• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.65-73
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• 2016

Purpose - Recently, the management conditions of small independent retailers are getting worse everyday as large-scale marts and franchised convenience stores are increasing. The objective of this research is to find out the antecedents and consequences of cooperation in voluntary chain in order to enhance small independent retailer's competitiveness. Voluntary chains, also called affiliation or symbol groups, or allied group represent a high market shared in some European countries like Italy, France, and Germany. Nevertheless, there are still limitations in this research from academic fields. Drawing from network theory, the author investigates the relationship between antecedent factors in voluntary chain cooperation, such as participation benefits, justice of compensation, and autonomy in voluntary chain, and relationship specific asset. The author also attempts to examine the relationship between the relationship specific asset and cooperation of voluntary chain member shop and cooperation and consequence factors of voluntary chain cooperation, such as efficiency, group cohesiveness, and long-term relationship. Research design, data, and methodology - The author presented conceptual framework integrating the major antecedents and consequences of voluntary chain cooperation. The data were collected from 174 independent small retailers who joined K-voluntary chain. K-voluntary chain consists of small independent retailers. In accordance with their status, each entrepreneur associated with the voluntary group can own one or more outlets and can be a part of the life and the decision-making process of the group. This participation is not based on company turnover or on the number of outlets, but based on a one member, one vote system. To verify the research model and test hypotheses, the author carefully investigated the reliability, content validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of the proposed model. The data were analyzed by using SPSS 18.0 and AMOS structural equation modeling program. Results - The results of this study are as follows. First, as antecedent variables, participation benefits and justice of compensation have positive effect on the relationship specific assets of voluntary chain members. Second, voluntary chain members' relationship specific asset also directly related to the level of its cooperation to chain headquarter. Third, cooperation of voluntary chain member shop facilitates efficiency, group cohesiveness, and long-term relationship. Unexpectedly, there are no effect autonomy in voluntary chain to relationship specific asset. Conclusions - This research shows several theoretical and practical implications to both marketing scholars and marketers. In terms of theoretical implications, this study applies to network theory and network theory variables to explain the antecedent and consequence factors of cooperation in voluntary chain. From the point of view from business management, most of all, this study shows the way how to reinforce competitiveness of voluntary chain. Specifically, it is necessary for voluntary chain headquarter to give higher level of participation benefit and justice of compensation to its members. Second, the results also indicate what the consequence factors of cooperation in voluntary chain. In other words, to increase the level of marketing efficiency, group cohesiveness, long-term orientation in retail voluntary chain, and chain headquarter need to facilitate participants' cooperation.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.11
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• pp.79-88
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• 2012

Purpose - The objective of this paper is to suggest that a company's CRM activities have an effect on customer loyalty in the Korean retail industry. Typically, Korean customers use large local marts with convenience in the absence of any other choice. Therefore, this study aims to shed light on the fact that customers do not break away from their preferred retail stores, either owing to their stringent loyalty (the lie loyalty) or difficulty in turning to alternative choices. Research design, data, methodology - By surveying a sample of 200 hyper-markets through a questionnaire, and excluding dubious and missing responses, I obtained 181 samples to be included in the empirical analysis. The survey was conducted for two weeks during October 2011. AMOS and SPSS18 statistical packages were used for conducting statistical analysis for this study. This paper was developed using the concept of customer equity on CRM, which is known to have a positive impact on customer loyalty through the satisfaction and switching-barrier parameters. The hypothesis of this paper is that customer equity is composed of relationship equity, value equity and brand equity, and that the relationship equity variable has positive effects on the value equity and brand equity amongst other types of customer equity. Moreover, customer equity influences customer loyalty through parameters including customer satisfaction and switching costs in the Korean retail industry. Results - According to the results of the analysis, it was confirmed that relationship value had a positive effect (+) on all variables, including the perceived QoS (Quality of Service), store brand images, economic value, and store convenience. It was also confirmed that the assumption that the perceived QoS (Quality of Service), economic value, and store convenience had a positive effect on customer satisfaction was shown to be statistically significant, with a p-value below 0.05. Only the store brand value variable had an effect on the switching-cost variable with respect to the causal sequence of the variables, including the perceived QoS, store brand value, economic value, and store convenience. The remaining variables did not seem to influence the switching-cost variable. On the other hand, another effect showed that customer satisfaction had a statistically significant influence on the switching-costs variable. Moreover, the customer satisfaction and switching-cost variables also had a statistical influence on customer loyalty. Conclusions - The CRM activities had an influence on various variables (including perceived QoS, perceived economic value, store brand value, and store convenience) pertaining to customer values. Customer satisfaction and switching-cost had some effects on customer loyalty as a parameter. This confirms that stringent loyalty exists with respect to customer loyalty in the retail industry. The fact that the variable had such a statistically significant influence on the switching-cost and store brand equity variables means that consumers react to the reputation of a brand, confidence about the store, and quality confidence. The implications of this study in the retail industry should be further extended to devise strategies for customer retention.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.730-743
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• 1997

Community structure and distribution patterns of benthic polychaetes were studied in Aug. 1983 and Feb. 1984 in Kwangyang Bay, Korea. During the study period, the large-scale reclamation and dredging operations were taking place. Polychaetes were composed of 76 species with a mean density of $342\;ind.{\cdot}m^{-2}$ during the summer 1983 and 77 species with a mean density of $437\;ind.{\cdot}m^{-2}$ during the winter 1984. Community structure indices were applied to the seasonal data. The stations influenced by the Seomjin river are characterized by a low species number and low diversity, while the stations located in channel regions represent high species richness and highdiversity. The inner bay stations showed the intermediate level in terms of species richness and diversity. On the basis of taxa composition and abundance in summer, the cluster analysis indicated that the study area was divided into live regions. The main factors that govern the polychaete distributions appeared to be the fresh water run-off and bottom sediment composition. However, a slight difference was observed in winter community, and changes in composition of the dominant species were found from Lagis bocki and Chone teres to Glycinde gurjanovae and Heteromastus filiformis. As a result, the broad scale reclamation and dredging activities may have played a role in changes of the polychaete community structure and the dominant species composition in Kwangyang Bay.

• The Journal of the Korean life insurance medical association
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.187-208
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• 1986

The conclusions which was acquired one renal cell carcinoma and renal disease 132 cases that was tested renal echogram among 4,499 cases for recent 16 months at medical department, Dae Han Kyoyuk Insurance company from August, 1984 to November, 1985 are as follows: 1. On bur ultrasonography, the echo of tumor was demonstrated with echogenicity as compared with renal parenchyme. 2. The case was stage I by Robson's modification method for pathologic histology. 3. There is no fever, typical triad of renal cell carcinoma and the result of serum biochemical test was within normal limit. 4. The frequency with disease was renal cell carcinoma(0.76%), ureteral stone(1.5%), multicystic kidney(2.27%), hydroureter(2.27%), Bilateral poly cystic kidney(4.55%), hydronephrosis(4.55%), renal agenesis(6.06%) renal calculi(18.18%), simple cyst(60.61%). 5. The frequency with age was 55/1200 case(4.58%) in $41{\sim}50$ years, 13/296 cases(4.39%) in $51{\sim}60$ years, 43/2144 cases(2.01%) in $31{\sim}40$ years, 14/791 cases(1.77%) in $21{\sim}30$ years, 7/53 cases(1.32%) more than 61 years and 0/15(0%) under 20 years. 6. The affected site of renal agenesis 8 cases was right side all. 7. In total renal disease 132 cases, the affected site of 126 cases except bilateral polycystic kidney 6 cases was right kidney 72 cases, left kidney the proportion of right to left 1.6:1 8. In total renal disease 132 cases except bilateral polycystic kidneys 6 cases, the patients affected with both side kidneys were 14 cases. 9. The affection rate with sex in total renal disease 132 cases was 98/2860 cases in male, 34/1819 cases in female and the former was about 2 times than the latter. 10. Classifying the stone with part, nephrolithiasis 24 cases were appeared high frequency, on the contray, ureteral stone 2 cases. 11. 2 cases of ureteral stone developed complication, hydronephrosis and hydroureter. 12. The linear array type transducer was not helpful for the diagnosis of lower ureteral calculi but for the lower ureteral calculi, we could see the stone with high echo in accompanying with acoustic shadowing. 13. In 24 cases of renal calculi, both side nephrolithiasis was 3 cases(12.5%). 14. In renal calculi, solitary stone could be seen extremely much and the number of stone was so much variable from 2 to 10. 15. In 26 cases with renal calculi and ureteral stone, the common clinical manifestation was a intermittent and slight pain. 16. In 80 cases of renal cyst, as one's get older, the affection rate of cyst extremely rised. 17. In bilateral polycystic kidney, large cyst had septum on the whole. 18. The patients with complication were 14 cases(10.6%) of total patients.

• Journal of Trauma and Injury
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.178-187
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• 2012

Purpose: In Korea, the nation's medical expenses were 12 billion won in 2010. The medical costs for individuals can also be overwhelming. If a patient has sustained severe trauma, his/her insurance company responsible may pay only part of the medical bills. In Korean, there are diverse types of medical insurance, such as health insurance, automobile insurance, and industrial accident compensation insurance. And each insurance system has a different type of payment system. Our study will be essential for establishing the optimal medical expense payment system. Methods: From January to December 2011, we retrospectively reviewed the medical charts of 161 patients who were admitted to our hospital's emergency room after having undergone severe trauma. Of those 161 patients, 125 were retrospectively reviewed. Written permission was obtained from all of the patients. We analysed the demographic characteristics, clinical outcomes, data of the trauma, type of the patient's insurance, and the entire bill when the patient was discharged. Results: Seventy-one patients had health insurance, 48 automobile insurance, and six industrial accident compensation insurance. High-deductible insurance included health insurance and industrial accident compensation insurance, with the deductibles up to 20.6% and 19.1%, respectively. We attempted to analyze the cause of the high deductible rate. In patients with health insurance, medicines, primarily sedatives, pain killers, antibiotics, and fluids. comprised a large proportion. On the other hand, industrial accident compensation insurance deducted for a high-grade hospital room charge. Conclusion: We found that medical expenses were diverse according to the type of insurance. In particular, health insurance forced patients to pay too much of the medical expenses. Therefore, in Korea we should try to identify the insurance problems and improve the wage system.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.53-77
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• 2012

Financial firms, especially large scaled firms such as KB bank, NH bank, Samsung Card, Hana SK Card, Hyundai Capital, Shinhan Card, etc. should be securely dealing with the personal financial information. Indeed, people have tended to believe that those big financial companies are relatively safer in terms of information security than typical small and medium sized firms in other industries. However, the recent incidents of personal information privacy invasion showed that this may not be true. Financial firms have increased the investment of information protection and security, and they are trying to prevent the information privacy invasion accidents by doing all the necessary efforts. This paper studies how effectively a financial firm will be able to avoid personal financial information privacy invasion that may be deliberately caused by internal staffs. Although there are several literatures relating to information security, to our knowledge, this is the first study to focus on the behavior of internal staffs. The big financial firms are doing variety of information security activities to protect personal information. This study is to confirm what types of such activities actually work well. The primary research model of this paper is based on Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) that describes the rational choice of human behavior. Also, a variety of activities to protect the personal information of financial firms, especially credit card companies with the most customer information, were modeled by the four-step process Security Action Cycle (SAC) that Straub and Welke (1998) claimed. Through this proposed conceptual research model, we study whether information security activities of each step could suppress personal information abuse. Also, by measuring the morality of internal staffs, we checked whether the act of information privacy invasion caused by internal staff is in fact a serious criminal behavior or just a kind of unethical behavior. In addition, we also checked whether there was the cognition difference of the moral level between internal staffs and the customers. Research subjects were customer call center operators in one of the big credit card company. We have used multiple regression analysis. Our results showed that the punishment of the remedy activities, among the firm's information security activities, had the most obvious effects of preventing the information abuse (or privacy invasion) by internal staff. Somewhat effective tools were the prevention activities that limited the physical accessibility of non-authorities to the system of customers' personal information database. Some examples of the prevention activities are to make the procedure of access rights complex and to enhance security instrument. We also found that 'the unnecessary information searches out of work' as the behavior of information abuse occurred frequently by internal staffs. They perceived these behaviors somewhat minor criminal or just unethical action rather than a serious criminal behavior. Also, there existed the big cognition difference of the moral level between internal staffs and the public (customers). Based on the findings of our research, we should expect that this paper help practically to prevent privacy invasion and to protect personal information properly by raising the effectiveness of information security activities of finance firms. Also, we expect that our suggestions can be utilized to effectively improve personnel management and to cope with internal security threats in the overall information security management system.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.1031-1040
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• 2015

Ultrstructural studies of germ cell differentiation and vitellogenesis in the oocytes of the female Rapana venosa in the brackish water area of Seomjin River were investigated by transmission electron microscope observations. In the early vitellogenic oocytes, the Golgi complex and mitochondria were involved in the formation of glycogen particle, lipid droplets, and yolk granules. In the late vitellogenic oocytes, the rough endoplasmic reticulum and multivesicular bodies were involved in the formation of proteid yolk granules in the cytoplasm. However, heterosynthetic vitellogenesis in this species were not observed in vitellogenic oocytes during oogenesis. A mature yolk granule was composed of three components: crystalline core, electron lucent cortex and the limiting membrane. As shown in some large gastropods, vitellogenesis in R. venosa occurred by way of endogenous autosynthesis without heterosythetic vitellogenesis (exogeneous endocytosis), which are found in the oocytes in bivalves. The mating period and spawning activity were related with the increases of seawater temperatures and salinities.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.639-648
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• 2016

Purpose: Existing precedent studies include success factors of individual management innovation activities constantly. However, those studies have limitations about the common key success factors of individual management innovation activities. Methods: For this study, we investigate the key success factors using literature research of the most typical management innovation activities adopted and implemented by many companies in Korea, such as 6sigma, TQM, Lean 6sigma, ERP, TPM, BPR, Project Management, System Engineering. Factors emerging repeatedly was combined into common factors and inherent factors that are necessary for the success of individual management innovation activities are designated to essential factors. Results: 'Essential factors for Six Sigma' consist of 5 items. Black belt operating system, personnel management system linkage, the correct management of the data, perform improvement projects associated with financial performance financial result, linked to financial performance improvement project, project progress management. 'Essential factors of TQM' are arranged 4 items. Quality team's independence and role, goal-setting, Quality Information System, corporate's philosophy of quality first. 'Essential factors of Lean Six Sigma' are the selection of value stream which is based on the customer needs and the value creation and identify the project based on the selected value in the company. 'Essential factors of ERP' are investigated 6 items. Ongoing system maintenance and upgrades, the measurement and support of user satisfaction, the operating systems and the policies for the maintenance, IT infrastructure, change adaption condition monitoring, focusing on improving business performance. 'Essential factors for TPM' are arranged 4 items. Motivated and energetic Bottom-Up, CEO's recognition of the importance facility management, long-term perspective of necessity and ongoing patience. 'Essential factors for BPR' are the pursuit of change process and the staff's sense of crisis management. 'Essential factors for Project Management' are the strategy that reduce the risk management skills through risk management and the understanding and organized management for the project participant's needs. 'Essential factors for System Engineering' consist of 2 items. The first is the design for the best balanced system with pre-analysis about the compromise the cost, schedule and the performance. The second is the analysis of large problem into small problems which can solved. We have found the solution considering components of the interface through the systematic perspective. Conclusion: Common factors and essential factors presented in this study will properly help to introduce the individual management innovation activities for the each business sector and implement management innovation. After this study, new literature research that reflect new studies should accomplish steadily.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.41-50
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• 2000

Cement-bonded particleboard is being used as outdoor siding material all over the world, because this composite particularly bears a light weight, high resistance against fire, decay, and crack by cyclic freezing and thawing, anti-shock property, and strength enhancement. Construction systems are currently changing into a frame-building style and wooden houses are being constructed with prefabrication type. Therefore, they require a more durability at outdoor-exposed sides. In this study, the cement hydration property for Korean pine particle, Japanese larch particle and face- and middle layer particles (designated as PB particle below) used in Korean particleboard-manufacturing company was investigated, and the rapid manufacturing characteristics of cement-bonded particleboard by supercritical $CO_2$ curing was evaluated. Korean pine flour showed a good hydration property, however, larch flour showed a bad one. PB particle had a better hydration property than larch flour. The addition of $Na_2SiO_3$ indicated a negative effect on hydration, however, $MgCl_2$ had a positive one. Curing by supercritical $CO_2$ fluid gave a conspicuous enhancement in the performances of cement-bonded particleboards compared to conventional curing. $MgCl_2$ 3%-added PB particle had the highest properties, and $MgCl_2$ 1%-added Korean pine particle had the second class with the conditions of cement/wood ratio of 2.7, a small fraction-screened particle and supercritical curing. On the contrary, the composition of non-hammermilled or large fraction-screened particle at cement/wood ratio of 2.2 was poorer. Also, the feasibility for actual use of 3%-added, small PB particle-screened fraction was greatest of all the conventional curing treatments. Relative superiority of supercritical curing vs. conventional curing at dimensional stability was not so apparent as in strength properties. Through the thermogravimetric analysis, it was ascertained that the peak of a component $CaCO_3$ was highest, and the two weak peaks of calcium silicate hydrate and ettringite and $Ca(OH)_2$ were present in supercritical treatment. Accordingly, it was inferred that the increased formation of carbonates in board contributes to strength enhancement.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.3-14
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• 2019

The café has become an important representative "third place" where people study and rest. Hence, it is worthwhile for researchers to understand the needs of individual users as well as the requirements of people who visit such venues in groups. The identification of strategies that can help achieve larger, wider, higher, or deeper interior spaces in small and compact locations can generate benefits for both users and designers. In this study, where 56 interior design students participated, we used an eye-tracker and images of cafes to explore the relationships between spatial depth and the intention to visit a cafe space. The researchers digitally developed fifteen different conditions of space and measured the eye movements of the participants using an eye-tracker when they examined images that appeared to convey the most depth. Participants were also asked to imagine the proposed space images as cafes and to select one of the 15 images as the location that they would be most likely to visit individually and one that they would frequent in the company of other people. The research results revealed that certain ways of using interior design elements altered the participants' perceptions of spatial depth without any change being effected to the actual volume or the size of the space. The participants tended to perceive a space with a small decorative artwork on a dark toned wall with unconnected furniture as deeper than a space with no or large artwork on a light toned wall with contiguous furniture. Spatial depth was a more important consideration for an individual visit than for a group visit. The results of this exploratory study will help scholarly understanding of the role played by spatial depth in customer intentions to visit a cafe.