• Information Systems Review
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.49-73
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• 2010

The lack of customer satisfaction and trust remains a key barrier to electronic commerce. From the standpoint of online merchants, it is critical to build consumer trust by lessening sources of apprehensions and uneasiness associated with online transactions. This paper explores the relationships between customer satisfaction and intermediary's trustworthiness factors in B2C e-marketplaces. It also aims at examining the effects of consumer characteristics, including propensity to trust and Internet shopping self-efficacy, upon trust and purchase intentions. To meet the research objectives, an empirical study has been conducted by surveying 223 active e-marketplace buyers in Korea. The findings of the present research indicate that customer satisfaction positively affects all the three attributes of trustworthiness (i.e., competence, benevolence, and integrity), and more specifically it has a quite strong association with benevolence. In addition, propensity to trust has no significant influence on trust or purchasing intentions, and only affects benevolence and integrity with no direct effect on competence. Finally, Internet shopping self-efficacy was found to affect both trust and purchasing intentions, suggesting that e-marketplaces seek an online strategy designed to strengthen loyalty for customers with high self-efficacy, while they use a strategy to improve the usability and usefulness of their website to attract customers with low self-efficacy. The paper concludes with implications and directions for future research.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.101-116
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• 2014

In the year 2013, Warren Buffett was named one of the most influential people of the year by TIME magazine. When people are exposed to such news, they show strong interest in who the influential people are and how those people became so successful. Likewise, people show strong attachment to other prominent figures as well. This social phenomenon indicates that people perceive well-known persona like business leaders, TV stars or sports stars etc. as human brands of intangible assets. As the role of these human brands is becoming more important, people tend to develop stronger attachment toward them. Another notable modern social phenomenon is people's pursuit of life-satisfaction and social well-being. People desire to increase their quality of life by having quality time with family and friends, and also by building attachment towards celebrities, sports stars, and so on. The main objective of this study is to examine how attachment toward human brands affects quality of life. While existing studies on human brands examined antecedents of attachment, e.g., some needs fulfillment such as A-R-C needs (autonomy, relatedness and competence needs) fulfillment, this study focuses on the outcome variables of attachment, e.g., how attachment toward human brands affects stress relief and life satisfaction through self-efficacy. Based on previous research, we divided human brands into two types: heroes and celebrities. Heroes are defined as people who have considerable and lasting importance on both societal and individual levels, and celebrities are defined as people who are well-known but have little or no short-term impact on society and individual levels. This study focuses on how attachment toward each type of human brands, celebrities and heroes, affects the quality of life or well-being. This study focuses on three important outcome variables; stress relief, life satisfaction, and self-efficacy, (three variables) which have been recently gaining importance, especially in the domain of positive psychology. Major findings from the present study show that although celebrities draw attachment from people by providing fun and entertainment or providing stress relief, they have weak influences on the wellbeing or efficacy of individuals at a deeper level. In contrast, attachment toward heroes helps people live better by providing meaning and positively influencing life satisfaction through self-efficacy (Frankl 1997). These results are consistent with the main tenet of 'positive psychology' which seeks "to find and nurture genius and talent and to make normal life more fulfilling" (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000). Considering the fact that certain celebrities are perceived as heroes to some, we can conclude that celebrities can become heroes if they provide meaning and value to the lives of people. This study contributes to the research stream of human brands since the most current leading research (e.g., Thomson 2006) indicated the need to look at the resulting effect of attachment on life satisfaction through self-efficacy. Another important contribution is that we empirically documented the different effects of celebrities and heroes. As expected, this study shows that heroes more deeply influence the lives of individuals in the long term while celebrities do so rather shallowly in the short term. The issues of the influence of heroes on the individuals' lives need to be further investigated in relation with the perspective of positive psychology.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.5-14
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• 2020

Purpose: Trust plays an important role in e-commerce because consumers perceive more risk involved with this type of shopping than traditional way of shopping. Trust is defined as complex and multidimensional issue. This paper argues that trust should be considered to have two important components as trust belief and trust intention, in which trust belief has three components as competence, integrity and benevolence. Research design, data and methodology: This study examines the relationship between retailer website quality (web design, navigation, information), reputation and risk toward trust. In addition, trust and risk toward buying behavior are also considered, leading to customer satisfaction. The paper is conducted on a sample of 594 customers with direct experience of online shopping in Vietnam. Both confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and a structural equation model (SEM) were utilised. Results: Empirical findings from this paper indicate that trust is high order construct. Website quality and reputation have positive impacts on customers' trust. Trust has a positive relationship to buying behavior and customers' satisfaction while perceived risk has negative relationship to buying behavior. In contrast, a relationship between perceived risk and trust is not supported in this study. Conclusions: Improving reputation and website quality (especially information) may increase customers' trust and eventually lead to purchase decision.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.537-547
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• 2017

This study attempted to determine differences between the perceived empowerment level and job satisfaction depending on hairdressers' demographic characteristics and analyze the effects of their empowerment on job satisfaction. For this, a total of 310 hairdressers in Gwangju-Jeonnam and Seoul-Gyeonggi-do were chosen through convenience sampling, and then a questionnaire survey was conducted. The valid 277 copies were used for final analysis. For data analysis, descriptive statistics, factor analysis, reliability analysis, t-test, ANOVA, Duncan's test, and multiple regression analysis were conducted using SPSS 15.0. The study results found the following: First, in terms of the subordinate factors of empowerment, the following four factors were found: meaningfulness, self-determination, competence, and impact. Second, depending on demographic characteristics (e.g., age, career, type of beauty salon, job title, punch-in time, monthly pay), a statistically significant difference was found between empowerment and job satisfaction (p<.01). Third, hairdressers' perceived empowerment level had a positive impact on job satisfaction (p<.01). In terms of the empowerment on job satisfaction by sub-factor, 'self-determination' was largest, followed by 'meaningfulness' and 'competence.' Therefore, beauty salon owners need to manage their business more efficiently by converging cosmetology and business management by expanding empowerment among hairdressers properly after recognizing the importance of hairdresser empowerment.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.83-106
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• 2009

Trust is becoming one of the critical forces that drive consumers into purchases in e-marketplaces, as consumers face uncertainty associated with buying online from unknown sellers. In this paper we propose a consumer trust model specifically designed for an online marketplace. It aims at examining how intermediary and site characteristics of an e-marketplace affect factors of trustworthiness, and understanding the relationship between trustworthiness factors and trust in intermediary. Findings from an empirical analysis indicate that both intermediary and site characteristics are positively associated with factors of trustworthiness - namely, competence, integrity, and benevolence. In addition, all the three factors of trustworthiness were found to have positive relationship with overall trust in intermediary; in particular, integrity had higher association with trust than the other two factors. The paper concludes with suggestions for building consumer trust for the owners of online marketplaces.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.107-132
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• 2009

The purpose of this research is to define the consulting competence of IT consultants and empirically analyze the perceptual differences between the IT consultant group and the client group. Based on the previous researches and the opinion of the actual IT consultants, the consulting capability model has been established, which consists of six categories and eighteen factors. Six categories are (1) IT domain expertise, (2) problem solving ability, (3) project management capability, (4) communication skills, (5) human relations skills, and (6) professional ethics and attitude. Two field surveys have been performed and the responses of 174 IT consultants 116 clients have been acquired. It is shown that the level of possessed proficiency of IT consulting capability is far lower than the level of the required proficiency. And there exist the perceptual difference between two responding groups with respect to the level required proficiency but no difference exists in terms of the level of possessed proficiency. The findings of this research can provide some useful information in order to fully understand the differences between the IT consultant group and the client group.

• Korean small business review
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.147-164
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• 2021

This study focuses on succession in a family business which is the crucial factor affecting future and survival of a family business. Especially, the study concentrate a successor's view which is regarded as a key-player during the succession. In this study, we used AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) methodology to identify priorities of factors influencing succession. We divided into two-tier level. The first-tier is defined as 1) the relationship with an incumbent CEO, 2) a successor 's management ability, 3) a successor' s self-efficacy and 4) succession plan. For the second-tier of each first-tier have 3 sub-factors ; 1) the relationship with an incumbent CEO is set as level of mutual trust, sharing the vision of a company, and level of communication each other. 2) A successor 's management ability is based on business competence, education and training and interpersonal management ability, 3) a successor 's self-efficacy was set as successor' s willingness of succession, confidence of overcoming crisis and confidence of achieving objectives. Lastly, 4) a succession plan is set as finance plan, leadership transformation plan and human-organization management plan. A total of 93 questionnaires is distributed and retrieved, and 88 questionnaires are used for the study, excluding those with missing data. As a result of this study, successors selected 1) the relationship with an incumbent C.E.O. as the most important priority in the first-tier. The second is 2) a successor 's management ability, the third is 3) a successor' s self-efficacy, and the last priority is 4) a succession plan. In particular, 3 sub-factors that make up the relationship with an incumbent are the most important factors. These factors rank the first to the third in the final result.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 2003

Many organizations experience that the value they gained from IT (information technology) investment is lower than they expected prior to the actual implementation of a system - the value gap between expected value and realized value from IT. Research on the barriers to the expectation and realization is of high importance both in practice and in IS research. This study analyzed such barriers observed in three companies that have adopted such IT systems as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems each. From analyses of the three companies we specifically identified eight types of barriers: barriers related to industry, organization, knowledge, resource, usage, competence, product, and safety. Common barriers among the three cases were classified into six types, e.g. lack of strategic mind-set, improper organizational structure, lack of human resource, etc. We expect that the results help managers in IS investment to minimize the valuation gap and maximize realized values.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.167-180
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• 2006

The Ruhr region used to be a large industrial area, working as an engine of economic growth of the Germany. However, the region has been suffering from economic and social problems originating from de-industrialization. Since the 1970s, various levels of governments have attempted to solve the problems with policies of regional innovation, e.g., establishing technology parks, competence centers, and business incubators to promote start-ups, technology transfers, and networks between governments, businesses, universities, public research institutes, and the public. In this context, this paper attempts to analyse governance of regional innovation policies of the Ruhr area, based on an analytical framework developed by a groups of researchers, i.e.. Bae et al (2006), The paper concludes that the roles of governments are important in creating and implementing regional innovation policies of the Ruhr area, the policies heavily rely on the R&D capacity of local universities and public research institutes; and various levels of governments have different roles to play.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2006

Previous to do business computerization of industry field, it isn't efficient for write down all account book. Recently many companies competitive is raised from competence improvement for a task and cost-cutting for electronic data processing system. Moreover, sudden increase of internet-user need effective management information system and share information because of network connection. Accordingly, it needs to get out of text base information system from multimedia base system and it need to introduce E-catalog system of merchandise information. In addition, it is required technological development and merchandising with movement, real time omnipresent. carrying. In this paper, established portable B2B system with movement of precious metals and jewels field's portable terminal from mobile technology.