view per day, the number of basic page view, the number of page view per visit, the total number of hits, the number of average hits per day, the number of hits per visit, the number of visits, the number of average visits per day, the net number of visitors, average visitors per day, one-time visitors, visitors who have come more than twice, and average using hours, etc. These sites are deemed to be useful for utilizing data for the analysis of the situation and current status of rival companies as well as benchmarking. As keyword advertising exposes advertisements exclusively on search-result pages, competition among advertisers attempting to preoccupy popular keywords is very fierce. Some portal sites keep on giving priority to the existing advertisers, whereas others provide chances to purchase keywords in question to all the advertisers after the advertising contract is over. If an advertiser tries to rely on keywords sensitive to seasons and timeliness in case of sites providing priority to the established advertisers, he or she may as well make a purchase of a vacant place for advertising lest he or she should miss appropriate timing for advertising. However, Naver doesn't provide priority to the existing advertisers as far as all the keyword advertisements are concerned. In this case, one can preoccupy keywords if he or she enters into a contract after confirming the contract period for advertising. This study is designed to take a look at marketing for keyword advertising and to present effective strategies for keyword advertising marketing. At present, the Korean CPC advertising market is virtually monopolized by Overture. Its strong points are that Overture is based on the CPC charging model and that advertisements are registered on the top of the most representative portal sites in Korea. These advantages serve as the most appropriate medium for small and medium enterprises to use. However, the CPC method of Overture has its weak points, too. That is, the CPC method is not the only perfect advertising model among the search advertisements in the on-line market. So it is absolutely necessary that small and medium enterprises including independent shopping malls should complement the weaknesses of the CPC method and make good use of strategies for maximizing its strengths so as to increase their sales and to create a point of contact with customers.

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Measuring Intracellular Mycobacterial Killing Using a Human Whole Blood Assay (인체 전혈 모델을 이용한 세포내 결핵균 살균력에 관한 연구)

  • Cheon, Seon-Hee;Song, Ho-Yeon;Lee, Eun-Hee;Oh, Hee-Jung;Kang, In-Sook;Cho, Ji-Yoon;Hong, Young-Sun
    • Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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    • v.53 no.5
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    • pp.497-509
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    • 2002
  • Background : The mechanisms through which cellular activation results in intracellular mycobacterial killing is only partially understood. However, in vitro studies of human immunity to Mycobacterium tuberculosis have been largely modeled on the work reported by Crowle, which is complicated by several factors. The whole blood culture is simple and allows the simultaneous analysis of the relationship between bacterial killing and the effect of effector cells and humoral factors. In this study, we attempted to determine the extent to which M. tuberculosis is killed in a human whole blood culture and to explore the role of the host and microbial factor in this process. Methods : The PPD positive subject were compared to the umbilical cord blood and patients with tuberculosis, diabetes and lung cancer. The culture is performed using heparinized whole blood diluted with a culture medium and infected with a low number of M. avium or M. tuberculosis $H_{37}Ra$ for 4 days by rotating the culture in a $37^{\circ}C$, 5% $CO_2$ incubator. In some experiments, methlprednisolone- or pentoxifyline were used to inhibit the immune response. To assess the role of the T-cell subsets, CD4+, CD8+ T-cells or both were removed from the blood using magnetic beads. The ${\Delta}$ log killing ratio was defined using a CFU assay as the difference in the log number of viable organisms in the completed culture compared to the inoculum. Results : 1. A trend was noted toward the improved killing of mycobacteria in PPD+ subjects comparing to the umbilical cord blood but there was no specific difference in the patients with tuberculosis, diabetes and lung cancer. 2. Methylprednisolone and pentoxifyline adversely affected the killing in the PPD+ subjects umbilical cord blood and patients with tuberculosis. 3. The deletion of CD4+ or CD8+ T-lymphocytes adversely affected the killing of M. avium and M. tuberculosis $H_{37}Ra$ by PPD+ subjects. Deletion of both cell types had an additive effect, particularly in M. tuberculosis $H_{37}Ra$. 4. A significantly improved mycobacterial killing was noted after chemotherapy in patients with tuberculosis and the ${\Delta}$ logKR continuously decreased in a 3 and 4 days of whole blood culture. Conclusion : The in vitro bactericidal assay by human whole blood culture model was settled using a CFU assay. However, the host immunity to M. tuberculosis was not apparent in the human whole blood culture bactericidal assay, and patients with tuberculosis showed markedly improved bacterial killing after anti-tuberculous chemotherapy compared to before. The simplicity of a whole blood culture facilitates its inclusion in a clinical trial and it may have a potential role as a surrogate marker in a TB vaccine trial.

Prevalence of Enteyobius vermiculuris infection and preventive effects of masts treatment among children in rural and urban areas, and children in orphanages (농촌, 도시 및 집단생활 아동의 요충 감염과 집단 구충에 의한 예방 효과)

  • Kim, Jong-Su;Lee, Hae-Yong;An, Yeong-Gyeom
    • Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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    • v.29 no.3
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    • pp.235-244
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    • 1991
  • An epidemiological study and mass treatments of Enterobius vermicularis infection among children near Wonju area of Kangwon province were carried out. The children were divided into 4 groups according to their residing localities; children in the mountainous area, rural area, urban area and in orphanage. They were examined by adhesive cellotape anal swab technique, and egg positive rates were obtained. The rates of egg reduction and re-infection rates after repeated mass treatments were also observed. The results obtained were as follows: 1. The overall egg Positive rate of E. vermicularis in the first screening was 19.9% (251 out of 1, 262 examinees; 19.7% in males and 20.1% in females). The positive rates were 13.0% in the mountainous area, 11 9% in the rural area, 15.1% in the urban (medium-sized) area and 61.9% in orphanages. 2. The highest positive rates were observed in the kindergarten children, and 1st and 2nd grade children of primary schools (26.2~32.2%), and the lowest rate (13.6%) in 6-year grade children of primary schools. 3. Cumulative detection rates from 3 repeated anal swabs at 4~5 days interval were higher (70.8%) than those from single anal swabs (50.0~59.2%). 4. Out of the examinees who showed the highest cumulative positive rate (70.8%), about 39.2% were consecutively positive in 3 anal swabs. Among different groups of children, the higher the total egg detection rates (87.5%), the higher the consecutive positive rates (71.9%) . 5. A total of 2, 609 (male : female=1 : 12.4) worms were collected from 17 egg-positive cases treated with anthelinintics. The mean number of worms per child was 153 (range: 4-824) . 6. The egg-positive cases in several studied groups (180 children) were treated with anthelmintics 6 times at 3-week intervals. In this case, the overall positive rate was decreased from 54.8% to 2.2% at 15 weeks after the treatments, but no complete negative conversion was experienced. However, in a group of children (154 children) including egg Positive and negative cases who were both treated with anthelmintics at 3-week interval, a complete egg-negative conversion was observed in the 9th week after treatments. 7. The egg-detection rate in the brothers or sisters of egg Positive children was 70.0% (28 out of 40 examined), and the egg-positive rate according to the family unit was 69.7%. In summarizing the above results, it is concluded that Enterobius vermicularis infection is still highly prevalent among children in Korea, and that repeated mass treatments of more than 3 times will be effective for control of this infection.

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Information types and characteristics within the Wireless Emergency Alert in COVID-19: Focusing on Wireless Emergency Alerts in Seoul (코로나 19 하에서 재난문자 내의 정보유형 및 특성: 서울특별시 재난문자를 중심으로)

  • Yoon, Sungwook;Nam, Kihwan
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.28 no.1
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    • pp.45-68
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    • 2022
  • The central and local governments of the Republic of Korea provided information necessary for disaster response through wireless emergency alerts (WEAs) in order to overcome the pandemic situation in which COVID-19 rapidly spreads. Among all channels for delivering disaster information, wireless emergency alert is the most efficient, and since it adopts the CBS(Cell Broadcast Service) method that broadcasts directly to the mobile phone, it has the advantage of being able to easily access disaster information through the mobile phone without the effort of searching. In this study, the characteristics of wireless emergency alerts sent to Seoul during the past year and one month (January 2020 to January 2021) were derived through various text mining methodologies, and various types of information contained in wireless emergency alerts were analyzed. In addition, it was confirmed through the population mobility by age in the districts of Seoul that what kind of influence it had on the movement behavior of people. After going through the process of classifying key words and information included in each character, text analysis was performed so that individual sent characters can be used as an analysis unit by applying a document cluster analysis technique based on the included words. The number of WEAs sent to the Seoul has grown dramatically since the spread of Covid-19. In January 2020, only 10 WEAs were sent to the Seoul, but the number of the WEAs increased 5 times in March, and 7.7 times over the previous months. Since the basic, regional local government were authorized to send wireless emergency alerts independently, the sending behavior of related to wireless emergency alerts are different for each local government. Although most of the basic local governments increased the transmission of WEAs as the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 increases, the trend of the increase in WEAs according to the increase in the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 was different by region. By using structured econometric model, the effect of disaster information included in wireless emergency alerts on population mobility was measured by dividing it into baseline effect and accumulating effect. Six types of disaster information, including date, order, online URL, symptom, location, normative guidance, were identified in WEAs and analyzed through econometric modelling. It was confirmed that the types of information that significantly change population mobility by age are different. Population mobility of people in their 60s and 70s decreased when wireless emergency alerts included information related to date and order. As date and order information is appeared in WEAs when they intend to give information about Covid-19 confirmed cases, these results show that the population mobility of higher ages decreased as they reacted to the messages reporting of confirmed cases of Covid-19. Online information (URL) decreased the population mobility of in their 20s, and information related to symptoms reduced the population mobility of people in their 30s. On the other hand, it was confirmed that normative words that including the meaning of encouraging compliance with quarantine policies did not cause significant changes in the population mobility of all ages. This means that only meaningful information which is useful for disaster response should be included in the wireless emergency alerts. Repeated sending of wireless emergency alerts reduces the magnitude of the impact of disaster information on population mobility. It proves indirectly that under the prolonged pandemic, people started to feel tired of getting repetitive WEAs with similar content and started to react less. In order to effectively use WEAs for quarantine and overcoming disaster situations, it is necessary to reduce the fatigue of the people who receive WEA by sending them only in necessary situations, and to raise awareness of WEAs.

Design and Implementation of MongoDB-based Unstructured Log Processing System over Cloud Computing Environment (클라우드 환경에서 MongoDB 기반의 비정형 로그 처리 시스템 설계 및 구현)

  • Kim, Myoungjin;Han, Seungho;Cui, Yun;Lee, Hanku
    • Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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    • v.14 no.6
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    • pp.71-84
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    • 2013
  • Log data, which record the multitude of information created when operating computer systems, are utilized in many processes, from carrying out computer system inspection and process optimization to providing customized user optimization. In this paper, we propose a MongoDB-based unstructured log processing system in a cloud environment for processing the massive amount of log data of banks. Most of the log data generated during banking operations come from handling a client's business. Therefore, in order to gather, store, categorize, and analyze the log data generated while processing the client's business, a separate log data processing system needs to be established. However, the realization of flexible storage expansion functions for processing a massive amount of unstructured log data and executing a considerable number of functions to categorize and analyze the stored unstructured log data is difficult in existing computer environments. Thus, in this study, we use cloud computing technology to realize a cloud-based log data processing system for processing unstructured log data that are difficult to process using the existing computing infrastructure's analysis tools and management system. The proposed system uses the IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) cloud environment to provide a flexible expansion of computing resources and includes the ability to flexibly expand resources such as storage space and memory under conditions such as extended storage or rapid increase in log data. Moreover, to overcome the processing limits of the existing analysis tool when a real-time analysis of the aggregated unstructured log data is required, the proposed system includes a Hadoop-based analysis module for quick and reliable parallel-distributed processing of the massive amount of log data. Furthermore, because the HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System) stores data by generating copies of the block units of the aggregated log data, the proposed system offers automatic restore functions for the system to continually operate after it recovers from a malfunction. Finally, by establishing a distributed database using the NoSQL-based Mongo DB, the proposed system provides methods of effectively processing unstructured log data. Relational databases such as the MySQL databases have complex schemas that are inappropriate for processing unstructured log data. Further, strict schemas like those of relational databases cannot expand nodes in the case wherein the stored data are distributed to various nodes when the amount of data rapidly increases. NoSQL does not provide the complex computations that relational databases may provide but can easily expand the database through node dispersion when the amount of data increases rapidly; it is a non-relational database with an appropriate structure for processing unstructured data. The data models of the NoSQL are usually classified as Key-Value, column-oriented, and document-oriented types. Of these, the representative document-oriented data model, MongoDB, which has a free schema structure, is used in the proposed system. MongoDB is introduced to the proposed system because it makes it easy to process unstructured log data through a flexible schema structure, facilitates flexible node expansion when the amount of data is rapidly increasing, and provides an Auto-Sharding function that automatically expands storage. The proposed system is composed of a log collector module, a log graph generator module, a MongoDB module, a Hadoop-based analysis module, and a MySQL module. When the log data generated over the entire client business process of each bank are sent to the cloud server, the log collector module collects and classifies data according to the type of log data and distributes it to the MongoDB module and the MySQL module. The log graph generator module generates the results of the log analysis of the MongoDB module, Hadoop-based analysis module, and the MySQL module per analysis time and type of the aggregated log data, and provides them to the user through a web interface. Log data that require a real-time log data analysis are stored in the MySQL module and provided real-time by the log graph generator module. The aggregated log data per unit time are stored in the MongoDB module and plotted in a graph according to the user's various analysis conditions. The aggregated log data in the MongoDB module are parallel-distributed and processed by the Hadoop-based analysis module. A comparative evaluation is carried out against a log data processing system that uses only MySQL for inserting log data and estimating query performance; this evaluation proves the proposed system's superiority. Moreover, an optimal chunk size is confirmed through the log data insert performance evaluation of MongoDB for various chunk sizes.

Depth Control and Sweeping Depth Stability of the Midwater Trawl (중층트롤의 깊이바꿈과 소해심도의 안정성)

  • 장지원
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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    • v.9 no.1
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    • pp.1-18
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    • 1973
  • For regulating the depth of midwater trawl nets towed at the optimum constant speed, the changes in the shape of warps caused by adding a weight on an arbitrary point of the warp of catenary shape is studied. The shape of a warp may be approximated by a catenary. The resultant inferences under this assumption were experimented. Accordingly feasibilities for the application of the result of this study to the midwater trawl nets were also discussed. A series of experiments for basic midwater trawl gear models in water tank and a couple of experiments of a commercial scale gears at sea which involve the properly designed depth control devices having a variable attitude horizontal wing were carried out. The results are summarized as follows: 1. According to the dimension analysis the depth y of a midwater trawl net is introduced by $$y=kLf(\frac{W_r}{R_r},\;\frac{W_o}{R_o},\;\frac{W_n}{R_n})$$) where k is a constant, L the warp length, f the function, and $W_r,\;W_o$ and $W_n$ the apparent weights of warp, otter board and the net, respectively, 2. When a boat is towing a body of apparent weight $W_n$ and its drag $D_n$ by means of a warp whose length L and apparent weight $W_r$ per unit length, the depth y of the body is given by the following equation, provided that the shape of a warp is a catenary and drag of the warp is neglected in comparison with the drag of the body: $$y=\frac{1}{W_r}\{\sqrt{{D_n^2}+{(W_n+W_rL)^2}}-\sqrt{{D_n^2+W_n}^2\}$$ 3. The changes ${\Delta}y$ of the depth of the midwater trawl net caused by changing the warp length or adding a weight ${\Delta}W_n$_n to the net, are given by the following equations: $${\Delta}y{\approx}\frac{W_n+W_{r}L}{\sqrt{D_n^2+(W_n+W_{r}L)^2}}{\Delta}L$$ $${\Delta}y{\approx}\frac{1}{W_r}\{\frac{W_n+W_rL}{\sqrt{D_n^2+(W_n+W_{r}L)^2}}-{\frac{W_n}{\sqrt{D_n^2+W_n^2}}\}{\Delta}W_n$$ 4. A change ${\Delta}y$ of the depth of the midwater trawl net by adding a weight $W_s$ to an arbitrary point of the warp takes an equation of the form $${\Delta}y=\frac{1}{W_r}\{(T_{ur}'-T_{ur})-T_u'-T_u)\}$$ Where $$T_{ur}^l=\sqrt{T_u^2+(W_s+W_{r}L)^2+2T_u(W_s+W_{r}L)sin{\theta}_u$$ $$T_{ur}=\sqrt{T_u^2+(W_{r}L)^2+2T_uW_{r}L\;sin{\theta}_u$$ $$T_{u}^l=\sqrt{T_u^2+W_s^2+2T_uW_{s}\;sin{\theta}_u$$ and $T_u$ represents the tension at the point on the warp, ${\theta}_u$ the angle between the direction of $T_u$ and horizontal axis, $T_u^2$ the tension at that point when a weights $W_s$ adds to the point where $T_u$ is acted on. 5. If otter boards were constructed lighter and adequate weights were added at their bottom to stabilize them, even they were the same shapes as those of bottom trawls, they were definitely applicable to the midwater trawl gears as the result of the experiments. 6. As the results of water tank tests the relationship between net height of H cm velocity of v m/sec, and that between hydrodynamic resistance of R kg and the velocity of a model net as shown in figure 6 are respectively given by $$H=8+\frac{10}{0.4+v}$$ $$R=3+9v^2$$ 7. It was found that the cross-wing type depth control devices were more stable in operation than that of the H-wing type as the results of the experiments at sea. 8. The hydrodynamic resistance of the net gear in midwater trawling is so large, and regarded as nearly the drag, that sweeping depth of the gear was very stable in spite of types of the depth control devices. 9. An area of the horizontal wing of the H-wing type depth control device was $1.2{\times}2.4m^2$. A midwater trawl net of 2 ton hydrodynamic resistance was connected to the devices and towed with the velocity of 2.3 kts. Under these conditions the depth change of about 20m of the trawl net was obtained by controlling an angle or attack of $30^{\circ}$.

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Factors Affecting International Transfer Pricing of Multinational Enterprises in Korea (외국인투자기업의 국제이전가격 결정에 영향을 미치는 환경 및 기업요인)

  • Jun, Tae-Young;Byun, Yong-Hwan
    • Korean small business review
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    • v.31 no.2
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    • pp.85-102
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    • 2009
  • With the continued globalization of world markets, transfer pricing has become one of the dominant sources of controversy in international taxation. Transfer pricing is the process by which a multinational corporation calculates a price for goods and services that are transferred to affiliated entities. Consider a Korean electronic enterprise that buys supplies from its own subsidiary located in China. How much the Korean parent company pays its subsidiary will determine how much profit the Chinese unit reports in local taxes. If the parent company pays above normal market prices, it may appear to have a poor profit, even if the group as a whole shows a respectable profit margin. In this way, transfer prices impact the taxable income reported in each country in which the multinational enterprise operates. It's importance lies in that around 60% of international trade involves transactions between two related parts of multinationals, according to the OECD. Multinational enterprises (hereafter MEs) exert much effort into utilizing organizational advantages to make global investments. MEs wish to minimize their tax burden. So MEs spend a fortune on economists and accountants to justify transfer prices that suit their tax needs. On the contrary, local governments are not prepared to cope with MEs' powerful financial instruments. Tax authorities in each country wish to ensure that the tax base of any ME is divided fairly. Thus, both tax authorities and MEs have a vested interest in the way in which a transfer price is determined, and this is why MEs' international transfer prices are at the center of disputes concerned with taxation. Transfer pricing issues and practices are sometimes difficult to control for regulators because the tax administration does not have enough staffs with the knowledge and resources necessary to understand them. The authors examine transfer pricing practices to provide relevant resources useful in designing tax incentives and regulation schemes for policy makers. This study focuses on identifying the relevant business and environmental factors that could influence the international transfer pricing of MEs. In this perspective, we empirically investigate how the management perception of related variables influences their choice of international transfer pricing methods. We believe that this research is particularly useful in the design of tax policy. Because it can concentrate on a few selected factors in consideration of the limited budget of the tax administration with assistance of this research. Data is composed of questionnaire responses from foreign firms in Korea with investment balances exceeding one million dollars in the end of 2004. We mailed questionnaires to 861 managers in charge of the accounting departments of each company, resulting in 121 valid responses. Seventy six percent of the sample firms are classified as small and medium sized enterprises with assets below 100 billion Korean won. Reviewing transfer pricing methods, cost-based transfer pricing is most popular showing that 60 firms have adopted it. The market-based method is used by 31 firms, and 13 firms have reported the resale-pricing method. Regarding the nationalities of foreign investors, the Japanese and the Americans constitute most of the sample. Logistic regressions have been performed for statistical analysis. The dependent variable is binary in that whether the method of international transfer pricing is a market-based method or a cost-based method. This type of binary classification is founded on the belief that the market-based method is evaluated as the relatively objective way of pricing compared with the cost-based methods. Cost-based pricing is assumed to give mangers flexibility in transfer pricing decisions. Therefore, local regulatory agencies are thought to prefer market-based pricing over cost-based pricing. Independent variables are composed of eight factors such as corporate tax rate, tariffs, relations with local tax authorities, tax audit, equity ratios of local investors, volume of internal trade, sales volume, and product life cycle. The first four variables are included in the model because taxation lies in the center of transfer pricing disputes. So identifying the impact of these variables in Korean business environments is much needed. Equity ratio is included to represent the interest of local partners. Volume of internal trade was sometimes employed in previous research to check the pricing behavior of managers, so we have followed these footsteps in this paper. Product life cycle is used as a surrogate of competition in local markets. Control variables are firm size and nationality of foreign investors. Firm size is controlled using dummy variables in that whether or not the specific firm is small and medium sized. This is because some researchers report that big firms show different behaviors compared with small and medium sized firms in transfer pricing. The other control variable is also expressed in dummy variable showing if the entrepreneur is the American or not. That's because some prior studies conclude that the American management style is different in that they limit branch manger's freedom of decision. Reviewing the statistical results, we have found that managers prefer the cost-based method over the market-based method as the importance of corporate taxes and tariffs increase. This result means that managers need flexibility to lessen the tax burden when they feel taxes are important. They also prefer the cost-based method as the product life cycle matures, which means that they support subsidiaries in local market competition using cost-based transfer pricing. On the contrary, as the relationship with local tax authorities becomes more important, managers prefer the market-based method. That is because market-based pricing is a better way to maintain good relations with the tax officials. Other variables like tax audit, volume of internal transactions, sales volume, and local equity ratio have shown only insignificant influence. Additionally, we have replaced two tax variables(corporate taxes and tariffs) with the data showing top marginal tax rate and mean tariff rates of each country, and have performed another regression to find if we could get different results compared with the former one. As a consequence, we have found something different on the part of mean tariffs, that shows only an insignificant influence on the dependent variable. We guess that each company in the sample pays tariffs with a specific rate applied only for one's own company, which could be located far from mean tariff rates. Therefore we have concluded we need a more detailed data that shows the tariffs of each company if we want to check the role of this variable. Considering that the present paper has heavily relied on questionnaires, an effort to build a reliable data base is needed for enhancing the research reliability.