• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2013.01a
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• pp.479-487
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• 2013

State Highway Agencies (SHAs) have started utilizing cost-plus-time bidding (A+B bidding) since Federal Highway Agency (FHWA) declared it operational on May 4, 1995. Although this technique has successfully accelerated many projects by incorporating construction time in the bidding competition, a framework to illustrate the interactions of incentive/disincentive (I/D) rates on the competitiveness of contractors participating in the bid competition is yet to be developed. In a previous research, authors indicated that for each bid competition there is an efficient cap for I/D rates which are dictated by the capabilities of contractors in project acceleration. However, the results of previous study were based on the assumption that there is a statistically significant relationship between cost and time. In this study, the entire cost-plus-time projects implemented by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) were investigated. Then the significance of relationship between cost and time were analyzed for each contractor utilizing Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) technique, and the price-time function of each contractor was determined by regression analysis. The results of the analysis indicate that there is a significant relationship between cost and time for the majority of contractors. However, a quadratic relationship is not always significant and for some contractors a linear price-time relationship is significant. The results of this project can be used not only by ODOT to optimize the incentive/disincentive rates but also by contractors to determine the most competitive strategies of other bid participants.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.499-510
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• 2011

Any server offering a routing service in the Internet would naturally be in competition for clients, and clients may need to utilize service from a specific server in order to achieve a desired result. We study the various properties of this competition, such as the fraction of route requests handled by a routing service provider and the fraction of total revenue obtained. As the routing service providers (i.e., servers or routers in this context) compete, they may alter behavior in order to optimize one of the above properties. For example, a service provider may lower the price charged for its service, in order to increase the number of clients served. Our models are based on servers offering a routing service to clients within representative network topologies based on actual Internet sub-graphs. These models provide, a framework for evaluating competition in the Internet. We monitor key aspects of the service, as several variables are introduced into the models. The first variable is the fraction of client requests that will pay more for a better quality route. The remaining requests are normal client requests that are satisfied by the most economical route. The second variable is the fraction of servers who choose to lower service prices in order to maximize the number of client requests served. As this fraction increases, it is more likely that a server will lower the price. Finally, there are some resource constraints applied to the model, to increase the difficulty in providing a routing solution, i.e., to simulate a realistic scenario. We seek to understand the effect on the overall network, as service providers compete. In simple cases, we show that this competition could have a negative impact on the overall efficiency of a service. We show that the routing variety present in the larger models is unable to mask this tendency and the routing service performance is decreased due to competition.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2001.07a
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• pp.386-388
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• 2001

The change of the electricity charge from cost base to price base due to the introduction of the electricity market competition causes consumer to choose a variety of charge schemes and a portion of loads to be affected by this change. Besides, it is required the index that consolidate the price volatility experienced on the power exchange with gaming and strategic bidding by suppliers to increase profits. Therefore, in order to find a mathematical model of the sensitively-responding-to-price loads, the price-sensitive load model is needed. And the development of state-of-the-art technologies affects the electricity price, so the diffusion of high-efficient end-uses and these price affect load patterns. This paper shows the analysis on learning curves algorithms which is used to investigate the correlation of the end-uses' price and load patterns.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.285-291
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• 2015

Many Koreans have the question about the price of food: whether the price of Korean food is reasonable or not? Even though some previous studies tried to discuss and analyze the price system of Korean food, few papers clearly present the implication about production cost or marketing margin of processing food. The purpose of this paper is to measure and analyze the production cost and marketing margin of tofu and kimchi, which are one of the main food in Korea, through the raw-data of FIS, KAMIS, and other data from Korean business area. The results of studies present a few findings as follows: First, the proportion of labor cost in the production cost is very important factor and need to be decreased for the lower consumer price. Especially, the lower proportion of labor cost in kimchi industry should be important issue, even though the reduction of proportion of labor cost in kimchi industry is not easy in the real world. Second, each marketing channel of processed food shows different marketing margin. Therefore, Korean government need to increase the level of competition of marketing channels, which makes each business is forced to decrease the marketing margin to survive the market competition in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.149-153
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• 1990

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.47-55
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• 2016

The proliferation of the Internet and related technologies has led to a new form of distribution channels, namely online retailers. The conventional offline and the new online retailers have different transaction costs perceived by the consumers in the following perspectives: the accessibility to the product information, the traffic cost and the opportunity cost for the time to visit the store, the delivery time and the possibility of 'touch and feel' to test the quality of the product. In particular, the online retailers have lower distribution cost structure in that they do not have physical stores, which results in lower selling price. Thus they continuously offer price competition against offline retailers using the lower selling cost as competitive weapon. Moreover the emergence of the social commerce is likely to intensify the competition between the online and offline retailers. To survive in this fierce competition, the offline retailers are trying to defend their business interests by sticking to offline transaction in anticipation of increased customer loyalty, customer's preference for 'touch and feel' style shopping, and others. Despite of these efforts, customers who touch and feel a product in an offline store but purchase the product through an online retailer are increasing. To protect such customers, recently, some of the offline retailers began to provide the mobile discount service (MDS) which enables the offline customers to purchase a product at a discounted price through the mobile applications. In business competitions, the price discount strategy is usually considered to secure more market share at the cost of lower profit. In this study, however, we analyze the effect of MDS as a weapon for securing more profit. To do this, we set up a game model between the online and offline retailers which incorporates the effect of the MDS. By numerically analyzing the Nash equilibrium of the game, some managerial implications for using the MDS for more profit are discussed.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.449-463
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• 2021

The aim of this study was to analyze the perceptions and entering status of small business online fashion retailers on portal shopping and fashion shopping malls. Case studies were conducted on a total of 10 research samples. The results were as follows: first, regarding the strategic factors of online fashion stores, 'price competitiveness' is important, especially in portal shopping and low-cost brands; 'product assortment' is important but not essential in all platforms; and 'differentiation' is important to continuously secure loyal customers in fashion shopping malls. Customer satisfaction leads to customer loyalty, and customer loyalty affects the sales conversion rate and brand growth of online sales channels. Factors that promoted sales activities in online sales channels were exposure, advertisements, SNS, events, special exhibitions, and events. Hindrance factors were low price competition, overheated competition, and the MD of sales channels. Second, the research samples used multiple online sales channels, including portal shopping malls and fashion shopping malls, in addition to their own malls. The selection factors were platform reputation and commission, branding, and customer inflow through exposure. Portal shopping malls were perceived as providing easy access, advertising/customer communication, exposure/search, price competitiveness, scalability, and intense competition, whereas fashion shopping malls were perceived as providing a brand image and concept, brand promotion, high commissions, difficult entry, and low profits. The factors for success in portal shopping malls were exposure/search, price competitiveness, and brand recognition, whereas the factors for success in fashion shopping malls were differentiation, brand, exposure/advertisement, product assortment, and MD.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.85-100
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• 2009

An online marketplace, such as eBay, is an example of two-sided markets. In online marketplaces, there are transactions between sellers and buyers and direct competition effects among sellers and among buyers. Previous research on two-sided market has not handle these competition effects and mostly focused on indirect network externalities between sellers and buyers. We analyze the fee structure of an online marketplace considering direct competition effects among sellers and among buyers. We find that when fees for sellers and buyers can be imposed, an auction or fixed-pricing rule can be chosen according to the characteristics of a product traded. But when only fees for sellers can be imposed, an auction can be taken as a trading mechanism solely.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.587-590
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• 2004

The present business environment has been incurred much competition by oversupply so that customers have been to have more opportunities in selection of firms to produce required product. Under this circumstance, companies have to provide attractive proposal (for example, low price and on time delivery) to customers as considering their capacity and risk for their survival. Therefore this paper proposes a method to select customer and to propose price and due date for maximum profit in the restricted situation.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2001.11b
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• pp.435-437
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• 2001

The change of the electricity charge from cost base to price base due to the introduction of the electricity market competition causes consumer to choose a variety of charge schemes and a portion of loads to be affected by this change. Besides, it is required the index that consolidate the price volatility experienced on the power exchange with gaming and strategic bidding by suppliers to increase profits. Therefore, in order to find a mathematical model of the sensitively-responding-to-price loads, the price-sensitive load model is needed. And the development of state-of-the-art technologies affects the electricity price, so the diffusion of high-efficient end-uses and these price affect load patterns. This paper shows the analysis on learning curves algorithms which is used to investigate the correlation of the end-uses' price and load patterns.