Qualitative Study about Value Cognition and Benefits of Consumer on Culture-Art products (문화예술상품에 대한 소비자의 가치인식과 추구혜택에 관한 질적 연구)
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- Asia Marketing Journal
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- v.12 no.4
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- pp.27-54
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- 2011
This research attempted to present the efficiency of culture marketing to the organizations producing culture-art products and to the companies utilizing art and suggest the practical viewpoints to the culture and art policy agencies. The methodology used was to take an in-depth look at the consumer value cognition and benefits of culture-art products in contemporary consumption culture from a social context by conducting a total of 12 Focus Group Interviews, consisting of 58 males and females in their 10s~50s who can represent culture-art product consumers. The culture-art products refer to the artist's spiritual, actual act of creating or to the end products with economic exchange value. They are also sense goods and merit goods that affect the mental state of consumers. By looking at culture-art products as consumer merit goods, this research examined consumer value cognition of culture-art products based on the characteristics culture-art products. As a result, this research determined that consumers view culture-art products largely as 'aesthetic and sensuous merit goods', 'actual and individual merit goods', and 'social public property'. As 'aesthetic and sensuous merit goods', culture-art products are considered as the products of an artist's creative activities; as 'social public property', culture-art products have a public value in terms of ownership; and as 'actual and individual merit goods', culture-art products act on the spirit and reality of a consumer in terms of consumption. As a result of analyzing the benefits of culture-art products based on the above-mentioned consumer value cognition, it was observed that the benefits of culture-art-product consumption are chiefly divided into 'aesthetic character-oriented', 'social relationships-oriented', and 'individual benefits-oriented' depending on how consumers see culture-art products. A 3-conceptional structures model was constructed according to the relationship between consumer value cognition of culture-art products and the benefits. This research revealed that consumers who pursue the aesthetic value or sense of beauty as the central reason experience culture-art products themselves, enjoy intellectual quests, and pursue their satisfaction by expressing affection for and interests in culture-art products. On the other hand, consumers who pursue social value as the central reason as a means of communication by perceiving culture-art products as a public property of society, pursue sympathy with people close to them through the symbolic power of culture-art product consumption or the joy of self-display. Consumers who perceive art products as spiritual and actual merit goods and pursue consumer value as a central reason want to express their own personality, develop themselves, and differentiate themselves or identify themselves with others in the context of social relations for the ultimate goal of living a happy and satisfied life while pursuing to satisfy imminent and actual necessities as emotional stability and rest. The fact that culture-art product benefits could vary according to how a consumer perceives them implies that consumer value cognition of culture-art products and their benefits significant affect consumers' decision in choosing and consuming various culture-art products. It turned out that such benefits from the consumption of culture-art products reflect the complex contemporary consumption culture of rational consumption, symbolic consumption, experiential consumption, and social reflective consumption. This research identified conceptional structures of consumer value cognition on culture-art products and benefits that can be used for studying and understanding culture-art products consumers who pursue a variety of consumption values. They can also be used by private companies in utilizing art, as well as by national agencies in enhancing the population's quality of life. However, since this research could only conceptually grasp consumer perception of culture-art products and reveal the dimension of classification due to its own limitations arising from characteristic investigation, quantitative data on the benefits of culture-art product consumers should be measured in future studies through a quantitative investigation, while using the value cognition of culture-art products and the individual characteristics of consumers as variables based on this research.
Customers often experience waiting for buying service. Managing customers' waiting time is important for service providers since customers who are dissatisfied with waiting, secede from a service place at last. Not a few studies have been done to solve waiting time problem and improve customers' waiting experience. Hui & Tse(1996) identify evaluation factors in customers' behavioral mechanism as customers wait. That is, customers experience perceived waiting time, waiting acceptability and emotional response to the wait when they wait. Since customers evaluate the wait using these factors, service provider should manage these factors in order to minimize customers' dissatisfaction. Therefore, this study explores that evaluation factors of waiting are influenced by customers' situational and experiential characteristics, which include customer loyalty, transaction importance for customer and waiting expectation level. Those situational and experiential characteristics are usually given to service providers so they can't control these at waiting point. The major findings derived from two exploratory studies can be summarized as follows. First, according to the result from the study 1 (restaurant setting), customers' transaction importance has the greatest positive influence on waiting experience. The results show restaurant service provider could prevent customers' separation effectively through strategies which raise customers' transaction importance, like giving special coupons for important events. Second, in study 2 (amusement part setting) customer loyalty has large positive impact on waiting experience as well as transaction importance. This results show that service provider could minimize customers' dissatisfaction using strategies which raise customer loyalty continuously. This results show customer perceives waiting experience differently according to characteristics of service place and service itself. Therefore, service provider should grasp the unique customers' situational and experiential characters for each service and service place. It could provide an effective strategy for waiting time management. Third, the study finds transaction importance and waiting expectation level have direct influence customers' waiting experience as independent variables, while existing studies treated them as moderators. Customer loyalty which has not been incorporated in previous waiting time research is known to affect waiting experience. It suggests that marketing strategy which builds up customer loyalty for long period of time is also quite effective, compared to short term tactics to help customers endure waiting time. Fourth, this study reveals the importance of actual waiting time along with perceived waiting time. So far most studies only focus on customers' perceived waiting time. Especially, this study incorporates the concept of patient limit on waiting time to investigate effect of actual waiting time. The results show that there were various responses to the wait depending on how actual waiting time exceeds individual's patent limit on waiting time or not, even though customers wait about the same period of time. Finally, using structural equation model, conceptual path between behavioral responses is verified. As customer perceives waiting time, then she decides whether she can endure it or not, and then her emotional response occurs. This result are somewhat different from Hui & Tse(1996)'s study. The study also includes theoretical contributions as well as practical implications.
It is not new that today's business organizations are expected to exhibit ethical and moral management and to carry out social responsibility as a good corporate citizen. Since South Korea emerged as a newly industrialized country during the 1980s, Korean corporations have become active in carrying out their social responsibility as a good corporate citizen to society. In spite of the short history of corporate social responsibility, Korean companies have actively participated in corporate philanthropy. Corporations' significant donations to various social causes, no-lay-off policies, corporate volunteerism and green marketing are evidences of their commitment to corporate citizenship. Corporate social responsibility is now an essential management practice whereby corporation can strengthen its sustainable value creation processes by enhancing the trust assets underlying the relationships between the business and the stakeholders. Much of the conceptual work in the area of corporate social responsibility(CSR) has originated from researches conducted in the management field. Carroll(1979) proposed that corporations have four types of social responsibilities: economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibility. Most past research has investigated CSR and its impact on consumers' attitudes toward the corporations and corporate performances. Although there exists a large body of literature on how consumers perceive and respond to CSR, the majority of past studies were conducted in the United States. The stability and applicability of past findings need to be tested across different national/cultural settings, especially since corporate social responsibility is a reflection of implicit conformation with the expectations and criticism that society may have toward a corporation(Matten and Moon, 2004). In this study, we explored whether people in Korea perceive CSR of Korean corporations in the same four dimensions as done in the United States and what were the measurement items tapping each of these four dimensions. In order to investigate the dimensions of CSR and the measurement items for CSR perceived by Korean people, nine focus group interviews were conducted with several stakeholder groups(two with undergraduate students, two with graduate students, three with general consumers, and two with NGO groups). Scripts from the interviews revealed that the Korean stakeholders perceived four types of CSR which are the same as those proposed by Carroll(1979). However we found CSR issues unique to Korean corporations. For example for the economic responsibility, Korean people mentioned that the corporation needed to contribute to the economic development of the country by generating corporate profits. For the legal responsibility, Koreans included the "corporation need to follow the consumer protection law." For the ethical responsibility, they considered that the corporation needed to not promote false advertisement. In addition, Koreans thought that an ethical company should do transparent management. For the philanthropic responsibility, people in Korea thought that a corporation needed to return parts of its profits to the society for the betterment of society. The 28 items were developed based on the results of the nine focus group interviews, while considering the scale developed by Maignan and Ferrell(2001). Following the procedure proposed by Churchill(1979), we started by developing an item poll consisting of 28 items and purified the initial pool of items through exploratory, confirmatory factor analyses. 176 samples were sued for this analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the 28 items in order to verify the underlying four factor structure. Study 1 provided new measurement items for tapping the Korean CSR dimensions, which can be useful for the future studies exploring the effects of CSR on Korean consumers' attitudes toward the corporations and corporate performances. And we found the CSR scale(17 items) has good reliability, discriminant validity and nomological validity. Economic Responsibility: "XYZ company continuously improves the quality of our products", "XYZ company has a procedure in place to respond to customer complaint", "XYZ company contributes to the economic development of our country by generating profits", "XYZ company is eager to hire people". Legal Responsibility: "XYZ company's products meet legal standards", "XYZ company seeks to comply with all laws regulating hiring and employee benefits", "XYZ company honors contractual obligations to its suppliers", "XYZ company's managers try to comply with the law related to the business operation". Ethical Responsibility: "XYZ company has a comprehensive code of conduct", "XYZ company does not promote a false or misleading advertisement", "XYZ company seems to conduct a transparent business", "XYZ company does a fair business with its suppliers or sub-contractors". Philanthropic Responsibility: "XYZ company encourages partnerships with local businesses and schools", "XYZ company supports sports and cultural activities", "XYZ company gives adequate contributions to charities considering its business size", "XYZ company encourages employees to support our community". Study 2 was condusted for comprehensive validity. 655 samples were used for this anlysis. Collected samples were tested by factor analysis and Crnbach's Alpha coefficiednts and were found to be satisfactory in terms of validity and reliability. Furthermore, fitness of the measurement model was tested by using conformatory factor analysis. χ2=880.73(df=160), GFI=0.891, AGFI=0.854, NFI=0.908, NNFI=0.913, RMR=0.059, RMESA=0.070. We hope that CSR scale could greatly facilitate research on Corporate social resposibility, it is by no means the final answer.
As we transition into the post-COVID era, economic activities that were stagnant are regaining momentum. In particular, there is a growing trend of technology entrepreneurship driven by the opportunities of digital transformation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. However, entrepreneurship education content is struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of technological change. This study aims to emphasize the importance of entrepreneurship mentoring as a crucial component of entrepreneurship education content that requires adaptation and advancement due to the increasing demand for technology entrepreneurship. This study redefines startup mentoring, which is differentiated from general mentoring, at the present time when the demand for startups, which increases with the declining employment rate, increases, and the development of quality startup education contents and securing professional startup mentors are required. According to the start-up stage, it is divided into preliminary entrepreneurs and early entrepreneurs, and the effect of entrepreneurship knowledge and self-efficacy among start-up mentoring functions on entrepreneurial will and mentoring satisfaction is improved by empirically researching the effects of start-up mentoring functions in the case of initial entrepreneurs as a moderating effect. To confirm the importance of entrepreneurship mentoring effect for. To this end, among the mentoring functions, entrepreneurship knowledge and self-efficacy were set as independent variables, and entrepreneurial will and mentoring satisfaction were set as dependent variables. The research model was designed and hypotheses were established. In addition, empirical analysis was conducted by conducting a questionnaire survey on trainees who received entrepreneurship mentoring education at ICCE Startup School and Opus Startup School. To summarize the results of the empirical analysis, first, among the entrepreneurship mentoring functions, entrepreneurship knowledge and self-efficacy were analyzed to have a significant positive (+) effect on entrepreneurial will. Second, among the entrepreneurship mentoring functions, entrepreneurship knowledge and self-efficacy were analyzed to have a significant positive (+) effect on mentoring satisfaction. Third, it was analyzed that entrepreneurship had no significant moderating effect on entrepreneurial knowledge and entrepreneurial will. Fourth, it was analyzed that entrepreneurship had no significant moderating effect on mentoring satisfaction. Fifth, it was found that entrepreneurship had a significant moderating effect between self-efficacy and will to start a business. As a result of the research analysis, the first implication is that the mentoring function in start-up education is analyzed to produce meaningful results for both the initial entrepreneurs and the prospective entrepreneurs in the will to start a business and satisfaction. . Second, it was analyzed that there was no significant relationship between whether a business was started and the mentoring function and effect. However, it was analyzed that the will to start a business through improvement of self-efficacy through mentoring was significantly related to whether or not to start a business. turned out to be helpful. Many start-up education programs currently conducted in Korea educate both early-stage entrepreneurs and prospective entrepreneurs at the same time for reasons such as convenience. However, through the results of this study, even in small-scale entrepreneurship mentoring, it is suggested that customized mentoring through detailed classification such as whether the mentee has started a business can be a method for successful entrepreneurship and high satisfaction of the mentee.
In order to analyze the relationship between teeth and basal bone for the maintainance of the good occlusion, the mesiodistal width of teeth, the basal arch width and the basal arch length were measured on the study model of the normal occlusion group and Angle's class I malocclusion group (non-extraction group, extraction group) The Maximum tooth material, the percentage of basal arch width to maximum tooth material, the percentage of basal arch length to maximum tooth material and the percentage of basal arch width plus basal arch length to maximum tooth material were caculated, and then statistical analysis was done. From thie study, the obtained results were as follows; 1. In maxilla, the percentage of basal arch width to maximum tooth material was
As relationship between buyer and seller has been brought closer and long-term relationship has been more important in B2B markets, the importance of service and service convenience increases as well as product. In homogeneous markets, where service offerings are similar and therefore not key competitive differentiator, providing greater convenience may enable a competitive advantage. Service convenience, as conceptualized by Berry et al. (2002), is defined as the consumers' time and effort perceptions related to buying or using a service. For this reason, B2B customers are interested in how fast the service is provided and how much save non-monetary cost like time or effort by the service convenience along with service quality. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impact of service convenience on relationship factors such as relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The purpose of this study is to find out whether service convenience can be a new antecedent of relationship quality and relationship performance. In addition, this study tries to examine how five-dimensional service convenience constructs (decision convenience, access convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affect customers' relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The service convenience comprises five fundamental components - decision convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with service purchase or use decisions), access convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with initiating service delivery), transaction convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with finalizing the transaction), benefit convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with experiencing the core benefits of the offering) and post-benefit convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with reestablishing subsequent contact with the firm). Earlier studies of perceived service convenience in the industrial market are none. The conventional studies that have dealt with service convenience have usually been made in the consumer market, or they have dealt with convenience aspects in the service process. This service convenience measure for consumer market can be useful tool to estimate service quality in B2B market. The conceptualization developed by Berry et al. (2002) reflects a multistage, experiential consumption process in which evaluations of convenience vary at each stage. For this reason, the service convenience measure is good for B2B service environment which has complex processes and various types. Especially when categorizing B2B service as sequential stage of service delivery like Kumar and Kumar (2004), the Berry's service convenience measure which reflect sequential flow of service deliveries suitable to establish B2B service convenience. For this study, data were gathered from respondents who often buy business service and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The sample size in the present study is 119. Composite reliability values and average variance extracted values were examined for each variable to have reliability. We determine whether the measurement model supports the convergent validity by CFA, and discriminant validity was assessed by examining the correlation matrix of the constructs. For each pair of constructs, the square root of the average variance extracted exceeded their correlations, thus supporting the discriminant validity of the constructs. Hypotheses were tested using the Smart PLS 2.0 and we calculated the PLS path values and followed with a bootstrap re-sampling method to test the hypotheses. Among the five dimensional service convenience constructs, four constructs (decision convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affected customers' positive relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. This result means that service convenience is important cue to improve relationship between buyer and seller. One of the five service convenience dimensions, access convenience, does not affect relationship quality and performance, which implies that the dimension of service convenience is not important factor of cumulative satisfaction. The Cumulative satisfaction can be distinguished from transaction-specific customer satisfaction, which is an immediate post-purchase evaluative judgment or an affective reaction to the most recent transactional experience with the firm. Because access convenience minimizes the physical effort associated with initiating an exchange, the effect on relationship satisfaction similar to cumulative satisfaction may be relatively low in terms of importance than transaction-specific customer satisfaction. Also, B2B firms focus on service quality, price, benefit, follow-up service and so on than convenience of time or place in service because it is relatively difficult to change existing transaction partners in B2B market compared to consumer market. In addition, this study using partial least squares methods reveals that customers' satisfaction and commitment toward relationship has mediating role between the service convenience and relationship performance. The result shows that management and investment to improve service convenience make customers' positive relationship satisfaction, and then the positive relationship satisfaction can enhance the relationship commitment and relationship performance. And to conclude, service convenience management is an important part of successful relationship performance management, and the service convenience is an important antecedent of relationship between buyer and seller such as the relationship commitment and relationship performance. Therefore, it has more important to improve relationship performance that service providers enhance service convenience although competitive service development or service quality improvement is important. Given the pressure to provide increased convenience, it is not surprising that organizations have made significant investments in enhancing the convenience aspect of their product and service offering.
Customer Relationship Management(CRM) has been a sustainable competitive edge of many companies. CRM analyzes customer data for designing and executing targeted marketing analysing customer behavior in order to make decisions relating to products and services including management information system. It is critical for companies to get and maintain profitable customers. How to manage relationships with customers effectively has become an important issue for both academicians and practitioners in recent years. However, the existing academic literature and the practical applications of customer relationship management(CRM) strategies have been focused on the technical process and organizational structure about the implementation of CRM. These limited focus on CRM lead to the result of numerous reports of failed implementations of various types of CRM projects. Many of these failures are also related to the absence of marketing approach. Identifying successful factors and outcomes focused on marketing concept before introducing a CRM project are a pre-implementation requirements. Many researchers have attempted to find the factors that contribute to the success of CRM. However, these research have some limitations in terms of marketing approach without explaining how the marketing based factors contribute to the CRM success. An understanding of how to manage relationship with crucial customers effectively based marketing approach has become an important topic for both academicians and practitioners. However, the existing papers did not provide a clear antecedent and outcomes factors focused on marketing approach. This paper attempt to validate whether or not such various marketing factors would impact on relational quality and CRM performance in terms of marketing oriented perceptivity. More specifically, marketing oriented factors involving market orientation, customer orientation, customer information orientation, and core customer orientation can influence relationship quality(satisfaction and trust) and CRM outcome(customer retention and customer share). Another major goals of this research are to identify the effect of relationship quality on CRM outcomes consisted of customer retention and share to show the relationship strength between two factors. Based on meta analysis for conventional studies, I can construct the following research model. An empirical study was undertaken to test the hypotheses with data from various companies. Multiple regression analysis and t-test were employed to test the hypotheses. The reliability and validity of our measurements were tested by using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and principal factor analysis respectively, and seven hypotheses were tested through performing correlation test and multiple regression analysis. The first key outcome is a theoretically and empirically sound CRM factors(marketing orientation, customer orientation, customer information orientation, and core customer orientation.) in the perceptive of marketing. The intensification of
With the continued globalization of world markets, transfer pricing has become one of the dominant sources of controversy in international taxation. Transfer pricing is the process by which a multinational corporation calculates a price for goods and services that are transferred to affiliated entities. Consider a Korean electronic enterprise that buys supplies from its own subsidiary located in China. How much the Korean parent company pays its subsidiary will determine how much profit the Chinese unit reports in local taxes. If the parent company pays above normal market prices, it may appear to have a poor profit, even if the group as a whole shows a respectable profit margin. In this way, transfer prices impact the taxable income reported in each country in which the multinational enterprise operates. It's importance lies in that around 60% of international trade involves transactions between two related parts of multinationals, according to the OECD. Multinational enterprises (hereafter MEs) exert much effort into utilizing organizational advantages to make global investments. MEs wish to minimize their tax burden. So MEs spend a fortune on economists and accountants to justify transfer prices that suit their tax needs. On the contrary, local governments are not prepared to cope with MEs' powerful financial instruments. Tax authorities in each country wish to ensure that the tax base of any ME is divided fairly. Thus, both tax authorities and MEs have a vested interest in the way in which a transfer price is determined, and this is why MEs' international transfer prices are at the center of disputes concerned with taxation. Transfer pricing issues and practices are sometimes difficult to control for regulators because the tax administration does not have enough staffs with the knowledge and resources necessary to understand them. The authors examine transfer pricing practices to provide relevant resources useful in designing tax incentives and regulation schemes for policy makers. This study focuses on identifying the relevant business and environmental factors that could influence the international transfer pricing of MEs. In this perspective, we empirically investigate how the management perception of related variables influences their choice of international transfer pricing methods. We believe that this research is particularly useful in the design of tax policy. Because it can concentrate on a few selected factors in consideration of the limited budget of the tax administration with assistance of this research. Data is composed of questionnaire responses from foreign firms in Korea with investment balances exceeding one million dollars in the end of 2004. We mailed questionnaires to 861 managers in charge of the accounting departments of each company, resulting in 121 valid responses. Seventy six percent of the sample firms are classified as small and medium sized enterprises with assets below 100 billion Korean won. Reviewing transfer pricing methods, cost-based transfer pricing is most popular showing that 60 firms have adopted it. The market-based method is used by 31 firms, and 13 firms have reported the resale-pricing method. Regarding the nationalities of foreign investors, the Japanese and the Americans constitute most of the sample. Logistic regressions have been performed for statistical analysis. The dependent variable is binary in that whether the method of international transfer pricing is a market-based method or a cost-based method. This type of binary classification is founded on the belief that the market-based method is evaluated as the relatively objective way of pricing compared with the cost-based methods. Cost-based pricing is assumed to give mangers flexibility in transfer pricing decisions. Therefore, local regulatory agencies are thought to prefer market-based pricing over cost-based pricing. Independent variables are composed of eight factors such as corporate tax rate, tariffs, relations with local tax authorities, tax audit, equity ratios of local investors, volume of internal trade, sales volume, and product life cycle. The first four variables are included in the model because taxation lies in the center of transfer pricing disputes. So identifying the impact of these variables in Korean business environments is much needed. Equity ratio is included to represent the interest of local partners. Volume of internal trade was sometimes employed in previous research to check the pricing behavior of managers, so we have followed these footsteps in this paper. Product life cycle is used as a surrogate of competition in local markets. Control variables are firm size and nationality of foreign investors. Firm size is controlled using dummy variables in that whether or not the specific firm is small and medium sized. This is because some researchers report that big firms show different behaviors compared with small and medium sized firms in transfer pricing. The other control variable is also expressed in dummy variable showing if the entrepreneur is the American or not. That's because some prior studies conclude that the American management style is different in that they limit branch manger's freedom of decision. Reviewing the statistical results, we have found that managers prefer the cost-based method over the market-based method as the importance of corporate taxes and tariffs increase. This result means that managers need flexibility to lessen the tax burden when they feel taxes are important. They also prefer the cost-based method as the product life cycle matures, which means that they support subsidiaries in local market competition using cost-based transfer pricing. On the contrary, as the relationship with local tax authorities becomes more important, managers prefer the market-based method. That is because market-based pricing is a better way to maintain good relations with the tax officials. Other variables like tax audit, volume of internal transactions, sales volume, and local equity ratio have shown only insignificant influence. Additionally, we have replaced two tax variables(corporate taxes and tariffs) with the data showing top marginal tax rate and mean tariff rates of each country, and have performed another regression to find if we could get different results compared with the former one. As a consequence, we have found something different on the part of mean tariffs, that shows only an insignificant influence on the dependent variable. We guess that each company in the sample pays tariffs with a specific rate applied only for one's own company, which could be located far from mean tariff rates. Therefore we have concluded we need a more detailed data that shows the tariffs of each company if we want to check the role of this variable. Considering that the present paper has heavily relied on questionnaires, an effort to build a reliable data base is needed for enhancing the research reliability.
Korea's business is composed of a few large-sized enterprises (which can be abbreviated as LSE) and a majority of small-sized enterprises (SSE). Although there has been a growing recognition of the need for the development of medium-sized enterprises (MSE) which can serve as a link between SSE and LSE, as yet there has not yet been a consensus on the definition, characteristics and the function of the MSE in Korea. Nowadays, the world is being globalized, and Japan and China are in competition to ne a great economic power. While East Asia is experiencing rapid changes, promoting MSE which can secure flexibility and efficiency through covering up the limitation of LSE and SSE is needed in order to respond the global market which is being specialized. The features of MSE in Japan can be listed as follows. First, the MSE in Japan is developing the company through getting into niche markets which are hard for major companies to enter rather than developing markets in order to compete against major companies directly. While MSEs are endeavoring to build the business firmly in the domestic market, they can possess special and competitive technical skills through trials and errors; so that they can get a chance develop their business through independent business system rather than putting their effort to compete against major companies. Second, from the MSEs with competitive edge in the market, there are many contributions to the national exportation. Those MSEs produce in domestic and maintain the quality of high price products which need cutting-edge technology, while they relocate the low and middle priced goods to the country where manufacturing costs are low, so that they can maintain the price competitiveness. Third, the industrial structure in Japan is formed from dual structure between major companies and small sized companies. In other words, in Japan's industrial structure which are composed of subcontract structure, this dual structure has taken a major role of small sized companies' growth and manufacturing businesses' international competitive power. Forth, MSE in Japan adopt a strategy of putting their value on qualitative scale growth rather than quantitative scale growth. In this paper, the case of Japanese MSE is analyzed. Along with its long history of Industrialization, Japan has a corporate environment where the SSEs can develop as a MSE and later a LSE through a full-support system. Among its SSEs, there are a number of world class corporations equipped with a large domestic market, win-win cooperation with the LSEs and an independent technology development. It can also be observed that these SSEs develop into MSEs with sustainable growth potentials. This study will focus on the condition under which the MSEs of Japan have been developed, and how they have survived the competition between SSEs and LSEs. Through this study, this paper attempts to offer solutions to Korea's polarization between the SSE and LSE, while providing the basis for SSEs revitalization. In general, if both extremities phenomenon deepen between LSE and SSE, there are possible fears of occurring disutility in national economy by the monopolization of LSE. For that reason, enterprise group, which can make SSE or MSE compete LSE in some area and ease the monopoly and oligopoly problem, is needed. This awareness has been shared for ages long. Nevertheless, there is no legal definition for MSE in Japan, and there is no definition about the enterprise size or unified view of MSE between scholars, but it is defined differently by each of academical person or research institution and study meeting. For that reason, this paper will organize the definition of MSE in Japan, and then will propose the characteristics of the background which has made MSE secure competitiveness and sustainable growth in global market. This study focus on that because through this process, the positive change to the awareness of MSE can be proposed in Korea and to seek the policy direction for building institutional framework which can make SSE become MES. Through this way, the fundamentals for SSE to become MSE can be managed and some appropriate suggestions which will be able to make MSE enter the global market in the future can also be proposed. Due to these facts, this study is very important and well timed task. In a sense of this way, this study will examine the definition and role of MSE in Japan. after this examination, this study will deal with the status, special feature, and promotion policy for MSE. Through this analysis of MSE in Japan, the foundation which be able to set the desirable role model for MSE in Korea can be proposed. Also, the political implication which is needed to push ahead to contribute to creating employment and economic growth through sustainable growth of MSEs in economic system of Korea can be offered through this study. It has been found that Japan's MSE functions as an indispensable link among various industrial structures by holding a significant position in employment rate, production and value added. Although the MSEs took up less than 1% of the entire number of businesses with 2700 manufacturing firms and 7000 non-manufacturing firms, its employment ratios are about 15%, while taking about 25% of the manufacturing industry's exports. In industries such as machinery and electronics which is considered Japan's major industry, the MSEs showed a higher than average ratio of manufacturing exports and employment rate. It can be analyzed that behind Japan's advantageous industries, close and deeply knit MSEs exist. Although there are no clearly stated policies geared towards the MSEs by the Japanese government, various political measures exist such as the R&D Project and the inducement of cooperation between enterprises which gives room for MSEs to participate in the SSE policies. In relation to these findings, the following practical measures can be considered in order to revitalize Korea's MSEs: First, there is a need for a legal definition of MSE and the incentives to provide legal support for its growth. Second, if a law to support the MSEs is established, it could provide a powerful inducement for the SSE to grow as a MSE, rather than stay as a SSE. Third, there is a need for a strategy of MSEs to establish a stable base in the domestic market and then advance to the global market with the accumulated trial and error and competitiveness. Fourth, the SSE themselves need the spirit of entrepreneurship in order to make the leap to a MSE. Because if nothing is to be changed about the system on the firms that grew, and the parts of the past custom was left to be managed alone, confusion and absence of management can take place. No matter how much tax favors the government will give and no matter how much incentive there could be through the policies, there are limits for industries to higher the ability to propagate. And because of that it is a period where industries need their own innovative skills to reform their firms.
The purpose of this paper was to review the results of the subjective well-being(swb) studies performed by Hahn and coworkers in Korean culture. As the correlates of swb, we dealt with demographic/individual difference variables, intrapersonal variables, interpersonal process variables, and Korean cultural variables. We proposed that the components of swb were consisted of quality of life(cognitive swb) and overall happy feelings about one's own life(emotional swb). It was also assumed that a measure of total swb could be calculated by summated mean of cognitive swb and emotional swb measures. The data of the swb studies were analyzed and interpreted according to the above three measures of swb. The results of a nationwide survey(Hahn, 2004) from age of 19 to 75 years ald(n=2,230) showed significant simple correlation coefficients between the following demographic/individual difference variables and swb: Gender difference in swb was found(total swb r=.08, p<.001; life satisfaction r=.10, p<.001; overall emotional swb r=.05, p<.05). Men were happier than women in terms of all three measures of swb. It was also found that women appeared to experience greater positive and negative emotions. Correlation between age and emotional swb(r=.09, p<.001) was significant, but life satisfaction was not significant(r=.04, n.s). Correlations between economic status and swb were also significant(total swb r =.23, p<.001; life satisfaction r=.15 p<.001; overall emotional swb r=.15, p<.001l). Although existence of father was negatively related to emotional swb(r=-.05, p<.05), the existence of mother was not related to any of swb measures. Similarly existence of brothers was related positively to overall emotional swb, but existence of sisters was not. Though existence of son was not related to swb, daughter contributed negatively to swb(total swb -.12, p<.01; life satisfaction -.09, p<.05; emotional swb r=-.12, p<.01). We assumed that family member-in-Iaw also contributed to swb because the extended dose social networks were important in Korean culture. The results showed that the following family member-in-law variables were related to swb: Parents-in-law(total swb r=.11, p<.01; life satisfaction r=.10, p<.01; emotional swb r=.10, p<.01), father-in-law(total swb r=.11, p<.01; life satisfaction r=.11, p<.01; emotional swb r=.06, n.s). The result suggested that especially father-in-law contributed to swb through financial and social support. Correlations between emotional experiences in everyday life and swb were also presented. The range of correlation coefficients between the positive emotion measures and swb were r=.30~.48(p<.001) when the above two measures obtained at same time. But the range decreased to r=.19~32(p<.001) when the swb measure was obtained 9 month later longitudinally. Intercorrelations between positive emotional experience; and life satisfaction were r=.37~58(p<.001) when two measures were obtained at same time. We also examined the effects of the intrapersonal cognitive responses to the most stressful life event upon swb. The results of nationwide survey(n=1,021) showed that self-disclosure(total swb r=.09, p<.010; life satisfaction r=.10, p<.01; emotional swb r=.07, p<.01), rumination(total swb r=-.17, p<.001), thought avoidance(total swb r=.12, p<.001; life satisfaction r=-.08; emotional swb r=-.12, p<.001) and suppression(total swb r=-.13, p<.001; life satisfaction r=-.08, p<.05: emotional swb r=-.13, p<.001) contributed to swb. It was also suggested that mismatch between self-guide and regulatory focus contributed negatively to emotional swb. It was also found that social comparison motives and fulfillment of the motives contributed to swb. The results of a survey research(n=363 college students) revealed that the higher the general social comparison motive, the lower the swb(total swb r=-.15, P<.01: life satisfaction r=-.17. p<.01; emotional swb r=-.10, p<.05). It was also found that satisfaction level of self-evalution motive contributed positively to swb(total swb r=-.14. p<.01: life satisfaction r=-.12, p<.05; emotional swb r=.15, p<.001). Both of self-improvement motive(r=.13, p<.05) and satisfaction level of self-improvement motive(r=.12, p<.05) contributed positively to emotional swb, respectively. The above results suggested that swb was depended upon the interaction effect of social comparison motive; and level of fulfillment of the motives. We also reported the significant multiple predictors of swb in a sample of age from 60years to 89years olds. The results of multiple regression analysis showed that the significant multiple predictors of swb were past illness(β=.174, p<.001), economic status(β=.418, p<.001), marital satisfaction(β=.0841, p<.001), satisfaction of offsprins(β=.065, p<.01), expectation level of social support from offsprings(β=-.049, p<.001), and negative emotions(β=-.454. p<.001) among 16 social psychological factors. It was also found that swb was an important multiple predictors of physical health. This finding was replicated in a longitudinal study. Both of positive and negative emotional experiences were significant multiple predictors of physical health one year later. The results of the discriminant analysis showed both of total swb and positive emotional experiences contributed to discriminate the happy and healthy olds from unhappy and unhealthy olds. We paper also examined the effects of the nonnative social behaviors upon swb in Korean culture. The main hypotheses of the study(Hahn, 2006, in press) was that the important nonnative behaviors would influence on swb through both of the mediation processes of adjustment to social relationships and psychological stress. The survey data were collected from 2,129 adults age of 19 to 75, from 7 regional areas in Korea. The results of the study revealed that almost all of correlation coefficients between 15 normative social behaviors and the above three criteria w-ere significant. The fitness test results of the covariance structural equation model showed that all of the fitness indices were satisfactory (GFI=.974, AGFI=.909, NNFI=.922, NFI=.973, CFI=.974. RMR=.049, RMSEA=.073). The results of the analysis revealed that the following five path coeffi6ents from behaviors to social adjustment were significant; behavior tor family and family members(t=5.87, p<.001), courteous behavior(t=4.39, p<.001), faithful behavior (t=2.15. p<.05). collectivistic behavior(t=8.31, p<.001). Seven path coefficients from the normative behaviors to psychological stress were significant; behavior for family and family members (t=-4.63, p<.001), faithful behavior(t=-3.86, p<.001). suppression of emotional expression(t=3.99, p<.001), trustworthy and dependable behavior(t=-2.21, p<.05), collectivistic behavior(t=3.72, p<.001), effortful and diligent behavior(t=2.94, p<.001), husbandry and saving behavior(t=3.40, p<.001). The above results suggested that four normative behaviors among seven behaviors contributed negatively to psychological stress in current Korean society. The results abo confirmed the hypothesized paths from social adjustment (t=10.40, p<.001) to swb and from psychological stress(t=-19.74, p<.001) to swb. The important results of the study were discussed in terms of the Confucian traditions and recent social changes in Korean culture. Finally limitations of this review paper were discussed and the suggestions for the future study were also proposed.