• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.367-385
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• 2021

This study examined changes in the energy landscape, focusing on the photovoltaic module carbon certification system. As the global photovoltaic market has been reorganized around Chinese companies, the South Korean government has pushed to strengthen the competitiveness of the nation's photovoltaic industry. However, a limitation remains in that the government-led effort was not sufficient to bring about dynamic changes in the energy landscape. Against this backdrop, this study explored the stages leading to the multi-level perspectives of "macro-environment, socio-technical regime, and niche" to track the process of the government and domestic photovoltaic companies as part of a socio-technical regime responding to global market changes. In particular, this study raised an issue with the conceptual discussion of multi-level perspective, which placed a particular emphasis on the rate of change at each level and the niche in which innovative experiments take place, and thus attempted to fill this gap by tracking the energy landscape that varies differently from space. These spatial discussions can track different carbon emissions coefficients and industrial characteristics for each country, and have a higher level of explanatory power for the system thus constructed. In addition, through discussions on the problems and implications of the government-led introduction of renewable energy policies, this study suggests the need to create and implement a field-oriented system.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.28 no.8
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• pp.103-109
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• 2023

In this paper, we propose a smart wall switch based on IEEE 802.11b/g/n standard 2.4GHz band communication. As the 4th industrial era evolves, smart home solution development is actively underway, and application cases for smart wall switches are increasing. Most of the Chinese products that preoccupy the market through price competitiveness use Bluetooth and Zigbee communication switches. However, while ZigBee communication is low power, communication speed is slower than Bluetooth and network configuration through a separate hub is additionally required. The Bluetooth method has problems in that the communication range and speed are lower than Wi-Fi communication, the communication standby time is relatively long, and security is weak. In this study, an IEEE 802.11b/g/n smart wall switch applied with Wi-Fi communication technology was developed. In addition, through the two-wire structure, it is designed so that no additional cost is incurred through the construction of a separate neutral line in the building. The result of the study is more than 30% cheaper than the existing wall switch, so it is judged that it will be able to preoccupy the market not only in terms of technological competitiveness but also price competitiveness.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.73-93
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• 2023

This study provides a prospect for the fast growing the smartwatch market by investigating the relationship between the satisfaction and the continuous use intention of Apple watch users, as well as the factors influencing their satisfaction. Based on the TAM, this study uses system quality, information quality, and self-efficacy as independent variables, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and satisfaction as mediators, and continuous use intention as the dependent variable. We analyze the data of 256 individuals who completed an online survey with SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 26.0 software. This study conducts several tests and analyses to empirically evaluate the data including reliability analysis, factor analysis, feasibility analysis, path analysis, hypothesis verification, and mediation analysis. Our results investigate which factors may influence consumers' intention to continuously using Apple Watch devices in the future. In summary, satisfaction has a positive effect on the intention to continuously use smartwatchs. Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have a positive effect on satisfaction. Among the three factors (system quality, information quality, and self-efficacy), only self-efficacy has no significant impact on perceived usefulness but had a positive effect on perceived ease of use. In addition, system quality and information quality positively affect perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, satisfaction, and continuous intention to use an Apple Watch. Taking the Apple Watch as the subject of our research topic, this study provides theoretical value by exploring the impact of user's satisfaction with their smartwatch on their continuous usage intention. This study further explains the influence of system quality, information quality, and self-efficacy on user satisfaction. Additionally, this research offers valuable insight to practitioners by confirming that information quality, system quality, and self-efficacy are important features for enhancing satisfactory user experiences which in turn may increase users' intention to continued using smartwatches.

• Korean small business review
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.85-102
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• 2009

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.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.71-99
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• 2010

Most of studies on patriotism in the marketing area have focused on ethnocentric tendencies observed in consumption behaviors. On the contrary, there have been few empirical studies on how patriotism in the general sense, indicating affection for, attachment to, and pride in the country, influences consumers' evaluation of domestic and foreign products. Given the current situation that marketing activities appealing to people's patriotism is increasing, this is somewhat surprising. Thus, this study examined empirically how patriotism influences people's evaluation of domestic and foreign products. In addition, we tested whether consumer ethnocentrism works as an intervening variable in the relation between patriotism and product evaluation. The empirical analysis was conducted through a questionnaire survey of undergraduate and graduate students at universities in Seoul. The survey asked about the respondents' patriotism, consumer ethnocentrism, domestic product evaluation, foreign product evaluation, and demographical characteristics. In foreign product evaluation, the respondents were requested to evaluate Chinese and Japanese products. Email was used to send and recover the questionnaires, and 135 replies were used in the analysis. Major findings from the empirical analysis are as follows. First, a significant relationship was observed between patriotism and domestic product evaluation. That is, patriotic participants evaluated domestic products more favorably. On the other hand, no significant relationship was observed between patriotism and foreign product evaluation(See Table 1-1 and 1-2). Next, the effect of patriotism on domestic product evaluation was mediated by consumer ethnocentrism. However, whether the effect of patriotism on domestic product evaluation is mediated by consumer ethnocentrism partially or fully was different according to product(See Table 2-1 and 2-2). Lastly, we tried to analyze the relation between consumer ethnocentrism and product evaluation and comparing the results with findings of previous researches. According to the results, a significant relationship was observed between consumer ethnocentrism and domestic product evaluation but not between consumer ethnocentrism and foreign product evaluation. The meanings of this study are as follows. First, there have been few marketing studies that investigated the relation between patriotism and product evaluation. Thus, this study is meaningful in that it supplemented the limitation of previous research. Second, consumer ethnocentrism was found to mediate the relation between patriotism and domestic product evaluation. Considering the absence of previous research that examined the role of consumer ethnocentrism as an intervening variable, this study is significant in that it expanded the scope of research on consumer ethnocentrism. Third, from the practical aspect, the results of this study suggest that marketing appealing to patriotism is effective in stimulating consumers' purchase and consumption of domestic products. Accordingly, such a marketing strategy is expected to be effective in protecting domestic markets from imported goods and overseas brands and to increase demands for domestic products and brands. However, there is the question of whether the effect of patriotism based marketing strategies in promoting demand for domestic products would persist. That is, this study could not find a significant relation between patriotism and foreign product evaluation, and this means that the increase in patriotism for the home country does not damage people's view to the quality of foreign products negatively. Accordingly, without change in people's perception of foreign products, it is highly likely that the increase in demand for domestic products or brands induced by patriotism elevated at a specific time or situation may not last long. Fourth, the results of this study suggest that the patriotism level may influence consumers' choice behavior toward retailers strongly connected to a specific country or region. That is, consumers with high level patriotism may hesitate or avoid using a retailer associated with some foreign country. Fifth, according to the results of this study, when people's patriotism is stimulated by a specific social situation or event, it can be an opportunity for domestic franchise brands to increase their market performance such as sales and market share and, at the same time, for foreign franchise brands to experience adversities. Therefore, during a period like the Olympic Games or the World Cup when people's sense of belonging or attachment to their country is heightened, domestic franchise brands need to make marketing activities that may lead market opportunities to substantial results and foreign franchise brands to cope with such adversities. Sixth, consumers' brand choice is often made in retail stores. It has been demonstrated by numerous studies that in store stimuli such as point of purchase display can affect consumers' behavior. Considering this, domestic brands facing competition with foreign brands should make continuous efforts to enhance the market performance of their products through developing in store stimuli that can stimulate consumers' patriotism. Finally, based on the major findings of this study, both academic and practical issues were discussed. Suggestions for future studies were provided.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.27-35
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• 2012

This study locates typical Korean fashion images in domestic and foreign fashion journals to advance Korea's international image in contemporary global fashion markets. The investigation of the frequency of articles and their types (so as to inquire into interest in Korean fashion in the global fashion markets) showed that for the appearance frequency of domestic articles studied, a good number of articles were published in the first half of 2008 and in 2009. In the case of foreign articles, the number of them increased from the second half of 2008 and the majority of articles were shown in the first half of 2010. Second, the investigation of the appearance features by article type studied in order to understand how Korean fashion played a role in the world's markets. The majority of articles were related to fashion brands that entered Chinese market in fashion brand articles in the case of domestic articles; however, many foreign articles introduced designers that participated in global fashion collections in Paris and New York. Third, as a result of analyzing typical key words by article type in order to find key words which could enhance Korea's fashion national image representing, we could confirm that 'Korean designers' can be a typical key words to represent Korean fashion. The key word most exposed in both domestic and foreign articles was 'designer Lie Sang Bong' and only his articles contained the content about influential Korean design materials.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.668-676
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• 2001

Two growth performance experiments were undertaken in order to compare the nutritional benefit of micronized dehulled barley (MDB) with wheat and maize. In the first experiment, ninety-six 24 d old Cotswold pigs with an average body weight of 9.5 kg were randomly allotted into one of four dietary treatments. The wheat and MDB ratio in the four complex diets were 100% wheat, 75% wheat+25% MDB, 50% wheat+50% MDB and 100% MDB; cereal was about 47% of the whole diet and varied by using different ratios of wheat and MDB. Starter phase was started at a bodyweight 9.9 kg; grower phase continued at liveweight 37.1 kg and finished at 74.0 kg. The ADFI, ADG and feed efficiency (F/G) were not affected (p>0.05) by the level of MDB in the diet from 9.9 to 37.1 kg live weight. However, ADFI was (p<0.05) less (14%) for the pigs fed the 75 or 100% of MDB based diets without affecting F/G during the second phase (37.1 to 74.0 kg live weight). Pigs fed the MDB based diet had a lower (p<0.05) plasma urea nitrogen (PUN) concentration than the pigs fed the wheat-based diet. In the second experiment, the trial started at 9.9 kg body weight and ended at market weight (107.6 kg), with three different phases in the trial. One hundred and twenty Cotswold pigs were randomly assigned to one of three dietary treatments. The maize and MDB ratio in the three diets were 100% maize, 50% maize+50% MDB and 100% MDB. Diet treatments did not affect (p>0.05) growth performance, PUN level, carcass characteristics and organ size, except for an improvement (p<0.05) in ADG for the pigs in the starter phase fed 50% and 100% MDB based diets.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.191-209
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• 2015

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) in social media has been recognized as one of the most influential marketing tools across various businesses. Understanding eWOM in social media is critical to reach potential global consumers easily and quickly in the hospitality industry. However, few empirical studies in hospitality attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of eWOM in social media from a global perspective. Given the competitive climate of the hospitality market, it is meaningful for hospitality marketers to evaluate the effectiveness of eWOM in social media and the influence of cultural factors to promote customers and increase profitability globally. The main purpose of this study was to examine the influence of cultural values on social media eWOM in the hospitality industry in China, Korea, and the USA. The result of this study indicates Chinese and American people engage more than Korean people when they try to purchase hospitality product and service This study particularly provided a cross-cultural study of comparison among these countries and the findings of this study are expected to provide important practical assistance for global marketing strategies in social media.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.1109-1118
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• 2017

With mobile payment always at the center of the fintech craze all over the world, many countries led by China, India, England and Brazil are dedicated to activating and supplying online and offline mobile payment services, securing competitive advantage in the global mobile payment market. However, Korea that had proudly considered itself as an IT power was crowded out of the top 10 ranking, falling behind even Australia, Mexico and Germany. Therefore, this study conducted an empirical research to measure the word-of-mouth intention of general consumers using offline mobile payment service in Korea. Furthermore, it comparatively analyzed the world's most powerful country, China, in mobile payment services, and analyzed the difference in consumer perception between Korea and China.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.213-234
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• 2017

This study analyzed valid samples of 707 units collected by conducting paper and online surveys on the Korean, the Chinese, the American, and the Japanese. The result showed that a significant causal relationship exists between power distance and pull motivation as well as collectivism and push motivation, which led to a conclusion that developing travel packages that can strengthen bonding of fraternal societies through various events and attractions is effective for respondents from Asian countries. On the other hand, Americans turned out to prefer practical plans, which could provide individual's needs and preferences, for example, a self-healing package. This study, using a simple survey, may have a limitation in that it does not allow the participants to express their opinions. However, the study is meaningful that it made a theoretical contribution utilizing Hofstede's cultural dimensions index, two types of motivation, and theories of customer satisfaction and revisit intention. It also has a practical implication in that it proposes the most optimal and applicable overseas travel marketing strategy by comparing cultural traits of each country.