• The Journal of Small Business Innovation
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.1-17
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to suggest an efficient way for ventures to achieve innovation performance through R&D cooperative arrangements. Achieving innovation is one of the critical factors for the survival of ventures. Unlike established firms, ventures often do not have the specialized assets necessary to take technological developments to the product and market stages. Young and resource-constrained firms can achieve innovation by finding and accessing to the complementary resources from R&D cooperation. In the current business environment, many firms are likely to engage in multiple simultaneous R&D cooperations with different partners. Recent research stream addresses the importance of efficient cooperation management from the holistic portfolio perspective. Since maintaining the multiple cooperative relations require substantial amount of time and effort, managing cooperative relationships play a more important role to resource-constrained firms. In order to find an efficient composition of R&D cooperative partners, we mainly focus on the diversity of partner type and dependence level in partnership. We analyze the data on Korean manufacturing ventures collected in the Korean Innovation Survey (KIS) which was conducted by the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI). The KIS questionnaire assesses the existence of cooperative relationships with different types of partners respectively. The types of cooperating partners are affiliated companies, suppliers, clients & customers, competitors or other firms in the same industry, consulting firms, universities, and research institutes. We confirm that ventures obtain relatively higher benefits from R&D cooperation compared with established firms in terms of innovation performance. The results show that a moderate level of diversity in cooperative partner type composition increases innovation. Moreover, diversity of cooperation dependency among the partners enhances innovation performance. Likewise, concentrating on the quality aspects of cooperative composition, such as diversity of partners and degree of dependencies, this study offers some implications for ventures in managing partners from an integrative perspective.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.139-155
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• 2009

For the last few decades, many studies have tried to explore and unveil venture companies' success factors and unique features in order to identify the sources of such companies' competitive advantages over their rivals. Such venture companies have shown tendency to give high returns for investors generally making the best use of information technology. For this reason, many venture companies are keen on attracting avid investors' attention. Investors generally make their investment decisions by carefully examining the evaluation criteria of the alternatives. To them, credit rating information provided by international rating agencies, such as Standard and Poor's, Moody's and Fitch is crucial source as to such pivotal concerns as companies stability, growth, and risk status. But these types of information are generated only for the companies issuing corporate bonds, not venture companies. Therefore, this study proposes a method for evaluating venture businesses by presenting our recent empirical results using financial data of Korean venture companies listed on KOSDAQ in Korea exchange. In addition, this paper used multi-class SVM for the prediction of DEA-based efficiency rating for venture businesses, which was derived from our proposed method. Our approach sheds light on ways to locate efficient companies generating high level of profits. Above all, in determining effective ways to evaluate a venture firm's efficiency, it is important to understand the major contributing factors of such efficiency. Therefore, this paper is constructed on the basis of following two ideas to classify which companies are more efficient venture companies: i) making DEA based multi-class rating for sample companies and ii) developing multi-class SVM-based efficiency prediction model for classifying all companies. First, the Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) is a non-parametric multiple input-output efficiency technique that measures the relative efficiency of decision making units(DMUs) using a linear programming based model. It is non-parametric because it requires no assumption on the shape or parameters of the underlying production function. DEA has been already widely applied for evaluating the relative efficiency of DMUs. Recently, a number of DEA based studies have evaluated the efficiency of various types of companies, such as internet companies and venture companies. It has been also applied to corporate credit ratings. In this study we utilized DEA for sorting venture companies by efficiency based ratings. The Support Vector Machine(SVM), on the other hand, is a popular technique for solving data classification problems. In this paper, we employed SVM to classify the efficiency ratings in IT venture companies according to the results of DEA. The SVM method was first developed by Vapnik (1995). As one of many machine learning techniques, SVM is based on a statistical theory. Thus far, the method has shown good performances especially in generalizing capacity in classification tasks, resulting in numerous applications in many areas of business, SVM is basically the algorithm that finds the maximum margin hyperplane, which is the maximum separation between classes. According to this method, support vectors are the closest to the maximum margin hyperplane. If it is impossible to classify, we can use the kernel function. In the case of nonlinear class boundaries, we can transform the inputs into a high-dimensional feature space, This is the original input space and is mapped into a high-dimensional dot-product space. Many studies applied SVM to the prediction of bankruptcy, the forecast a financial time series, and the problem of estimating credit rating, In this study we employed SVM for developing data mining-based efficiency prediction model. We used the Gaussian radial function as a kernel function of SVM. In multi-class SVM, we adopted one-against-one approach between binary classification method and two all-together methods, proposed by Weston and Watkins(1999) and Crammer and Singer(2000), respectively. In this research, we used corporate information of 154 companies listed on KOSDAQ market in Korea exchange. We obtained companies' financial information of 2005 from the KIS(Korea Information Service, Inc.). Using this data, we made multi-class rating with DEA efficiency and built multi-class prediction model based data mining. Among three manners of multi-classification, the hit ratio of the Weston and Watkins method is the best in the test data set. In multi classification problems as efficiency ratings of venture business, it is very useful for investors to know the class with errors, one class difference, when it is difficult to find out the accurate class in the actual market. So we presented accuracy results within 1-class errors, and the Weston and Watkins method showed 85.7% accuracy in our test samples. We conclude that the DEA based multi-class approach in venture business generates more information than the binary classification problem, notwithstanding its efficiency level. We believe this model can help investors in decision making as it provides a reliably tool to evaluate venture companies in the financial domain. For the future research, we perceive the need to enhance such areas as the variable selection process, the parameter selection of kernel function, the generalization, and the sample size of multi-class.

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

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

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.95-118
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is as follows. First, we investigate empirically the effects of social network properties such as social network density and centrality of a franchisee on its information sharing with various subjects such as the franchisor and other franchisees in the franchise system. Second, we examine exploratively if tie strength between a franchisee and its franchisor plays a moderating role on the relationship between social network properties and information sharing. The study model was established as shown in

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.113-145
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• 2008

Marketing for the distribution industry is making an ongoing progress in the changes of customers, the competitive environment, and the internal marketing environment. Integrated marketing communication activities are required for the enhancement of efficiency in the market.oriented activities. In this study, IMC is defined as "a notion that a market oriented business integrated marketing communication means, conducting and evaluating marketing activities with consistent messages in order to communicate with customers based on databases." In this study, an IMC planning model for the improvement of marketing efficiency in the distribution industry was derived from a pilot study. This model may be broken down into the following phases: IMC goals setting, situational analysis (customer analysis, competition analysis and company analysis), customer data analysis, contact management, budgeting, the establishment of an IMC strategy, the IMC mix and execution, an evaluation system, and feedback. In consideration of the characteristics of the distribution industry, this study was accompanied by a vocational study on IMC means employed by, in particular, department stores and other distributors such as: advertising, sales promotion, sales promotion advertising, direct marketing, public relations, personal selling, the Internet, mobile, visual merchandising, words of mouth. In addition, this study also covered the correlation among variables such as IMC activities of distributors, the process of forming customer's brand attitudes, brand loyalty and repurchase intention. This research would enhance the utilization of IMC. The analysis on customer's brand attitudes toward the IMC activities of distributors requires the simultaneous consideration of how they are linked to purchase as well as their attitudes toward both distributors and stores. The formation of brand loyalty and repurchase intention is related to the integration of marketing communication and the maintenance of consistency in contents, which requires integrated brand communication (IBC) strategies. IBC is a concept of using IMC means to manage the brand in a continuing and consistent manner and measuring their effect, which is a process to establish enterprise.level brand identity and maximize brand loyalty and repurchase intention by integrating IMC means. For an empirical analysis in this study, an online questionnaire survey was conducted among those department store customers from 20's to 50's who reside either in the Seoul and Gyeonggi areas and have made purchase at department stores. In this study, the research model consisted of four theoretical variables: IMC activities, IMC attitudes, brand loyalty, and repurchase intention, on which variables a pilot study was conducted. A number of hypotheses were constructed on the relations between IMC activities and IMC attitudes, between IMC attitudes and repurchase intention, and between brand loyalty and repurchase intention. The test of the hypotheses may be summarized as follows: Firstly, the test of the hypothesis concerning the relation between IMC attitudes and IMC activities - advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, public relations, personal selling, the Web, mobile, visual merchandising, and word of mouth - indicates that advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, public relations, personal selling, mobile, visual merchandising, and word of mouth have significant impact on IMC activities. In addition to the result similar to those of previous studies that such marketing communication means as word of mouth, advertising, personal selling and sales promotion, in particular, play very important roles, a notable finding of this study is that visual merchandising performed by department stores is shown to have very significant impact on IMC activities. On a separate note, it is also noteworthy that Internet marketing activities engaged by department stores are not shown to have significant impact on IMC attitudes. Secondly, the test of the hypothesis on the relation between IMC attitudes and brand loyalty attests that IMC attitudes for the distribution industry significantly affect brand loyalty. Thirdly, the test of the hypothesis concerning the relation between IMC attitudes and repurchase intention confirms that IMC attitudes for the distribution industry significantly affect repurchase intention. Fourthly, the test of the hypothesis concerning the relation between brand loyalty and repurchase intention indicates that brand loyalty significantly affect repurchase intention. A comprehensive view of these findings points to the conclusion that the IMC activities for the distribution industry do affect IMC attitudes, brand loyalty, and repurchase intention.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.175-189
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• 2020

While there have been many previous studies showing that an entrepreneur's personal characteristics have a significant impact on his intention to start a business, there was relatively little research on the inherent mechanisms for this. Recent researches show that entrepreneur's personal characteristics affect the entrepreneurial intention through entrepreneurial attitude and perceived behavioral control, rather than directly. This study carried out empirical research on 233 Chinese university students on what personal characteristics affect the entrepreneurial intention of Chinese university students, who are actively engaged in start-up activities recently. Based on the theory of planned behavior, we set entrepreneurial attitude and perceived behavioral control as important variables that shape the entrepreneurial intention and formed a model and hypotheses that personal characteristics of a potential entrepreneur(leadership, planning, innovation, sociality) affect the entrepreneurial intention through these two variables. We verified these hypotheses by regression analysis and structural equation model. The analysis confirmed that for Chinese university students the entrepreneurial attitude and perceived behavioral control were important antecedent variables that shape the entrepreneurial intention. It was also shown that leadership and innovation have a positive influence on the entrepreneurial attitude, while leadership and planning raise the level of perceived behavioral control. As a result, leadership forms the entrepreneurial intention through the entrepreneurial attitude and perceived behavior control, and innovation affects the entrepreneurial intention through the entrepreneurial attitude, while planning affects the entrepreneurial intention through perceived behavior control. Therefore, entrepreneurship education that emphasizes leadership, innovation and planning is required for Chinese college students as a potential entrepreneur. These three factors could also be important personal characteristics when choosing a potential entrepreneur.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.49-68
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• 2001

In this chapter, we summarize the results on the optimal location selection and present limitation and direction of research. In order to reach the objective, this study selected and tested the interaction model which obtains the value of co-ordinates on location selection through the optimization technique. This study used the original variables in the model, but the results indicated that there is difference in reality. In order to overcome this difference, this study peformed market survey and found the new variables (first data such as price, quality and assortment of goods, and the second data such as aggregate area, and area of shop, and the number of cars in the parking lot). Then this study determined an optimal variable by empirical analysis which compares an actual value of market share in 1988 with the market share yielded in the model. However, this study found the market share in each variables does not reflect a reality due to an assumption of λ-value in the model. In order to improve this, this study performed a sensitivity analysis which adds the λ value from 1.0 to 2.9 marginally. The analyzed result indicated the highest significance with the market share ratio in 1998 at λ of 1.0. Applying the weighted value to a variable from each of the first data and second data yielded the results that more variables from the first data coincided with the realistic rank on sales. Although this study have some limits and improvements, if a marketer uses this extended model, more significant results will be produced.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.217-235
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• 2010

In franchise industry, territorial restraint is a system that imposes exclusive right to franchisers in a certain business area. To the franchisers, this system guarantees monopoly profits in a local market and exclusive rights during the contract periods. In such a way, franchisee generates a big revenue at once on the basis of franchiser's initial investment such as interior cost and franchise fee, it must have supervised franchiser's moral hazard for the territorial restraint agreement. Rather than territorial restraint can be a system to give exclusive right to franchiser's so that they neglect their own sales and too much rely on headquarter's brand and marketing activities without their own efforts. This paper assesses the implication of territorial restraint by examining the effect on brand extension, degree of contract termination. Drawing on research in transaction cost agreement and opportunism, the authors suggest that franchisee is highly likely to launch similar brand which is not effected on previous contract when territorial restraint is set out in the contract system. Moreover, the authors find that the degree of contract termination will be high in the existence of territorial restraint due to the franchisee's opportunism. The results imply that territorial restraint induces franchisee's opportunistic strategy more aggressively so that the possibility of brand extension or new brand launching will be increased. At the same time, franchisee is aggressively seeking for the reason for contract termination due to the pursuit of its profit maximization. Based on some empirical findings, this paper concludes with policy implications and some necessary fields of future studies desirable.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.29-57
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• 2008

Empirical model was developed to test the building mechanism of trust dimensions and loyalty with the suppliers' bonding tactics to service firms. And interactive effects between suppliers' bonding tactics and service firms' store age was hypothesized in the trust-loyalty building processes. The model was tested in the context of animal clinics which belong to Korean Animal Hospital Association (KAHA). The data was analysed using structural equation model (SEM). The findings are as follows. First, two different relational bonding tactics play different roles in their effects on building trust dimensions toward suppliers. While supplier's social bonding tactic significantly influences on both the affective and cognitive trust of service firms, suppliers' structural bonding tactic only influences significantly on affective trust of service firms. Second, while suppliers' social bonding tactic influences on building service firms' loyalty significantly, suppliers' structural bonding tactic doesn't influence on building their loyalty. Suppliers' structural bonding tactic influences on building their loyalty indirectly through affective trust. Third, while service firms' affective trust influences on building loyalty significantly, cognitive trust doesn't. Their cognitive trust influences on building loyalty indirectly through affective trust. Fourth, the higher the firms' store age is, the more suppliers use social bonding tactics to build trust and loyalty directly. While the shorter the firms' store age is, the more suppliers partially use both the social and structural bonding tactics to build trust and loyalty. In conclusion, in the context of animal clinics' distribution channels, suppliers' relational bonding tactics with service firms differently influence to build trust sub-dimensions and loyalty. And, suppliers should take note of the interactive role of service firms' store age in the utilization of the different bonding tactics to build service firms' trust and loyalty toward suppliers. At the end of the paper, managerial implications, limitations, and future research directions are suggested.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.97-115
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• 2008

Introduction The e-government is concerned with using Internet and Web technologies to exchange information and services with citizens, businesses and other related organizations, and it centers on three functions, namely informational, interactive, and transactional [UN, 2001]. Many developed countries like the U.S. have been actively involved in e-government projects, since they enable both more effective public services for citizens and more efficient internal operations. Korea is among these leading countries that are planning to leverage computer and communication technologies to provide for integration of work processes and information as well as convenient access to information and services. For this reason, evaluating e-government projects is becoming a crucial issue for both researchers and policy-makers. However, most research to date has primarily focused on a model of success of an e-government system designed for citizens, overlooking internal systems specifically created for employees working in a public organization. This paper is intended to propose a model to measure the success of a Web-based information system designed for use by internal users at Chungwadae, the executive branch of Korea's central government. The paper is also aimed at applying the model to the assessment of the present system being used at Chungwadae in comparison with the preceding system. Evaluating an e-Government System The most widely cited model of information systems success today is that of DeLone and McLean[1992, 2003, 2004]. The original model states that the success of an information system can be measured using six dimensions, including system quality, information quality, use, user satisfaction, individual impact, and organizational impact. Although the ultimate success of an information system may be reflected in the impact that the system has upon individuals as well as an organization, aspects of using the system such as system use and user satisfaction can play an important role in determining the system success, because the system would be a sheer failure if users don't like and use the system. As a response to criticisms given by numerous researchers, the authors adapted their model to fit the emerging Web-based environment. The revised model[DeLone and McLean, 2003] they offered included an additional quality dimension, namely service quality, and combined individual and organizational impacts into net benefits which can also influence user satisfaction. The e-government system success model can be built around this updated model. Our model incorporates information quality, system quality, and service quality as in the DeLone and McLean model. However, the 'system use' dimension has been replaced by perceived usefulness, as suggested by Seddon[1998]. In addition, because the e-government systems that this paper focuses on are internal public systems used in government agencies, the 'net benefits' dimension has been replaced by perceived work efficiency. Based on the proposed model, a total of nine hypotheses have been formulated which we tested using an empirical analysis. Methods A questionnaire form has been created with items that are designed to examine the relationships among the variables in the model. The questionnaire has been handed over, in person, to 65 members of Chungwadae staff who are now actively using the E-Support System, the present information system created to support internal work at Chungwadae. We made arrangements to meet with each individual who agreed to participate in our survey, and helped to fill out the survey form with explanations. Of the 65 copies that were delivered, only 33 were returned, and 30 responses of these have been adopted for our analysis, since three were not valid. The extremely small sample size was due to the limited number of staff members who had adequate experience required of this study. Results We gathered data from the questionnaire survey and analyzed them using a regression analysis to test the hypotheses. As shown in the table below, the results indicated that all three dimensions of an information system’s quality are positively related to user satisfaction. However, information quality and system quality were found to be positively related to perceived usefulness, while service quality was not. In addition, perceived usefulness is not positively related to user satisfaction, implying that a user may find a system useful, but may not be satisfied with it. Finally, user satisfaction and perceived usefulness both are positively related to perceived work efficiency. This suggests that workers' positive experience with the system is important to guarantee favorable work efficiency. Conclusions We conclude that the proposed model proved useful in measuring the success of an internal information system used by a government agency. To demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of the model in the paper, we applied the model to the assessment of the present internal system used at Chungwadae in comparison with the preceding system. The results showed that the present system outperforms the preceding one in a statistically significant way. Future research will have to focus on applying the model to Korea's governmental agencies other than Chungwadae and examine whether it proves applicable in different types of governmental organizations.