• Korean Business Review
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• v.17
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• pp.153-183
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• 2004

The Gaisong Merchants can be regarded to playa pioneering role to activate the Korea's trade with foreign countries. In the early period of Yi-Dynasty, the Gaisong Merchants focused on personal trade, but in the middle period of Yi-Dynasty, they entered to the realm of governmental trade. Furthermore, their business activities widened to various forms of trades, for example, smuggling. Utilizing accumulated capital, Gaisong merchants expanded their trading activities to their neighboring countries such as Japan and China. In recent times, it is necessary for modem Korean companies to diversify risks through the establishment of corporations for production, marketing and R&D abroad or through joint venture, M&A and strategic alliance with foreign companies in order to reduce the risks originated from volatile economic and political situations. In this study, we utilize tools of comparative study to compare Gaisong Merchants' foreign trade strategies with those of modem companies such as AMOREPACIFIC, HANILCEMENT and SHINDORICO. The purpose of the paper is to test the hypothesis that modem Korean companies grew up by following the cases of Gaisong Merchants' business activities. We summarize our main findings as follows. First, both Gaisong Merchants and modem Korean companies have common functional core capability in the field of marketing, manufacturing technology, R&D, and human resources development. Second, both Gaisong Merchants and modem Korean companies have common organizational core capability. Third, both Gaisong Merchants and modem Korean companies have common infrastructures such as planning, finance, accounting and MIS. It constitutes the infrastructure of Korea's foreign trade sector. Fourth, both Gaisong Merchants and modem companies have common organizational culture in the field of management policy and philosophy. Actually, those factors are evaluated to be driving forces of Koera's success in foreign trade. In conclusion, the business activities of Gaisong Merchants who represented the peculiarity of Korean business spirit are partially inherited to current Korean business management. The value system and behavior pattern of modern Korean companies is succeeded from the spirit of Gaisong Merchants and it playa major role to specify the identity of Korean business administration.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.80-91
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• 2017

This study identifies factors of Hanbok-trippers - a term for people who dress in Hanbok(Korean traditional costume) while going on a trip - who converge on Gyeongbokgung Palace by determining the characteristics of class, places to visit and preferred places. This study interprets the voluntary hobby activities of Hanbok-trippers from a viewpoint of a landscape prosumer and the meaning of the urban landscape. As a result of in-depth interviews, on-site survey, and observation surveys focused on Hanbok-trippers, there were various levels of participants. They are classified into three groups - leading group, entry group, temporary-experience group - according to their cognitions, types of Hanbok use, activities, etc. The leading group and entry group are a voluntary hobbyist class due to the ongoing tendencies of their participation. There are differences in the purpose and factors of visiting Gyeongbokgung Palace as a place for a Hanbok-trip. The leading group visited Gyeongbokgung Palace for cultural activities, regular get-together, public relations, and as a gathering place to go neighboring destinations. In this case, the main factors of the visit are the traditional landscape, convenient transportation, chances for traditional culture exhibitions and events in Gyeongbokgung Palace and its neighborhood. The entry group visits Gyeongbokgung Palace because of its traditional landscape and cultural activities nearby. The traditional landscape and many Hanbok-trippers are main factors of visiting Gyeongbokgung Palace for the Temporary-experience group. This study found that Gyeongbokgung Palace has a new sense of place of 'Introductory course of Hanbok-trip', 'Hanbok Playground' because temporary-experience group visits there to experience a Hanbok-trip for the first time. Hanbok-trippers consume places and landscape in actual places offline, producing a new landscape at the same time, and has the characteristics of a 'landscape prosumer' by producing landscape images online through their own personal or social media. Their colorful and voluntary movements contribute to the dynamism of the urban landscape and can become a new cultural asset for the city. The voluntary hobbyist class can be considered a new type of participants in bottom-up planning such as urban regeneration and place marketing. This study has significance in that it conceptualized the 'landscape prosumer' through the voluntary hobbyist class of Hanbok-trippers with the concept of the 'prosumer' that has been studied only in the consumer studies and marketing fields, and has identified the significance of the urban landscape.

• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.159-212
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• 2018

This paper is focused on analyzing the social environment of a rapidly changing on Vietnamese company. The key analysis of this study is on the change of perception in Vietnam and the regional difference of CSR acception. The social acceptance research of CSR is centered on the comparative analysis of Korean, Japanese and Chinese companies Social Activities in Vietnam. In addition, This paper seek to way of contribute to the sustainable development of Korean companies, and its harmonious cooperation with Vietnamese society through reviewing the CSR activities and direction of their CSR expectation. In the paper, linkage analysis was conducted with the results of the study on CSR value development process in Vietnam society and analysis of social responsibility values obtained from empirical studies. Through this, finally, we trying to search the value of social responsibility in Vietnam and its future directions. When we understand Vietnam's CSR, based on 'locality' of Vietnam, Northern and Southern can be understand on its different backgrounds. And it can be analyzed by their CSR characteristics of acception. As the result of this research, In the North, Foreign companies' CSR is understanded to be viewed from the corporate economic income and distribution. In the South, there is a strong tendency to understand CSR activities of foreign companies as marketing activities. On the whole, In northern Hanoi, there was a strong expectation in terms of 'employment improvement' and 'workers' working conditions'. In the South, there was a greater interest in improving the 'quality of life of residents' and 'consumer protection'. This is due to the influence of the economic system experienced during the process of different colonization, modernization and communization between the two regions. Since the Reform and Opening of Vietnam, Social Awareness of CSR seems that the regional differences were formed by the pace of economic development and the economic environment has played a role. In particular, the social acceptance of CSR values showed a slight difference in recognition between the North and South regions, but as both regions showed common hope for 'intervention in the role of government'. Therefore, Social Awareness of Vietnam's CSR is based on relation of 'government-society' formed from the 'Communitarianism'. As foreign investment flows more, CSR awareness and expectations in Vietnam's society will increase further. And the CSR expectations of local governments and stakeholder will be more complicated. It is time to check the needs of Vietnamese society in relation to locality of the social responsibility activities.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.65-96
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• 2012

Brand has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume product or services, they are exposed to a lot of brand related stimuli. These contain brand personality, brand experience, brand identity, brand communications and so on. A special kind of new crisis occasionally confronting companies' brand management today is the brand related rumor. An important influence on consumers' purchase decision making is the word-of-mouth spread by other consumers and most decisions are influenced by other's recommendations. In light of this influence, firms have reasonable reason to study and understand consumer-to-consumer communication such as brand rumor. The importance of brand rumor to marketers is increasing as the number of internet user and SNS(social network service) site grows. Due to the development of internet technology, people can spread rumors without the limitation of time, space and place. However relatively few studies have been published in marketing journals and little is known about brand rumors in the marketplace. The study of rumor has a long history in all major social science. But very few studies have dealt with the antecedents and consequences of any kind of brand rumor. Rumor has been generally described as a story or statement in general circulation without proper confirmation or certainty as to fact. And it also can be defined as an unconfirmed proposition, passed along from people to people. Rosnow(1991) claimed that rumors were transmitted because people needed to explain ambiguous and uncertain events and talking about them reduced associated anxiety. Especially negative rumors are believed to have the potential to devastate a company's reputation and relations with customers. From the perspective of marketer, negative rumors are considered harmful and extremely difficult to control in general. It is becoming a threat to a company's sustainability and sometimes leads to negative brand image and loss of customers. Thus there is a growing concern that these negative rumors can damage brands' reputations and lead them to financial disaster too. In this study we aimed to distinguish antecedents of brand rumor transmission and investigate the effects of brand rumor characteristics on rumor spread intention. We also found key components in personal acceptance of brand rumor. In contextualist perspective, we tried to unify the traditional psychological and sociological views. In this unified research approach we defined brand rumor's characteristics based on five major variables that had been found to influence the process of rumor spread intention. The five factors of usefulness, source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness, encompass multi level elements of brand rumor. We also selected product involvement as a control variable. To perform the empirical research, imaginary Korean 'Kimch' brand and related contamination rumor was created and proposed. Questionnaires were collected from 178 Korean samples. Data were collected from college students who have been experienced the focal product. College students were regarded as good subjects because they have a tendency to express their opinions in detail. PLS(partial least square) method was adopted to analyze the relations between variables in the equation model. The most widely adopted causal modeling method is LISREL. However it is poorly suited to deal with relatively small data samples and can yield not proper solutions in some cases. PLS has been developed to avoid some of these limitations and provide more reliable results. To test the reliability using SPSS 16 s/w, Cronbach alpha was examined and all the values were appropriate showing alpha values between .802 and .953. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted successfully. And structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the research model using smartPLS(ver. 2.0) s/w. Overall, R² of adoption of rumor is .476 and R² of intention of rumor transmission is .218. The overall model showed a satisfactory fit. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. According to the results, the variables of brand rumor characteristic such as source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness affect argument strength of rumor. And argument strength of rumor also affects rumor intention. On the other hand, the relationship between perceived usefulness and argument strength of rumor is not significant. The moderating effect of product involvement on the relations between argument strength of rumor and rumor W.O.M intention is not supported neither. Consequently this study suggests some managerial and academic implications. We consider some implications for corporate crisis management planning, PR and brand management. This results show marketers that rumor is a critical factor for managing strong brand assets. Also for researchers, brand rumor should become an important thesis of their interests to understand the relationship between consumer and brand. Recently many brand managers and marketers have focused on the short-term view. They just focused on strengthen the positive brand image. According to this study we suggested that effective brand management requires managing negative brand rumors with a long-term view of marketing decisions.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.143-167
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• 2010

Diverse research topics relating to Social Network Services (SNS) such as, social affective factors in relationships among internet users, social capital value of SNS, comparing attributes why users are intending to participate in SNS, user's lifestyle and their preferences, and the exploratory seeking potential of SNS as a social capital need to be focused on. However, these researches that have been undertaken only consider facts at a particular period of the changing computing environment. In accordance with this indispensability, the integrated view on what technical, social and business characteristics and attributes need to be acknowledged. The purpose of this study is to analyze the evolving attributes and characteristics of SNS from Web 1.0 to Mobile web 2.0 through the Web 2.0 and Mobile 1.0 period. Based on the relevant literature, the attributes that drive the changing technological, social and business aspects of SNS have been developed and analyzed. This exploratory study analyzed major attributes and relationships between SNS and users by changing the paradigms which represented each period. It classified and chronicled each period by representing paradigms and deducted the attributes by considering three aspects such as technological, social and business administration. The major findings of this study are, firstly, the web based computing environment has been changed into the platform attribute for users in the aspect of technology. Users can only read, listen and view information through the web site in the early stages, but now it is possible that users can create, modify and distribute all kinds of information. Secondly, the few knowledge producers of web services have been changed into a collective intelligence by groups of people in the aspect of society. Information authority has been distributed and there is no limit to its spread. Many businesses recognized the potential of the SNS and they are considering how to utilize these advantages toward channel of promotion and marketing. Thirdly, the conventional marketing channel has been changed into oral transmission by using SNS. The market of innovative mobile technology such as smart phones, which provide convenience and access-ability toward customers, has been enlarged. New opportunities to build friendly relationship between business and customers as a new marketing chance have been created. Finally, the role of the consumer has been changed into the leading role of a prosumer. Users can create, modify and distribute information, and are performing the dual role of customer and producer.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.37 no.12
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• pp.1667-1673
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• 2008

This study was conducted to investigate the purchase behavior of environment-friendly agricultural products (EFATs) and to provide necessary information for planning and executing effective marketing strategies for producers and distributors. The subjects of this study were 306 housewives in the Seoul area over the age of 20. The result of this study showed that once a month topped with 38.9% in the frequency of purchase, vegetables were the highest with 83.3% in the percentage of purchase and the place of purchase most frequented by consumers discount stores (45.8%), but purchases from farmers were the lowest with 3.6%. TV/radio topped the list of information resource with 3.42, followed by family/relatives/friends (3.33) and newspaper/ magazine (3.31). Those surveyed listed sanitary condition/freshness (4.43), safety (4.20), nutrition (4.05), and taste (3.99) as major evaluative criteria for choosing organic food, in order of importance. Finally, consumers seem to be satisfied with the nutrition (3.75), safety (3.71), and freshness (3.70) of the products and they were dissatisfied with the price of the products.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.8
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• pp.375-402
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• 2001

While the national economy has rapidly grown, both insufficience in indirect capital facilities of society and attempt to avoid having a logistical job as one of the so-called dirty, difficult and dangerous jobs have resulted in the leak of labor in the logistical industry. First of all, it was shown that the functional utilization level of the logistical information system had a partial effect on the logistical performance, that the reduction of logistical costs was influenced by the information system of connecting and supporting functions, and that the improvement of customer service was significantly influenced by only the supporting-function system. Second, the logistical performance was partially influenced by the linkage between logistical activities, only the customer linkage had a significant effect on the reduction of logistical costs, and the improvement of customer service was influenced by the intra-company linkage. Third, in verifying a hypothesis that the logistical information system's functional utilization level and organizational structure would interact with each other and have an effect on the logistical performance, it was shown that based on their mutual interaction at a normalized level this center's functional information system had a significant effect on the reduction of logistical costs. Fourth, in testing a hypothesis that both the linkage between logistical activities and logistical organization structure would interact with each other and would have an effect on the logistical performance, it was shown that their interaction at a normalized level was significant concerning only the reduction of logistical costs, while there was I10 its significance in the customer service. In proving a hypothesis that the linkage between logistical activities and logistical strategy patterns would interact with each other and would have an effect on the logistical performance, it was shown in a differentiated, aggressive investment one among variously patterned logistical strategies that the customer linkage had a significant effect on the reduction of logistical costs, and in the improvement of customer service that the supplier linkage had a remarkable impact. It also was shown that in case of the cost reduction and offensive control strategy, the customer linkage had a remarkable effect, and th at in the improvement of customer service the intra-company and customer linkage had a significant effect. In the marketing and customer service strategy, finally, there was no any significant influence while the customer linkage had a significant impact in the improvement of customer service. Accordingly, whether or not individual companies utilize the logistical information system's functional utilization levels well will have an effect on their logistical performance, and how their supply chain management is well-linked will affect their logistical performance.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.49-59
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• 2011

A franchise can be said to be the main method of distribution and marketing. It appears to be the future of the retail industry and is one of the world's fastest growing businesses sectors, as many policy reports and research results have acknowledged. Korea's franchise industry began in the 1970s, spread out into many areas (including food services, retail, and the service industry), and has grown by over 10% each year ever since. The industry's influence on the national economy becomes ever greater. Although the size of the franchise industry is expected to grow as it spreads and as the government expands its support, it has not yet attracted much academic interest. Research has so far been very fragmented. The main interest has been the relationship and conflicts between the head offices and the affiliates. No study has yet occurred on whether the concepts of satisfaction and intent to conclude a contract directly affect the success or failure of the affiliates. Few studies have empirically inquired into the demographic characteristics and abilities of the affiliates that significantly affect their results. Domestic franchise industries must prepare to leap from quantitative to qualitative growth. Most important is the need for affiliate headquarters and affiliates to build confidence between them. A friendly and reliable relationship between affiliate headquarters and affiliates will eliminate distrust from the franchise and maintain a healthy franchise system. This study suggests that current and prospective heads of affiliation should concentrate not on attracting affiliates but on investment and techniques of affiliate support. They should work on the reinforcement of brand power, the appropriate affiliate business environment, systematic education/training, taking burdens off the affiliate business persons, consolidating the relationship with the affiliate business persons, marketing mix factors (e.g. products, price conditions, logistics and shipping services, promotion, supervising and supervisor, operation procedures/processes, and material evidence); these all greatly affect the success or failure of the affiliate business. Supporting the affiliates is an important factor that enhances their results and satisfaction and consequently increases the positive recommendations to others and the ratio of recurrent conclusions of contracts, which ultimately generate the growth of the franchises. In addition, it is suggested that prospective franchise founders should make every effort to choose a good head office since the characteristics of the head office greatly influence the success of the affiliates. This study is significant in that it grasps the characteristics of the head office of affiliation and of the affiliates that influence affiliate results in ways not yet academically attempted.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.11 no.7
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• pp.2358-2370
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• 2010

This research aims to empirically analyze the factors that affect the success of technology marketing by Korean universities. The total of 207 universities which successfully made technology transfers from 2006 to 2008 was examined to test the nine hypotheses. For the purpose of testing the hypotheses, technology infrastructure (research costs and the number of SCIE papers), the compensation system for the patents (application and registration), the number of patents (application and registration), TLO staff (the number of people in charge of technology transfer and the job experience in industries), the compensation system for technology transfers (researchers and contributors), and attitudes of university management and industries were analyzed with structural equation methods to figure out their effects on the revenues of technology transfer. The results of this research are summarized as follows. First, technology infrastructures of universities were found to have positive effects on securing patents. As the university research costs in the field of science and technology are increases, the research capabilities are enhanced and this a larger number of researchers are conducted. Second, this research shows that compensation systems for patent application and registration in universities have motivated researchers to take out patents for the outputs of their research. Third, the number of patents universities possess was found to have a positive effect on technology transfer. An increase in the number of patents universities possess implies an increase in the diversity and excellence of the target technologies for transfer. Fourth, the number of patents universities possess turned out to have a positive effect on TLO staff. The number of experts in charge of technology transfer including technology dealers, valuation analysis and patent attorneys should be increased as target technologies for transfer increase according to the increase of patents possessed. Because the technologies are transferee from universities to businesses, businesses (job) experience of TLO staff in industries are also important. This research is meaningful because it has identified the factors affecting the results of technology transfer by employing structural equation methods. In particular, an official governmental survey data for the academic-industrial cooperation were analyzed systematically in terms of technology infrastructure, compensation systems related to patents, the number of patents, TLO staff, compensation systems for technology transfer, and attitudes of university management and industries. All these facts might could differentiate this study from the previous studies.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.179-200
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• 2019

Word-of-mouth (WoM) is defined by consumer activities that share information concerning consumption. WoM activities have long been recognized as important in corporate marketing processes and have received much attention, especially in the marketing field. Recently, according to the development of the Internet, the way in which people exchange information in online news and online communities has been expanded, and WoM is diversified in terms of word of mouth, score, rating, and liking. Social media makes online users easy access to information and online WoM is considered a key source of information. Although various studies on WoM have been preceded by this phenomenon, there is no meta-analysis study that comprehensively analyzes them. This study proposed a method to extract major researches by applying text mining techniques and to grasp the main issues of researches in order to find the trend of WoM research using scholarly big data. To this end, a total of 4389 documents were collected by the keyword 'Word-of-mouth' from 1941 to 2018 in Scopus (www.scopus.com), a citation database, and the data were refined through preprocessing such as English morphological analysis, stopwords removal, and noun extraction. To carry out this study, we adopted main path analysis (MPA) and word co-occurrence network analysis. MPA detects key researches and is used to track the development trajectory of academic field, and presents the research trend from a macro perspective. For this, we constructed a citation network based on the collected data. The node means a document and the link means a citation relation in citation network. We then detected the key-route main path by applying SPC (Search Path Count) weights. As a result, the main path composed of 30 documents extracted from a citation network. The main path was able to confirm the change of the academic area which was developing along with the change of the times reflecting the industrial change such as various industrial groups. The results of MPA revealed that WoM research was distinguished by five periods: (1) establishment of aspects and critical elements of WoM, (2) relationship analysis between WoM variables, (3) beginning of researches of online WoM, (4) relationship analysis between WoM and purchase, and (5) broadening of topics. It was found that changes within the industry was reflected in the results such as online development and social media. Very recent studies showed that the topics and approaches related WoM were being diversified to circumstantial changes. However, the results showed that even though WoM was used in diverse fields, the main stream of the researches of WoM from the start to the end, was related to marketing and figuring out the influential factors that proliferate WoM. By applying word co-occurrence network analysis, the research trend is presented from a microscopic point of view. Word co-occurrence network was constructed to analyze the relationship between keywords and social network analysis (SNA) was utilized. We divided the data into three periods to investigate the periodic changes and trends in discussion of WoM. SNA showed that Period 1 (1941~2008) consisted of clusters regarding relationship, source, and consumers. Period 2 (2009~2013) contained clusters of satisfaction, community, social networks, review, and internet. Clusters of period 3 (2014~2018) involved satisfaction, medium, review, and interview. The periodic changes of clusters showed transition from offline to online WoM. Media of WoM have become an important factor in spreading the words. This study conducted a quantitative meta-analysis based on scholarly big data regarding WoM. The main contribution of this study is that it provides a micro perspective on the research trend of WoM as well as the macro perspective. The limitation of this study is that the citation network constructed in this study is a network based on the direct citation relation of the collected documents for MPA.