Although the internet community(IC) has been recognized as an increasingly important for better understanding and relationships with customers, few evidence has been accumulated what factors influence IC success. This study posits the characteristics and individual characteristics as key determinants of IC success, and related hypotheses were tested using 230 data. Using user loyalty as a surrogate of IC success, this study found that the three key characteristics of IC-focus, interactivity, and cohesion levels-significantly influence the community user's loyalty. In addition, individual characteristics including personal value propositions(e.g, challenge/ambitious value, economic/rational value) and absorption tendency(e.g., flow level) affect their loyalty levels. This study also found that the determinents of IC user's loyalty defer with different types of community such as entertainment, relationships, and information/opinion sharing communities. These findings are hopefully helpful for the successful and contingent management of IC buildings and operations.

This paper proposes an analysis methodology that enables the establishment of improved customer satisfaction via decision support system using customer satisfaction index data and customer database of a company. The proposed methodology establishes rational future goal of a company by applying DEA, finds potential customers which correspond to demographic features of the previous target group, and improve quality factors which distinguish the quality-satisfaction-group from the quality-dissatisfaction-group through the use of machine learning tools, SOM and C4.5. Finally, we illustrate the effectiveness of our research methodology using actual data of a camera company.

Economists have advocated that the privatization and market competitiveness improve the firm's productivity and eventually its service quality. However, the previous researches did not provide the empirical results enough to prove that the privatization and competitiveness do improve the service quality. In this paper, we conducted an empirical research to find whether the privatization and competition induces the quality of service. The mobile telecommunication industry was chosen since it went through bringing the privatization and increasing the competition along with a high attention. We found that the privatization and competition itself does not guarantee the quality of mobile telecommunication service. It is the intensity of competition that improves the mobile telecommunication service quality. The service quality depends mainly on the competitor's competence, i.e. the intensity of competition rather than the competition itself. In sum, when we want to improve the service quality as well as the productivity, we had better increase the intensity of competition by allowing many new strong entries.

This study was conducted to analyze Korean companie's perception in IT investment cost-benefit analysis(CBA), and to see if various user group's perception is different. Literature was reviewed to classify and define variables in IT CBA, and questionnaire was distributed to CEOs, CIOs, IT managers, and general managers in Korean companies. Respondent's priority ranking in IT CBA was shown to be tangible benefit, direct cost/intangible benefit, and indirect cost/risk. Data analysis showed that Korean companie's actual practice in CBA was generally aligned with their perception. User group's(Executives vs. mangers, and IT managers vs. general managers) perception was not shown to be statistically different. Survey result also showed that IT CBA was not well practiced in the companies although respondents perceive the analysis very important. These findings suggest that more education and practical experience is needed for Korean companies to perform IT CBA.

Though much attention has been paid to offer various multimedia services by many online service providers, the study on consumer behavior of online information service users are yet to be further explored in various aspects. This study develops a mathematical model for analyzing online consumer's usage patterns, contrasted to the existing media selection theory and flow concept about usage behavior of information services. We demonstrated using some case examples that online information consumption can be viewed not only as a cognitive behavior interacting with online media, but also as an economically rational behavior depending on consumer's perceived cost and time spending. The results obtained in this paper will surely serve as a theoretical foundation for justifying the consumer's behavior and WTP (willingness to pay) for various online contents consumption empirically.

As E-commerce is getting more popular, consumers faces more decision complexity than ever before because they can get greater alternative choices. Futhermore, consumers are sometimes motivated to expand effort in making a good decision in the case of relatively important and non-routine decison, such as buying a house or car. Thus, a buying decision support function is required to help consumers make decisions that have the greatest effects on consumer's lives. We develop a propotype system of a web-based buying decision support system for a cyber shopping mall. A buying decision of a consumer is a multi-attribute decision problem and is supported using analytic hierarchy process model. The system was implemented using HTML, Java, Java applet, JSP.

Trust has been identified as a key component in many e-Commerce studies. The purpose of this study is to find out which factors play a major role in building trust and how the built-up trust affect consumer's purchase intention in Internet used-car transactions. Based on the information asymmetry, TAM(Technology Acceptance Model), and the trust theory, our research model includes factors such as a buyer's propensity-to-trust, institutional characteristics(inspection and warranty policy), word-of-mouth referral, perceived size, and perceived benefits as independent variables. The model also includes trust as a mediate variable, intention to purchase as a dependent variable and perceived quality risk as a moderate variable. The research model is tested by analyzing 787 sample data gathered from Internet used-car transaction sites. The result shows that the trust has significant effects on the online purchase intention, and institutional characteristics has been identified as the most significant factor for the trust of Internet used-car sites. The independent factors influencing trust vary depending on the level of perceived quality risk. For users who perceive the quality risk low, the perceived benefits explain a little portion of the purchase intention. However, those who perceive quality risk high would purchase used-cars only when they have trust on the Internet sites, indicating that trust play an important role as a mediate variable. This study suggests that enhancing the trust in Internet used-car sites is important to increase online transactions.

Open Decision Support System(DSS) is an automated and transparent system that is built to be shared both within and across organizations. The open DSS has been thought to be a set of decision components that are communicating through Web protocols. These characteristics intuitively invite the Web services concepts, which are currently one of the new trends in network-based business services. However, web services still are not active enough to be autonomous, and to provide for composing functionalities. These lead to the motivation on building a sophisticated web service to contain these features and to utilize web services on behalf of the user. This paper aims to propose a new concept of Meta Web Service, a web service-based open DSS. Decision modules in a dynamic and open DSS can be viewed as a web service. The Meta Web Service understands the users problem statement with ontology, performs web service discovery, web service composition, and automatically generates codes for composite web service execution. A prototype of example web service has been developed to show the feasibility of the proposed idea.

There have been quite many studies to identify factors affecting successful implementation of EDI systems. However, previous studies have investigated influencing factors independently. Given the complexity involved in the implementation of EDI systems, it might be quite necessary to investigate the interaction effects between influencing factors. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the interaction effects of organizational characteristics as contextual variables on the relationship between managerial characteristics and EDI implementation. Analysis of 202 responses of survey questionnaire indicates the following: 1) Education/training and top management support has positive effect on the successful EDI implementation. 2) The degree of decentralization has strong, and management risk position has mild moderating effect on the relationship between managerial characteristics and EDI implementation. 3) The degree of formalization and organizational size have no moderating effect. 4) The subgroup analysis, conducted to determine the exact nature of interaction effect, reveals that the relationship between managerial characteristics and EDI implementation is significantly stronger with a high level of decentralization or management risk position than with a low level.

Based on the IS literature on software project risk management, we developed an integrated model to investigate the risk factors and risk management factors in project development. We also analyzed the interrelation between project risk and project risk management. The questionaries are collected from 83 project leaders. We tested reliability and validity of the measure and analyzed the obtained data. The results support our risk-based hypothesis that shows the importance of risk management in reducing project risks and improving performance of project and process.