• Korean small business review
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.77-93
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• 2011

Since 2000, the employment rate of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has dwindled while the creation of new jobs and the emergence of healthy SMEs have been stagnant. The fundamental reason for these symptoms is that the economic structure is disadvantageous to SMEs. In particular, the greater gap between SMEs and large enterprises has resulted in polarization, and the resulting imbalance has become the largest obstacle to improving SMEs' competitiveness. For example, the total productivity has continued to drop, and the average productivity of SMEs is now merely 30% of that of large enterprises, and the average wage of SMEs' employees is only 53% of that of large enterprises. Along with polarization, rapid industrialization has also caused anti-enterprise consensus, the collapse of the middle class, hostility towards establishments, and other aftereffects. The general consensus is that unless these problems are solved, South Korea will not become an advanced country. Especially, South Korea is now facing issues that need urgent measures, such as the decline of its economic growth, the worsening distribution of profits, and the increased external volatility. Recognizing such negative trends, the MB administration proposed a win-win growth policy and recently introduced a new national value called "ecosystemic development." As the terms in such policy agenda are similar, however, the conceptual differences among such terms must first be fully understood. Therefore, in this study, the concepts of win-win growth policy and ecosystemic development, and the need for them, were surveyed, and their differences from and similarities with other policy concepts like win-win cooperation and symbiotic development were examined. Based on the results of the survey and examination, the study introduced a South Korean model of win-win growth, targeting the promotion of a sound balance between large enterprises and SMEs and an innovative ecosystem, and finally, proposing future policy tasks. Win-win growth is not an academic term but a policy term. Thus, it is less advisable to give a theoretical definition of it than to understand its concept based on its objective and method as a policy. The core of the MB administration's win-win growth policy is the creation of a partnership between key economic subjects such as large enterprises and SMEs based on each subject's differentiated capacity, and such economic subjects' joint promotion of growth opportunities. Its objective is to contribute to the establishment of an advanced capitalistic system by securing the sustainability of the South Korean economy. Such win-win growth policy includes three core concepts. The first concept, ecosystem, is that win-win growth should be understood from the viewpoint of an industrial ecosystem and should be pursued by overcoming the issues of specific enterprises. An enterprise is not an independent entity but a social entity, meaning it exists in relationship with the society (Drucker, 2011). The second concept, balance, points to the fact that an effort should be made to establish a systemic and social infrastructure for a healthy balance in the industry. The social system and infrastructure should be established in such a way as to create a balance between short- term needs and long-term sustainability, between freedom and responsibility, and between profitability and social obligations. Finally, the third concept is the behavioral change of economic entities. The win-win growth policy is not merely about simple transactional relationships or determining reasonable prices but more about the need for a behavior change on the part of economic entities, without which the objectives of the policy cannot be achieved. Various advanced countries have developed different win-win growth models based on their respective cultures and economic-development stages. Japan, whose culture is characterized by a relatively high level of group-centered trust, has developed a productivity improvement model based on such culture, whereas the U.S., which has a highly developed system of market capitalism, has developed a system that instigates or promotes market-oriented technological innovation. Unlike Japan or the U.S., Europe, a late starter, has not fully developed a trust-based culture or market capitalism and thus often uses a policy-led model based on which the government leads the improvement of productivity and promotes technological innovation. By modeling successful cases from these advanced countries, South Korea can establish its unique win-win growth system. For this, it needs to determine the method and tasks that suit its circumstances by examining the prerequisites for its success as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each advanced country. This paper proposes a South Korean model of win-win growth, whose objective is to upgrade the country's low-trust-level-based industrial structure, in which large enterprises and SMEs depend only on independent survival strategies, to a high-trust-level-based social ecosystem, in which large enterprises and SMEs develop a cooperative relationship as partners. Based on this objective, the model proposes the establishment of a sound balance of systems and infrastructure between large enterprises and SMEs, and to form a crenovative social ecosystem. The South Korean model of win-win growth consists of three axes: utilization of the South Koreans' potential, which creates community-oriented energy; fusion-style improvement of various control and self-regulated systems for establishing a high-trust-level-oriented social infrastructure; and behavioral change on the part of enterprises in terms of putting an end to their unfair business activities and promoting future-oriented cooperative relationships. This system will establish a dynamic industrial ecosystem that will generate creative energy and will thus contribute to the realization of a sustainable economy in the 21st century. The South Korean model of win-win growth should pursue community-based self-regulation, which promotes the power of efficiency and competition that is fundamentally being pursued by capitalism while at the same time seeking the value of society and community. Already existing in Korea's traditional roots, such objectives have become the bases of the Shinbaram culture, characterized by the South Koreans' spontaneity, creativity, and optimism. In the process of a community's gradual improvement of its rules and procedures, the trust among the community members increases, and the "social capital" that guarantees the successful control of shared resources can be established (Ostrom, 2010). This basic ideal can help reduce the gap between large enterprises and SMEs, alleviating the South Koreans' victim mentality in the face of competition and the open-door policy, and creating crenovative corporate competitiveness. The win-win growth policy emerged for the purpose of addressing the polarization and imbalance structure resulting from the evolution of 21st-century capitalism. It simultaneously pursues efficiency and fairness on one hand and economic and community values on the other, and aims to foster efficient interaction between the market and the government. This policy, however, is also evolving. The win-win growth policy can be considered an extension of the win-win cooperation that the past 'Participatory Government' promoted at the enterprise management level to the level of systems and culture. Also, the ecosystemic development agendum that has recently emerged is a further extension that has been presented as a national ideal of "a new development model that promotes the co-advancement of environmental conservation, growth, economic development, social integration, and national and individual development."

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.91-116
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• 1991

Market liberalization progressing simultaneously with high and rapidly rising domestic wages has created an adverse business environment for domestic firms. Korean firms are losing their international competitiveness in comparison to firms from LDC(Less Developed Countries) in low-tech industries. In high-tech industries, domestic firms without government protection (which is impossible due to the liberalization policy and the current international status of the Korean economy) are in a disadvantaged position relative to firms from advanced countries. This paper examines the division of roles between the private sector and the government in order to achieve a successful structural adjustment, which has become the impending industrial policy issue caused by high domestic wages, on the one hand, and the opening of domestic markets, on the other. The micro foundation of the economy-wide structural adjustment is actually the restructuring of business portfolios at the firm level. The firm-level business restructuring means that firms in low-value-added businesses or with declining market niches establish new major businesses in higher value-added segments or growing market niches. The adjustment of the business structure at the firm level can only be accomplished by accumulating firm-specific managerial assets necessary to establish a new business structure. This can be done through learning-by-doing in the whole system of management, including research and development, manufacturing, and marketing. Therefore, the voluntary cooperation among the people in the company is essential for making the cost of the learning process lower than that at the competing companies. Hence, firms that attempt to restructure their major businesses need to induce corporate-wide participation through innovations in organization and management, encourage innovative corporate culture, and maintain cooperative labor unions. Policy discussions on structural adjustments usually regard firms as a black box behind a few macro variables. But in reality, firm activities are not flows of materials but relationships among human resources. The growth potential of companies are embodied in the human resources of the firm; the balance of interest among stockholders, managers, and workers of the company' brings the accumulation of the company's core competencies. Therefore, policymakers and economists shoud change their old concept of the firm as a technological black box which produces a marketable commodities. Firms should be regarded as coalitions of interest groups such as stockholders, managers, and workers. Consequently the discussion on the structural adjustment both at the macroeconomic level and the firm level should be based on this new paradigm of understanding firms. The government's role in reducing the cost of structural adjustment and supporting should the creation of new industries emphasize the following: First, government must promote the competition in domestic markets by revising laws related to antitrust policy, bankruptcy, and the promotion of small and medium-sized companies. General consensus on the limitations of government intervention and the merit of deregulation should be sought among policymakers and people in the business world. In the age of internationalization, nation-specific competitive advantages cannot be exclusively in favor of domestic firms. The international competitiveness of a domestic firm derives from the firm-specific core competencies which can be accumulated by internal investment and organization of the firm. Second, government must build up a solid infrastructure of production factors including capital, technology, manpower, and information. Structural adjustment often entails bankruptcies and partial waste of resources. However, it is desirable for the government not to try to sustain marginal businesses, but to support the diversification or restructuring of businesses by assisting in factor creation. Institutional support for venture businesses needs to be improved, especially in the financing system since many investment projects in venture businesses are highly risky, even though they are very promising. The proportion of low-value added production processes and declining industries should be reduced by promoting foreign direct investment and factory automation. Moreover, one cannot over-emphasize the importance of future-oriented labor policies to be based on the new paradigm of understanding firm activities. The old laws and instititutions related to labor unions need to be reformed. Third, government must improve the regimes related to money, banking, and the tax system to change business practices dependent on government protection or undesirable in view of the evolution of the Korean economy as a whole. To prevent rational business decisions from contradicting to the interest of the economy as a whole, government should influence the business environment, not the business itself.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.409-437
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to present the specific ways of successful localization by analyzing the success and failures case for localization within the framework of the strategic models through a theoretical background and strategic models of localization. The strategic models of localization are divided by management aspects such as the localization of product and sourcing, the localization of human resources, the localization of marketing, the localization of R&D, harmony with a local community and delegation of authority between headquarters and local subsidiaries. The results, by comparing and analyzing the success and failures case for localization of individual companies operating in India, indicate that in terms of localization of product and sourcing, there are successful companies which procure a components locally and produce a suitable model which local consumers prefer and the failed companies which can not meet local consumers' needs. In case of localization of human resources, most companies recognize the importance of this portion and make use of superior human resource aggressively through a related education. In case of localization of marketing, It is found that the successful companies perform pre-market research & management and build a effective marketing skills & after service network and select local business partner which has a technical skills and carry out a business activities, customer support, complaint handling with their own organization. In terms of localization of R&D, the successful major companies establish and operate R&D center to promote a suitable model for local customers. In part of harmony with a local community, it shows that companies which made a successful localization understand the cultural environment and contribute to the community through CSR. In aspect of delegation of authority between headquarters and local subsidiaries, it is found that most of Korean companies are very weak for this part. there is a tendency to be determined by the head office rather than local subsidiaries. Implication of this thesis is that Korean enterprises in India should carry forward localization of products and components, foster of local human resource who recognize management and system of company and take part in voluntary market strategy decision, wholly owned subsidiary, establishment and operation of R & D center, understanding of local culture and system, corporate social responsibility, autonomy in management.

• The Journal of Small Business Innovation
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.53-68
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• 2016

Motivation and activities for technological learning, entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity are driving forces of economic development in Asian countries. In the early stages of technological development, technological learning and entrepreneurship are efficient ways in which to catch up with advanced countries because firms can accumulate skills and knowledge quickly at relatively low risk. In the later stages of technological development, however, innovation and creativity become more important. This study aims to identify a) the factors (learning capabilities) that influence technological learning performance and b) barriers to enhancing innovation capabilities for the creative economy and organizations. The major part of this study is related to learning capabilities in the post-catch-up era. Based on a literature review and observations from Korean experiences, this study proposes a technological learning model composed of various influencing factors on technological learning. Three hypotheses are derived, and data are collected from Korean machine tool manufacturers. Intense interviews with CEOs and R&D directors are conducted using structured questionnaires. Statistical analysis, such as correlation and ANOVA are then carried out. Furthermore, this study addresses how to enhance innovation capabilities to move forward. Innovation enablers and barriers are identified by case studies and policy analysis. The results of the empirical study identify several levels of firms' learning capabilities and activities such as a) stock of technology, b) potential of technical labor, c) explicit technological efforts, d) readiness to learn, e) top management support, f) a formal technological learning system, g) high learning motivation, h) appropriate technology choice, and i) specific goal setting. These learning capabilities determine firms' learning performance, especially in the early stages of development. Furthermore, it is found that the critical factors for successful technological learning vary along the stages of technology development. Throughout the statistical and policy analyses, this study confirms that technological learning can be understood as an intrinsic principle of the technology development process. Firms perform proactive and creative learning in the late stages, while reactive and imitative learning prevails in the early stages. In addition, this study identifies the driving forces or facilitating factors enhancing innovation performance in the post catch-up era. The results of the preliminary case studies and policy analysis show some facilitating factors such as a) the strategic intent of the CEO and corporate culture, b) leadership and change agents, c) design principles and routines, d) ecosystem and collaboration with partners, and e) intensive R&D investment.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.45
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• pp.295-324
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• 2016

This essay attempts a contrapuntal reading of Thomas More's Utopia. Contrapunctual reading, proposed by Edward Said. attempts to make a text speak across temporal, cultural, and ideological boundaries to a topic of present. I examine two opposite readings of Utopia around 2011 by both pro- and anti-Occupy Wall Street positions. On the one hand, the opponents of Occupy find its limits as a utopian social movement echoing in the fictional character of Hythrodaeus and the alternative society verbally sketched by him in Book Two of Utopia. On the other, Occupy's advocates read More's text as embodying its radial possibility. However, each shares the tendency to denounce Book Two, praising Book One in which Hythrodaeus vehemently criticizes England; they read Hythrodaeus not as an utopian idealist but as a social critic. The Occupy, as a result, is seen here as having an ambivalent relationship to utopianism. I reinterpret the radical possibilities of Book Two criticized by both pro- and anti-Occupy invocations of Utopia. Book Two provides a utopian space in which the existing social contradictions are cancelled, revealing the limits of the three partial utopias proposed at the end of Book One. Following Louis Marin's argument, I argue, the "utopic" space does not lie in the so-called ideal society described in the text but in the inconsistencies between the text's description(discourse) and topography(map). In Book Two the existence of a king is described, yet his space is not found in the topography of utopia; likewise market is described as existing at the center of a city, yet its space is not found either. These inconsistencies create a neutral space in which the ideological contradictions of the text are cancelled, and the space opens up the possibility of communal society beyond modern sovereign power and capitalism I argue this utopian dream needs to be summoned once again in our time as a compelling alternative to the corporate, capitalist order.

• 한국사회정책
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.49-81
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• 2016

This study agrees with the idea that a situation centered perspective provides a useful contribution in understanding women's attitude on organizations. Women's occupational experiences are less related to their "femaleness" than to the structural constraints inherent in the occupational positions women fill. So characteristics of the organizational situation including gender composition and hierarchical status may "shape and define" women's experience on the job. The present study examined the managerial level's gender gap and "glass ceiling" of the corporation. According to Kanter, if the ratio of women to men in organizations begins to shift, as affirmative action and new hiring and promotion policies promised, forms of relationships and corporate culture should also change. However, the mere presence of women on workplace may not, in itself, result in women-friendly work condition. This study analyzes "Korean Women Manger Panel survey(2010 3rd. wave)" to examine how much gender gap of the managerial level persists and when the glass ceiling effect emerges. Using t-test and ANOVA, various aspects of the gender gap within managerial level were verified. The most significant finding is the glass ceiling effect starts from very low level of management. Policy implications from the statistical analysis of the Panel survey are: 1) We need to increase the absolute number of the women managers for securing middle level women leadership pipe line. 2) We need to confront the fact that the glass ceiling starts from the very low managerial level, and to explore more realistic way to break up the vicious circle for the tokenism. and 3) We need to looking beyond numbers in approaching women's matter at work. At the cultural and institutional level, work-family programs and policies, women's ratings of their competence, and family-friendly organization's climate should be considered.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.29-58
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• 2022

Startups lack resources and manpower to build internal capabilities to strengthen market competitiveness; external cooperation such as joint research and networking plays is important. In this study, we analyzed the effect of startups' industry-university cooperation on organizational learning capability and innovation performance. Empirical results demonstrate the mechanism by which government R&D investment strengthens organizational learning capability and creates innovative results by promoting cooperation between startups and universities. First, industry-university cooperation strengthened organizational learning capability. An empirical analysis shows that startups increase internal capabilities through external cooperation. Second, startups' organizational learning capability had a significant effect on innovation performance. We analyze how organizations with high learning capabilities positively develop corporate innovation performance by having a culture of discovery and sharing new ideas. Finally, industry-university cooperation had different effects on organizational learning capability and innovation performance according to the previous experiences of startup founders. In particular, small- and medium-sized (startup) businesses and individual-based experience groups positively affected the creation of organizational learning capabilities and innovation performance through industry-university cooperation. Small- and medium-sized businesses and individual founders have a relatively small cooperative network with the outside world compared to founders of large companies, universities, and research institutes; therefore, they strengthen organizational learning capabilities through cooperation with universities. This study demonstrates that government should create policy inducements for cooperation with universities to maximize the R&D performance of startups. Criticism exists that lending support to startups and universities will hinder innovation performance; nevertheless, government investment plays a role in expanding intangible resources such as accumulating technologies, fostering high-quality human resources, and strengthening innovation networks. Therefore, the government should appropriately utilize the its authority to strengthen investment strategies for startup growth.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.95-124
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• 2021

As the symbolic images of girls besides its definition have varied according to the age and society, a posthuman girl character recently appears in the digital cinema. This study aims to analyze its cinematic representations and the social contexts in which they are created. For this purpose, the study focuses on what extent the society allows its imagined figurations as a future female body and the meanings revolving around the image of 'technologically body-enhanced female fighter'. Current digital visualization technology has developed to the extent any imaged future humans can be represented, but posthuman girls' representations have its limitation that only a human-like figuration can be allowed in accord with the traditionally idolized image of girls. It is because of the representation logic in which digital cinema is visualized based on perceptual realism that values audiences' experiences. Despite such less critical figuration which does not dare to cross the boundary between the image of human and inhuman, the posthuman girl characters create a new category of the 'dangerous girls' who are both void of sexual femininity and independent of motherhood and heterosexual romance narrative. Of course, they support the modern human-centered belief that humans can take entire control of technology with their moral behaviors and dispel the fear about the negative impact the nature of technology may have on society at large by showing their child-like figuration protecting ethical values. However, the new character of 'unruly girl' exerts her subversive act that seeks to fight against the human-centered liberal humanistic values and melancholic feeling and vulnerability that the neoliberalism and technocracy enforce. When posthuman girl characters are considered to be a marker through which we can see how different social forces are intervening and competing each other in the upcoming posthuman age, the limited figuration of the posthuman girl characters in South Korean movies illustrates the opinionated thoughts toward the instrumentalism in technology but their bloodshed struggles reveal how the corporate or state-governed techno-biopower has oppressively treated and appropriated the human body as the technology-object and also provide a meaningful opportunity to rethink its unethical violence.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.41-61
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• 2023

The universal form of life in the era of the 4th industrial revolution can probably be summarized as the keyword "non-face-to-face". In particular, in terms of consumption activities, face-to-face contact is gradually changing to a system that minimizes, and offline stores are rapidly changing to non-contact services through kiosks and robots. The social structure is also changing with the passage of time, and most fundamentally, our dietary consumption patterns are changing. In particular, the increase in single-person households and the aging population are having a great impact on changes in the food service industry, which is closely related to dietary life. The HMR (Home Meal Replacement) market has grown significantly as the labor of cooking at home has decreased and the use of substitute foods has increased. As the size of the market has grown, the types of businesses that provide products have also diversified. The development of technology, non-face-to-face culture, and corporate management efficiency are intertwined, and unmanned stores are spreading recently. In this study, service quality attributes of HMR unmanned stores, where competition is gradually intensifying, are classified, and service quality classification using the Kano model and Timko's customer satisfaction coefficient are calculated to provide implications for service management based on customer satisfaction. As a result of the analysis, 'products with short cooking time' and 'variety of products (menu)' were classified as attractive qualities, and 'cleanliness inside/outside of the store' and 'products at reasonable prices' were classified as unified quality. In addition, 'convenience of self-checkout process' was classified as a natural quality, and 'convenience of in-store passage' was classified as an indifferent quality. Furthermore, when the service factor was satisfied within the HMR unmanned store, the factor with the highest satisfaction coefficient was 'product (menu) variety', and the factor with the highest dissatisfaction factor was 'convenience of self-checkout process'. Through the results of this study, it is intended to derive priorities in service quality management of HMR unmanned stores and provide strategic implications for related businesses.

• Korea Science and Art Forum
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• v.21
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• pp.31-43
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• 2015

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is one of the technologies which represent the core value of the creative economy. It has served as a vehicle connecting the existing industry and corporate infrastructure, developing existing products and services and creating new products and services. In addition to the ICT, new devices including big data, mobile gadgets and wearable products are gaining a great attention sending an expectation for a new market-pioneering. Further, Internet of Things (IoT) is helping solidify the ICT-based social development connecting human-to-human, human-to-things and things-to-things. This means that the manufacturing-based hardware development needs to be achieved simultaneously with software development through convergence. The essential element the convergence between hardware and software is OS, for which world's leading companies such as Google and Apple have launched an intense development recognizing the importance of software. Against this backdrop, the status-quo of the software market has been examined for the study of the present report (Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology: Professional Design Technology Development Project). As a result, the software platform-based Google's android and Apple's iOS are dominant in the global market and late comers are trying to enter the market through various pathways by releasing web-based OS and similar OS to provide a new paradigm to the market. The present study is aimed at finding the way to utilize a smart content by which anyone can be a developer based on OS responding to such as social change, newly defining a smart content to be universally utilized and analyzing the market to deal with a rapid market change. The study method, scope and details are as follows: Literature investigation, Analysis on the app market according to a smart classification system, Trend analysis on the current content market, Identification of five common trends through comparison among the universal definition of smart content, the status-quo of application represented in the app market and content market situation. In conclusion, the smart content market is independent but is expected to develop in the form of a single organic body being connected each other. Therefore, the further classification system and development focus should be made in a way to see the area from multiple perspectives including a social point of view in terms of the existing technology, culture, business and consumers.