• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.123-138
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• 2016

This study investigates intents of acquisitions in information technology industries. Mergers and acquisitions are a strategic decision at corporate-level and have been an important tool for a firm to grow. Plenty of firms in information technology industries have acquired startups to increase production efficiency, expand customer base, or improve quality over the last decades. For example, Google has made about 200 acquisitions since 2001, Cisco has acquired about 210 firms since 1993, Oracle has made about 125 acquisitions since 1994, and Microsoft has acquired about 200 firms since 1987. Although there have been many existing papers that theoretically study intents or motivations of acquisitions, there are limited papers that empirically investigate them mainly because it is challenging to measure and quantify intents of M&As. This study examines the intent of acquisitions by measuring specific intents for M&A transactions. Using our measures of acquisition intents, we compare the intents by four acquisition types: (1) the acquisition where a hardware firm acquires a hardware firm, (2) the acquisition where a hardware firm acquires a software/IT service firm, (3) the acquisition where a software/IT service firm acquires a hardware firm, and (4) the acquisition where a software /IT service firm acquires a software/IT service firm. We presume that there are difference in reasons why a hardware firm acquires another hardware firm, why a hardware firm acquires a software firm, why a software/IT service firm acquires a hardware firm, and why a software/IT service firm acquires another software/IT service firm. Using data of the M&As in US IT industries, we identified major intents of the M&As. The acquisition intents are identified based on the press release of M&A announcements and measured with four categories. First, an acquirer may have intents of cost saving in operations by sharing common resources between the acquirer and the target. The cost saving can accrue from economies of scope and scale. Second, an acquirer may have intents of product enhancement/development. Knowledge and skills transferred from the target may enable the acquirer to enhance the product quality or to expand product lines. Third, an acquirer may have intents of gain additional customer base to expand the market, to penetrate the market, or to enter a foreign market. Fourth, a firm may acquire a target with intents of expanding customer channels. By complementing existing channel to the customer, the firm can increase its revenue. Our results show that acquirers have had intents of cost saving more in acquisitions between hardware companies than in acquisitions between software companies. Hardware firms are more likely to acquire with intents of product enhancement or development than software firms. Overall, the intent of product enhancement/development is the most frequent intent in all of the four acquisition types, and the intent of customer base expansion is the second. We also analyze our data with the classification of production-side intents and customer-side intents, which is based on activities of the value chain of a firm. Intents of cost saving operations and those of product enhancement/development can be viewed as production-side intents and intents of customer base expansion and those of expanding customer channels can be viewed as customer-side intents. Our analysis shows that the ratio between the number of customer-side intents and that of production-side intents is higher in acquisitions where a software firm is an acquirer than in the acquisitions where a hardware firm is an acquirer. This study can contribute to IS literature. First, this study provides insights in understanding M&As in IT industries by answering for question of why an IT firm intends to another IT firm. Second, this study also provides distribution of acquisition intents for acquisition types.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.22
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• pp.137-165
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• 2007

It seems high time to increase productivity by adopting e-business to overcome challenges posed by both external factors including the appreciation of Korean won, oil hikes and fierce global competition and domestic issues represented by disparities between large corporations and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Seoul metropolitan and local cities, and export and domestic demand all of which weaken future growth engines in the Korean economy. The demands of the globalization era are for innovative changes in businessprocess and industrial structure aiming for creating new values. To this end, e-business is expected to play a core role in the sophistication of the Korean economy through new values and innovation. In order to examine business performance in e-business-adopting industries, this study analyzed the home shopping industry by closely looking into the financial ratios including the ratio of net profit to sales, the ratio of operation income to sales, the ratio of gross cost to sales cost, the ratio of gross cost to selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expense, and return of investment (ROI). This study, for best outcome, referred to corporate financial statements as a main resource to calculate financial ratios by utilizing Data Analysis, Retrieval and Transfer System (DART) of the Financial Supervisory Service, one of the Korea's financial supervisory authorities. First of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of net profit to sales is as following. CJ Home Shopping has registered a remarkable increase in its ratio of net profit rate to sales since 2002 while its competitors find it hard to catch up with CJ's stunning performances. This is partly due to the efficient management compared to CJ's value of capital. Such significance, if the current trend continues, will make the front-runner assume the largest market share. On the other hand, GS Home Shopping, despite its best organized system and largest value of capital among others, lacks efficiency in management. Second of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of operation income to sales is as following. Both CJ Home Shopping and GS Home Shopping have, until 2004, recorded similar growth trend. However, while CJ Home Shopping's operating income continued to increase in 2005, GS Home Shopping observed its operating income declining which resulted in the increasing income gap with CJ Home Shopping. While CJ Home Shopping with the largest market share in home shopping industryis engaged in aggressive marketing, GS Home Shopping due to its stability-driven management strategies falls behind CJ again in the ratio of operation income to sales in spite of its favorable management environment including its large capital. Companies in the Group B were established in the same year of 2001. NS Home Shopping was the first in the Group B to shift its loss to profit. Woori Home Shopping has continued to post operating loss for three consecutive years and finally was sold to Lotte Group in 2007, but since then, has registered a continuing increase in net income on sales. Third of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of gross cost to sales cost is as following. Since home shopping falls into sales business, its cost of sales is much lower than that of other types of business such as manufacturing industry. Since 2002 in gross costs including cost of sales, SG&A expense, and non-operating expense, cost of sales turned out to have remarkably decreased. Group B has also posted a notable decline in the same sector since 2002. Fourth of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of gross cost to SG&A expense is as following. Due to its unique characteristics, the home shopping industry usually posts ahigh ratio of SG&A expense. However, more than 80% of SG&A expense means the result of lax management and at the same time, a sharp lower net income on sales than other industries. Last but not least, the result of the trend analysis on ROI is as following. As for CJ Home Shopping, the curve of ROI looks similar to that of its investment on fixed assets. As it turned out, the company's ratio of fixed assets to operating income skyrocketed in 2004 and 2005. As far as GS Home Shopping is concerned, its fixed assets are not as much as that of CJ Home Shopping. Consequently, competition in the home shopping industry, at the moment, is among CJ, GS, Hyundai, NS and Woori Home Shoppings, and all of them need to more thoroughly manage their costs. In order for the late-comers of Group B and other home shopping companies to advance further, the current lax management should be reformed particularly on their SG&A expense sector. Provided that the total sales volume in the Internet shopping sector is projected to grow over 20 trillion won by the year 2010, it is concluded that all the participants in the home shopping industry should put strategies on efficient management on costs and expenses as their top priority rather than increase revenues, if they hope to grow even further after 2007.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.483-493
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• 2017

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine trends in dietary vitamin E intakes and contributing food groups among Korean adults. Methods: This study included 66,695 subjects aged ${\geq}19years$ who completed a nutrition survey as part of the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1998, 2001, 2005, 2007~2009, 2010~2012, 2013~2015). We estimated individual daily intakes of ${\alpha}-$, ${\beta}-$, ${\gamma}-$, ${\delta}-tocopherol$, and total vitamin E by linking food consumption data with a vitamin E database of commonly consumed foods. Results: Daily vitamin E intake significantly increased from $6.4mg\;{\alpha}-TE/d$ in 1998 to $7.7mg\;{\alpha}-TE/d$ in 2013~2015 (p for trend < 0.0001) among men as well as from $5.4mg\;{\alpha}-TE/d$ in 1998 to $6.5mg\;{\alpha}-TE/d$ in 2013~2015 among women (p for trend < 0.0001). However, the intake of vitamin E was lower than the adequate intake (AI) of Dietary Reference Intakes for Koreans 2015 (2015 KDRI). In 2013~2015, men consumed 6.5 mg/d of ${\alpha}-tocopherol$, 0.5 mg/d of ${\beta}-tocopherol$, 6.0 mg/d of ${\gamma}-tocopherol$, and 3.9 mg/d of ${\delta}-tocopherol$, whereas women consumed 5.7 mg/d of ${\alpha}-tocopherol$, 0.4 mg/d of ${\beta}-tocopherol$, 4.8 mg/d of ${\gamma}-tocopherol$, and 2.8 mg/d of ${\delta}-tocopherol$. The major food groups contributing to vitamin E intake were vegetables (men: 23.3%, women: 22.7%), grains (men: 14.5%, women: 13.9%), and eggs (men: 13.0%, women: 12.5%). Conclusion: This study provides scientific evidence for vitamin E intake in Korean adults. Since the current intake of vitamin E was lower than the reference intakes set by 2015 KDRI, dietary vitamin E intake should be monitored regularly among Korean adults.

• FLOWER RESEARCH JOURNAL
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.125-135
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• 2010

To discover the main characteristics of Korean traditional flower arrangement, they were compared with different articles and old paintings used in royal court ceremonies. The primary research involved principle of design. The times periods used were the Joseon Dynasty era of Korea, the Ming era of China, and the Edo eras of Japan. The result, which shows both the similarities and differences, of the research is summarized as follows. The similarities were that they all respect the features of nature, and their image expresses their creator's thinking. There was one technique, called 'Suje', in which a part of the stem is coming out from one branch. Also, each three eras preferred flowering trees and ornamental trees more than annuals or foliage plants. one of the differences was that korea used a simple number of materials. The work had volume and appeared mild by using a soft curved line which was repetitive and massive. The Joseon Dynasty era advanced a sense of beauty with artistic symmetry and balance. The work seemed soft and natural because of the little change in blank space, with almost no angle of line. The form had a characteristic preference of being taller than the typical Japanese arrangement. It appeared simple, calm, and rustic by using only one kind of material. In contrast, the Chinese style was gorgeous and displayed volume in a non-symmetrical tripodal form, which incorporated various colors and materials. Also, they avoided processing the materials in order to emphasize the original beauty of nature. Chinese flower arts did not become formalized because they did not consider the formality seriously the formal. The Japanese style was also gorgeous because it incorporated various materials and angles. It included an extreme technique in which an artificial line divided the blank space delicately. The line was both strong and delicate in an established form. The restriction of the main branch gave a light feeling, as well as more strain as in a balance sense. The Japanese eras emphasized more the use of line and a sense of blank space.

• Korean Journal of Breeding Science
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.674-678
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• 2010

A new sweetpotato variety, 'Daeyumi', was developed by Bioenergy Crop Research Center, National Institute of Crop Science (NICS), RDA in 2008. This variety was obtained from the cross between 'Jinhongmi' and 'Xusju 18' in 2000. The seedling and line selections were performed from 2001 to 2003, preliminary and advanced yield trials were carried out from 2004 to 2005, and the regional yield trials were conducted at six locations from 2006 to 2008. 'Daeyumi' has cordate leaf, green vine and petiole, elliptic storage root, red skin and yellow flesh color of storage root. This variety is also resistant to Fusarium wilt and nematode. The starch value was 25.9%, ethanol yield was 418 L/Ton, which was 7% higher than that of 'Yulmi' variety, and the total sugar content was 2.47 g/100g, dry weight. 'Daeyumi's initial temperature of starch gelatinization was lower, 76.2$^{\circ}C$, and the retrogradation process was earlier than 'Yulmi'. The average yield of storage root was 27.8 ton/ha in the regional yield trials, which was 36% higher than that of 'Yulmi' variety. Number of storage roots over 50 gram per plant was 3.0, and the average weight of one storage root was 152 gram. This variety can be used for the production of bioethanol and starch processing.

• Korean Journal of Breeding Science
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.262-266
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• 2010

'Josaengheugchal', a new blackish purple pigmented glutinous japonica rice cultivar, was developed by the rice breeding team of Department of Functional Crop, NICS, RDA in 2004. This cultivar was derived from a cross between 'Tohoku 149' as black glutinous source and 'Sx 864' as purple colored rice in 1992 and 1993 winter season, and selected by pedigree breeding method until $F_6$ generation. As a result, a promising line, YR15907-6-8-1-5, was advanced and designated as the name of 'Milyang 194' in 2001. The local adaptability test of 'Milyang 194' was carried out at seven locations from 2002 to 2004 and it was named as 'Josaengheugchal'. 'Josaengheugchal' is an early maturing cultivar and has 71 cm culm height. It has higher anthocyanian content compared with 'Heugnambyeo'. It is moderately resistant to leaf blast but susceptible to other disease and insect pests. The yield potential of 'Josaengheugchal' in brown rice was about 4.21 MT/ha at ordinary fertilizer level in local adaptability test. This cultivar would be adaptable to the plain paddy field of middle, Honam, and Yeomgnam in Korea under ordinary and double cropping system.

• Korean Journal of Breeding Science
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.679-683
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• 2010

'Yeonjami' is a new sweetpotato variety developed for table use by Bioenergy Crop Research Center, National Institute of Crop Science (NICS), RDA in 2008. This variety was selected from the cross between 'Ayamurasakki' and 'Poly Cross' in 2000, and seedling and line selections were practiced from 2001 to 2003. Preliminary and advanced yield trials were carried out from 2004 to 2005. The regional yield trials were conducted at six locations from 2006 to 2008. 'Yeonjami' has cordate leaf, green vine and petiole, long elliptic storage root, purple skin and light purple flesh color of storage root. The average yield of storage root was 25.9 ton/ha in the regional yield trials, which was 15% higher than that of 'Sinjami' variety. Number of storage roots over 50 gram per plant was 2.9, and the average weight of one storage root was 153 gram. This variety was partly-resistant to Fusarium wilt and nematode. In addition, steamed 'Yeonjami' has higher polyphenol contents as 139.6 mg/100 g and higher biological activities as, which may improve the bioactivity in human.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.296-304
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• 2018

The objective of this study was to analyze the impact of climate change on rice yield and quality. Experiments were conducted using SPAR(Soil-Plant-Atmosphere-Research) chambers, which was designed to create virtual future climate conditions, in the National Institute of Crop Science, Jeonju, Korea, in 2016. In the future climate conditions($+2.8^{\circ}C$ temp, 580 ppm $CO_2$) of year 2051~2060 according to RCP 8.5 scenario, elevated temperature and $CO_2$ accelerated the heading date by about five days than the present climate conditions, resulted in a high temperature environment during grain filling stage. Rice yield decreased sharply in the future climate conditions due to the high temperature induced poor ripening. And the spikelet numbers, ripening ratio, and 1000-grain weight of brown rice were significantly decreased compared to control. The rice grain quality was also decreased sharply, especially due to the increased immature grains. In the future climate conditions, expression of starch biosynthesis-related genes such as granule-bound starch synthase(GBSSI, GBSSII, SSIIa, SSIIb, SSIIIa), starch branching enzyme(BEIIb) and ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase(AGPS1, AGPS2, AGPL2) were repressed in developing seeds, whereas starch degradation related genes such as ${\alpha}-amylase$(Amy1C, Amy3D, Amy3E) were induced. These results suggest that the reduction in yield and quality of rice in the future climate conditions is likely caused mainly by the poor grain filling by high temperature. Therefore, it is suggested to develop tolerant cultivars to high temperature during grain filling period and a new cropping system in order to ensure a high quality of rice in the future climate conditions.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.71-88
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• 2017

Language models were originally developed for speech recognition and language processing. Using a set of example sentences, a language model predicts the next word or character based on sequential input data. N-gram models have been widely used but this model cannot model the correlation between the input units efficiently since it is a probabilistic model which are based on the frequency of each unit in the training set. Recently, as the deep learning algorithm has been developed, a recurrent neural network (RNN) model and a long short-term memory (LSTM) model have been widely used for the neural language model (Ahn, 2016; Kim et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2016). These models can reflect dependency between the objects that are entered sequentially into the model (Gers and Schmidhuber, 2001; Mikolov et al., 2010; Sundermeyer et al., 2012). In order to learning the neural language model, texts need to be decomposed into words or morphemes. Since, however, a training set of sentences includes a huge number of words or morphemes in general, the size of dictionary is very large and so it increases model complexity. In addition, word-level or morpheme-level models are able to generate vocabularies only which are contained in the training set. Furthermore, with highly morphological languages such as Turkish, Hungarian, Russian, Finnish or Korean, morpheme analyzers have more chance to cause errors in decomposition process (Lankinen et al., 2016). Therefore, this paper proposes a phoneme-level language model for Korean language based on LSTM models. A phoneme such as a vowel or a consonant is the smallest unit that comprises Korean texts. We construct the language model using three or four LSTM layers. Each model was trained using Stochastic Gradient Algorithm and more advanced optimization algorithms such as Adagrad, RMSprop, Adadelta, Adam, Adamax, and Nadam. Simulation study was done with Old Testament texts using a deep learning package Keras based the Theano. After pre-processing the texts, the dataset included 74 of unique characters including vowels, consonants, and punctuation marks. Then we constructed an input vector with 20 consecutive characters and an output with a following 21st character. Finally, total 1,023,411 sets of input-output vectors were included in the dataset and we divided them into training, validation, testsets with proportion 70:15:15. All the simulation were conducted on a system equipped with an Intel Xeon CPU (16 cores) and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 GPU. We compared the loss function evaluated for the validation set, the perplexity evaluated for the test set, and the time to be taken for training each model. As a result, all the optimization algorithms but the stochastic gradient algorithm showed similar validation loss and perplexity, which are clearly superior to those of the stochastic gradient algorithm. The stochastic gradient algorithm took the longest time to be trained for both 3- and 4-LSTM models. On average, the 4-LSTM layer model took 69% longer training time than the 3-LSTM layer model. However, the validation loss and perplexity were not improved significantly or became even worse for specific conditions. On the other hand, when comparing the automatically generated sentences, the 4-LSTM layer model tended to generate the sentences which are closer to the natural language than the 3-LSTM model. Although there were slight differences in the completeness of the generated sentences between the models, the sentence generation performance was quite satisfactory in any simulation conditions: they generated only legitimate Korean letters and the use of postposition and the conjugation of verbs were almost perfect in the sense of grammar. The results of this study are expected to be widely used for the processing of Korean language in the field of language processing and speech recognition, which are the basis of artificial intelligence systems.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.111-133
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• 2010

Marketing financial services used to be easier. Today, the competition in financial services is fierce. Not only has the competition become more intense, financial services have also changed structurally. In an environment with various customer needs and severe competitions, the marketing in financial services industry is getting more difficult and more important than before. However, there are still not enough studies on financial services marketing in Korea whereas lots of research papers have been published frequently in some international journals. The purpose of this paper is (1)to review the literature on financial services marketing, (2)to investigate current marketing activities based on in-depth interview with financial marketing managers in Korea, and (3)to suggest some implications for future research on the financial services marketing. Financial products are not consumer products. In fact, they are not products at all in the way product marketing is usually described. Nor are they altogether like services. The financial industry operates in a unique way, and its marketing tasks are correspondingly complex. However, the literature review shows that there has been a lack of basic studies which dealt with inherent characteristics of financial services marketing compared to the research on marketing in other industries. Many studies in domestic marketing journals have so far focused only on the general customer behaviors and the special issues in some financial industries. However, for more effective financial services marketing, we have to answer following questions. Is there any difference between financial service marketing and consumer packaged goods marketing? What are the differences between the financial services marketing and other services marketing such as education and health services? Are there different ways of marketing among banks, securities firms, insurance firms, and credit card companies? In other words, we need more detailed research as well as basic studies about the financial services marketing. For example, we need concrete definitions of financial services marketing, bank marketing, securities firm marketing, and etc. It is also required to compare the characteristics of each marketing within the financial services industry. The products sold in each market have different characteristics such as duration and degree of risk-taking. It means that there are sub-categories in financial services marketing. We have to consider them in the future research on the financial services marketing. It is also necessary to study customer decision making process in the financial markets. There have been little research on how customers search and process information, compare alternatives, make final decision, and repeat their choices. Because financial services have some unique characteristics, we need different understandings in the customer behaviors compared to the behaviors in other service markets. And also considering the rapid growth in financial markets and upcoming severe competition between domestic and global financial companies, it is time to start more systematic and detailed research on financial services marketing in Korea. In the second part of this paper, I analyzed the results of in-depth interview with 20 marketing managers of financial services companies in Korea. As a result, I found that the role of marketing departments in Korean financial companies are mainly focused on the short-term activities such as sales support, promotion, and CRM data analysis although the size and history of marketing departments to some extent show a sign of maturity. Most companies established official marketing departments before 2001. Average number of employees in a marketing department is about 58. However, marketing managers in eight companies(40% of the sample) still think that the purpose of marketing is only to support and manage general sales activities. It shows that some companies have sales-oriented concept rather than marketing-oriented concept. I also found three key words which marketing managers think importantly in financial services markets. They are (1)Trust in customer relationship, (2)Brand differentiation, and (3)Rapid response to customer needs. 50% of the sample support that "Trust" is the most important key word in the financial services marketing. It is interesting that 80% of banks and securities companies think that "Trust" is the most important thing, whereas managers in credit card companies consider "Rapid response to customer needs" as the most important key word in their market. In addition, there are different problems recognition of marketing managers depending on the types of financial industries they belong to. For example, in the case of banks and insurance companies, marketing managers consider "a lack of communication with other departments" as the most serious problem. On the other hand, in the case of securities firms, "a lack of utilization of customer data" is the most serious problem. These results imply that there are different important factors for the customer satisfaction depending on the types of financial industries, and managers have to consider them when marketing financial products in more effective ways. For example, It will be necessary for marketing managers to study different important factors which affect customer satisfaction, repeat purchase, degree of risk-taking, and possibility of cross-selling according to the types of financial industries. I also suggested six hypothetical propositions for the future research.