• Journal of Mushroom
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.45-53
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• 2017

Profitability of farmers has decreased mainly owing to low price while the gross amount of mushroom production has increased continuously in South Korea. In this regard, analyzing patterns of mushroom consumption is believed to be meaningful. We used a panel data set consisting of 667 families, from 2010 to 2015. Based on the panel data, mushroom consumption patterns of people living in city areas were examined. Multiple descriptive analysis methods and frequency analysis approaches were adopted in this study in terms of time and space dimensions, demographic properties, and purchase behaviors. The findings of this studyshow that mushroom purchase is highly dependent on seasonal events, which implies that the product consumption timing is predictable. In addition, yearly purchase amount patterns reflect that superstores have become the major mushroomtrading venues. This directly supports the need to establish supply chain capabilities for mushroom farmers so that they gain more bargaining power against enterprise-type groceries. Finally, functional features of mushroom can be linked with marketing promotion because purchase patterns demonstrate potential needs for healthcare food in mushroom categories. Based on the analyzed patterns, this paper provides insightful implications for policy makers who want to promote mushroom consumption.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.157-183
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• 2008

'New Universities for Regional Innovation(NURI)' is a financial aid program designed to promote the development of universities as a major component of Regional Innovation System (RIS). In particular, this program emphasizes the role of regional universities to provide the qualified graduates for the regional economy. This paper is to evaluate the effect of NURI, focusing on the change of graduates' employment. The effect of the program can be evaluated by the quality of graduates' accumulated human capital, and graduates' employment performance represents the graduates' quality evaluated in the labor market. This is also believed to be a good performance indicator of the NURI program. We utilize the graduate employment survey of Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI), and calculate the graduates' employment rates of the departments that received the financial support of NURI (treatment group). We also calculate the graduates' employment rates of the departments that applied for the support of the NURI program but were not selected (comparison group). By using difference-in-differences method, we compare the change of graduates' employment rates in treatment and comparison groups before and after the program came in effect. Compared with the employment rates in 2004 before the NURI program started, the graduates employment rates improved in both groups in 2005 and 2006. The improvement of the employment rates in the treatment group is larger than that in the comparison group. Moreover, the difference of improvement gets larger in the year 2006 than in 2005, which means those students who were affected more years by the NURI program are more likely to be employed. However, the difference is not statistically significant, and we cannot definetely conclude that NURI showed the desired effect on the quality of the college graduates. We calculate employment rates in two ways; whether to treat going on to graduate education as an employment or not. The result was qualitatively the same in both cases. We also tracked quality of employment by investigating the firm size where the graduates of the treatment group were employed. By utilizing data from the Employment Insurance Fund, we measure the firm size by the number of employees. We did not find any deterioration of employment quality between 2005 and 2006, though it deteriorates in 2007. Therefore, the improvement of employment rates until 2006, though not statistically significant, does not seem to come at the cost of employment quality. The interpretation of this result cannot help being very limited. First, this evaluation covers such a short time period. It only covers two years after the program started, 2005 and 2006. Second, the extent of the improvement in employment rates is not satisfactory considering the amount of financial support, even though it can be argued that the employment has improved since the inception of the program. Subsequent evaluation of the program is required to certify the NURI programs' longer term effectiveness.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.83-89
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• 2020

For the past few decades, as part of efforts to protect the environment where fossil fuels, which have been a key energy resource for mankind, are becoming increasingly depleted and pollution due to industrial development, ecofriendly secondary batteries, hydrogen generating energy devices, energy storage systems, and many other new energy technologies are being developed. Among them, the lithium-ion battery (LIB) is considered to be a next-generation energy device suitable for application as a large-capacity battery and capable of industrial application due to its high energy density and long lifespan. However, considering the growing battery market such as eco-friendly electric vehicles and drones, it is expected that a large amount of battery waste will spill out from some point due to the end of life. In order to prepare for this situation, development of a process for recovering lithium and various valuable metals from waste batteries is required, and at the same time, a plan to recycle them is socially required. In this study, we introduce a nanoscale pattern transfer printing (NTP) process of Li2CO3, a representative anode material for lithium ion batteries, one of the strategic materials for recycling waste batteries. First, Li2CO3 powder was formed by pressing in a vacuum, and a 3-inch sputter target for very pure Li2CO3 thin film deposition was successfully produced through high-temperature sintering. The target was mounted on a sputtering device, and a well-ordered Li2CO3 line pattern with a width of 250 nm was successfully obtained on the Si substrate using the NTP process. In addition, based on the nTP method, the periodic Li2CO3 line patterns were formed on the surfaces of metal, glass, flexible polymer substrates, and even curved goggles. These results are expected to be applied to the thin films of various functional materials used in battery devices in the future, and is also expected to be particularly helpful in improving the performance of lithium-ion battery devices on various substrates.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.91-107
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• 2023

Lean startup is a concept that combines the words "lean," meaning an efficient way of running a business, and "startup," meaning a new business. It is often cited as a strategy for minimizing failure in early-stage businesses, especially in software-based startups. By scrutinizing the case of a startup L, this study suggests that lean startup methodology(LSM) can be useful for hardware and manufacturing companies and identifies ways for early startups to successfully implement LSM. To this end, the study explained the core of LSM including the concepts of hypothesis-driven approach, BML feedback loop, minimum viable product(MVP), and pivot. Five criteria to evaluate the successful implementation of LSM were derived from the core concepts and applied to evaluate the case of startup L . The early startup L pivoted its main business model from defecation alert system for patients with limited mobility to one for infants or toddlers, and finally to a smart bottle for infants. In developing the former two products, analyzed from LSM's perspective, company L neither established a specific customer value proposition for its startup idea and nor verified it through MVP experiment, thus failed to create a BML feedback loop. However, through two rounds of pivots, startup L discovered new target customers and customer needs, and was able to establish a successful business model by repeatedly experimenting with MVPs with minimal effort and time. In other words, Company L's case shows that it is essential to go through the customer-market validation stage at the beginning of the business, and that it should be done through an MVP method that does not waste the startup's time and resources. It also shows that it is necessary to abandon and pivot a product or service that customers do not want, even if it is technically superior and functionally complete. Lastly, the study proves that the lean startup methodology is not limited to the software industry, but can also be applied to technology-based hardware industry. The findings of this study can be used as guidelines and methodologies for early-stage companies to minimize failures and to accelerate the process of establishing a business model, scaling up, and going global.

• Journal of Practical Agriculture & Fisheries Research
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.118-126
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• 2024

Recently, the alternative meat (food) market is growing rapidly due to the increase in meat consumption due to global population growth and income improvement, as well as issues such as equal welfare, carbon neutrality, and sustainability. The government is also developing a green bio convergence new industry development plan to foster alternative foods, but there are difficulties in commercialization due to the lack of technology and insufficient production facilities among domestic small and medium-sized enterprises, so it is necessary to build joint utilization facilities and equipment to resolve the difficulties faced by companies. am. In addition, small and medium-sized enterprises are having difficulty developing and commercializing plant-based meat substitutes due to a lack of technical skills, and related equipment is expensive, making it difficult to build equipment on their own. Accordingly, Jeollabuk-do is pursuing a strategy to secure the source technology for development, processing, and industrialization of plant-based substitute meat at the level of developed countries by establishing a plant-based alternative meat industrialization center. In this study, an economic feasibility analysis study was conducted when a plant-based alternative meat industrialization center is built in Jeollabuk-do. As a result of the analysis, B/C=1.32, NPV=374 million won, and IRR=4.8%, showing that there is economic feasibility in establishing an alternative meat industrialization center. In addition, as a result of analyzing the regional economic ripple effect resulting from the establishment of an industrialization center, if 38 billion won is invested in Jeollabuk-do, the nationwide production inducement effect is 74 billion won, the added value inducement effect is 29.8 billion won, and the employment inducement effect is 672 people

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.1-33
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• 2019

The small and medium sized enterprises (hereinafter SMEs) are already at a competitive disadvantaged when compared to large companies with more abundant resources. Manufacturing SMEs not only need a lot of information needed for new product development for sustainable growth and survival, but also seek networking to overcome the limitations of resources, but they are faced with limitations due to their size limitations. In a new era in which connectivity increases the complexity and uncertainty of the business environment, SMEs are increasingly urged to find information and solve networking problems. In order to solve these problems, the government funded research institutes plays an important role and duty to solve the information asymmetry problem of SMEs. The purpose of this study is to identify the differentiating characteristics of SMEs that utilize the public information support infrastructure provided by SMEs to enhance the innovation capacity of SMEs, and how they contribute to corporate performance. We argue that we need an infrastructure for providing information support to SMEs as part of this effort to strengthen of the role of government funded institutions; in this study, we specifically identify the target of such a policy and furthermore empirically demonstrate the effects of such policy-based efforts. Our goal is to help establish the strategies for building the information supporting infrastructure. To achieve this purpose, we first classified the characteristics of SMEs that have been found to utilize the information supporting infrastructure provided by government funded institutions. This allows us to verify whether selection bias appears in the analyzed group, which helps us clarify the interpretative limits of our study results. Next, we performed mediator and moderator effect analysis for multiple variables to analyze the process through which the use of information supporting infrastructure led to an improvement in external networking capabilities and resulted in enhancing product competitiveness. This analysis helps identify the key factors we should focus on when offering indirect support to SMEs through the information supporting infrastructure, which in turn helps us more efficiently manage research related to SME supporting policies implemented by government funded institutions. The results of this study showed the following. First, SMEs that used the information supporting infrastructure were found to have a significant difference in size in comparison to domestic R&D SMEs, but on the other hand, there was no significant difference in the cluster analysis that considered various variables. Based on these findings, we confirmed that SMEs that use the information supporting infrastructure are superior in size, and had a relatively higher distribution of companies that transact to a greater degree with large companies, when compared to the SMEs composing the general group of SMEs. Also, we found that companies that already receive support from the information infrastructure have a high concentration of companies that need collaboration with government funded institution. Secondly, among the SMEs that use the information supporting infrastructure, we found that increasing external networking capabilities contributed to enhancing product competitiveness, and while this was no the effect of direct assistance, we also found that indirect contributions were made by increasing the open marketing capabilities: in other words, this was the result of an indirect-only mediator effect. Also, the number of times the company received additional support in this process through mentoring related to information utilization was found to have a mediated moderator effect on improving external networking capabilities and in turn strengthening product competitiveness. The results of this study provide several insights that will help establish policies. KISTI's information support infrastructure may lead to the conclusion that marketing is already well underway, but it intentionally supports groups that enable to achieve good performance. As a result, the government should provide clear priorities whether to support the companies in the underdevelopment or to aid better performance. Through our research, we have identified how public information infrastructure contributes to product competitiveness. Here, we can draw some policy implications. First, the public information support infrastructure should have the capability to enhance the ability to interact with or to find the expert that provides required information. Second, if the utilization of public information support (online) infrastructure is effective, it is not necessary to continuously provide informational mentoring, which is a parallel offline support. Rather, offline support such as mentoring should be used as an appropriate device for abnormal symptom monitoring. Third, it is required that SMEs should improve their ability to utilize, because the effect of enhancing networking capacity through public information support infrastructure and enhancing product competitiveness through such infrastructure appears in most types of companies rather than in specific SMEs.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.33-56
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• 2017

As Internet usage is becoming more common worldwide and smartphone become necessity in daily life, technologies and applications related to mobile Internet are developing rapidly. The results of the Internet usage patterns of consumers around the world imply that there are many potential new business opportunities for mobile Internet technologies and applications. The location-based service (LBS) is a service based on the location information of the mobile device. LBS has recently gotten much attention among many mobile applications and various LBSs are rapidly developing in numerous categories. However, even with the development of LBS related technologies and services, there is still a lack of empirical research on the intention to use LBS. The application of previous researches is limited because they focused on the effect of one particular factor and had not shown the direct relationship on the intention to use LBS. Therefore, this study presents a research model of factors that affect the intention to use and actual use of LBS whose market is expected to grow rapidly, and tested it by conducting a questionnaire survey of 330 users. The results of data analysis showed that service customization, service quality, and personal innovativeness have a positive effect on the intention to use LBS and the intention to use LBS has a positive effect on the actual use of LBS. These results implies that LBS providers can enhance the user's intention to use LBS by offering service customization through the provision of various LBSs based on users' needs, improving information service qualities such as accuracy, timeliness, sensitivity, and reliability, and encouraging personal innovativeness. However, privacy concerns in the context of LBS are not significantly affected by service customization and personal innovativeness and privacy concerns do not significantly affect the intention to use LBS. In fact, the information related to users' location collected by LBS is less sensitive when compared with the information that is used to perform financial transactions. Therefore, such outcomes on privacy concern are revealed. In addition, the advantages of using LBS are more important than the sensitivity of privacy protection to the users who use LBS than to the users who use information systems such as electronic commerce that involves financial transactions. Therefore, LBS are recommended to be treated differently from other information systems. This study is significant in the theoretical point of contribution that it proposed factors affecting the intention to use LBS in a multi-faceted perspective, proved the proposed research model empirically, brought new insights on LBS, and broadens understanding of the intention to use and actual use of LBS. Also, the empirical results of the customization of LBS affecting the user's intention to use the LBS suggest that the provision of customized LBS services based on the usage data analysis through utilizing technologies such as artificial intelligence can enhance the user's intention to use. In a practical point of view, the results of this study are expected to help LBS providers to develop a competitive strategy for responding to LBS users effectively and lead to the LBS market grows. We expect that there will be differences in using LBSs depending on some factors such as types of LBS, whether it is free of charge or not, privacy policies related to LBS, the levels of reliability related application and technology, the frequency of use, etc. Therefore, if we can make comparative studies with those factors, it will contribute to the development of the research areas of LBS. We hope this study can inspire many researchers and initiate many great researches in LBS fields.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.67-83
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• 2018

The Korean film industry with significant increase every year exceeded the number of cumulative audiences of 200 million people in 2013 finally. However, starting from 2015 the Korean film industry entered a period of low growth and experienced a negative growth after all in 2016. To overcome such difficulty, stakeholders like production company, distribution company, multiplex have attempted to maximize the market returns using strategies of predicting change of market and of responding to such market change immediately. Since a film is classified as one of experiential products, it is not easy to predict a box office record and the initial number of audiences before the film is released. And also, the number of audiences fluctuates with a variety of factors after the film is released. So, the production company and distribution company try to be guaranteed the number of screens at the opining time of a newly released by multiplex chains. However, the multiplex chains tend to open the screening schedule during only a week and then determine the number of screening of the forthcoming week based on the box office record and the evaluation of audiences. Many previous researches have conducted to deal with the prediction of box office records of films. In the early stage, the researches attempted to identify factors affecting the box office record. And nowadays, many studies have tried to apply various analytic techniques to the factors identified previously in order to improve the accuracy of prediction and to explain the effect of each factor instead of identifying new factors affecting the box office record. However, most of previous researches have limitations in that they used the total number of audiences from the opening to the end as a target variable, and this makes it difficult to predict and respond to the demand of market which changes dynamically. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to predict the weekly number of audiences of a newly released film so that the stakeholder can flexibly and elastically respond to the change of the number of audiences in the film. To that end, we considered the factors used in the previous studies affecting box office and developed new factors not used in previous studies such as the order of opening of movies, dynamics of sales. Along with the comprehensive factors, we used the machine learning method such as Random Forest, Multi Layer Perception, Support Vector Machine, and Naive Bays, to predict the number of cumulative visitors from the first week after a film release to the third week. At the point of the first and the second week, we predicted the cumulative number of visitors of the forthcoming week for a released film. And at the point of the third week, we predict the total number of visitors of the film. In addition, we predicted the total number of cumulative visitors also at the point of the both first week and second week using the same factors. As a result, we found the accuracy of predicting the number of visitors at the forthcoming week was higher than that of predicting the total number of them in all of three weeks, and also the accuracy of the Random Forest was the highest among the machine learning methods we used. This study has implications in that this study 1) considered various factors comprehensively which affect the box office record and merely addressed by other previous researches such as the weekly rating of audiences after release, the weekly rank of the film after release, and the weekly sales share after release, and 2) tried to predict and respond to the demand of market which changes dynamically by suggesting models which predicts the weekly number of audiences of newly released films so that the stakeholders can flexibly and elastically respond to the change of the number of audiences in the film.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.480-487
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• 2018

Purpose: The study examined the Chinese and Japanese consumers' preference for Korean home meal replacement (HMR) product package designs using conjoint analysis. Methods: The questionnaire survey was completed by 270 consumers living in Beijing, China and Osaka, Japan, over the age of 20 years old, who had previously purchased or consumed a Korean HMR. Based on the attributes and levels within each attribute related to the Korean HMR product package design, 54 profiles were constructed. Of the 54 profiles, 11 combinations were selected using an orthogonal design, and the participants were asked to rank the 11 combinations in order of preference from top to bottom. Results: The relative importance of the Korean HMR product package design attributes were analyzed. Chinese consumers regarded illustration, ingestion form, concept, and brand name, in that order, to be most important. In the case of Japanese consumers, illustration, concept, ingestion form, and brand name, in that order, were most important. For the illustration attributes, in order of importance, Chinese consumers preferred raw materials, characters, and celebrities, and Japanese consumers preferred characters, raw materials, and celebrities. For the concept attributes, Chinese consumers favored, witty, traditional Korean, and modern concepts, whereas Japanese consumers favored witty, modern, and then traditional Korean concepts. For the ingestion form attributes, both Chinese and Japanese consumers preferred Ready To Eat (RTE), followed by Ready To Heat (RTH), and then Ready To Cook (RTC). For the brand name attributes, both Chinese and Japanese consumers preferred the localized brand name over the Korean brand name. Conclusion: Differences in the relative importance of Korean HMR product package design attributes were observed among Chinese and Japanese consumers, and there were differences in preference according to the levels within each attribute. These results are expected to provide useful basic data to assist in the future development of differentiated HMR package designs and marketing strategies to meet consumer needs in the market for Korean HMR in China and Japan.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.111-144
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• 2011

This study is to confirm the core factors of innovative capabilities and technological entrepreneurship affecting the performance of technology management and business management of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Through the consideration about the complex natures of technological innovation affecting by multidimensional factors, this study designs the research model that innovative capabilities, the performances of technology and business management are arranged in accordance with the innovation process; input-output-outcome. To meet this research purpose, the hypothesis are set up based on the previous research studies and the research samples are selected from members of the Innovative Business (INNO-BIZ) Association, located in Seoul and Geyonggi province. As a result of regression analysis to the responses gathered from 360 firms, the performance of business management is influenced positively by the technology superiority, market growth and business profitability which are the dominant factors of performance of technology management. In addition, three sub-variables of innovative capabilities such as R&D, strategic planning and learning capability, have positive effects on both the managerial performances. Innovativeness and progressiveness of technological entrepreneurship affect both the performances positively. Moreover, the co-relation between technological entrepreneurship of an innovation leader and innovative capabilities of organizational members are identified. Lastly, technological entrepreneurship has the mediating effect on the path of leading innovative capabilities to the managerial performances. In conclusion, the research results imply that technological innovation-type firms should periodically evaluate the performance of technology management which are the output of technological innovations and the reinvestment for ultimate business success. And improving and developing innovative capabilities and technological entrepreneurship is required to continuously and consistently investing and supporting resources on technological innovations at the firm-and government-level. It is considered that these are the crucial methods for securing the technologically competitive advantage of SMEs with less resources and narrow innovation range.