• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.55-75
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• 1992

At the outset of import liberalization, most economists expected a significant drop in the prices of domestic goods that faced foreign competition. However, it is now generally acknowledge that a significant drop in prices of those goods has not occurred. A common claim is that the prices did not drop significantly because the major importers of many imported goods were also the domestic producers of competing goods. The objective of this paper is to analyze the welfare effect of importation by domestic firms that produce competing goods, to identify the factors that facilitate such business practices, and to formulate a policy that could improve the welfare. We proved that importation by competing domestic firms definitely raises the prices of both imported and domestic goods compared to the situation where foreign goods are imported by non-producers, ceteris paribus. The intuition behind this result is that since a producer-importer is essentially a cartel, its overall profit maximization requires reduced competition between the products that it sells. On the other hand, if a producer-importer is more efficient at distrinbution than a simple importer, the comparison between the two cases is a priori indeterminate. We also find that the industries in which domestic producers are actively involved in importing competing goods are the ones in which the distribution channels are tightly controlled by importer-producers. This finding suggests that exclusive dealing contracts, which work as an entry barrier, may be the source of importing by domestic producers. We argue that in a country such as Korea, where financial market is highly incomplete, tight control of the distribution channels by oligopolistic manufacturers is likely to be an effective entry barrier that leads to importing by domestic producers of similar goods. We further argue that seemingly superior distribution costs of importer-producers is likely to be a result of market foreclosure which would disappear once the entry barrier of exclusive dealing contracts is removed. Above findings suggest that market imperfections are the source of importation by domestic competitors, which in turn constitutes a market imperfection in itself and reduces consumer welfare. As potential remedies, we considered three alternatives; direct price control by the government over the imported goods sold by major domestic producers, regulation of trade itself between major producers, and regulation of exclusive dealing contracts. For reasons both theoretical and pratical, we find that the last alternative is the most attrative. Prohibiting exclusive contracts between manufacturers and dealers in industries where exclusive dealing contracts are a significant entry barrier is expected to break up the importer-producer cartel and improve the welfare.

• Korean Journal of Poultry Science
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.105-127
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• 1989

Although poultry industry in Japan has been much developed in recent years, it still needs to be developed , compared with developed countries. Since the poultry market in Korea is expected to be opened in the near future it is necessary to maximize the Productivity to reduce the production costs and to develop the scientific, technologies and management organization systems for the improvement of the quality in poultry production. Followings ale the summary of poultry industry in Japan. 1. Poultry industry in Japan is almost specized and commercialized and its management system is ： integrated, cooperative and developed to industrialized intensive style. Therefore, they have competitive power in the international poultry markets. 2. Average egg weight is 48-50g per day (Max. 54g) and feed requirement is 2. 1-2. 3. 3. The management organization system is specialized and farmers in small scale form complex and farmers in large scale are integrated.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.123-138
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• 2017

Since the stock market is driven by the expectation of traders, studies have been conducted to predict stock price movements through analysis of various sources of text data. In order to predict stock price movements, research has been conducted not only on the relationship between text data and fluctuations in stock prices, but also on the trading stocks based on news articles and social media responses. Studies that predict the movements of stock prices have also applied classification algorithms with constructing term-document matrix in the same way as other text mining approaches. Because the document contains a lot of words, it is better to select words that contribute more for building a term-document matrix. Based on the frequency of words, words that show too little frequency or importance are removed. It also selects words according to their contribution by measuring the degree to which a word contributes to correctly classifying a document. The basic idea of constructing a term-document matrix was to collect all the documents to be analyzed and to select and use the words that have an influence on the classification. In this study, we analyze the documents for each individual item and select the words that are irrelevant for all categories as neutral words. We extract the words around the selected neutral word and use it to generate the term-document matrix. The neutral word itself starts with the idea that the stock movement is less related to the existence of the neutral words, and that the surrounding words of the neutral word are more likely to affect the stock price movements. And apply it to the algorithm that classifies the stock price fluctuations with the generated term-document matrix. In this study, we firstly removed stop words and selected neutral words for each stock. And we used a method to exclude words that are included in news articles for other stocks among the selected words. Through the online news portal, we collected four months of news articles on the top 10 market cap stocks. We split the news articles into 3 month news data as training data and apply the remaining one month news articles to the model to predict the stock price movements of the next day. We used SVM, Boosting and Random Forest for building models and predicting the movements of stock prices. The stock market opened for four months (2016/02/01 ~ 2016/05/31) for a total of 80 days, using the initial 60 days as a training set and the remaining 20 days as a test set. The proposed word - based algorithm in this study showed better classification performance than the word selection method based on sparsity. This study predicted stock price volatility by collecting and analyzing news articles of the top 10 stocks in market cap. We used the term - document matrix based classification model to estimate the stock price fluctuations and compared the performance of the existing sparse - based word extraction method and the suggested method of removing words from the term - document matrix. The suggested method differs from the word extraction method in that it uses not only the news articles for the corresponding stock but also other news items to determine the words to extract. In other words, it removed not only the words that appeared in all the increase and decrease but also the words that appeared common in the news for other stocks. When the prediction accuracy was compared, the suggested method showed higher accuracy. The limitation of this study is that the stock price prediction was set up to classify the rise and fall, and the experiment was conducted only for the top ten stocks. The 10 stocks used in the experiment do not represent the entire stock market. In addition, it is difficult to show the investment performance because stock price fluctuation and profit rate may be different. Therefore, it is necessary to study the research using more stocks and the yield prediction through trading simulation.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.163-199
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• 2010

A frequent flyer program is a loyalty program offered by many airlines. Typically, airline customers enrolled in the program accumulate frequent flyer miles corresponding to the distance flown on that airline or its partners. There are other ways to accumulate miles. In recent years, more miles were awarded for using co-branded credit and debit cards than for air travel. Acquired miles can be redeemed for free air travel; for other goods or services, such as travel class upgrades, airport lounge access or priority bookings. The first modern frequent flyer program was created Texas International Airlines in 1979. This program was also adopted in Korean Air in 1984. Since then, the mileage programs have grown enormously. As of June 2009, the total member of two national airlines in Korea had been over thirty million. However, accumulated miles could be burden of airlines, because the korean corporations should record the annual financial report the accumulate mileage on a liability account by 'the international financial report standards(IFRS)' next year. The korean airlines need to minimize the accumulated miles, so that for instance Korean Airlines SKYPASS-miles expire 5 years after being earned. It means that miles earned on or after July 2008 will expire after five years if unredeemed. Thus, this paper attempt to analyze the unfairness of the mileage rules of korean airlines by examining a specific portion of the conditions relating to consumer protection, because many mileage users has difficulties using mileage programs and complained the amendment of the mileage rules. In conclusion, the contemporary mileage rules in Korea are rather unsatisfactory, because airlines is not only recognizing a mileage into a kind of benefit but also denying inheritance of mileage and the legal nature of mileage as a property right. It is necessary to amend relevant mileage rules in view of consumer protection, because air mileage is not simple benefit but a right of mileage user.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-31
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• 2007

While trust and commitment are core mediating variables for the purpose of maintaining the long-term relationship, in the context of the characteristics of company and the relationship performance of its members, there have been limited studies which explore as to how each of the dimensions has affects differently. The basic purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between an automobile manufacturer and its agencies. The main purpose of this study is to examine how each different dimension of trust and commitment on the automobile manufacturer has different mediating effects between the characteristics of company(organization characteristics, relationship characteristics) and relationship performance perceived by its agents. Another purpose is to investigate the mechanism by which the relationship performance of the agencies is improved. An empirical study surveying 115 sales office managers at a leading automobile manufacturer in Korea was conducted. An analysis of the collected data indicates that while the characteristics of company have a positive influence on the agencies' relational performance through the mediating role of both trust of benevolence and commitment, agencies' trust of their headquarter's benevolence has a different influence on the dimensions of commitment. Finally, the authors discussed some theoretical contributions and managerial implications. And then, they presented limitations of this study and the future research directions.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.51-79
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• 2011

Korea has accomplished the establishment of the National Single Window for Paperless Trade. Since 1991, it has developed Trade Automation Service System based on EDI technology. In 2003, Korean government and private sectors jointly began to set up National Paperless Trade Service( e-Trade Service) as one of the e-government projects. In 2008, they commenced the uTradeHub Service which was equipped with Internet based e-B/L and e-Nego service systems for the first time in the world To facilitate the service Korea amended its e-Trade facilitation Act and Law by 2007. At the end of 2011, Korea historically recorded its trade volume of 1 trillion US dollars and joined '$1 trillion trade club' as the 9the member country since the country had started international trade less than five decades ago. A rolling out of the e-B/L and e-Nego service will 'ally reduce the transaction costs of trading businesses and accelerate the activation e-trade services. The purposes of the study are to examine 'e-B/L Korea' service and its facilitation strategies as well as identify obstacles to utilize the 'e-B/L Korea' service. The paper reviewed and analyzed Korea's Paperless trade system and distinctive characteristics of the 'e-B/L Korea Service. Parts of the fOWld distinctive characteristics of the Korea's e-B/L service are as follows; It is well equiped with IT and legal system. It also has more that 30,000 potential users who are already uTradeHub service users. The paper indicated several weaknesses of the current system such as global KPI issues, circulation of the electronic documents not only in the domestic market but also among economies, development of the electronic Bill of Exchange. As resolution measures, the paper recommended the introduction of mutual recognition system of PKI among trade partner counties, setting up e-trade solution for small and medium companies, and special attention to raise users' awareness of the e-B/L service.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.237-262
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• 2022

There has been a growing interest in IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) due to the profitable returns that IPO stocks can offer to investors. However, IPOs can be speculative investments that may involve substantial risk as well because shares tend to be volatile, and the supply of IPO shares is often highly limited. Therefore, it is crucially important that IPO investors are well informed of the issuing firms and the market before deciding whether to invest or not. Unlike institutional investors, individual investors are at a disadvantage since there are few opportunities for individuals to obtain information on the IPOs. In this regard, the purpose of this study is to provide individual investors with the information they may consider when making an IPO investment decision. This study presents a model that uses machine learning and text analysis to predict whether an IPO stock price would move up or down after the first 5 trading days. Our sample includes 691 Korean IPOs from June 2009 to December 2020. The input variables for the prediction are three tone variables created from IPO prospectuses and quantitative variables that are either firm-specific, issue-specific, or market-specific. The three prospectus tone variables indicate the percentage of positive, neutral, and negative sentences in a prospectus, respectively. We considered only the sentences in the Risk Factors section of a prospectus for the tone analysis in this study. All sentences were classified into 'positive', 'neutral', and 'negative' via text analysis using TF-IDF (Term Frequency - Inverse Document Frequency). Measuring the tone of each sentence was conducted by machine learning instead of a lexicon-based approach due to the lack of sentiment dictionaries suitable for Korean text analysis in the context of finance. For this reason, the training set was created by randomly selecting 10% of the sentences from each prospectus, and the sentence classification task on the training set was performed after reading each sentence in person. Then, based on the training set, a Support Vector Machine model was utilized to predict the tone of sentences in the test set. Finally, the machine learning model calculated the percentages of positive, neutral, and negative sentences in each prospectus. To predict the price movement of an IPO stock, four different machine learning techniques were applied: Logistic Regression, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and Artificial Neural Network. According to the results, models that use quantitative variables using technical analysis and prospectus tone variables together show higher accuracy than models that use only quantitative variables. More specifically, the prediction accuracy was improved by 1.45% points in the Random Forest model, 4.34% points in the Artificial Neural Network model, and 5.07% points in the Support Vector Machine model. After testing the performance of these machine learning techniques, the Artificial Neural Network model using both quantitative variables and prospectus tone variables was the model with the highest prediction accuracy rate, which was 61.59%. The results indicate that the tone of a prospectus is a significant factor in predicting the price movement of an IPO stock. In addition, the McNemar test was used to verify the statistically significant difference between the models. The model using only quantitative variables and the model using both the quantitative variables and the prospectus tone variables were compared, and it was confirmed that the predictive performance improved significantly at a 1% significance level.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.17-27
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• 2011

As the world becomes more globalized, business competition becomes fiercer, while consumers' needs for less expensive quality products are on the increase. Business operations make an effort to secure a competitive edge in costs and services, and the logistics industry, that is, the industry operating the storing and transporting of goods, once thought to be an expense, begins to be considered as the third cash cow, a source of new income. Logistics centers are central to storage, loading and unloading of deliveries, packaging operations, and dispensing goods' information. As hubs for various deliveries, they also serve as a core infrastructure to smoothly coordinate manufacturing and selling, using varied information and operation systems. Logistics centers are increasingly on the rise as centers of business supply activities, growing beyond their previous role of primarily storing goods. They are no longer just facilities; they have become logistics strongholds that encompass various features from demand forecast to the regulation of supply, manufacturing, and sales by realizing SCM, taking into account marketability and the operation of service and products. However, despite these changes in logistics operations, some centers have been unable to shed their past roles as warehouses. For the continuous development of logistics centers, various measures would be needed, including a revision of current supporting policies, formulating effective management plans, and establishing systematic standards for founding, managing, and controlling logistics centers. To this end, the research explored previous studies on the use and effectiveness of logistics centers. From a theoretical perspective, an evaluation of the overall introduction, purposes, and transitions in the use of logistics centers found issues to ponder and suggested measures to promote and further advance logistics centers. First, a fact-finding survey to establish demand forecast and standardization is needed. As logistics newspapers predicted that after 2012 supply would exceed demand, causing rents to fall, the business environment for logistics centers has faltered. However, since there is a shortage of fact-finding surveys regarding actual demand for domestic logistic centers, it is hard to predict what the future holds for this industry. Accordingly, the first priority should be to get to the essence of the current market situation by conducting accurate domestic and international fact-finding surveys. Based on those, management and evaluation indicators should be developed to build the foundation for the consistent advancement of logistics centers. Second, many policies for logistics centers should be revised or developed. Above all, a guideline for fair trade between a shipper and a commercial logistics center should be enacted. Since there are no standards for fair trade between them, rampant unfair trades according to market practices have brought chaos to market orders, and now the logistics industry is confronting its own difficulties. Therefore, unfair trade cases that currently plague logistics centers should be gathered by the industry and fair trade guidelines should be established and implemented. In addition, restrictive employment regulations for foreign workers should be eased, and logistics centers should be charged industry rates for the use of electricity. Third, various measures should be taken to improve the management environment. First, we need to find out how to activate value-added logistics. Because the traditional purpose of logistics centers was storage and loading/unloading of goods, their profitability had a limit, and the need arose to find a new angle to create a value added service. Logistic centers have been perceived as support for a company's storage, manufacturing, and sales needs, not as creators of profits. The center's role in the company's economics has been lowering costs. However, as the logistics' management environment spiraled, along with its storage purpose, developing a new feature of profit creation should be a desirable goal, and to achieve that, value added logistics should be promoted. Logistics centers can also be improved through cost estimation. In the meantime, they have achieved some strides in facility development but have still fallen behind in others, particularly in management functioning. Lax management has been rampant because the industry has not developed a concept of cost estimation. The centers have since made an effort toward unification, standardization, and informatization while realizing cost reductions by establishing systems for effective management, but it has been hard to produce profits. Thus, there is an urgent need to estimate costs by determining a basic cost range for each division of work at logistics centers. This undertaking can be the first step to improving the ineffective aspects of how they operate. Ongoing research and constant efforts have been made to improve the level of effectiveness in the manufacturing industry, but studies on resource management in logistics centers are hardly enough. Thus, a plan to calculate the optimal level of resources necessary to operate a logistics center should be developed and implemented in management behavior, for example, by standardizing the hours of operation. If logistics centers, shippers, related trade groups, academic figures, and other experts could launch a committee to work with the government and maintain an ongoing relationship, the constraint and cooperation among members would help lead to coherent development plans for logistics centers. If the government continues its efforts to provide financial support, nurture professional workers, and maintain safety management, we can anticipate the continuous advancement of logistics centers.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.51-89
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• 2007

INTRODUCTION Due to the high broadband internet penetration rate and its group-oriented culture, various types of online communities operate in Korea. This study use 'Uses and Gratification Approach, and argue that members' usage-needs satisfaction with brand community is an important factor for promoting community commitment. Based on previous studies identifying the effect of brand image on consumers' responses to various marketing stimuli, this study hypothesizes that brand image can be a moderate variable affecting the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction with brand community and members' commitment to brand community. This study analyzes the influence of usage-needs satisfaction on brand community commitment and how apparel brand image affects the relationships between usage-needs satisfactions and community commitments. The hypotheses of this study are proposed as follows. H1-3: The usage-needs satisfaction of apparel brand community (interest, transaction, relationship needs) influences emotional (H1), continuous (H2), and normative (H3) commitments to apparel brand communities. H4-6: Apparel brand image has a moderating effect on the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction and emotional (H4), continuous (H5), and normative (H6) commitments to apparel brand communities. METHODS Brand communities founded by non-company affiliates were excluded and emphasis was placed instead on communities created by apparel brand companies. Among casual apparel brands registered in 6 Korean portal sites in August 2003, a total of 9 casual apparel brand online communities were chosen, depending on the level of community activity and apparel brand image. Data from 317 community members were analyzed by exploratory factor analysis, moderated regression analysis, ANOVA, and scheffe test. Among 317 respondents answered an online html-type questionnaire, 80.5% were between 16 to 25 years old. There were a total of 150 respondents from apparel brand communities(n=3) recording higher-than-average brand image scores (Mean > 3.75) and a total of 162 respondents from apparel brand communities(n=6) recording lower-than-average brand image scores(Mean < 3.75). In this study, brand community commitment was measured by a 5-point Likert scale: emotional, continuous and normative commitment. The degree of usage-needs satisfaction (interest, transaction, relationship needs) was measured on a 5-point Likert scale. The level of brand image was measured by a 5-point Likert scale: strength, favorability, and uniqueness of brand associations. RESULTS In the results of exploratory factor analysis, the three usage-needs satisfactions with brand community were classified as interest, transaction, and relationship needs. Brand community commitment was also divided into the multi-dimensional factors: emotional, continuous, and normative commitments. The regression analysis (using a stepwise method) was used to test the influence of 3 independent variables (interest-needs satisfaction, transaction-needs, and relationship-needs satisfactions) on the 3 dependent variables (emotional, continuous and normative commitments). The three types of usage-needs satisfactions are positively associated with the three types of commitments to apparel brand communities. Therefore, hypothesis 1, 2, and 3 were significantly supported. Moderating effects of apparel brand image on the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction and brand community commitments were tested by moderated regression analysis. The statistics result showed that the influence of transaction-needs on emotional commitment was significantly moderated by apparel brand image. In addition, apparel brand image had moderating effects on the relationship between relationship-needs satisfaction and emotional, continuous and normative commitments to apparel brand communities. However, there were not significant moderate effects of apparel brand image on the relationships between interest-needs satisfaction and 3 types of commitments (emotional, continuous and normative commitments) to apparel brand communities. In addition, the influences of transaction-needs satisfaction on 2 types of commitments (continuous and normative commitments) were not significantly moderated by apparel brand image. Therefore, hypothesis 4, 5 and 6 were partially supported. To explain the moderating effects of apparel brand image, four cross-tabulated groups were made by averages of usage-needs satisfaction (interest-needs satisfaction avg. M=3.09, transaction-needs satisfaction avg. M=3.46, relationship-needs satisfaction M=1.62) and the average apparel brand image (M=3.75). The average scores of commitments in each classified group are presented in Tables and Figures. There were significant differences among four groups. As can be seen from the results of scheffe test on the tables, emotional commitment in community group with high brand image was higher than one in community group with low brand image when transaction-needs satisfaction was high. However, when transaction-needs satisfaction was low, there was not any difference between the community group with high brand image and community group with low brand image regarding emotional commitment to apparel brand communities. It means that emotional commitment didn't increase significantly without high satisfaction of transaction-needs, despite the high apparel brand image. In addition, when apparel brand image was low, increase in transaction-needs did not lead to the increase in emotional commitment. Therefore, the significant relationship between transaction-needs satisfaction and emotional commitment was found in only brand communities with high apparel brand image, and the moderating effect of apparel brand image on this relationship between two variables was found in the communities with high satisfaction of transaction-needs only. Statistics results showed that the level of emotional commitment is related to the satisfaction level of transaction-needs, while overall response is related to the level of apparel brand image. We also found that the role of apparel brand image as a moderating factor was limited by the level of transaction-needs satisfaction. In addition, relationship-needs satisfaction brought significant increase in emotional commitment in both community groups (high and low levels of brand image), and the effect of apparel brand image on emotional commitment was significant in both community groups (high and low levels of relationship-needs satisfaction). Especially, the effect of brand image was greater when the level of relationship-needs satisfaction was high. in contrast, increase in emotional commitment responding to increase in relationship-needs satisfaction was greater when apparel brand image is high. The significant influences of relationship-needs satisfaction on community commitments (continuous and normative commitments) were found regardless of apparel brand image(in both community groups with low and high brand image). However, the effects of apparel brand image on continuous and normative commitments were found in only community group with high satisfaction level of relationship-needs. In the case of communities with low satisfaction levels of relationship needs, apparel brand image marginally increases continuous and normative commitments. Therefore, we could not find the moderating effect of apparel brand image on the relationship between relationship-needs satisfaction and continuous and normative commitments in community groups with low satisfaction levels of relationship needs, CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS From the results of this study, we draw several conclusions; First, the increases in usage-needs satisfactions through apparel brand communities result in the increases in commitments to apparel brand communities, wheres the degrees of such relationship depends on the level of apparel brand image. That is, apparel brand image is a moderating factor strengthening the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction and commitment to apparel brand communities. In addition, the effect of apparel brand image differs, depending on the level and types of community usage-needs satisfactions. Therefore, marketers of apparel brand companies must determine the appropriate usage-needs, depending on the type of commitment they wish to increase and the level of their apparel brand image, to promote member's commitments to apparel brand communities. Especially, relationship-needs satisfaction was very important factor for increasing emotional, continuous and normative commitments to communities. However the level of relationship-needs satisfaction was lower than interest-needs and transaction-needs. satisfaction. According to previous study on apparel brand communities, relationship-need satisfaction was strongly related to member's intention of participation in their communities. Therefore, marketers need to develope various strategies in order to increase the relationship- needs as well as interest and transaction needs. In addition, despite continuous commitment was higher than emotional and normative commitments, all types of commitments to apparel brand communities had scores lower than 3.0 that was mid point in 5-point scale. A Korean study reported that the level of members' commitment to apparel brand community influenced customers' identification with a brand and brand purchasing behavior. Therefore, marketers should try to increase members' usage-needs satisfaction and apparel brand image as the necessary conditions for bringing about community commitments. Second, marketers should understand that they should keep in mind that increasing the level of community usage needs (transaction and relationship) is most effective in raising commitment when the level of apparel brand image is high, and that increasing usage needs (transaction needs) satisfaction in communities with low brand image might not be as effective as anticipated. Therefore, apparel companies with desirable brand image such as luxury designer goods firms need to create formal online brand communities (as opposed to informal communities with rudimentary online contents) to satisfy transaction and relationship needs systematically. It will create brand equity through consumers' increased emotional, continuous and normative commitments. Even though apparel brand is very famous, emotional commitment to apparel brand communities cannot be easily increased without transaction-needs satisfaction. Therefore famous fashion brand companies should focus on developing various marketing strategies to increase transaction-needs satisfaction.