• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.157-194
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• 2008

The popularity of communities on the internet has captured the attention of marketing scholars and practitioners. By adapting to the culture of the internet, however, and providing consumer with the ability to interact with one another in addition to the company, businesses can build new and deeper relationships with customers. The economic potential of online communities has been discussed with much hope in the many popular papers. In contrast to this enthusiastic prognostications, empirical and practical evidence regarding the economic potential of the online community has shown a little different conclusion. To date, even communities with high levels of membership and vibrant social arenas have failed to build financial viability. In this perspective, this study investigates the role of various kinds of influencing factors to online community loyalty and basically suggests the framework that explains the process of building purchase loyalty. Even though the importance of building loyalty in an online environment has been emphasized from the marketing theorists and practitioners, there is no sufficient research conclusion about what is the process of building purchase loyalty and the most powerful factors that influence to it. In this study, the process of building purchase loyalty is divided into three levels; characteristics of community site such as content superiority, site vividness, navigation easiness, and customerization, the mediating variables such as self congruency, consumer experience, and consumer to consumer interactivity, and finally various factors about online community loyalty such as visit loyalty, affect, trust, and purchase loyalty are those things. And the findings of this research are as follows. First, consumer-to-consumer interactivity is an important factor to online community purchase loyalty and other loyalty factors. This means, in order to interact with other people more actively, many participants in online community have the willingness to buy some kinds of products such as music, content, avatar, and etc. From this perspective, marketers of online community have to create some online environments in order that consumers can easily interact with other consumers and make some site environments in order that consumer can feel experience in this site is interesting and self congruency is higher than at other community sites. It has been argued that giving consumers a good experience is vital in cyber space, and websites create an active (rather than passive) customer by their nature. Some researchers have tried to pin down the positive experience, with limited success and less empirical support. Web sites can provide a cognitively stimulating experience for the user. We define the online community experience as playfulness based on the past studies. Playfulness is created by the excitement generated through a website's content and measured using three descriptors Marketers can promote using and visiting online communities, which deliver a superior web experience, to influence their customers' attitudes and actions, encouraging high involvement with those communities. Specially, we suggest that transcendent customer experiences(TCEs) which have aspects of flow and/or peak experience, can generate lasting shifts in beliefs and attitudes including subjective self-transformation and facilitate strong consumer's ties to a online community. And we find that website success is closely related to positive website experiences: consumers will spend more time on the site, interacting with other users. As we can see figure 2, visit loyalty and consumer affect toward the online community site didn't directly influence to purchase loyalty. This implies that there may be a little different situations here in online community site compared to online shopping mall studies that shows close relations between revisit intention and purchase intention. There are so many alternative sites on web, consumers do not want to spend money to buy content and etc. In this sense, marketers of community websites must know consumers' affect toward online community site is not a last goal and important factor to influnece consumers' purchase. Third, building good content environment can be a really important marketing tool to create a competitive advantage in cyberspace. For example, Cyworld, Korea's number one community site shows distinctive superiority in the consumer evaluations of content characteristics such as content superiority, site vividness, and customerization. Particularly, comsumer evaluation about customerization was remarkably higher than the other sites. In this point, we can conclude that providing comsumers with good, unique and highly customized content will be urgent and important task directly and indirectly impacting to self congruency, consumer experience, c-to-c interactivity, and various loyalty factors of online community. By creating enjoyable, useful, and unique online community environments, online community portals such as Daum, Naver, and Cyworld are able to build customer loyalty to a degree that many of today's online marketer can only dream of these loyalty, in turn, generates strong economic returns. Another way to build good online community site is to provide consumers with an interactive, fun, experience-oriented or experiential Web site. Elements that can make a dot.com's Web site experiential include graphics, 3-D images, animation, video and audio capabilities. In addition, chat rooms and real-time customer service applications (which link site visitors directly to other visitors, or with company support personnel, respectively) are also being used to make web sites more interactive. Researchers note that online communities are increasingly incorporating such applications in their Web sites, in order to make consumers' online shopping experience more similar to that of an offline store. That is, if consumers are able to experience sensory stimulation (e.g. via 3-D images and audio sound), interact with other consumers (e.g., via chat rooms), and interact with sales or support people (e.g. via a real-time chat interface or e-mail), then they are likely to have a more positive dot.com experience, and develop a more positive image toward the online company itself). Analysts caution, however, that, while high quality graphics, animation and the like may create a fun experience for consumers, when heavily used, they can slow site navigation, resulting in frustrated consumers, who may never return to a site. Consequently, some analysts suggest that, at least with current technology, the rule-of-thumb is that less is more. That is, while graphics etc. can draw consumers to a site, they should be kept to a minimum, so as not to impact negatively on consumers' overall site experience.

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

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

• The Korea Journal of Herbology
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.1-16
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• 2012

Objective : To investigate the current status of prescription drugs in Oriental medical institutes and to draw up a future plan for the revitalization of Oriental medical health insurance, this survey has been performed. Method : The survey has been made with 321 doctors working at Oriental medical institutes in Daegu and Kyungbuk areas for a period of 3 month from June 1, 2010 until September 1, 2010. Result : 1. When it comes to the current status of the use of herbal drugs in Oriental Health insurance, most of doctors surveyed prescribe insurance drugs, and they prescribe insurance drugs to patients, who are less than 20% of total patients visiting their clinics. 2. The awareness of Herbal Health Care Drugs is investigated. When it comes to the understanding of the difference between insurance drugs(powder type drugs) and granular type drugs, doctors admit that they differ only in one aspect, whether or not their being covered by health insurance. Based on the survey results on the understanding of insurance coverage of granular type drugs, doctors, even though they long for granular type drugs to be accepted as insurance drugs, are worrying whether the number of outpatients might dwindle due to increased insurance co-payments. They also point out that the biggest obstacles in the expansion of the granular type drugs as insurance drugs are the lack of understanding of the government and the objection of the Health Insurance Review and Assesment service (HIRA) for fear of increased insurance claims. 3. Upon investigation on Oriental medicine doctors' understandings of herbal pharmaceutical industry, it is found that doctors' responses on pharmaceutical industry are not all positive ones('new product development and neglect of R&D infrastructure' and 'smallness of industry'). When it is investigated what area needs the greatest improvement in herbal pharmaceutical industry, 'securing sufficient capital, good manufacturing, and strengthening quality control', is the highest. 4. When it is asked what are the most needed in order to improve herbal health insurance medicine, responses such as 'the increase in the accessibility to and the utilization of Oriental medical clinics through the diversification of the means of prescriptions', 'the improvement of insurance benefits(cap adjustments)', 'increase the proportion of high quality medicinal plants', 'the ceiling of co-payments(deductible) at 20,000 won or more', 'expansion of the choices of formulations', 'formulational expansions of tablets and pills', and finally 'admittance and expansion of granular type drug as insurance drug' are the highest. 5. Upon investigating the general characteristics of the current status of the usage of Oriental health care herbal drugs, the followings are observed. First, the frequency of use of health insurance drugs by the doctors who use health insurance with general characteristics shows similar differences in case of total monthly sales amount (p<0.001), average number of daily patients (p<0.05). Secondly, as to the willingness of the expanded usage of insurance drugs, similar differences are observed in case of total monthly sales amount (p<0.05). 6. Upon investigating the general characteristics of the perception of Herbal health care drugs, the followings are observed. First, inspecting general characteristics and insurance claims due to increased co-payments(deductible amount) reveals similar differences in case of working period (p<0.01) and in case of total monthly sales amount (p <0.01). Secondly, inspecting general characteristics and the obstacles that hinder granular type drugs from being accepted as health care insurance drugs shows similar differences in case of working period (p<0.05). 7. Upon investigating the general characteristics of the understanding of Oriental Herbal pharmaceutical companies, the followings are observed. First, opinions on the general characteristics of pharmaceutical companies, when examined with variance analysis, shows similar differences in case of total monthly sales amount (p<0.05). Secondly, when opinions are examined on general characteristics and the problems of herbal pharmaceutical companies, similar differences are found in case of working period (p<0.01) and in case of total monthly sales amount (p<0.001). Lastly, opinions on the general characteristics and reforms of pharmaceutical companies, similar differences are observed in case of working period (p<0.001). 8. Upon investigating the general characteristics of the improvement of insurance Herbal drugs, the followings are observed. First, regarding general characteristics and insurance benefits, similar differences are observed in case of working period (p<0.05), in case of total monthly sales amount (p<0.05), and in case of average number of daily patients (p<0.01). Secondly, opinions on the general characteristics and the needs for the improvement of Herbal insurance drugs are examined in 5 different aspects, which are the approval of granular type drugs as insurance drugs, the expanded practices of the number of prescription insurance drugs, the needs of a variety of formulations, the needs of TFT of which numbers of Oriental medical doctors are members for the revision of the existing system, and the needs of adjusting the current ceiling of the fixed amount and the fixed rate. When processed by the analysis of variance, the results show similar differences in case of average number of daily patients (p<0.01). Conclusion : From the results of this study the first measures to take are, to reform overall insurance benefit system, including insurance co-payment system(fixed rate cap adjustment), to expand the number of the herbal drugs to be prescribed matching with insurance benefit accordingly, and to revitalize herbal medicine insurance system through the change of various formulations. In addition, it is recommended to improve the effectiveness of herbal medicine by making plans to enhance the efficacy of herbal medicine and by enabling small pharmaceutical companies to outgrow themselves.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.962-974
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• 1998

Background: Alteration of p53 tumor suppressor genes is most frequently identified in human neoplasms, including lung carcinoma. It is well known that bcl-2 oncoprotein protects cells from apoptosis. Recent studies have demonstrated that bcl-2 expression is associated with favorable prognosis for patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma. However, the precise biologic role of bcl-2 in the development of these tumors is still obscure. p53 and bcl-2 have important regulatory influence in the apoptotic pathway and thus their relationship is of interest in tumorigenesis, especially lung cancer. Purpose: The author investigated to know the prognostic significance of the expression of p53 and bcl-2 in radically resected non-small cell lung cancer. Method: 84 cases of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded blocks from resected primary non-small cell lung cancer from 1980 to 1994 at Hanyang University Hospital were available for both clinical follow-up and immunohistochemical staining using monoclonal antibodies for p53 and bcl-2. Results : The histologic classification of the tumor was based on WHO criteria., and the specimens included 45 squamous cell carcinomas(53.6%), 28 adeonocarcinomas(33.3%) and 11 large cell carcinomas(13.1 %). p53 immunoreactivity was noted in 47 cases of 84 cases(56.0%). bcl-2 immunoreactivity was noted in 15 cases of 84 cases(17.9%). The mean survival duration was $64.23{\pm}10.73$ months in bcl-2 positive group and $35.28{\pm}4$. 39 months in bcl-2 negative group. The bcl-2 expression was significantly correlated with survival in radically resected non-small cell lung cancer patients(p=0.03). The mean survival duration was $34.71{\pm}6.12$ months in p53 positive group and $45.35{\pm}6.30$ months in p53 negative group(p=0.21). The p53 expression was not predictive for survival. There was no correlation between combination of the different status of p53 and bcl-2 expression in our study. Conclusions : The interaction and the regulation of new biologic markers, such as those involved in the apoptotic pathway, are complex. bcl-2 overexpression is a good prognostic factor in non-small cell lung cancer and p53 expression is not significantly associated with the prognostic factor in non-small cell lung cancer.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.93-111
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• 2013

As Internet and information technology (IT) continues to develop and evolve, the issue of big data has emerged at the foreground of scholarly and industrial attention. Big data is generally defined as data that exceed the range that can be collected, stored, managed and analyzed by existing conventional information systems and it also refers to the new technologies designed to effectively extract values from such data. With the widespread dissemination of IT systems, continual efforts have been made in various fields of industry such as R&D, manufacturing, and finance to collect and analyze immense quantities of data in order to extract meaningful information and to use this information to solve various problems. Since IT has converged with various industries in many aspects, digital data are now being generated at a remarkably accelerating rate while developments in state-of-the-art technology have led to continual enhancements in system performance. The types of big data that are currently receiving the most attention include information available within companies, such as information on consumer characteristics, information on purchase records, logistics information and log information indicating the usage of products and services by consumers, as well as information accumulated outside companies, such as information on the web search traffic of online users, social network information, and patent information. Among these various types of big data, web searches performed by online users constitute one of the most effective and important sources of information for marketing purposes because consumers search for information on the internet in order to make efficient and rational choices. Recently, Google has provided public access to its information on the web search traffic of online users through a service named Google Trends. Research that uses this web search traffic information to analyze the information search behavior of online users is now receiving much attention in academia and in fields of industry. Studies using web search traffic information can be broadly classified into two fields. The first field consists of empirical demonstrations that show how web search information can be used to forecast social phenomena, the purchasing power of consumers, the outcomes of political elections, etc. The other field focuses on using web search traffic information to observe consumer behavior, identifying the attributes of a product that consumers regard as important or tracking changes on consumers' expectations, for example, but relatively less research has been completed in this field. In particular, to the extent of our knowledge, hardly any studies related to brands have yet attempted to use web search traffic information to analyze the factors that influence consumers' purchasing activities. This study aims to demonstrate that consumers' web search traffic information can be used to derive the relations among brands and the relations between an individual brand and product attributes. When consumers input their search words on the web, they may use a single keyword for the search, but they also often input multiple keywords to seek related information (this is referred to as simultaneous searching). A consumer performs a simultaneous search either to simultaneously compare two product brands to obtain information on their similarities and differences, or to acquire more in-depth information about a specific attribute in a specific brand. Web search traffic information shows that the quantity of simultaneous searches using certain keywords increases when the relation is closer in the consumer's mind and it will be possible to derive the relations between each of the keywords by collecting this relational data and subjecting it to network analysis. Accordingly, this study proposes a method of analyzing how brands are positioned by consumers and what relationships exist between product attributes and an individual brand, using simultaneous search traffic information. It also presents case studies demonstrating the actual application of this method, with a focus on tablets, belonging to innovative product groups.

• Journal of Korean Historical Folklife
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• no.46
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• pp.195-237
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• 2014

Palsapum are ornaments to reveal the purpose of commander of three naval forces as well as symbols to remember the greatness of admiral Yi, Sun-Shin. In 1966, ther were designated as a treasure No. 440 based on their value; however, they have not received attention from academia because they are relics from China. This study compares and analyzes the document, paintings, and relevant references from Korea and China focusing on Palsapum, understands their formal characteristics, and examines their historical value such as years and location of creation. As a result, the study determines five of them are original, but three of them were newly created by the later generations. The five, Dodogin (都督印, Commander's seal)·Yeongpae (令牌, Commander's tablet)·Gwido (鬼刀, Replica of the devil sword)·Chamdo (斬刀, Replica of the decapitation swor d)·and Gognapal (bugle) were created by Ming Dynasty before 1598, and delivered by the hands of General Chen Lin. The other three, Dokjeongi (督戰 旗, Battle flag)·Hongsoryeonggi (紅小令旗, Commander's flag)·and Namsoryeonggi (藍小令旗, Commander's flag), were created in 19th century by Joseon Dynasty. After analysis on the former relics, the study determines that they are not official relics with the dignity of Ming Dynasty but personal relics with regional characteristics; in other words, Palsamun are not the royal gifts from Emperor Shenzong to Admiral Yi, Sun-Shin. but personal momentoes left by General Chen Lin in the Tongjeyoung to celebrate the admiral. The names, variety, numbers, and appurtenances of Palsapum have been changed with time as follows. First, the scholars of Jeseon in 17the century only focused on Dodogin. It was certainly created in Ming Dynasty; however, it was a personal stamp, so considered to be not from the emperor but from General Chen Lin. Second, Palsapum was called Palsamul and consisted of 14 pieces of 8 kinds in 18the century, ; it is confirmed on the 「Dosul(圖說, stories with pictures of」 『Yi Chungmugong Literary Collection』 The sizes of five relics including Dodogin are similar to the records, but their patterns and shapes are exotic, or cannot be found in Joseon. Thus, they reflect the regional characteristics of Guangdong province. Third, they were called Palsapum, and consisted on 15 pieces of 8 kinds in 19th century; it is confirmed on , a sixteen-fold folding screen drawn by Shin, Gwan-Ho in 1861. The stamp box, tablet bag, and three flags were newly created to engrave Joseon style letters and patterns on damageable materials such as leather and cloth. The relics easy to be destroyed have been renewed even after 19th century. Last, there are many misunderstandings about Palsapum by governmental indifference and improper management of records even though they were designated as a treasure in very early times. Thus, authorities should be concerned with Palsapum to provide the measures for stable maintenance of the relics; this will let people remember not only the history of cooperation between Korea and China to stop the Japanese ambition, but also Admiral Yi, Sun-Shin and General Chen Lin to bring victory in Japanese invasions of Korea.

• 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.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.63-86
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• 2010

Personalized services directly and indirectly acquire personal data, in part, to provide customers with higher-value services that are specifically context-relevant (such as place and time). Information technologies continue to mature and develop, providing greatly improved performance. Sensory networks and intelligent software can now obtain context data, and that is the cornerstone for providing personalized, context-specific services. Yet, the danger of overflowing personal information is increasing because the data retrieved by the sensors usually contains privacy information. Various technical characteristics of context-aware applications have more troubling implications for information privacy. In parallel with increasing use of context for service personalization, information privacy concerns have also increased such as an unrestricted availability of context information. Those privacy concerns are consistently regarded as a critical issue facing context-aware personalized service success. The entire field of information privacy is growing as an important area of research, with many new definitions and terminologies, because of a need for a better understanding of information privacy concepts. Especially, it requires that the factors of information privacy should be revised according to the characteristics of new technologies. However, previous information privacy factors of context-aware applications have at least two shortcomings. First, there has been little overview of the technology characteristics of context-aware computing. Existing studies have only focused on a small subset of the technical characteristics of context-aware computing. Therefore, there has not been a mutually exclusive set of factors that uniquely and completely describe information privacy on context-aware applications. Second, user survey has been widely used to identify factors of information privacy in most studies despite the limitation of users' knowledge and experiences about context-aware computing technology. To date, since context-aware services have not been widely deployed on a commercial scale yet, only very few people have prior experiences with context-aware personalized services. It is difficult to build users' knowledge about context-aware technology even by increasing their understanding in various ways: scenarios, pictures, flash animation, etc. Nevertheless, conducting a survey, assuming that the participants have sufficient experience or understanding about the technologies shown in the survey, may not be absolutely valid. Moreover, some surveys are based solely on simplifying and hence unrealistic assumptions (e.g., they only consider location information as a context data). A better understanding of information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services is highly needed. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to identify a generic set of factors for elemental information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services and to develop a rank-order list of information privacy concern factors. We consider overall technology characteristics to establish a mutually exclusive set of factors. A Delphi survey, a rigorous data collection method, was deployed to obtain a reliable opinion from the experts and to produce a rank-order list. It, therefore, lends itself well to obtaining a set of universal factors of information privacy concern and its priority. An international panel of researchers and practitioners who have the expertise in privacy and context-aware system fields were involved in our research. Delphi rounds formatting will faithfully follow the procedure for the Delphi study proposed by Okoli and Pawlowski. This will involve three general rounds: (1) brainstorming for important factors; (2) narrowing down the original list to the most important ones; and (3) ranking the list of important factors. For this round only, experts were treated as individuals, not panels. Adapted from Okoli and Pawlowski, we outlined the process of administrating the study. We performed three rounds. In the first and second rounds of the Delphi questionnaire, we gathered a set of exclusive factors for information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services. The respondents were asked to provide at least five main factors for the most appropriate understanding of the information privacy concern in the first round. To do so, some of the main factors found in the literature were presented to the participants. The second round of the questionnaire discussed the main factor provided in the first round, fleshed out with relevant sub-factors. Respondents were then requested to evaluate each sub factor's suitability against the corresponding main factors to determine the final sub-factors from the candidate factors. The sub-factors were found from the literature survey. Final factors selected by over 50% of experts. In the third round, a list of factors with corresponding questions was provided, and the respondents were requested to assess the importance of each main factor and its corresponding sub factors. Finally, we calculated the mean rank of each item to make a final result. While analyzing the data, we focused on group consensus rather than individual insistence. To do so, a concordance analysis, which measures the consistency of the experts' responses over successive rounds of the Delphi, was adopted during the survey process. As a result, experts reported that context data collection and high identifiable level of identical data are the most important factor in the main factors and sub factors, respectively. Additional important sub-factors included diverse types of context data collected, tracking and recording functionalities, and embedded and disappeared sensor devices. The average score of each factor is very useful for future context-aware personalized service development in the view of the information privacy. The final factors have the following differences comparing to those proposed in other studies. First, the concern factors differ from existing studies, which are based on privacy issues that may occur during the lifecycle of acquired user information. However, our study helped to clarify these sometimes vague issues by determining which privacy concern issues are viable based on specific technical characteristics in context-aware personalized services. Since a context-aware service differs in its technical characteristics compared to other services, we selected specific characteristics that had a higher potential to increase user's privacy concerns. Secondly, this study considered privacy issues in terms of service delivery and display that were almost overlooked in existing studies by introducing IPOS as the factor division. Lastly, in each factor, it correlated the level of importance with professionals' opinions as to what extent users have privacy concerns. The reason that it did not select the traditional method questionnaire at that time is that context-aware personalized service considered the absolute lack in understanding and experience of users with new technology. For understanding users' privacy concerns, professionals in the Delphi questionnaire process selected context data collection, tracking and recording, and sensory network as the most important factors among technological characteristics of context-aware personalized services. In the creation of a context-aware personalized services, this study demonstrates the importance and relevance of determining an optimal methodology, and which technologies and in what sequence are needed, to acquire what types of users' context information. Most studies focus on which services and systems should be provided and developed by utilizing context information on the supposition, along with the development of context-aware technology. However, the results in this study show that, in terms of users' privacy, it is necessary to pay greater attention to the activities that acquire context information. To inspect the results in the evaluation of sub factor, additional studies would be necessary for approaches on reducing users' privacy concerns toward technological characteristics such as highly identifiable level of identical data, diverse types of context data collected, tracking and recording functionality, embedded and disappearing sensor devices. The factor ranked the next highest level of importance after input is a context-aware service delivery that is related to output. The results show that delivery and display showing services to users in a context-aware personalized services toward the anywhere-anytime-any device concept have been regarded as even more important than in previous computing environment. Considering the concern factors to develop context aware personalized services will help to increase service success rate and hopefully user acceptance for those services. Our future work will be to adopt these factors for qualifying context aware service development projects such as u-city development projects in terms of service quality and hence user acceptance.

• MISULJARYO - National Museum of Korea Art Journal
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• v.97
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• pp.87-104
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• 2020

Myogilsang on Diamond Mountain, signed and dated (2000) by Seon-u Yeong (1946-2009), is the first work by a North Korean artist to enter the collection of the National Museum of Korea (fig. 1a). The donor acquired the painting directly from the artist in Pyeongyang in 2006. In consequence, there are no issues with the painting's authenticity.This painting is the largest among all existing Korean paintings, whether contemporary or from the Joseon Dynasty, to depict this iconography (see chart 1. A Chronological List of Korean Myogilsang Paintings.) It is ink and color on paper, measures 130.2 × 56.2 centimeters, and is in a hanging scroll format. Since this essay is intended as a brief introduction of the painting and not in-depth research into it, I will simply examine the following four areas: 1. Seon-u Yeong's background; 2. The location and the traditional appellation of the rock-cut image known as Myogilsang; 3. The iconography of the image; and 4) A comparative analysis of Seon-u Yeong's painting in light of other paintings on the same theme. Finally, I will present two more of his works to broaden the understanding of Seon-u Yeong as a painter. 1. Seon-u Yeong: According to the donor, who met Seon-u at his workshop in the Cheollima Jejakso (Flying Horse Workshop) three years before the artist's death, he was an individual of few words but displayed a firm commitment to art. His preference for subjects such as Korean landscapes rather than motifs of socialist realism such as revolutionary leaders is demonstrated by the fact that, relative to his North Korean contemporaries, he seems to have produced more paintings of the former. In recent years, Seon-u Yeong has been well publicized in Korea through three special exhibitions (2012 through 2019). He graduated from Pyeongyang College of Fine Arts in 1969 and joined the Central Fine Arts Production Workshop focusing on oil painting. In 1973 he entered the Joseon Painting Production Workshop and began creating traditional Korean paintings in ink and color. His paintings are characterized by intense colors and fine details. The fact that his mother was an accomplished embroidery specialist may have influenced on Seon-u's choice to use intense colors in his paintings. By 1992, he had become a painter representing the Democratic People's Republic of Korea with several titles such as Artist of Merit, People's Artist, and more. About 60 of his paintings have been designated as National Treasures of the DPRK. 2. The Myogilsang rock-cut image is located in the Manpok-dong Valley in the inner Geumgangsan Mountain area. It is a high-relief image about 15 meters tall cut into a niche under 40 meters of a rock cliff. It is the largest of all the rock-cut images of the Goryeo period. This image is often known as "Mahayeon Myogilsang," Mahayeon (Mahayana) being the name of a small temple deep in the Manpokdong Valley (See fig. 3a & 3b). On the right side of the image, there is an intaglio inscription of three Chinese characters by the famous scholar-official and calligrapher Yun Sa-guk (1728-1709) reading "妙吉祥"myogilsang (fig. 4a, 4b). 3. The iconography: "Myogilsang" is another name for the Bhodhisattva Mañjuśrī. The Chinese pronunciation of Myogilsang is "miaojixiang," which is similar in pronunciation to Mañjuśrī. Therefore, we can suggest a 妙吉祥 ↔ Mañjuśrī formula for the translation and transliteration of the term. Even though the image was given a traditional name, the mudra presented by the two hands in the image calls for a closer examination. They show the making of a circle by joining the thumb with the ring finger (fig. 6). If the left land pointed downward, this mudra would conventionally be considered "lower class: lower life," one of the nine mudras of the Amitabha. However, in this image the left hand is placed across its abdomen at an almost 90-degree angle to the right hand (fig. 6). This can be interpreted as a combination of the "fear not" and the "preaching" mudras (see note 10, D. Saunders). I was also advised by the noted Buddhist art specialist Professor Kim Jeong-heui (of Won'gwang University) to presume that this is the "preaching" mudra. Therefore, I have tentatively concluded that this Myogilsang is an image of the Shakyamuni offering the preaching mudra. There is no such combination of hand gestures in any other Goryeo-period images. The closest I could identify is the Beopjusa Rock-cut Buddha (fig. 7) from around the same time. 4. Comparative analysis: As seen in , except for the two contemporary paintings, all others on this chart are in ink or ink and light color. Also, none of them included the fact that the image is under a 40-meter cliff. In addition, the Joseon-period paintings all depicted the rock-cut image as if it were a human figure, using soft brushstrokes and rounded forms. None of these paintings accurately rendered the mudra from the image as did Seon-u. Only his painting depicts the natural setting of the image under the cliff along with a realistic rendering of the image. However, by painting the tall cliff in dark green and by eliminating elements on either side of the rock-cut image, the artist was able to create an almost surreal atmosphere surrounding the image. Herein lies the uniqueness of Seon-u Yeong's version. The left side of Seon-u's 2007 work Mount Geumgang (fig. 8) lives up to his reputation as a painter who depicts forms (rocks in this case) in minute detail, but in the right half of the composition it also shows his skill at presenting a sense of space. In contrast, Wave (fig. 9), a work completed one year before his death, displays his faithfulness to the traditions of ink painting. Even based on only three paintings by Seon-u Yeong, it seems possible to assess his versatility in both traditional ink and color mediums.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.1-23
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• 2012

The conflict between major corporations and small and medium-sized businesses is being aggravated, the trickle down effect is not working properly, and, as the controversy surrounding the effectiveness of the business limiting system continues to swirl, the plan proposed to protect the business domain of small and medium-sized businesses, resolve polarization between these businesses and large corporations, and protect small family run stores is the suitable business type designation system for small and medium-sized businesses. The current status of carrying out this system of selecting suitable business types among small and medium-sized businesses involves receiving applications for 234 items among the suitable business types and items from small and medium-sized businesses in manufacturing, and then selecting the items of the consultative group by analyzing and investigating the actual conditions. Suitable business type designation in the service industry will involve designation with priority on business types that are experiencing social conflict. Three major classifications of the service industry, related to the livelihood of small and medium-sized businesses, will be first designated, and subsequently this will be expanded sequentially. However, there is the concern that when designated as a suitable business type or item, this will hinder the growth motive for small to medium-sized businesses, and designation all cause decrease in consumer welfare. Also it is highly likely that it will operate as a prior regulation, cause side-effects by limiting competition systematically, and also be in violation against the main regulations of the FTA system. Moreover, it is pointed out that the system does not sufficiently reflect reverse discrimination factor against large corporations. Because conflict between small to medium sized businesses and large corporations results from the expansion of corporations to the service industry, which is unrelated to their key industry, it is necessary to introduce an advanced contract method like a master franchise or local franchise system and to develop local small to medium sized businesses through a franchise system to protect these businesses and dealers. However, this method may have an effect that contributes to stronger competitiveness of small to medium sized franchise businesses by advancing their competitiveness and operational methods a step further, but also has many negative aspects. First, as revealed by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, the franchise industry is contributing to the strengthening of competitiveness through the economy of scale by organizing existing individual proprietors and increasing the success rate of new businesses. It is also revealed to be a response measure by the government to stabilize the economy of ordinary people and is emphasized as a 'useful way' to revitalize the service industry and improve the competitiveness of individual proprietors, and has been involved in contributions to creating jobs and expanding the domestic market by providing various services to consumers. From this viewpoint, franchises fit the purpose of the suitable business type system and is not something that is against it. Second, designation as a suitable business type may decrease investment for overseas expansion, R&D, and food safety, as well negatively affect the expansion of overseas corporations that have entered the domestic market, due to the contraction and low morale of large domestic franchise corporations that have competitiveness internationally. Also because domestic franchise businesses are hard pressed to secure competitiveness with multinational overseas franchise corporations that are operating in Korea, the system may cause difficulty for domestic franchise businesses in securing international competitiveness and also may result in reverse discrimination against these overseas franchise corporations. Third, the designation of suitable business type and item can limit the opportunity of selection for consumers who have up to now used those products and can cause a negative effect that reduces consumer welfare. Also, because there is the possibility that the range of consumer selection may be reduced when a few small to medium size businesses monopolize the market, by causing reverse discrimination between these businesses, the role of determining the utility of products must be left ot the consumer not the government. Lastly, it is desirable that this is carried out with the supplementation of deficient parts in the future, because fair trade is already secured with the enforcement of the franchise trade law and the best trade standard of the Fair Trade Commission. Overlapping regulations by the suitable business type designation is an excessive restriction in the franchise industry. Now, it is necessary to establish in the domestic franchise industry an environment where a global franchise corporation, which spreads Korean culture around the world, is capable of growing, and the active support by the government is needed. Therefore, systems that do not consider the process or background of the growth of franchise businesses and harm these businesses for the sole reason of them being large corporations must be removed. The inhibition of growth to franchise enterprises may decrease the sales of franchise stores, in some cases even bankrupt them, as well as cause other problems. Therefore the suitable business type system should not hinder large corporations, and as both small dealers and small to medium size businesses both aim at improving competitiveness and combined growth, large corporations, small dealers and small to medium sized businesses, based on their mutual cooperation, should not include franchise corporations that continue business relations with them in this system.