• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.85-108
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• 2014

This study provides the information about size, financial structure, profitability and growth of franchisors using financial data(asset, liability, equity, sales volume, operating income and net income) in uniform franchise offering circular of fair trade commission. The data were collected from 1,050 franchisors in various business fields: fast food, family restaurant, bakery, agriculture & fishery and liquor shop in the uniform franchise offering circular in 2012 and 2011. Results of this study are as follows: For company size, median of total assets was KRW 675 million and the accumulated median assets rate was 0.48%, but the accumulated median company numbers were 49.9%, which showed small size. For financial structure, 525 companies were below 200% debt ratio, while 314 (29.9%) companies were in over 200% debt, and 211 (20.1%) companies were impaired in capital. These also showed financial structure was vulunerable. For profitability, median of ROA for total companies were only 4.72%, which showed low profitability. For growth, median of growth rate for sales were 7.57% per year, which showed mature industry. In overall, the results showed franchisors should improve their financial status.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.13
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• pp.869-895
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• 2000

The US supports the Information and Communication (IC) industry as a strategic one to wield a complete power over the World Market. However, several other countries are also eager to have the support for the IC industry because the industry produces a high added value and has a significant effect on other industries. Korea is not an exception. Korea recently succeeded in the commercialization of CDMA for the first time in the world, after the successful development of TDX. Hence, it is highly likely to get tracked by the US. Although the IC industry is a specific sector of IT, there is a concern that there might be a trade friction between the US and Korea due to a possible competition. It will be very important to prepare a solution in advance so that Korea could prevent the friction and at the same time increase its share domestically and globally. It will be our important task to solve the problem with the minimum cost if the conflict arises unfortunately in the IT area. The parties that have a strong influence on the US trade policy are the think tank group and the IT-related interest group. Therefore, it would be important to have a close relationship with them. We found some implications by analyzing the case of Japan, which has experienced trade frictions with the US over the long period of time in the high tech industry. In order to get rid of those conflicts with the US, the Japanese did the following things : (1) The Japanese government developed supporting theories and also resorted to international support so that the world could support the Japanese theories. (2) Through continual dialogue with the US business people, the Japanese business people sought after solutions to share profits among the Japanese and the US both in the domestic and in the worldwide markets. They focused on lobbying activities to influence the US public opinion to support the Japanese. The specific implementation plan was first to open culture lobby toward opinion leaders who were leaders about the US opinion. The institution, Japan Society, were formed to deliver a high quality lobbying activities. The second plan is economic lobby. They have established Japanese Economic Institute at Washington. They provide information about Japan regularly or irregularly to the US government, research institution, universities, etc., that are interested in Japan. The main objective behind these activities though is to advertise the validity of Japanese policy. Japanese top executives, practical interest groups on international trade, are trying to justify their position by direct contact with the US policy makers. The third one is political lobby. Japan is very careful about this political lobby. It is doing its best not to give impression that Japan is trying to shape the US policy making. It is collecting a vast amount of information to make a correct judgment on situation. It is not tilted toward one political party or the other, and is rather developing a long-term network of people who understand and support the Japanese policy. The following implications were drawn from the experience of Japan. First, the Korean government should develop a long-term plan and execute it to improve the Korean image perceived by American people. Second, the Korean government should begin public relation activities toward the US elite group. It is inevitable to make an effort to advertise Korea to this elite group because this group leads public opinion in the USA. Third, the Korean government needs the development of a relevant policy to elevate the positive atmosphere for advertising toward the US. For example, we need information about to whom and how to about lobbying activities, personnel network who immediately respond to wrong articles about Korea in the US press, and lastly the most recent data bank of Korean support group inside the USA. Fourth, the Korean government should create an atmosphere to facilitate the advertising toward the US. Examples include provision of incentives in tax on the expenses for the advertising toward the US and provision of rewards to those who significantly contribute to the advertising activities. Fifth, the Korean government should perform the role of a bridge between Korean and the US business people. Sixth, the government should promptly analyze the policy of IT industry, a strategic area, and timely distribute information to industries in Korea. Since the Korean government is the only institution that has formal contact with the US government, it is highly likely to provide information of a high quality. The followings are some implications for business institutions. First, Korean business organization should carefully analyze and observe the business policy and managerial conditions of US companies. It is very important to do so because all the trade frictions arise at the business level. Second, it is also very important that the top management of Korean firms contact the opinion leaders of the US. Third, it is critically needed that Korean business people sent to the USA do their part for PR activities. Fourth, it is very important to advertise to American employees in Korean companies. If we cannot convince our American employees, it would be a lot harder to convince regular American. Therefore, it is very important to make the American employees the support group for Korean ways. Fifth, it should try to get much information as early as possible about the US firms policy in the IT area. It should give an enormous effort on early collection of information because by doing so it has more time to respond. Sixth, it should research on the PR cases of foreign enterprise or non-American companies inside the USA. The research needs to identify the success factors and the failure factors. Finally, the business firm will get more valuable information if it analyzes and responds to, according to each medium.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.1-34
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• 2010

Introduction The purpose of this research is to develop overall model which involves the effect of ongoing support services by franchisor on franchisee's relationship quality(trust, satisfaction, and commitment) and business performance(financial and non-financial performance), and to investigate the relationships among trust, satisfaction, commitment, financial and non-financial performance. This study also suggests franchise business or franchise system should be based on long-term orientation between franchisor and franchisee rather than short-term orientation, or transactional relationship, and proposes the most effective way of providing on-going support services by franchisor with franchisee thru symbiotic relationship among franchisor and franchisee Research Model and Hypothesis The research model as Figure 1 shows the variables on-going support services which affect the relationship quality between franchisor and franchisee such as trust, satisfaction, and commitment, and also analyze the effects of relationship quality on business performance including financial and non-financial performance We established 12 hypotheses to test as follows; Relationship between on-going support services and trust H1: On-going support services factors (product category & price, logistics service, promotion, information providing & problem solving capability, supervisor's support, and education & training support) have positive effect on franchisee's trust. Relationship between on-going support services and satisfaction H2: On-going support services factors (product category & price, logistics service, promotion, information providing & problem solving capability, supervisor's support, and education & training support) have positive effect on franchisee's satisfaction. Relationship between on-going support services and commitment H3: On-going support services factors (product category & price, logistics service, promotion, information providing & problem solving capability, supervisor's support, and education & training support) have positive effect on franchisee's commitment. Relationship among relationship quality: trust, satisfaction, and commitment H4: Franchisee's trust has positive effect on franchisee's satisfaction. H5: Franchisee's trust has positive effect on franchisee's commitment. H6: Franchisee's satisfaction has positive effect on franchisee's commitment. Relationship between relationship quality and business performance H7: Franchisee's trust has positive effect on franchisee's financial performance. H8: Franchisee's trust has positive effect on franchisee's non-financial performance. H9: Franchisee's satisfaction has positive effect on franchisee's financial performance. H10: Franchisee's satisfaction has positive effect on franchisee's non-financial performance. H11: Franchisee's commitment has positive effect on franchisee's financial performance. H12: Franchisee's commitment has positive effect on franchisee's non-financial performance. Method The on-going support services were defined as an organized system of continuous supporting services by franchisor for the purpose of satisfying the expectation of franchisee based on long-term orientation and classified into six constructs such as product category & price, logistics service, promotion, providing information & problem solving capability, supervisor's support, and education & training support. The six constructs were measured agreement using a 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree)as follows. The product category & price was measured by four items: menu variety, price of food material provided by franchisor, and support for developing new menu. The logistics service was measured by six items: distribution system of franchisor, return policy for provided food materials, timeliness, inventory control level of franchisor, accuracy of order, and flexibility of emergency order. The promotion was measured by five items: differentiated promotion activities, brand image of franchisor, promotion effect such as customer increase, long-term plan of promotion, and micro-marketing concept in promotion. The providing information & problem solving capability was measured by information providing of new products, information of competitors, information of cost reduction, and efforts for solving problems in franchisee's operations. The supervisor's support was measured by supervisor operations, frequency of visiting franchisee, support by data analysis, processing the suggestions by franchisee, diagnosis and solutions for the franchisee's operations, and support for increasing sales in franchisee. Finally, the of education & training support was measured by recipe training by specialist, service training for store people, systemized training program, and tax & human resources support services. Analysis and results The data were analyzed using Amos. Figure 2 and Table 1 present the result of the structural equation model. Implications The results of this research are as follows: Firstly, the factors of product category, information providing and problem solving capacity influence only franchisee's satisfaction and commitment. Secondly, logistic services and supervising factors influence only trust and satisfaction. Thirdly, continuing education and training factors influence only franchisee's trust and commitment. Fourthly, sales promotion factor influences all the relationship quality representing trust, satisfaction, and commitment. Fifthly, regarding relationship among relationship quality, trust positively influences satisfaction, however, does not directly influence commitment, but satisfaction positively affects commitment. Therefore, satisfaction plays a mediating role between trust and commitment. Sixthly, trust positively influence only financial performance, and satisfaction and commitment influence positively both financial and non-financial performance.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.67-84
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• 2010

In terms of business, forecasting is a work of what is expected to happen in the future to make managerial decisions and plans. Therefore, the accurate forecasting is very important for major managerial decision making and is the basis for making various strategies of business. But it is very difficult to make an unbiased and consistent estimate because of uncertainty and complexity in the future business environment. That is why we should use scientific forecasting model to support business decision making, and make an effort to minimize the model's forecasting error which is difference between observation and estimator. Nevertheless, minimizing the error is not an easy task. Case-based reasoning is a problem solving method that utilizes the past similar case to solve the current problem. To build the successful case-based reasoning models, retrieving the case not only the most similar case but also the most relevant case is very important. To retrieve the similar and relevant case from past cases, the measurement of similarities between cases is an important key factor. Especially, if the cases contain symbolic data, it is more difficult to measure the distances. The purpose of this study is to improve the forecasting accuracy of case-based reasoning approach using fuzzy relation and composition. Especially, two methods are adopted to measure the similarity between cases containing symbolic data. One is to deduct the similarity matrix following binary logic(the judgment of sameness between two symbolic data), the other is to deduct the similarity matrix following fuzzy relation and composition. This study is conducted in the following order; data gathering and preprocessing, model building and analysis, validation analysis, conclusion. First, in the progress of data gathering and preprocessing we collect data set including categorical dependent variables. Also, the data set gathered is cross-section data and independent variables of the data set include several qualitative variables expressed symbolic data. The research data consists of many financial ratios and the corresponding bond ratings of Korean companies. The ratings we employ in this study cover all bonds rated by one of the bond rating agencies in Korea. Our total sample includes 1,816 companies whose commercial papers have been rated in the period 1997~2000. Credit grades are defined as outputs and classified into 5 rating categories(A1, A2, A3, B, C) according to credit levels. Second, in the progress of model building and analysis we deduct the similarity matrix following binary logic and fuzzy composition to measure the similarity between cases containing symbolic data. In this process, the used types of fuzzy composition are max-min, max-product, max-average. And then, the analysis is carried out by case-based reasoning approach with the deducted similarity matrix. Third, in the progress of validation analysis we verify the validation of model through McNemar test based on hit ratio. Finally, we draw a conclusion from the study. As a result, the similarity measuring method using fuzzy relation and composition shows good forecasting performance compared to the similarity measuring method using binary logic for similarity measurement between two symbolic data. But the results of the analysis are not statistically significant in forecasting performance among the types of fuzzy composition. The contributions of this study are as follows. We propose another methodology that fuzzy relation and fuzzy composition could be applied for the similarity measurement between two symbolic data. That is the most important factor to build case-based reasoning model.

• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.131-153
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• 1984

Fishery resources are still abundant compared with other resources and the possibility of exploitation is probably great. The Korean fishery industry has grown remarkably since 1957, and Korea is ranked as one of the major fishery countries. Its of fishery products reached the 9th in the world and the value of exports was 5th in 1982. But recently a growth rate has slowed down, due to the enlargement of territorial seas by the declaration of the 200 mile, Exclusive Economic Zone, the tendency to develop fishery resources strate-gically in international bargaining, the change in function of the international organizations, the expansion of regulated waters, the illegal arrest of our fishing boats, the rapid rise in oil prices, and the fall in fish prices, the development of fishery resources as a symbol of nationalism, the fishing boats decreptitude, the rise of crew wages, regulations on fishing methods, fish species, fishing season, size of fish, and mesh size, fishing quotas and the demand of excessive fishing royalties. Besides the the obligation of coastal countries, employing crews of their host countries is also an example of the change in the international environment which causes the aggravation of foreign profit of fishing firms. To ameliorate the situation, our Korean fishery firms must prepare efficient plans and study systematically to internationalize themselves because such existing methods as conventional fishing entry and licence fishing entry are likely to be unable to cope with international environmental change. Thus, after the systematic analysis of the problem, some new combined alternatives might be proposed. These are some of the new schemes to support this plan showing the orientation of our national policy: 1. Most of the coastal states, to cope with rapid international environmental change and to survive in the new era of ocean order, have rationalized their higher governmental structure concerning the fishery industries. And the coastal countries which are the objectives of our expecting entry, demand excessive economic and technical aid, limit the number of fishing boats’entry and the use of our foreign fishing bases, and regulate the membership of the international fishery commissions. Especially, most of the coastal or island countries are recently independent states, which are poorer in national budget, depend largely on fishing royalties and licence entry fees as their main resources of national finance. 2. Alternatives to our entry to deep sea fishing, as internationalization strategies, are by direct foreign investment method. About 30 firms have already invested approximately US $ 8 million in 9 coastal countries. Areas of investment comprise the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean, the Moroccan sea and five other sea areas. Trawling, tuna purse seining and five other fields are covered by the investment. Joint-venture is the most prominent method of this direct investment. If we consider the number of entry firms, the host countries, the number of seas available and the size of investment, this method of cooperation is perhaps insufficient so far. Our fishery firms suffer from a weakness in international competitive ability, an insufficiency of information, of short funds, incompetency in the market, the unfriendliness of host coastal countries, the incapability of partners in joint-ventures and the political instability of the host countries. To enlarge our foreign fishing grounds, we are to actively adopt the direct investment entry method and to diversity our collaboraboration with partner countries. Consequently, besides proper fishing, we might utilize forward integration strategies, including the processing fied. a. The enterprise emigration method is likely to be successful in Argentina. It includes the development of Argentinian fishing grounds which are still not exploited in spite of abundant resources. Besides, Arentina could also be developed as a base for the exploitation of the krill resources and for further entries into collaboration with other Latin American countries. b. The co-business contract fishing method works in American territorial seas where American fishermen sell their fishery products to our factory ships at sea. This method contributes greatly to obtaining more fishing quotas and in innovation bottom fishing operation. Therefore we may apply this method to other countres to diffuse our foreign fishing entry. c. The new fishing ground development method was begun in 1957 by tuna long-line experimental fishing in the Indian Ocean. It has five fields, trawling, skipjack pole fishing and shrimp trawling, and so on. Recently, Korean fisheries were successful in the development of the Antarctic Ocean krill and tuna purse seining. 3. The acceleration of the internationalization of deep sea fishing; a. Intense information exchange activities and commission participation are likely to be continues as our contributions to the international fishery organizations. We should try to enter international fishery commissions in which we are not so far participating. And we have to reform adequately to meet the changes of the function of the international commissions. With our partner countries, we ought to conclude bilateral fishery agreements, thus enlarging our collaboration. b. Our government should offer economic and technical aids to host countries to facilitate our firms’fishery entry and activities. c. To accelerate technical innovation, our fishery firms must invest greater amount in technical innovation, at the same time be more discriminatory in importing exogeneous fishery technologies. As for fishing methods; expanded use of multi-purpose fishing boats and introduction of automation should be encuraged to prevent seasonal fluctuations in fishery outputs. d. The government should increases financial and tax aid to Korean firms in order to elevate already weak financial structure of Korean fishery firms. e. Finally, the government ought to revise foreign exchange regulations being applied to deep sea fishery firms. Furthermore, dutes levied on foreign purchaed equipments and supplies used by our deep sea fishing boats thould be reduced or exempted. when the fish caught by Korean partner of joint-venture firms is sold at the home port, pusan, import duty should be exempted.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.25-75
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• 1999

This study concern with the pattern of Pusan Station Shopping District within Pusan City, Korea, one of the third ranked centers within Pusan-the first ranked is CBD, the second is subCBD, the third are Spa Shopping district, Tongnae shopping district, Jobang-Ap shopping district and Yangjeong shopping district. This paper serves as a part of series studies which attempt to clarify the internal structure of Pusan as a whole. Part(I) of this study deals with the pattern of functions including information & culture, business, recreation and retailing. The results are as follows. 1. Pusan Station is one of higher ranked class of central places within Pusan City. But the ratio of dwelling houses is the highest in Pusan Station among the 9 higher ranked central places within Pusan. It means that the residential areas still remain along the maze type of narrower streets inner part of the blocks, especially western belt of this shopping district. 2. Business functions are one of the important criteria which classified the central places within the city and Pusan Station is the first ranked shopping districts in terms of these criteria among the 9 higher ranked central places including CBD within Pusan City. It suggests that Pusan Station is the miniature of the CBD, SubCBD is not the miniature of CBD in the view point of business function. It also means that Pusan Station Shopping District has been developed as a special shopping district or as a special central place. It has not been evolved as a center of the hierarchy of central places within the city by the natural or organic growth. 3. Pusan Station as 'the third space or drinking place' and it's characteristics as a amusement center presents at so called the 'Texas Town'-free tax area- whose customers are mainly U. S. soldiers and foreign sailors. But from the 1990s, this 'Town' changed to 'Russian Town', You can easy to meet many Russians and Russian lettered signboards-not English- along the street. 4. Convenient stores distribute mainly at back streets or along the narrower streets. It means that this kinds of stores have a residential oriented character. And a certain convenient stores locate with almost same distances. It suggests that it's hinterland is limited in nearer neighborhoods.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.335-348
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• 2014

This study investigates the technical level and industrial structure for the case of the Gazelle industry in Chungnam Province. As a results of the empirical study, the Gazelle industry of Chungnam Province shows a competitive position in terms of scale and growth capacity, which. in turn, provides income and tax collection effects due to the high level of industrial efficiency. Among the Gazelle industry of Chungnam Province, low-level technology industry, compared to high and middle-level technology industries, accelerates higher level of agglomeration and industrial growth, which provides a rapid change of industrial structure of the province. Theses research results imply that research and development investment in the Gazelle industry is essential and industrial development strategy should be conducted via step-by-step with business scale quotient (BQ) and industrial growth rate (IG). Meanwhile, there should be a serious policy review whether low-level technology industry is better off for the province compared to high and middle-level technology industries. This study expects that regional industrial policy applying the concept of Gazelle industry can accelerate regional development since the Gazelle industry contributes to the high level of income growth and employment creation.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.174-182
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• 2018

Given the ongoing debate in many aspects of finance, more attention may need to focus on corporate R&D expenditures. This study empirically tests financial determinants of R&D expenditures for NYSE-listed and KOSPI-listed firms. Three major hypotheses were postulated to test for corporate R&D outlay. First, proposed variables such as one-year lagged R&D expenditures, market value based leverage, profitability and cash holdings showed significant influence on corporate R&D costs for the sample firms. Moreover, financial factors inclusive of squared one-year lagged R&D expenditures, the interaction effect between one-lagged R&D expenditures and high-growth firm, non-debt tax shield, Tobin's q and a dummy variable to explain differences in accounting treatment between the U.S. and Korea, revealed significant differences between the two samples. Finally, in the conditional quantile regression (CQR) analysis for the R&D-related variables in relation to corporate growth rate, it was found that the NYSE-listed firms had a statistically significant linkage between growth potential and one-year lagged R&D expenditures at lower quantile levels. This study may shed new light on identifying financial factors affecting differences between the U.S. market (as an advanced market) and the Korean market (as an emerging market) regarding the optimal level of R&D investments for shareholders.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.9 no.12
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• pp.31-43
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• 2018

Purpose - Smartphone shopping malls provide customers with a variety of tangible and intangible services including web sites, web design, use convenience, information for products and shopping and various after services. Accordingly, it is needed to expand and classify service qualities based on the various services provided by smartphone shopping malls, and then analyze path structures of smartphone shopping malls' qualities → customer satisfaction → behavioral intention. The purpose of this study is to categorize the qualities of smartphone shopping mall users based on the e-SERVQUAL by Lee(2002) and the SERVQUAL by Parasuraman et al.(1988, 2005), the smartphone shopping malls' service qualities based on service quality of smartphone shopping malls used in the previous use studies, and the Website quality factors of service industry and to analyze path structure of smartphone shopping mall's qualities → customer satisfaction → behavioral intention on college students in order to confirm the system of smartphone shopping malls' qualities. Research design, data, and methodology - This study's survey was carried out on the college students of university located in northeastern of Seoul. It was from December 7 - 15, 2017, and a total of 240 questionnaires were distributed, with 228 collected. Of them, effective questionnaires used in the final study were a total of 201 except 27 that couldn't be used. In this study, empirical analysis was done with factor analysis, correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, simple multiple regression analysis and moderating regression analysis by using Statistics Package SPSS18.0. Results - The study results are as follows: First, smartphone shopping malls' qualities were classified into six categories like customer system quality, Web design quality, convenience quality, information-offering quality, service quality, and product quality. Second, it showed that system quality, Web design quality, and information-offering quality had a positive impact on customer satisfaction, respectively. Third, it suggested that quality factors of smartphone shopping mall users had a positive impact on customer satisfaction in the order of quality, information-offering quality, system quality and Web design quality. Finally, it showed that customer service quality, product quality, and convenience quality did not have a positive impact on customer satisfaction. In addition, it said that customer satisfaction of smartphone shopping mall users had a positive impact on behavioral intention and thereby, the higher the customer satisfaction was, the higher the relations between reuse intention and recommendation intention were. Meanwhile, moderating regression analysis showed that trust did not have moderating effect in the relations between customer satisfaction and behavioral intention. The above study revealed that smartphone shopping malls' qualities were classified into six categories and it was possible to generalize after empirical analysis was made in the path structure. Conclusions - Smartphone shopping mall users consider usefulness of obtaining shopping information and quality on quick and abundant shopping information more important than access environment of smartphone shopping malls and kind services of smartphone shopping mall managers. Thereby, smartphone shopping mall marketers need to take service qualities like system quality and information-offering quality into more consideration.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.259-278
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• 2010

This study analyzes the achievement of the shipping policies and the priority for the promotion of such policies, in order to consider the features of the shipping industries in Korea and other advanced shipping countries and manage the rapidly changing shipping environment actively. Based on such analysis, this study also discusses the promotional strategy to strengthen the international competitiveness of the shipping industry. Regarding the promotion of the related policies, it is necessary to establish a base for growth, strengthen a capacity of leading the market, and create an opportunity in the market. By considering such three factors, it has become known that the establishment of the market order is important for the establishment of a base for growth. It is important to consider the advancement of the shipping tax system. Also, the information-orientation and the knowledge-industrialization of the shipping industry need to be considered. In order to strengthen a capacity of leading the market, the stable security of the labor force in the shipping industry is the most important factor. Also, it is important to consider the development and the upbringing of the global mega career and the shipping business. Regarding the creation of an opportunity in the market, it is important to expand the range of the shipping exchange between South Korea and North Korea, which will influence the administrative and the operative results related with the promotion of the related policies.