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Exploring the Role of Preference Heterogeneity and Causal Attribution in Online Ratings Dynamics

  • Chu, Wujin;Roh, Minjung
    • Asia Marketing Journal
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    • v.15 no.4
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    • pp.61-101
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    • 2014
  • This study investigates when and how disagreements in online customer ratings prompt more favorable product evaluations. Among the three metrics of volume, valence, and variance that feature in the research on online customer ratings, volume and valence have exhibited consistently positive patterns in their effects on product sales or evaluations (e.g., Dellarocas, Zhang, and Awad 2007; Liu 2006). Ratings variance, or the degree of disagreement among reviewers, however, has shown rather mixed results, with some studies reporting positive effects on product sales (e.g., Clement, Proppe, and Rott 2007) while others finding negative effects on product evaluations (e.g., Zhu and Zhang 2010). This study aims to resolve these contradictory findings by introducing preference heterogeneity as a possible moderator and causal attribution as a mediator to account for the moderating effect. The main proposition of this study is that when preference heterogeneity is perceived as high, a disagreement in ratings is attributed more to reviewers' different preferences than to unreliable product quality, which in turn prompts better quality evaluations of a product. Because disagreements mostly result from differences in reviewers' tastes or the low reliability of a product's quality (Mizerski 1982; Sen and Lerman 2007), a greater level of attribution to reviewer tastes can mitigate the negative effect of disagreement on product evaluations. Specifically, if consumers infer that reviewers' heterogeneous preferences result in subjectively different experiences and thereby highly diverse ratings, they would not disregard the overall quality of a product. However, if consumers infer that reviewers' preferences are quite homogeneous and thus the low reliability of the product quality contributes to such disagreements, they would discount the overall product quality. Therefore, consumers would respond more favorably to disagreements in ratings when preference heterogeneity is perceived as high rather than low. This study furthermore extends this prediction to the various levels of average ratings. The heuristicsystematic processing model so far indicates that the engagement in effortful systematic processing occurs only when sufficient motivation is present (Hann et al. 2007; Maheswaran and Chaiken 1991; Martin and Davies 1998). One of the key factors affecting this motivation is the aspiration level of the decision maker. Only under conditions that meet or exceed his aspiration level does he tend to engage in systematic processing (Patzelt and Shepherd 2008; Stephanous and Sage 1987). Therefore, systematic causal attribution processing regarding ratings variance is likely more activated when the average rating is high enough to meet the aspiration level than when it is too low to meet it. Considering that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity occurs through the mediation of causal attribution, this greater activation of causal attribution in high versus low average ratings would lead to more pronounced interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity in high versus low average ratings. Overall, this study proposes that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity is more pronounced when the average rating is high as compared to when it is low. Two laboratory studies lend support to these predictions. Study 1 reveals that participants exposed to a high-preference heterogeneity book title (i.e., a novel) attributed disagreement in ratings more to reviewers' tastes, and thereby more favorably evaluated books with such ratings, compared to those exposed to a low-preference heterogeneity title (i.e., an English listening practice book). Study 2 then extended these findings to the various levels of average ratings and found that this greater preference for disagreement options under high preference heterogeneity is more pronounced when the average rating is high compared to when it is low. This study makes an important theoretical contribution to the online customer ratings literature by showing that preference heterogeneity serves as a key moderator of the effect of ratings variance on product evaluations and that causal attribution acts as a mediator of this moderation effect. A more comprehensive picture of the interplay among ratings variance, preference heterogeneity, and average ratings is also provided by revealing that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity varies as a function of the average rating. In addition, this work provides some significant managerial implications for marketers in terms of how they manage word of mouth. Because a lack of consensus creates some uncertainty and anxiety over the given information, consumers experience a psychological burden regarding their choice of a product when ratings show disagreement. The results of this study offer a way to address this problem. By explicitly clarifying that there are many more differences in tastes among reviewers than expected, marketers can allow consumers to speculate that differing tastes of reviewers rather than an uncertain or poor product quality contribute to such conflicts in ratings. Thus, when fierce disagreements are observed in the WOM arena, marketers are advised to communicate to consumers that diverse, rather than uniform, tastes govern reviews and evaluations of products.

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The Effectiveness of Fiscal Policies for R&D Investment (R&D 투자 촉진을 위한 재정지원정책의 효과분석)

  • Song, Jong-Guk;Kim, Hyuk-Joon
    • Journal of Technology Innovation
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    • v.17 no.1
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    • pp.1-48
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    • 2009
  • Recently we have found some symptoms that R&D fiscal incentives might not work well what it has intended through the analysis of current statistics of firm's R&D data. Firstly, we found that the growth rate of R&D investment in private sector during the recent decade has been slowdown. The average of growth rate (real value) of R&D investment is 7.1% from 1998 to 2005, while it was 13.9% from 1980 to 1997. Secondly, the relative share of R&D investment of SME has been decreased to 21%('05) from 29%('01), even though the tax credit for SME has been more beneficial than large size firm, Thirdly, The R&D expenditure of large size firms (besides 3 leading firms) has not been increased since late of 1990s. We need to find some evidence whether fiscal incentives are effective in increasing firm's R&D investment. To analyse econometric model we use firm level unbalanced panel data for 4 years (from 2002 to 2005) derived from MOST database compiled from the annual survey, "Report on the Survey of Research and Development in Science and Technology". Also we use fixed effect model (Hausman test results accept fixed effect model with 1% of significant level) and estimate the model for all firms, large firms and SME respectively. We have following results from the analysis of econometric model. For large firm: i ) R&D investment responds elastically (1.20) to sales volume. ii) government R&D subsidy induces R&D investment (0.03) not so effectively. iii) Tax price elasticity is almost unity (-0.99). iv) For large firm tax incentive is more effective than R&D subsidy For SME: i ) Sales volume increase R&D investment of SME (0.043) not so effectively. ii ) government R&D subsidy is crowding out R&D investment of SME not seriously (-0.0079) iii) Tax price elasticity is very inelastic (-0.054) To compare with other studies, Koga(2003) has a similar result of tax price elasticity for Japanese firm (-1.0036), Hall((l992) has a unit tax price elasticity, Bloom et al. (2002) has $-0.354{\sim}-0.124$ in the short run. From the results of our analysis we recommend that government R&D subsidy has to focus on such an areas like basic research and public sector (defense, energy, health etc.) not overlapped private R&D sector. For SME government has to focus on establishing R&D infrastructure. To promote tax incentive policy, we need to strengthen the tax incentive scheme for large size firm's R&D investment. We recommend tax credit for large size film be extended to total volume of R&D investment.

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Factors Affecting International Transfer Pricing of Multinational Enterprises in Korea (외국인투자기업의 국제이전가격 결정에 영향을 미치는 환경 및 기업요인)

  • Jun, Tae-Young;Byun, Yong-Hwan
    • Korean small business review
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    • v.31 no.2
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    • pp.85-102
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    • 2009
  • With the continued globalization of world markets, transfer pricing has become one of the dominant sources of controversy in international taxation. Transfer pricing is the process by which a multinational corporation calculates a price for goods and services that are transferred to affiliated entities. Consider a Korean electronic enterprise that buys supplies from its own subsidiary located in China. How much the Korean parent company pays its subsidiary will determine how much profit the Chinese unit reports in local taxes. If the parent company pays above normal market prices, it may appear to have a poor profit, even if the group as a whole shows a respectable profit margin. In this way, transfer prices impact the taxable income reported in each country in which the multinational enterprise operates. It's importance lies in that around 60% of international trade involves transactions between two related parts of multinationals, according to the OECD. Multinational enterprises (hereafter MEs) exert much effort into utilizing organizational advantages to make global investments. MEs wish to minimize their tax burden. So MEs spend a fortune on economists and accountants to justify transfer prices that suit their tax needs. On the contrary, local governments are not prepared to cope with MEs' powerful financial instruments. Tax authorities in each country wish to ensure that the tax base of any ME is divided fairly. Thus, both tax authorities and MEs have a vested interest in the way in which a transfer price is determined, and this is why MEs' international transfer prices are at the center of disputes concerned with taxation. Transfer pricing issues and practices are sometimes difficult to control for regulators because the tax administration does not have enough staffs with the knowledge and resources necessary to understand them. The authors examine transfer pricing practices to provide relevant resources useful in designing tax incentives and regulation schemes for policy makers. This study focuses on identifying the relevant business and environmental factors that could influence the international transfer pricing of MEs. In this perspective, we empirically investigate how the management perception of related variables influences their choice of international transfer pricing methods. We believe that this research is particularly useful in the design of tax policy. Because it can concentrate on a few selected factors in consideration of the limited budget of the tax administration with assistance of this research. Data is composed of questionnaire responses from foreign firms in Korea with investment balances exceeding one million dollars in the end of 2004. We mailed questionnaires to 861 managers in charge of the accounting departments of each company, resulting in 121 valid responses. Seventy six percent of the sample firms are classified as small and medium sized enterprises with assets below 100 billion Korean won. Reviewing transfer pricing methods, cost-based transfer pricing is most popular showing that 60 firms have adopted it. The market-based method is used by 31 firms, and 13 firms have reported the resale-pricing method. Regarding the nationalities of foreign investors, the Japanese and the Americans constitute most of the sample. Logistic regressions have been performed for statistical analysis. The dependent variable is binary in that whether the method of international transfer pricing is a market-based method or a cost-based method. This type of binary classification is founded on the belief that the market-based method is evaluated as the relatively objective way of pricing compared with the cost-based methods. Cost-based pricing is assumed to give mangers flexibility in transfer pricing decisions. Therefore, local regulatory agencies are thought to prefer market-based pricing over cost-based pricing. Independent variables are composed of eight factors such as corporate tax rate, tariffs, relations with local tax authorities, tax audit, equity ratios of local investors, volume of internal trade, sales volume, and product life cycle. The first four variables are included in the model because taxation lies in the center of transfer pricing disputes. So identifying the impact of these variables in Korean business environments is much needed. Equity ratio is included to represent the interest of local partners. Volume of internal trade was sometimes employed in previous research to check the pricing behavior of managers, so we have followed these footsteps in this paper. Product life cycle is used as a surrogate of competition in local markets. Control variables are firm size and nationality of foreign investors. Firm size is controlled using dummy variables in that whether or not the specific firm is small and medium sized. This is because some researchers report that big firms show different behaviors compared with small and medium sized firms in transfer pricing. The other control variable is also expressed in dummy variable showing if the entrepreneur is the American or not. That's because some prior studies conclude that the American management style is different in that they limit branch manger's freedom of decision. Reviewing the statistical results, we have found that managers prefer the cost-based method over the market-based method as the importance of corporate taxes and tariffs increase. This result means that managers need flexibility to lessen the tax burden when they feel taxes are important. They also prefer the cost-based method as the product life cycle matures, which means that they support subsidiaries in local market competition using cost-based transfer pricing. On the contrary, as the relationship with local tax authorities becomes more important, managers prefer the market-based method. That is because market-based pricing is a better way to maintain good relations with the tax officials. Other variables like tax audit, volume of internal transactions, sales volume, and local equity ratio have shown only insignificant influence. Additionally, we have replaced two tax variables(corporate taxes and tariffs) with the data showing top marginal tax rate and mean tariff rates of each country, and have performed another regression to find if we could get different results compared with the former one. As a consequence, we have found something different on the part of mean tariffs, that shows only an insignificant influence on the dependent variable. We guess that each company in the sample pays tariffs with a specific rate applied only for one's own company, which could be located far from mean tariff rates. Therefore we have concluded we need a more detailed data that shows the tariffs of each company if we want to check the role of this variable. Considering that the present paper has heavily relied on questionnaires, an effort to build a reliable data base is needed for enhancing the research reliability.

Antipodal Structuralization Strategy of Character Appearing in : Based on Psychological Functions of MBTI Personality Types Theory (<배가본드>에 나타난 캐릭터의 대척적 구조화 전략: MBTI 성격유형론의 심리기능에 근거하여)

  • Yang, Se-Hyeok;Kim, Dae-Gwon
    • Cartoon and Animation Studies
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    • s.31
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    • pp.117-152
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    • 2013
  • is a comics that the original Yoshokawa Eiji's novel . Since the series started in 1998, it's epic that records the 54 million or more copies of the cumulative sales volume to 1.7 million unit volume average in the book, 34 are currently up to volume has been published. proceeds with narratives in a way of following naturally the personality of a character based on the rule of an author, which is 'people should be described as what they are'. Accordingly it features very unique characterizing. This study focused on the fact that numerous characters in maintain a structural balance through the establishment of a character composition in an antipodal relationship although those characters have strong personalities. In order to analyze the relationship of such characters, the study utilized as an analytic frame MBTI personality types theory which is a psychology test tool. First, the study inferred personality patterns as the temperamental characteristics of MBTI, and tried to analyze the antipodal character composition based on the combination of cognition and judgment which are assumably the most important functions. From this, the study was able to discover the following three structures applied to those characters. (1) The antipodism between Musasi, the main character and Kojiro, a mirror character becomes central to the work, (2) The antipodal relationship between their fosterers and the character playing the mentor's role extends the character attribute of Musasi and Kojiro. (3) The Yoshioka family was also established in the antipodal composition as a role of exchanging influences with Musasi and Kojiro. Through this, the study reached a conclusion that in the pairs of characters in contrast were established as if to reach a dialectic synthesis. As such, the antipodal structuralization of the character composition shown in is deemed to differentiate the inner sides of numerous unique characters; thereby make it possible to describe their inner sides in-depth. Finally, the following common context is found: works in the field of successful comics and animation in terms of criticism and performance are focused on characters. It is probably because their consumers are relatively very interested in those characters as the characters in comics or animation become differentiated from those of novels or movies. Subsequently, it is expected that the analyzed results of characterizing can be referred to during the production of contents by preparing the results as database.

A study on Development Process of Fish Aquaculture in Japan - Case by Seabream Aquaculture - (일본 어류 양식업의 발전과정과 산지교체에 관한 연구 : 참돔양식업을 사례로)

  • 송정헌
    • The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
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    • v.34 no.2
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    • pp.75-90
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    • 2003
  • When we think of fundamental problems of the aquaculture industry, there are several strict conditions, and consequently the aquaculture industry is forced to change. Fish aquaculture has a structural supply surplus in production, aggravation of fishing grounds, stagnant low price due to recent recession, and drastic change of distribution circumstances. It is requested for us to initiate discussion on such issue as “how fish aquaculture establishes its status in the coastal fishery\ulcorner, will fish aquaculture grow in the future\ulcorner, and if so “how it will be restructured\ulcorner” The above issues can be observed in the mariculture of yellow tail, sea scallop and eel. But there have not been studied concerning seabream even though the production is over 30% of the total production of fish aquaculture in resent and it occupied an important status in the fish aquaculture. The objectives of this study is to forecast the future movement of sea bream aquaculture. The first goal of the study is to contribute to managerial and economic studies on the aquaculture industry. The second goal is to identify the factors influencing the competition between production areas and to identify the mechanisms involved. This study will examine the competitive power in individual producing area, its behavior, and its compulsory factors based on case study. Producing areas will be categorized according to following parameters : distance to market and availability of transportation, natural environment, the time of formation of producing areas (leaderㆍfollower), major production items, scale of business and producing areas, degree of organization in production and sales. As a factor in shaping the production area of sea bream aquaculture, natural conditions especially the water temperature is very important. Sea bream shows more active feeding and faster growth in areas located where the water temperature does not go below 13∼14$^{\circ}C$ during the winter. Also fish aquaculture is constrained by the transporting distance. Aquacultured yellowtail is a mass-produced and a mass-distributed item. It is sold a unit of cage and transported by ship. On the other hand, sea bream is sold in small amount in markets and transported by truck; so, the transportation cost is higher than yellow tail. Aquacultured sea bream has different product characteristics due to transport distance. We need to study live fish and fresh fish markets separately. Live fish was the original product form of aquacultured sea bream. Transportation of live fish has more constraints than the transportation of fresh fish. Death rate and distance are highly correlated. In addition, loading capacity of live fish is less than fresh fish. In the case of a 10 ton truck, live fish can only be loaded up to 1.5 tons. But, fresh fish which can be placed in a box can be loaded up to 5 to 6 tons. Because of this characteristics, live fish requires closer location to consumption area than fresh fish. In the consumption markets, the size of fresh fish is mainly 0.8 to 2kg.Live fish usually goes through auction, and quality is graded. Main purchaser comes from many small-sized restaurants, so a relatively small farmer and distributer can sell it. Aquacultured sea bream has been transacted as a fresh fish in GMS ,since 1993 when the price plummeted. Economies of scale works in case of fresh fish. The characteristics of fresh fish is as follows : As a large scale demander, General Merchandise Stores are the main purchasers of sea bream and the size of the fish is around 1.3kg. It mainly goes through negotiation. Aquacultured sea bream has been established as a representative food in General Merchandise Stores. GMS require stable and mass supply, consistent size, and low price. And Distribution of fresh fish is undertook by the large scale distributers, which can satisfy requirements of GMS. The market share in Tokyo Central Wholesale Market shows Mie Pref. is dominating in live fish. And Ehime Pref. is dominating in fresh fish. Ehime Pref. showed remarkable growth in 1990s. At present, the dealings of live fish is decreasing. However, the dealings of fresh fish is increasing in Tokyo Central Wholesale Market. The price of live fish is decreasing more than one of fresh fish. Even though Ehime Pref. has an ideal natural environment for sea bream aquaculture, its entry into sea bream aquaculture was late, because it was located at a further distance to consumers than the competing producing areas. However, Ehime Pref. became the number one producing areas through the sales of fresh fish in the 1990s. The production volume is almost 3 times the production volume of Mie Pref. which is the number two production area. More conversion from yellow tail aquaculture to sea bream aquaculture is taking place in Ehime Pref., because Kagosima Pref. has a better natural environment for yellow tail aquaculture. Transportation is worse than Mie Pref., but this region as a far-flung producing area makes up by increasing the business scale. Ehime Pref. increases the market share for fresh fish by creating demand from GMS. Ehime Pref. has developed market strategies such as a quick return at a small profit, a stable and mass supply and standardization in size. Ehime Pref. increases the market power by the capital of a large scale commission agent. Secondly Mie Pref. is close to markets and composed of small scale farmers. Mie Pref. switched to sea bream aquaculture early, because of the price decrease in aquacultured yellou tail and natural environmental problems. Mie Pref. had not changed until 1993 when the price of the sea bream plummeted. Because it had better natural environment and transportation. Mie Pref. has a suitable water temperature range required for sea bream aquaculture. However, the price of live sea bream continued to decline due to excessive production and economic recession. As a consequence, small scale farmers are faced with a market price below the average production cost in 1993. In such kind of situation, the small-sized and inefficient manager in Mie Pref. was obliged to withdraw from sea bream aquaculture. Kumamoto Pref. is located further from market sites and has an unsuitable nature environmental condition required for sea bream aquaculture. Although Kumamoto Pref. is trying to convert to the puffer fish aquaculture which requires different rearing techniques, aquaculture technique for puffer fish is not established yet.

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An Empirical Investigation Into the Effect of Organizational Capabilities on Service Innovation in Knowledge Intensive Business Firms (지식서비스기업의 서비스 혁신에 영향을 미치는 조직의 역량에 관한 연구)

  • Yoon, Bo Sung;Kim, Yong Jin;Jin, Seung Hye
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.23 no.1
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    • pp.87-106
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    • 2013
  • In the service-oriented economy, knowledge and skills are considered core resources to secure competitive advantages and service innovation. Knowledge management capability, which facilitates to produce, share, accumulate and reuse knowledge, becomes as important as knowledge itself to create service value. Along with knowledge management capability, dynamic capability and operational capability are the key capabilities related to managing service delivery processes. Previous studies indicated that these three capabilities are related to service innovation. Although separately investigate the relationship between the three capabilities. The purpose of this study is 1) to define variables that have effects on service innovation including knowledge management capability, dynamic capability and operational capability, and 2) to empirically test to identify relationship among variables. In this study, knowledge management capability is defined as the capability to manage knowledge process. Dynamic capability is regarded as the firm's ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments. Operational capability refers to a high-level routine that, together with its implementing input flows, confers upon an organization's management a set of decision options for producing significant outputs of a particular type. The proposed research model was tested against the data collected through the survey method. The survey questionnaire was distributed to the managers who participated in an educational program for management consulting. Each individual who answered the questionnaire represented a knowledge based service firm. About 212 surveys questionnaires were sent via e-mail or directly delivered to respondents. The number of useable responses was 93. Measurement items were adapted from previous studies to reflect the characteristics of the industry each informant worked in. All measurement items were in, 5 point Likert scale with anchors ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). Out of 93 respondents, about 81% were male, 82% of respondents were in their 30s. In terms of jobs, managers were 39.78%, professions/technicians were 24.73%, researchers were 12.90%, and sales people were 10.75%. Most of respondents worked for medium size enterprises (47,31%) in their, less than 30 employees (46.24%) in their number of employees, and less than 10 million USD (65.59%) in terms of sales volume. To test the proposed research model, structural equation modeling (SEM) technique (SPSS 16.0 and AMOS version 5) was used. We found that the three organizational capabilities have influence on service innovation directly or indirectly. Knowledge management capability directly affects dynamic capability and service innovation but indirectly affect operational capability through dynamic capability. Dynamic capability has no direct impact on service innovation, but influence service innovation indirectly through operational capability. Operational capability was found to positively affect service innovation. In sum, three organizational capabilities (knowledge management capability, dynamic capability and operational capability) need to be strategically managed at firm level, because organizational capabilities are significantly related to service innovation. An interesting result is that dynamic capability has a positive effect on service innovation only indirectly through operational capability. This result indicates that service innovation might have a characteristics similar to process innovation rather than product orientation. The results also show that organizational capabilities are inter-correlated to influence each other. Dynamic capability enables effective resource management, arrangement, and integration. Through these dynamic capability affected activities, strategic agility and responsibility get strength. Knowledge management capability intensify dynamic capability and service innovation. Knowledge management capability is the basis of dynamic capability as well. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed further in the conclusion section.

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A Study on the Start-up and Growth Business Model of Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturing Enterprises: Hyunsung Techno (제조기업의 창업과 성장의 비즈니스 모델 연구: 현성테크노)

  • Choi, In-Hyok;Kim, Do-Yeon
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.14 no.6
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    • pp.103-117
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    • 2019
  • Under the uncertainties and the consequent turmoils of the IMF financial crisis in Korea, Hyunsung Techno was founded in 1997 on the basis of automobile press molding which is critical for the quality of automobile. Ever since, Hyunsung Techno has grown rapidly based on the domestic market; however, gradually, it had faced a stalemate in terms of the saturation, on the supply side and the growth limit, on the demand side, of the domestic molding market. Accordingly, Hyunsung pushed for a strategy to localize overseas markets and a new acquisition strategy instead of resting on the domestic mold industry's growth, and the success of these strategies enabled it to leap forward into a global company with five companies including affiliates and 70 billion won in sales. The main reason why Hyunsung Techno evolved from a small and medium-sized manufacturing company into a global businesses is due to the success of Boa Constrictor M&A strategy. Its acquisition strategy is not just a successful case of any acquisition, but a rare, maybe the first domestic case of a successful acquisition of a primary supplier by a secondary supplier. Through the success of this strategy, Hyunsung Techno has achieved a continuous growth of businesses, an increase in sales volume, and expansion into new businesses. And on top of that, this achievements is leading it to be a global conglomerate In this study, Hyunsung Techno's success strategy, which is transformed from a small domestic manufacturing company into a global enterprise, was analyzed in detail with its development stages divided into start-up, overseas expansion, acquisitions, and business diversification. Eventually, this case study is meant to offer strategic implications for other small and medium-sized businesses under the current, gloomy economy of low or zero growth of today.

A Study on Food Service Franchise Location Factors and Quality of Service Factors, The Impact on Customer Satisfaction (외식 프랜차이즈 입지요건과 서비스 품질 요인이 고객만족에 미치는 영향)

  • Kim, Jo In Seog;Cho, Kyu Youn;An, Sang
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.11 no.5
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    • pp.77-90
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    • 2016
  • This study is to examine the importance of site selection and service quality in franchise business as food service franchise became one of the fastest-growing service industries today. The chief finding of this study is as follows: First, a survey in locational and service quality factors affecting food service franchise shows that responders are more concerned with hygiene and visibility of the store than proximity and transportation advantages which reflects low statistical significance, thus the distance did not seem to be a big problem for the responders in the context that they mostly visit nearby food franchise. Second, the examination of the influence by the service quality factors and customer satisfaction shows significant positive relation with customer response, speed and accuracy, and accuracy factors which reveals that the responders prefer prompt response and swift judgment toward the customer's needs and expectations, professional knowledge services to the credibility factors in which little correlation with the customer satisfaction were found. Third, the examination of the influence by the service quality factors, locational factors, and re-visit reveals that customer response and specialty showed statistically significant correlation with intention of WOM (Word of Mouth) and revisit, which suggests that swift judgment and response toward the customer's needs and expectations, professional knowledge services is of great importance to both customer satisfaction and revisit. The study on the aspects of locational and service quality factors affecting franchise industry's customer satisfaction was conducted as above, an investigation in both factors' influence on the customer satisfaction was made, and based on the results of the analysis, this research seeks an optimal operation strategy of a franchise business. Food service franchise are relatively very competent to business adminstration and reaction capability to consumption changes due to the already established market, and there are stores springing up everywhere inspired by the founders who are too confident of their success in the franchise business. However, it is necessary for the franchise beginners to figure out a zone oriented, regular customer oriented business strategy than just complying with the head office manual. Owing to an increasing trend of opening medium to large sized stores and investments in the wake of converting to multiple business type Korean food franchise, there is growing need to set up new concept of store development and operational management strategy in order to overcome the excessive competition and limited sales volume of the old-fashioned small sized, small capital franchise stores. Furthermore, as most business category of food service franchise serve very similar menus, from a product differentiation point of view, it is required to map out flexible sales concept including the adoption of competitive and low-price strategy. In conclusion, as is shown in the analytical research, the customers' optimal choice fluctuate over their preferences like customer convenience and circumstances rather than insisting on specific brand, thus it will be necessary for the franchise stores to draw up aggressive strategy and planning in running food service franchise to maximize their profits.

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Region-wide Road Transport CO2 Emission Inventory (지역단위 도로교통 탄소배출 인벤토리구축 방법론)

  • Shin, Yong Eun;Ko, Kwang Hyee
    • KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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    • v.33 no.1
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    • pp.297-304
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    • 2013
  • Due to its excessive $CO_2$ emissions, road transport sector becomes a target for emission reduction strategies. Although precise and reliable emissions inventories are necessary for evaluating plans and strategies, developing the region-wide inventory is a difficult task mainly because of a lack of data including travel patterns and modal volumes in the reginonal context. Most existing inventory methodologies employ fuel sale data within the target region, which ignores actual regional traffic patterns and thus not suited to its geographical context. To overcome these problems, this study develops region-wide $CO_2$ emissions inventory methodology by utilizing the Korea Transport DB (KTDB). KTDB provides a number of useful information and data, such as road network with which one can identify in and out trips over the entire region, traffic volumes of various modes, distance of travel, travel speed and so on. A model of equations that allow the computation of volume of $CO_2$ emitting from the road transport activities within the target region is developed. Using the model, numerical analyses are performed for the case of Busan Metropolitan City to demonstrate the applicability of the developed model. This study is indeed exploratory in the sense that using the existing data, it develops the $CO_2$ emissions inventory methodology which can produce better results than those from conventional fuel sales methodology. This study also suggests further reresarch directions to develop more refined methodologies in region-wide basis.

Estimating the Reliability of Commercial Products in a Military Operational Environment Utilizing Field Data (사용현장 데이터를 이용한 군 운용 환경에서의 상용품목 신뢰도 예측)

  • Lim, Tae-Jin;Park, Joon-Soo;Ko, Byoung-Sung;Sung, In-Chul;Cho, Moon-Soo;Kim, Sung-Chul
    • Journal of the military operations research society of Korea
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    • v.36 no.1
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    • pp.77-90
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    • 2010
  • Adapting commercial equipments to military operations may provide the advantage of low cost, reduced acquisition time, and technology advancement. On the other hand, it may also offer the opportunity for a reliability and logistics risk because commercial products, standards, and practices may not meet military requirements. In addition to this, commercial vendors have little experience in providing the technical data required to support military deployment logistics. As more companies are equipped with data aquisition systems for their products, considerable amount of field warranty data has been accumulated. Typically, the field data for a given product comprise with the sales volume and the number of the claims for each period. Three types of product data are considered in this study: military designed equipment operating in a military environment, commercial equipment operating in a military environment, and commercial equipment operating in a commercial environment. We construct a estimation model for each type of data and propose an reliability transform method from a commercial environment to a military environment. Parametric methods for estimating the product reliability are proposed based on maximum likelihood criteria and least square criteria. Then a reliability transform procedure for handling different types of data is proposed in a consistent fashion. A case study is investigated to characterize our model based on a real field warranty data set.