• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.1-20
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• 2013

Social commerce has been gaining explosive popularity, with typical examples of the model such as Groupon and Level Up. Both local business owners and consumers can benefit from this new e-commerce model. Local business owners have a chance to access potential customers and promote their products in a way that could not have otherwise been easily possible, and consumers can enjoy discounted offerings. However, questions have been increasingly raised about the value and future of the social commerce model. A recent survey shows that about a third of 324 business owners who ran a daily-deal promotion in Groupon went behind. Furthermore, more than half of the surveyed merchants did not express enthusiasm about running the promotion again. The same goes for the case in Korea, where more than half of the surveyed clients reported no significant change or even decrease in profits compared to before the use of social commerce model. Why do local business owners fail to exploit the benefits from the promotions and advertisements through the social commerce model and to make profits? Without answering this question, the model would fall under suspicion and even its sustainability might be challenged. This study aims to look into problems in the current social commerce transactions and provide implications for the social commerce model, so that the model would get a foothold for next growth. Drawing on justice theory, this study develops theoretical arguments for the effects of transaction characteristics on consumers' distributive justice and purchase intention in the social commerce. Specifically, this study focuses on two characteristics of social commerce transactions-the discount rate and the purchase rate of products-and investigates their effects on consumers' perception of distributive justice for discounted transactions in the social commerce and their perception of distributive justice for regular-priced transactions. This study also examines the relationship between distributive justice and purchase intention. We conducted an online experiment and gathered data from 115 participants to test the hypotheses. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of nine manipulated scenarios of social commerce transactions, which were generated based on the combination of three levels of purchase rate (high, medium, and low) and three levels of discount rate (high, medium, and low). We conducted MANOVA and post-hoc ANOVA to test hypotheses about the relationships between the transaction characteristics (purchase rate and discount rate) and distributive justice for each of the discounted transaction and the regular-priced transaction. We also employed a PLS analysis to test relations between distributive justice and purchase intentions. Analysis results show that a higher discount rate increases distributive justice for the discounted transaction but decreases distributive justice for the regular-priced transaction. This, coupled with the result that distributive justice for each type of transaction has a positive effect on the corresponding purchase intention, implies that a large discount in the social commerce may be helpful for attracting consumers, but harmful to the business after the promotion. However, further examination reveals curvilinear effects of the discount rate on both types of distributive justice. Specifically, we find distributive justice for the discounted transaction increases concavely as the discount rate increases while distributive justice for the regular-priced transaction decreases concavely with the dscount rate. This implies that there exists an appropriate discount rate which could promote the discounted transaction while not hurting future business of regular-priced transactions. Next, the purchase rate is found to be a critical factor that facilitates the regular-priced transaction. It has a convexly positive influence on distributive justice for the transaction. Therefore, an increase of the rate beyond some threshold would lead to a substantial level of distributive justice for the regular-priced transaction, threrby boosting future transactions. This implies that social commerce firms and sellers should employ various non-price stimuli to promote the purchase rate. Finally, we find no significant relationship between the purchase rate and distributive justice for the discounted transaction. Based on the above results, we provide several implications with future research directions.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.126
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• pp.109-132
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• 2013

The most important vocabulary in Advaita $Ved{\bar{a}}nta$, which is anthropology and soteriology on the self, is of course '${\bar{a}}tman$' or 'the self', to which '$an{\bar{a}}tman$' or 'the other' is in opposition. As $Ved{\bar{a}}ntic$ system revolves around the concept ${\bar{a}}tman$, it can be compared favorably with 'final vocabulary' of Richard Rorty. Moreover, $Ved{\bar{a}}ntic$ system can be termed as 'a return of self-identity', in which a process of returning is from a deceived self to the true and original self. After all, story of '$an{\bar{a}}tman$' or 'the other' in $Ved{\bar{a}}nta$ seems to have no significance at all. However, discourse about the other can also lead a something fruitful. There are such doctrines in $Ved{\bar{a}}nta$ that support a procedure of self-realization not according to the Hegelian dialectic but to the transposition and continuous antagonism between the self and the other, as a special meaning of viveka (discrimination) that fixes a boundary between the self and the other, a destruction of falsehood that is more important than establishment of truthfulness, a transposition of the true and the false before and after self-realization. Thus the other is not disappeared but only hidden, even after accomplishing its own methodological role, and the same is with discourse about the other. To revive forgotten vocabulary in $Ved{\bar{a}}nta$ is an attempt to reconstruct devaluated story by means of shifting the pivot of discourse from the self to the other. The essential thing in this attempt may be to revive the conceptions of 'effort' that is intently concealed and of 'self-inquiry' that has lost its true meaning. Out of these, a systematic and continuous self-inquiry, consists in having a scenario on the question 'Who am I?' and utilizing that scenario by experience without interruption. A work of reconstructing the lost narratives in $Ved{\bar{a}}nta$ can be feasible only when the history of self-inquiry is redescribed in the system itself, provided that object of inquiry is not 'a self as the self' but 'a self as the other'.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.66 no.1
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• pp.42-49
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• 2022

Many elementary school teachers' lack of scientific knowledge reveal as several problems in teaching science. Thus, elementary school teachers need to improve their scientific knowledge, but there is the limit to improve the teachers' scientific knowledge through activities based on lecture that conducted in process of training and retraining them. Therefore, Improvement for training science teacher to improve scientific knowledge of elementary school teachers would be searched in this study. Depth interview was conducted toward three elementary school teachers, who had conducted action research, to improve content knowledge of material domain within teaching process and elementary school science. Based on result of the interview, difficulty and development that the three teachers were commonly experienced in process of conducting scientific inquiry in action research were analyzed. One of the difficulties of the inquiry were to figure out how the three teachers, who participated in the interview, understand specific concept, what they do not understand, and what they should study more to understand the concept. And there was a circumstance that the teachers did not know how to apply procedural knowledge, which learned explicitly in the process of setting plan for conducting research, into real context. Since there was difference between knowledge that they understand disjunctively and context that observed in real circumstance, they faced difficulty. However, the teachers conducted analysis of topic, planning research, conducting research, discussion of the result by themselves with those difficulties Thus, the teachers mentioned that not only content knowledge had been improved, but understanding of procedural knowledge, which is not intended to improve, had been also improved. Besides, they also mentioned that comprehensive understanding content knowledge, which they already understood, was also helpful. And the teachers suggest that if there were chance to discuss and examine the scientific practices by consisting of group with colleagues rather than conducting it individually it would more efficient studying. Considering their suggestion, direction of training elementary school teachers for improving their scientific knowledge should be improved in a way to understand science concepts based on direct research about context that is generated in circumstance of studying group of the teachers. Consequently, it would contribute to improvement of teaching science by combining teachers' practice and understanding.

• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.22
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• pp.123-155
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• 2011

This study aims to closely read Kim Jong-il's "About Stage Drama Arts" and disclose the new reality as evaluated by him. The study took the method by which to compare Kim Jong-il's theory on drama and North Korea's drama theory in the 1950s, and the findings of this study revealed that it was irrational to grant the adjective "new" to Kim Jong-il's drama theory. This is because tradition inheritance and newness cross each other. First, his tradition inheritance aspect was found in his playwriting method. In playwriting method, Kim Jong-il's argument about characters and language is an extension of the 1950s drama theory, and his theory on JongZa(seeds) is the transformation of the concept proposed in the 1950s. Also, the expression means of dramas and drama arts is dialogue, and his guideline to focus on the art of conversation rather than on acting is interpreted to be a reduced concept of drama arts, compared with the 1950s drama theory. On the other hand, his newness aspect can be clearly discovered in the materialization of stage. The fixed stage background, without dark change, shifts to another situation as it is, and this stage setting is clearly distinguished from the previous stage setting. The attempt is worth highly evaluating to allow the stage to reflect actors' emotional flows and let them act. Also, the attempt is distinctively distinguished from previous drama theories to allow the chorus' positive involvement in dramas so as to directly deliver characters' emotions to the audience and to trigger the audience' response as intended by creators. From the perspectives of drama evaluation, Kim Jong-il's theory and practice regarding stage and music is understood to maximize the audio-visual effects. Therefore, Kim Jeong-il's drama theory, as he argues, is not a completely new theory, but a transformational inheritance of existing drama theories, and a creation theory with focus on expansion of spectacles.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.165-181
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• 2011

In 2005, Yuhan Kimberly found interesting points in the existing customers' U&A survey on the kitchen towel. The usage of Korean consumers is usually restricted to getting rid of the oil from the fans and the fried food. This usage limits could be the barrier to the diffusion of kitchen towel. Although consumers were worried about the hygiene situations about the dishcloth, they also percieved that the existing paper kitchen towels were short of something to soothe their inconveniences. As a result, the company made a decision to seek out the solution for the consumers' worries. The relative shortage of the paper kitchen towel compared to that of the unhygienic and inconvenient dishcloth was its lack of water-endurance. The dishcloth could be reliable in the wet environment which is very common in Korean kitchen, whereas the paper kitchen towel was perceived as very weak and unreliable in removing water form the dishes and the sink. To overcome the common sense of the consumers, it is important to shift the consumers' perception of the kitchen towel category. It is needed to expand the usage time from one time to several times in a day. So it is needed to redesign the customers' kitchen life. The company adopted the brand "Scott^®" to meet the global brand strategy of the parent company, Kimberley Clark. This brand was also adopted and made a succesful launch of the similar product lines in Latin America. Furthermore, to make an emphasis on the differentiation from the existing paper kitchen towels, the company made the slogan, "Scott^® washable kitchen towel." This slogan was designed to expand the familiar product image of convenient paper towels to water-resistance. As a result, consumers show the changes in usage behavior of paper towels and apply them for more various purposes such as cleaning the decks and tables. This change results in the rapid sales increase of "Scott^® washable kitchen towel."

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.55-78
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• 2011

Recently strategic alliance between business firms has become prevalent to overcome increasing competitive threats and to supplement resource limitation of individual firms. As one of allianced sales promotion activities, a new type of discount program, so called "Alliance Card Discount", is introduced with the partnership of credit cards and loyalty cards. The program mainly pursues short-term sales growth by larger discount scheme while spends less through cost share among alliance partners. Thus this program can be regarded as cost efficient discount promotion. But because there is no solid evidence that it can really deliver profitable sales growth, an empirical study for its effects on sales and profit should be conducted. This study has two basic research questions concerning the effects of allianced discount program ; 1)the possibility of sales increase 2) the profitability of the discount driven sales. In F&B industry, sales increase mainly comes from increased guest count. Especially in family restaurants, to increase the number of guests we need to enlarge the size of visitor group (number of visitors for one group) because customers visit by group in a special occasion. And because they pay the bill by group(table), the increase of sales per table is a key measure for sales improvement. The past researches for price & discount sensitivity and reference discount rate explain that price sensitive consumers have narrow reference discount zone and make rational purchase decision. Differently from all time discount scheme of regular sales promotions, the alliance card discount program only provides the right to get discount like discount coupon. And because it is usually once a month opportunity given by the past month usage level, customers tend to perceive alliance card discount as a rare chance to get. So that we can expect customers try to maximize the discount effect when they use the limited discount opportunity. Considering group visiting practice and low visit frequency of family restaurants, the way to maximize discount effect should be the increase the size of visit group. And their sensitivity to discount and rational consumption behavior defer the additional spending for ordering high price menu, even though they get considerable amount of savings from the discount. From the analysis of sales data paid by alliance discount cards for four months, we found the below. 1) The relation between discount rate and number of guest per table is positive : 25% discount results one additional guest 2) The relation between discount rate and the spending per guest is negative. 3) However, total profit amount per table is increased when discount rate is increased. 4) Reward point accumulation & redemption did not show any significant relationship with the increase of number of guests. These results suggest that the allianced discount program substantially contributes to sales increase and profit improvement by increasing the number of guests per table. Though the spending per guest is decreased by discount rate increase, the total amount of profit per table is improved. It seems the incremental profit by increased guest count offsets the profit decrease. Additional intriguing finding is the point reward system does not have any significant impact on the increase of number of guest, even if the point accumulation & redemption of loyalty program are usually regarded as another saving offers by customers. In sum, because it is proved that allianced discount program with credit cards and loyalty cards is effective to both sales drive and profit increase, the alliance card program could be recommended as strategically buyable program.