Recently, the researches to explain Switching Behavior through Theory of Planned Behavior have been discovered. Many researches say that System factors of mobile telecommunication service(MTS) is positively associated with Switching Intention. But There is no difference of system factors between mobile telecommunication services because of IT technique Development. Thus, this study investigated whether switching cost and alternative's attractiveness influence switching intention concerning mobile telecommunication service by adopting Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as an underlying theoretical premise. The study also attempted to determine the moderating effects of personal innovativeness on switching intention. For these purposes the author has developed several hypotheses as follows: H-1. The switching cost of different MTS is associated with the attitude of MTS which is using. H-2. The switching cost of different MTS is associated with the subjective norm of MTS which is using. H-3. The switching cost of different MTS is associated with the perceived behavior control of MTS which is using. H-4. The alternative's attractiveness of different MTS is associated with the attitude of MTS which is using. H-5. The alternative's attractiveness of different MTS is associated with the subjective norm of MTS which is using. H-6. The alternative's attractiveness of different MTS is associated with the perceived behavior control of MTS which is using. H-7. The switching cost of different MTS is associated with the switching intention. H-8. The alternative's attractiveness of different MTS is associated with the switching intention. H-9. The attitude of MTS is associated with the switching intention. H-10. The subjective norm of MTS is associated with the switching intention. H-11. The perceived behavior control of MTS is associated with the switching intention. H-12. The personal innovativeness has been a moderating effects to switching intention. Data has been collected from 403 respondents for this study using a questionnaire method. The survey for the actual analysis of the research was done and analyzed with the customers who have an experience of using Mobile telecommunication service and the samples were selected among the middle and high school students who live in Seoul area, the university students who live in Seoul, Gyeonggi and Chungcheng Provinces, and the ordinary workers who are working in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. The survey was done for 23 days from March 28, 2008 through April 12, 2008. The positive analysis was done with SPSS 12.0K statistics package and visual PLS program using the analysis techniques of frequency analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis and factor analysis. In addition, structural equation modeling was conducted using AMOS 5.0. The data was analyzed by frequency analysis using SPSS 12.0 and structural equation modeling using AMOS 5.0. The result of the overall model analysis is as follows: Chi-Square=378.306, d.f.=107, p-value=0.0, GFI=.904, AGFI= 0.863, IFI= 0.939, NFI= 0.917, RMSEA= 0.079, TLI= 0.922. The results of the overall model analysis were coherent. The following study results were revealed: First, switching cost was related positively to attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavior control, three components of TPB. Second, alternative's attractiveness was related negatively to subjective norm but positively to perceived behavior control. Third, switching cost and attitude was related negatively to switching intention, while perceived behavior control was related positively to switching intention. Finally, the study found the moderating effects of personal innovativeness on switching intention. Based on the results, the study offers marketing strategic implications for mobile telecommunication service industry.
Recently, the CO2 emission and energy consumption have become critical global issues to decide the future of nations. Especially, the spread of IT products and the increased use of internet and web applications result in the energy consumption and CO2 emission of IT industry though information technologies drive global economic growth. EU, the United States, Japan and other developed countries are using IT related environmental regulations such as WEEE(Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment), RoHS(Restriction of the use of Certain Hazardous Substance), REACH(Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of CHemicals) and EuP(Energy using Product), and have established systematic green business/IT strategies to enhance the competitiveness of IT industry. For example, the Japan government proposed the "Green IT initiative" for being compatible with economic growth and environmental protection. Not only energy saving technologies but energy saving systems have been developed for accomplishing sustainable development. Korea's CO2 emission and energy consumption continuously have grown at comparatively high rates. They are related to its industrial structure depending on high energy-consuming industries such as iron and steel Industry, automotive industry, shipbuilding industry, semiconductor industry, and so on. In particular, export proportion of IT manufacturing is quite high in Korea. For example, the global market share of the semiconductor such as DRAM was about 80% in 2008. Accordingly, Korea needs to establish a systematic strategy to respond to the global environmental regulations and to maintain competitiveness in the IT industry. However, green competitiveness of Korea ranked 11th among 15 major countries and R&D budget for green technology is not large enough to develop energy-saving technologies for infrastructure and value chain of low-carbon society though that grows at high rates. Moreover, there are no concrete action plans in Korea. This research aims to deduce the priorities of the Korean green business/IT strategies to use multi attribute weighted average method. We selected a panel of 19 experts who work at the green business related firms such as HP, IBM, Fujitsu and so on, and selected six assessment indices such as the urgency of the technology development, the technology gap between Korea and the developed countries, the effect of import substitution, the spillover effect of technology, the market growth, and the export potential of the package or stand-alone products by existing literature review. We submitted questionnaires at approximately weekly intervals to them for priorities of the green business/IT strategies. The strategies broadly classify as follows. The first strategy which consists of the green business/IT policy and standardization, process and performance management and IT industry and legislative alignment relates to government's role in the green economy. The second strategy relates to IT to support environment sustainability such as the travel and ways of working management, printer output and recycling, intelligent building, printer rationalization and collaboration and connectivity. The last strategy relates to green IT systems, services and usage such as the data center consolidation and energy management, hardware recycle decommission, server and storage virtualization, device power management, and service supplier management. All the questionnaires were assessed via a five-point Likert scale ranging from "very little" to "very large." Our findings show that the IT to support environment sustainability is prior to the other strategies. In detail, the green business /IT policy and standardization is the most important in the government's role. The strategies of intelligent building and the travel and ways of working management are prior to the others for supporting environment sustainability. Finally, the strategies for the data center consolidation and energy management and server and storage virtualization have the huge influence for green IT systems, services and usage This research results the following implications. The amount of energy consumption and CO2 emissions of IT equipment including electrical business equipment will need to be clearly indicated in order to manage the effect of green business/IT strategy. And it is necessary to develop tools that measure the performance of green business/IT by each step. Additionally, intelligent building could grow up in energy-saving, growth of low carbon and related industries together. It is necessary to expand the affect of virtualization though adjusting and controlling the relationship between the management teams.
Purpose: It is well known from clinical experience that acute complications of chemoradiation therapy vary from patients to patients. However, there are no known factors to predict these acute complications before treatment starts. The human XRCC1 gene is known as a DNA base excision repair gene. We investigated the possibilities of XRCC1 gene polymorphisms as a predictor for the acute complications of chemoradiation therapy in colorectal cancer patients. Materials and Methods: From July 1997 to June 2003, 86 colorectal cancer patients (71 rectal cancer, 13 sigmoid colon cancer and 2 colon cancer patients) were treated with chemoradiation therapy at the Department of Radiation Oncology, Inha University Hospital. Twenty-two patients were in stage B, 50 were in stage C, 8 were in stage D and 6 patients were unresectable cases. External radiation therapy was delivered with 10MV X-ray at a 1.8 Gy fraction per day for a total dose of radiation of
Recently concerns have been raised due to the unbalanced supply of crops: the price of crops has been unstable and at one point the price went up so high that the word Agflation(agriculture+ inflation) was coined. Korea, in particular, is a small-sized country and needs to secure the stable supply of crops by investing in the produce importation at a national level. Investment in foreign produce importation is becoming more important as a measure for sufficient supply of crops, limited supply of domestic crops, weakened farming conditions worldwide, as well as recent changes in the use of crops due to the development of bio-fuels, influence of carbon emission on crops, the price increase in crops, and influx of foreign hot money. However, there are many problems with investing in foreign produce importation: lack of support from the government; lack of farming information and technology; difficulty in securing the capital; no immediate pay-off from the investment and insufficient management. Although foreign produce is originally more price-competitive than domestic produce, it loses its competiveness in the process of importation (due to high tariffs) and poor distribution system, which makes it difficult to sell in Korea. Therefore, investment in foreign produce importation is being questioned for feasibility; to make it possible, foreign produce must maintain the price-competitiveness. Especially, harvest of agricultural products depends on natural and geographical conditions of each country and those products have indigenous properties, so distribution system according to import and export of agricultural products should be treated more carefully than that of other industries. Distribution costs are differentiated into each item and include cost of sorting and wrapping, cost of wrapping materials, cost of domestic transport, cost of international transport and cost of clearing customs for import and export. So transporting and storing agricultural products generates considerable costs compared with other products. Also, due to upgrade of dietary life, needs for stability, taste and visible quality toward food including agricultural products are being raised and wrong way of storage causes decomposition of food and loss of freshness, making the storage more difficult than that in room temperature, so storage and transport in distribution of agricultural products needs specialty. In addition, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. However, existing distribution system of agricultural products is exposed to various problems including problems in distribution channel, making distribution and strategy for distribution and those problems are as follows. First, in case of investment in overseas agricultural industry, stable supply of the products is difficult because areas of production are dispersed widely and influenced by outer factors due to including overseas distribution channels. Also, at the aspect of quality, standardization of products is difficult, distribution system is quite complicated and unreasonable due to long distribution channels according to international trade and financial and institutional support is not enough. Especially, there are quite a lot of ineffective factors including multi level distribution process, dramatic gap between production cost and customer's cost, lack of physical distribution facilities and difficulties in storage and transport due to lack of wrapping containers. Besides, because import and export of agricultural products has been manages under the company's own distribution according to transaction contract between manufacturers and exporting company, efficiency is low due to excessive investment in fixed costs and lack of specialty in dealing with agricultural products causes fall of value of products, showing the limit to lose price-competitiveness. Especially, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. Second, among tangible and intangible services which promote the efficiency of the whole distribution, a function building distribution environment which includes distribution information, system for standard and inspection, distribution finance, system for diversification of risks, education and training, distribution administration and tax system is wanted. In general, such a function building distribution environment is difficult to be changed and supplement innovatively because its effect compared with investment does not appear immediately despite of its necessity. Especially, in case of distribution of agricultural products, as a function of collecting and distributing is performed individually through various channels, the importance of distribution information and standardization is getting more focus due to the problem of repetition of work and lack of specialty. Also, efficient management of distribution is quite difficult due to lack of professionals in distribution, so support to professional education is needed. Third, though effort to keep self-sufficiency ratio of staple food, rice is regarded as important at the government level, level of dependency on overseas of others crops is high. Therefore, plan for stable securing food resources aside from staple food is also necessary. Especially, governmental organizations of agricultural products distribution in Korea are production-centered and have unreasonable structure whose function at the aspect of distribution and consumption is quite insufficient. And development of new distribution channels which can deal with changes in distribution environment and they do not achieve actual results of strategy for distribution due to non-positive strategy for price distribution. That is, it implies the possibility that base for supply will become vulnerable because it does not mediate appropriate interests on total distribution channels such as manufacturers, wholesale dealers and vendors by emphasizing consumer protection excessively in the distribution of agricultural products. Therefore, this study examined fundamental concept and actual situation for our investment to overseas agriculture, drew necessities, considerations, problems, etc. of overseas agricultural investment and suggested improvements at the level of distribution for price competitiveness of agricultural products cultivated in overseas under five aspects; government's indirect support, distribution's modernization and distribution information function's strengthening, government's political support for distribution facility, transportation route, load and unloading works' improvement, price competitiveness' securing, professional manpower's cultivation by education and training, etc. Here are some suggestions for foreign produce importation. First, the government should conduct a survey on the current distribution channels and analyze the situation to establish a measure for long-term development plans. By providing each agricultural area with a guideline for planning appropriate production of crops, the government can help farmers be ready for importation, and prevent them from producing same crops all at the same time. Government can sign an MOU with the foreign government and promote the importation so that the development of agricultural resources can be stable and steady. Second, the government can establish a strategy for an effective distribution system by providing farmers and agriculture-related workers with the distribution information such as price, production, demand, market structure and location, feature of each crop, and etc. In order for such distribution system to become feasible, the government needs to reconstruct the current distribution system, designate a public organization for providing distribution information and set the criteria for level of produce quality, trade units, and package units. Third, the government should provide financial support and a policy to seek an efficient distribution channel for foreign produce to be delivered fresh: the government should expand distribution facilities (for selecting, packaging, storing, and processing) and transportation vehicles while modernizing old facilities. There should be another policy to improve the efficiency of unloading, and to lower the cost of distribution. Fourth, it is necessary to enact a new law covering exceptional cases for importing produce in order to maintain the price competitiveness; currently the high tariffs is keeping the imported produce from being distributed domestically. However, the new adjustment should be made carefully within the WTO regulations since it can create a problem from giving preferential tariffs. The government can also simplify the distribution channels in order to reduce the cost in the distribution process. Fifth, the government should educate distributors to raise the efficiency and to modernize the distribution system. It is necessary to develop human resources by educating people regarding the foreign agricultural environment, the produce quality, management skills, and by introducing some successful cases in advanced countries.