• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.119-138
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• 2016

Since the Industrial Revolution, which made the mass production and mass distribution of standardized goods possible, machine-made (manufactured) products have accounted for the majority of the market. However, in recent years, the phenomenon of purchasing even more expensive handmade products has become a noticeable trend as consumers have started to acknowledge the value of handmade products, such as the craftsman's commitment, belief in their quality and scarcity, and the sense of self-esteem from having them,. Consumer interest in these handmade products has shown explosive growth and has been coupled with the recent development of three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies. Etsy.com is the world's largest online handmade platform. It is no different from any other online platform; it provides an online market where buyers and sellers virtually meet to share information and transact business. However, Etsy.com is different in that shops within this platform only deal with handmade products in a variety of categories, ranging from jewelry to toys. Since its establishment in 2005, despite being limited to handmade products, Etsy.com has enjoyed rapid growth in membership, transaction volume, and revenue. Most recently in April 2015, it raised funds through an initial public offering (IPO) of more than 1.8 billion USD, which demonstrates the huge potential of online handmade platforms. After the success of Etsy.com, various types of online handmade platforms such as Handmade at Amazon, ArtFire, DaWanda, and Craft is ART have emerged and are now competing with each other, at the same time, which has increased the size of the market. According to Deloitte's 2015 holiday survey on which types of gifts the respondents plan to buy during the holiday season, about 16% of U.S. consumers chose "homemade or craft items (e.g., Etsy purchase)," which was the same rate as those for the computer game and shoes categories. This indicates that consumer interests in online handmade platforms will continue to rise in the future. However, this high interest in the market for handmade products and their platforms has not yet led to academic research. Most extant studies have only focused on machine-made products and intelligent services for them. This indicates a lack of studies on handmade products and their intelligent services on virtual platforms. Therefore, this study used signaling theory and prior research on the effects of sellers' characteristics on their performance (e.g., total sales and price premiums) in the buyer-seller relationship to identify the key influencing e-Image factors (e.g., reputation, size, information sharing, and length of relationship). Then, their impacts on the performance of shops within the online handmade platform were empirically examined; the dataset was collected from Etsy.com through the application of web harvesting technology. The results from the structural equation modeling revealed that the reputation, size, and information sharing have significant effects on the total sales, while the reputation and length of relationship influence price premiums. This study extended the online platform research into online handmade platform research by identifying key influencing e-Image factors on within-platform shop's total sales and price premiums based on signaling theory and then performed a statistical investigation. These findings are expected to be a stepping stone for future studies on intelligent online handmade services as well as handmade products themselves. Furthermore, the findings of the study provide online handmade platform operators with practical guidelines on how to implement intelligent online handmade services. They should also help shop managers build their marketing strategies in a more specific and effective manner by suggesting key influencing e-Image factors. The results of this study should contribute to the vitalization of intelligent online handmade services by providing clues on how to maximize within-platform shops' total sales and price premiums.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.49 no.5
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• pp.761-778
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• 2014

There has been relatively little study to model price for commercial property because of its low transaction volume in the market. Despite of this thin market character, this paper tried to estimate prices for commercial lots as accurate as possible. We constructed a model whose components consist of mean structure(global trend), exponential covariance function and a pure error term, and applied it to actual sales price data of Seoul. We explicitly took account of spatial autocorrelation of land price by utilizing a kriging technique, a representative method of spatial interpolation, because the land price of commercial lots has feature of differential price forming pattern depending on submarkets they belong to. In addition, we chose to apply a bayesian kriging to overcome data scarcity by incorporating experts' knowledge into prior probability distribution. The chosen model's excellent performance was verified by the result from validation data. We confirmed that the excellence of the model is attributed to incorporating both autocorexperts' knowledge and spatial autocorrelation in the model construction. This paper is differentiated from previous studies in the sense that it applied the bayesian kriging technique to estimate price for commercial lots and explicitly combined experts' knowledge with data. It is expected that the result of this paper would provide a useful guide for the circumstances under which property price has to be estimated reliably based on sparse transaction data.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.369-381
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• 2011

Ginseng in Korea has not only the big production value but also till a good reputation from overseas in the name of 'Korea Ginseng'. Having spread rapidly nationwide from 2000 year, its production keeps on increasing but its consumption becomes lazy and its price is also falling down because of comsumer's concern about mainly overusing pesticide for ginseng. In order to cope with this problem, the government introduced the GAP certification system to ginseng in 2006 to reflect consumer's needs for food safety. This system will be a good opportunity to promote ginseng consumption dramatically. In this aspect it is very important to know how well this system is established and how ginseng farmers build marketing strategies to draw new wind in the market. This study was carried out to look over the GAP certified ginseng system and show its marketing strategies using 4P's(product, place, promotion and price). The main results are as follows. GAP ginseng system currently has some weaknesses such as lack of systematic certification management and after-service, nonrealistic certification fee and poor linkage from production to consumption. In the marketing mix strategies, product strategy suggests that the most desirable appearance be transplanted ginseng filled with branch roots and 4 to 5 year-ginseng, and it is necessary to choose multi-brand strategy divided for present into for self-sufficiency and family brand strategy by use if its brand enlarges to processed products in the future. In the place strategy, 3 stages like 'producer group' - 'GAP certified facility' - 'sales shop' are based as the physical marketing channel according to traceability, and connected with giant retail market and environment friendly stand, and if its sales volume enlarges, it should be considered the GAP ginseng specialized marketplace which is a type of chain store. In the promotion strategy, the promotion of government level is necessary at first and producer alliances require the promotion targeting at the group of women under 40 with differentiation from price, quality, and safety. In the price strategy, the early stage-high price strategy which sets 20~25% higher for self-sufficiency and 30~35% for present is desirable.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.33-57
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• 2005

After 1990's, many multi-level marketing companies lave been introduced in Korea. These MLM companies operate their stores as same way as general retailing stores. The major characteristics of these MLM companys' store is that their main customers are distributors who sell the purchased merchandise to another customers. Many studies about merchandise display in general retailing stores were reported. But, there was less research about merchandise display in these special type stores such as MLM companys' stores. This paper investigates the effects of merchandise display on distributor's merchandise selection in channel flow of multi-level marketing company. For this purpose, we formulated four hypotheses about display variance in quantity, height, location, and related merchandise to analyze the effect of merchandise display methods in MLM companys' stores. The experiment had been proceeded in three stores in a MLM company for 6 weeks and the sales data were collected by POS. The methods to analyze the data were used ANOVA and T-test. Findings of this study are as follows; First, there was no effect to store sale by the interaction effect between merchandise display method and scale of store. Second, scale of store affected considerably the volume of sales of each store according to main effect analysis. Third, display variance in quantity, height, and location did not affect store sale. In the related merchandise display, however, sale in all store was increased. Fourth, in additional analysis considering merchandise display only, display variance in both height and location affected their sale in large scale store. Based on the above results, we may predict merchandise display can affect sale in MLM companys' store as well as general retailing stores. Therefore if MLM company has large scale store, it should consider merchandise display methods in its stores.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.315-322
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• 2010

This study focused on mobile trend in diffusion of smart phone. Presently, it has been evolved from digital nomad to smart nomad. Smart nomad era is based on digital technology with mobility and being smart. Smart nomad that is made up high-end device and intellectual content has changed structure of industry and life style. Smart phone is a core key in smart nomad era. In 2010 smart phone has been distributed about 2.5 hundreds million which is 20% of whole mobile phone sales and the volume of smart phone sales will be getting bigger and bigger in near future. Although, there are various reasons for success of smart phone market, this research focused 4 reasons: first, development of mobile device, second, evolution of mobile content distribution, third, support of government system, fourth, success of Docomo i-mode and Apple i phone. Smart phone will grow up more rapidly. Smart phone eco-system will be more competitive in the world. In Korea, smart phone eco-system also will be very competitive. For success in the middle of this competitive environment, Korea should lead the competitive phase with development of ability of creation software and content, construction of various partnership and evolution of next generation technology and service.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.81-88
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• 2014

Purpose - Entrepreneurship promotion is emerging as an important economic growth agenda. However, in Korea, entrepreneurship has weakened because of the collapse of the venture bubbles of the 2000s and the global economic recession in 2008, which have induced the business community to choose stability over risk. The Korean government has been implementing several support projects to inspire and promote youth entrepreneurship through various means including financial assistance; however, the perpetuation rate of young entrepreneurship is still low as compared to advanced economies such as the US and EU. This case study focuses on the Youth Start-Up Business Support Program of the Small & Medium Business Corporation, and explores practical alternatives. Further, it aims to suggest managerial factors and a conceptual model for change management factors affecting the business performance creation of a startup company, based on the Small and medium Business Corporation's young venture startup fund. Research design, data, and methodology - Many studies examine the current progress and issues of startup firms, for example, a lack of systematic cultivation of entrepreneurship and startup business training, lack of commercialization funding for youth startup businesses, lack of mentoring, and inadequate infrastructure. From prior research, we address four factors, namely, personal managerial capabilities, innovative business model, sufficient cash flow, and social network, affecting startup companies' business performance. This study involved a sample survey of 200 young entrepreneurs to investigate casual relations between the four factors and business performance. A regression analysis was used to verify the hypotheses. Results - First, in relation to differences in the founder's personal characteristics, age, sales amount, and number of employees significantly impact business performance. Second, regarding the causal relation between the four factors for creating business performance, an innovative business model and social networking have supported the hypotheses, revealing that the more that a start-up founder has an innovative business model and social networking, the more the start-up firms are likely to have better performance (e.g., sales volume, employment, ROE, ROI, etc.). Although the founder's competency and sufficient cash flow have no significant relationship with business performance, the mean value was higher performance for high founder's competency and sufficient cash flow. Conclusions - This study provides basic data on policy support strategies of the Small and Medium Business Corporation, to help young entrepreneurs achieve their start-up business goals. It shows that young entrepreneurship startup firms should strive to explore ideas to satisfy customers' needs, and that changes in customer value and the continuous innovation of business model differentiation are required to actively respond to change management. Moreover, at the infant startup stage, they should activate social network programs to share information, thereby offsetting resource scarcity and managing business risk. Further, the establishment of a long-term vision and the implementation of training programs in related specific fields should be supported to strengthen founders' personal capabilities.

• Journal of Cadastre & Land InformatiX
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.181-200
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• 2020

This study used the OLS model to estimate the determinants affecting the tenure of a home and then compared the predictive power of each model with SVM, Decision Tree, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, XGBooest and LightGBM. There is a difference from the preceding study in that the Stacking model, one of the ensemble models, can be used as a base model to establish a more predictable model to identify the volume of housing transactions in the housing market. OLS analysis showed that sales profits, housing prices, the number of household members, and the type of residential housing (detached housing, apartments) affected the period of housing ownership, and compared the predictability of the machine learning model with RMSE, the results showed that the machine learning model had higher predictability. Afterwards, the predictive power was compared by applying each machine learning after rebuilding the data with the influencing variables, and the analysis showed the best predictive power of Random Forest. In addition, the most predictable Random Forest, Decision Tree, Gradient Boosting, and XGBooost models were applied as individual models, and the Stacking model was constructed using Linear, Ridge, and Lasso models as meta models. As a result of the analysis, the RMSE value in the Ridge model was the lowest at 0.5181, thus building the highest predictive model.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.81-93
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• 2021

Through processors, wholesale markets, intermediate sellers, and retailers, agricultural products have been distributed in a multi-level customary manner for a long time as they are easy to deteriorate and no not have a standardized system of size and quality. However, with the advancement of Internet networks and logistic services during the 2000s that facilitated the development of offline markets, and the rise of the non-contact purchase preference in direct response to COVID-19, previous offline consumers flowed into the online market to purchase agricultural goods. In other words, the volume of online agricultural transactions exploded since the pandemic. Against this social backdrop, this study focused on the difference in distribution costs as a result of converting from conventional offline distribution channels to online channels, and analyzed the reduced distribution costs through a case study of garlic sales on the online platform "H" shopping mall. The analysis found that considerable economic effects occurred, some of the effects being an approximate 39% decrease in distribution cost when comparing direct online transactions of the online shopping mall with other more traditional means, a reduced distribution cost rate of approximately 28%p, and increased profit for farmers.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.85-108
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• 2014

This study provides the information about size, financial structure, profitability and growth of franchisors using financial data(asset, liability, equity, sales volume, operating income and net income) in uniform franchise offering circular of fair trade commission. The data were collected from 1,050 franchisors in various business fields: fast food, family restaurant, bakery, agriculture & fishery and liquor shop in the uniform franchise offering circular in 2012 and 2011. Results of this study are as follows: For company size, median of total assets was KRW 675 million and the accumulated median assets rate was 0.48%, but the accumulated median company numbers were 49.9%, which showed small size. For financial structure, 525 companies were below 200% debt ratio, while 314 (29.9%) companies were in over 200% debt, and 211 (20.1%) companies were impaired in capital. These also showed financial structure was vulunerable. For profitability, median of ROA for total companies were only 4.72%, which showed low profitability. For growth, median of growth rate for sales were 7.57% per year, which showed mature industry. In overall, the results showed franchisors should improve their financial status.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.117-129
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• 2015

As the Internet becomes ubiquitous, a large volume of information is posted on the Internet with exponential growth every day. Accordingly, it is not unusual that investors in stock markets gather and compile firm-specific or market-wide information through online searches. Importantly, it becomes easier for investors to acquire value-relevant information for their investment decision with the help of powerful search tools on the Internet. Our study examines whether or not the Internet helps investors assess a firm's value better by using firm-level data over long periods spanning from January 2004 to December 2013. To this end, we construct weekly-based search volume for information technology (IT) services firms on the Internet. We limit our focus to IT firms since they are often equipped with intangible assets and relatively less recognized to the public which makes them hard-to measure. To obtain the information on those firms, investors are more likely to consult the Internet and use the information to appreciate the firms more accurately and eventually improve their investment decisions. Prior studies have shown that changes in search volumes can reflect the various aspects of the complex human behaviors and forecast near-term values of economic indicators, including automobile sales, unemployment claims, and etc. Moreover, search volume of firm names or stock ticker symbols has been used as a direct proxy of individual investors' attention in financial markets since, different from indirect measures such as turnover and extreme returns, they can reveal and quantify the interest of investors in an objective way. Following this line of research, this study aims to gauge whether the information retrieved from the Internet is value relevant in assessing a firm. We also use search volume for analysis but, distinguished from prior studies, explore its impact on return comovements with market returns. Given that a firm's returns tend to comove with market returns excessively when investors are less informed about the firm, we empirically test the value of information by examining the association between Internet searches and the extent to which a firm's returns comove. Our results show that Internet searches are negatively associated with return comovements as expected. When sample is split by the size of firms, the impact of Internet searches on return comovements is shown to be greater for large firms than small ones. Interestingly, we find a greater impact of Internet searches on return comovements for years from 2009 to 2013 than earlier years possibly due to more aggressive and informative exploit of Internet searches in obtaining financial information. We also complement our analyses by examining the association between return volatility and Internet search volumes. If Internet searches capture investors' attention associated with a change in firm-specific fundamentals such as new product releases, stock splits and so on, a firm's return volatility is likely to increase while search results can provide value-relevant information to investors. Our results suggest that in general, an increase in the volume of Internet searches is not positively associated with return volatility. However, we find a positive association between Internet searches and return volatility when the sample is limited to larger firms. A stronger result from larger firms implies that investors still pay less attention to the information obtained from Internet searches for small firms while the information is value relevant in assessing stock values. However, we do find any systematic differences in the magnitude of Internet searches impact on return volatility by time periods. Taken together, our results shed new light on the value of information searched from the Internet in assessing stock values. Given the informational role of the Internet in stock markets, we believe the results would guide investors to exploit Internet search tools to be better informed, as a result improving their investment decisions.