• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.315-322
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• 2008

Objectives : This study was performed to explore customer royalty and the related factors. Methods : 900 households(a 1% sample) were randomly selected from the total population of K city located in Kangwon province. An interview survey was performed with using a structured questionnaire for the subjects(923 persons) who had used medical service during the year before the survey, and the survey was done September, 2002. Results : When comparing the relating factors related with customer royalty according to the sociodemographic characteristics, the older group showed a significantly higher level of recognition for service quality, service reputation, internal customers' attitudes and switching cost. The lower income group showed a higher level of recognition for service quality, service image and switching cost. The lower educated group showed a higher level of recognition for service reputation, service image and internal customers' attitudes. The higher educated group showed a higher level of recognition for perceived risk, and seeking variety. In addition, the expert group or the service and manufacturing workers group showed a higher level of recognition for service involvement. On multiple regression analysis, internal customers' attitudes, service image, service reputation, service quality, switching cost, and substitutability showed significant relations with customer loyalty. Conclusions : This study showed that customer loyalty was significantly influenced by service factors like internal customers' attitudes, service image, service reputation, and service quality, and by market factors like switching cost, and substitutability. The results of this study can be used as a baseline for developing strategies to create and keep customers with high loyalty.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.490-501
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• 2018

Rapid technological innovation led by digitization has significantly changed the business of digital content goods, and has led to the emergence of new forms of services, such as music streaming. However, whether the streaming service is a threat to the traditional downloading service is still under debate. In this study, we examine whether music downloading is a substitute for or a complement to music streaming by investigating the moderating effects of LTE technology penetration. Using a unique dataset on the online music market from a dominant music platform in Korea, we found that music downloading services are complementary to music streaming services, but this complementary relationship is significantly and positively moderated by the introduction of LTE technology.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.727-745
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• 2015

This paper analyzes the firms' optimization behavior in response to rising demand for non-priced renewable energy in the manufacturing industries by using an input distance function. The annual estimates of the shadow price of renewable energy is derived and the trend of its shadow price over time is analyzed. The degree of substitution of renewable energy for fossil-fuels is examined. The input-based Malmquist productivity index, defined as a composite of the technical efficiency and technical change measures, is measured. The contribution of renewable energy input growth to the Malmquist index is analyzed. Empirical results indicate that the shadow price of renewable energy declined at an average annual rate of 17% over the period 1992-2012. Substitutability between renewable energy and fossil-fuels was limited. On average, a 1% increase in renewable energy would decrease Malmquist index by 0.04% per year.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.10
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• pp.47-57
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• 2016

Purpose - This study's purpose is to investigate the market structure of the Korean duty free shop industry that has received recent attention from researchers and practitioners. By raising the question of whether or not the Korean duty free shop industry is unequivocally monopolistic, a wider viewpoint is provided. The study seeks to offer insights and managerial implications for marketers and policy makers who are in charge of regulating major Korean duty free shops. Research design, data, and methodology - The authors use secondary data from various sources, including Korea Customs Service and the Moodie Report, to investigate the structure of the duty free shop industry of Korea. Based on several theories, they present various criteria and statistical evidence such as K-firm concentration ratio, HHI, consumer substitutability, excess profit, and marketing costs. Results - In terms of consumer substitutability, it is difficult to confirm whether or not the Korean duty free shop industry is monopolistic. Notwithstanding monopoly characteristics in terms of market share, neither the company Lotte nor Shilla appear to have market dominating power. It is not easy for either of them to control prices or to achieve a much lower operational profit ratio due to a dominant bargaining power. Moreover, the license is not an economic rent. In this situation, it is not easy for these companies to obtain an excessive profit. Conclusions - Considering that most global duty free shops are trying to go upscale to improve bargaining power, it does not seem likely that rigid regulations are needed in the industry. Even though the Korean duty free industry ostensibly has a monopolistic structure, government and policy-makers should look beyond the surface. They should take global and other reasonable criteria into consideration when they establish or change regulation policies. Thorough understanding and appropriate support are needed for the Korean duty free shop industry. Additionally, duty free shops should position themselves as global companies struggling against unlimited international competition, rather than Korean domestic companies. At the same time, they need to give customers appropriate information about the benefits they provide.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.427-452
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• 2003

Demand analyses often assume perfect substitution and some level of aggregation before analysis and data collection. Earlier works on this subject are carried out in the context of ordinary demand systems. However, perfect substitution is a degenerate special case in the systems and it is much more easily handled in a system of marginal value functions and no previous analysis has used the marginal value functions to test for perfect substitution and make possible aggregation with prior restrictions. In this article, we present the empirical results on a system of marginal value functions in fisheries and pose testable results of perfect substitution and aggregation. The contribution of this article is new establishment of a set of restrictions implying perfect substitutability among all commodities and the application to the problem of commodity aggregate. A system of marginal value functions is estimated in fisheries and its implication of perfect substitution is reasonably drawn.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.17-23
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• 1995

To assess preliminarily the contamination potential of water resources including groundwater owing to the hydrogeological characteristics of landfill site and the potential impact to humans and animals through contamination of water resources by leachate, "Landfill Site Preliminary Assessment Model(LASPAS)" was contrived. LASPAS could help them proritization of remediation of landfil sites by the convenient and relatively simple evaluation method of landfill site features. LASPAS was designd to aliot numerical ratings to landfill site related factors undermentioned; 1) hydrogeological factors such as hydraulic conductivity of aquifer, thickness of confining layer over aquifer, topographical slope, net recharge, and subsurface containment 2) water resources contamination factors of impacts on receptors such as proximity to drinking water supply, substitutability of drinking water supply, type of use of water resources, known impact on drinking water supply, and flood potential.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.55-75
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• 2011

Scant attention has been given to analyzing how knowledge sourcing strategies affect firm performance in SMEs and what are the differences between SMEs and large firms in the patterns of knowledge sourcing strategies adoption. This study attempts to advance the current literature by examining the impact of knowledge sourcing strategies on SMEs performance. The empirical segment of our work is based on data on knowledge sourcing strategies of SMEs and organizational performance from a sample of 166 Korean firms. Our results indicate knowledge sourcing adoption patterns of SMEs are different from large firms. In addition, the results confirm that substitutability between internal- and external-oriented, person- and external-oriented sourcing strategies. This study sheds new light on knowledge management (KM) research by identifying the relationship between knowledge sourcing strategies and SMEs performance.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.167-197
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• 2017

I build a small open economy (SOE) dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to investigate the effect of a heterogeneous wage contract between regular and temporary workers on a macroeconomic volatility in a financially fragile economy. The imperfect financial market condition is captured by a quadratic financial adjustment cost for borrowing foreign assets, and the labor market friction is captured by a Nash bargaining process which is only available to the regular workers when they negotiate their wages with the firms while the temporary workers are given their wage which simply equals the marginal cost. As a result of impulse responsesto a domestic productivity shock, the higher elasticity of substitution between two types of workers and the lower weight on the regular workers in the firm's production process induce the higher volatilities in most variables. This is reasoned that the higher substitutability creates more volatile wage determination process while the lower share of the regular workers weakens their Nash bargaining power in the contract process.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.7-17
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• 2017

Despite various types of online social networks having different topological and functional characteristics, the kinds of online social networks considered in social recommendations are highly restricted. The pervasiveness of social networks has brought scholarly attention to expanding the scope of social recommendations into more diverse and less explored types of online social networks. As a preliminary attempt, this study examined the information-sharing patterns of a new type of online social network - unilateral (directed) network - and assessed the feasibility of the network as a useful information source. Specifically, this study mainly focused on the presence of shared interests in unilateral networks, because the shared information is the inevitable condition for utilizing the networks as a feasible source of personalized recommendations. As the results, we discovered that user pairs with direct and distant links shared significantly more similar information than the other non-connected pairs. Individual users' social properties were also significantly correlated with the degree of their information similarity with social connections. We also found the substitutability of online social networks for the top cohorts anonymously chosen by the collaborative filtering algorithm.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.447-456
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• 2010

Asymmetric regulation as applied to mobile termination rates refers to regulatory arrangements in which different mobile operators charge different termination rates, even though the services provided are essentially identical. The asymmetric regulation has been frequently used as a regulatory tool to support new entrants to a mobile market. This paper examines the economic effects of asymmetric regulation of mobile termination rates using a theoretical model and its simulation. The result shows that when there is no noticeable difference in brand loyalty between mobile operators with the high degree of substitutability between services provided by mobile operators, and the costs of new entrants are low, a reduction in the asymmetry of mobile access prices results in an enhancement of consumer welfare. These findings provide positive evidence for the argument that in certain situations asymmetric pricing of mobile access services may be counterproductive for consumer welfare.