As Internet usage is becoming more common worldwide and smartphone become necessity in daily life, technologies and applications related to mobile Internet are developing rapidly. The results of the Internet usage patterns of consumers around the world imply that there are many potential new business opportunities for mobile Internet technologies and applications. The location-based service (LBS) is a service based on the location information of the mobile device. LBS has recently gotten much attention among many mobile applications and various LBSs are rapidly developing in numerous categories. However, even with the development of LBS related technologies and services, there is still a lack of empirical research on the intention to use LBS. The application of previous researches is limited because they focused on the effect of one particular factor and had not shown the direct relationship on the intention to use LBS. Therefore, this study presents a research model of factors that affect the intention to use and actual use of LBS whose market is expected to grow rapidly, and tested it by conducting a questionnaire survey of 330 users. The results of data analysis showed that service customization, service quality, and personal innovativeness have a positive effect on the intention to use LBS and the intention to use LBS has a positive effect on the actual use of LBS. These results implies that LBS providers can enhance the user's intention to use LBS by offering service customization through the provision of various LBSs based on users' needs, improving information service qualities such as accuracy, timeliness, sensitivity, and reliability, and encouraging personal innovativeness. However, privacy concerns in the context of LBS are not significantly affected by service customization and personal innovativeness and privacy concerns do not significantly affect the intention to use LBS. In fact, the information related to users' location collected by LBS is less sensitive when compared with the information that is used to perform financial transactions. Therefore, such outcomes on privacy concern are revealed. In addition, the advantages of using LBS are more important than the sensitivity of privacy protection to the users who use LBS than to the users who use information systems such as electronic commerce that involves financial transactions. Therefore, LBS are recommended to be treated differently from other information systems. This study is significant in the theoretical point of contribution that it proposed factors affecting the intention to use LBS in a multi-faceted perspective, proved the proposed research model empirically, brought new insights on LBS, and broadens understanding of the intention to use and actual use of LBS. Also, the empirical results of the customization of LBS affecting the user's intention to use the LBS suggest that the provision of customized LBS services based on the usage data analysis through utilizing technologies such as artificial intelligence can enhance the user's intention to use. In a practical point of view, the results of this study are expected to help LBS providers to develop a competitive strategy for responding to LBS users effectively and lead to the LBS market grows. We expect that there will be differences in using LBSs depending on some factors such as types of LBS, whether it is free of charge or not, privacy policies related to LBS, the levels of reliability related application and technology, the frequency of use, etc. Therefore, if we can make comparative studies with those factors, it will contribute to the development of the research areas of LBS. We hope this study can inspire many researchers and initiate many great researches in LBS fields.
Corporate credit rating assessment consists of complicated processes in which various factors describing a company are taken into consideration. Such assessment is known to be very expensive since domain experts should be employed to assess the ratings. As a result, the data-driven corporate credit rating prediction using statistical and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques has received considerable attention from researchers and practitioners. In particular, statistical methods such as multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) and multinomial logistic regression analysis (MLOGIT), and AI methods including case-based reasoning (CBR), artificial neural network (ANN), and multiclass support vector machine (MSVM) have been applied to corporate credit rating.2) Among them, MSVM has recently become popular because of its robustness and high prediction accuracy. In this study, we propose a novel optimized MSVM model, and appy it to corporate credit rating prediction in order to enhance the accuracy. Our model, named 'GAMSVM (Genetic Algorithm-optimized Multiclass Support Vector Machine),' is designed to simultaneously optimize the kernel parameters and the feature subset selection. Prior studies like Lorena and de Carvalho (2008), and Chatterjee (2013) show that proper kernel parameters may improve the performance of MSVMs. Also, the results from the studies such as Shieh and Yang (2008) and Chatterjee (2013) imply that appropriate feature selection may lead to higher prediction accuracy. Based on these prior studies, we propose to apply GAMSVM to corporate credit rating prediction. As a tool for optimizing the kernel parameters and the feature subset selection, we suggest genetic algorithm (GA). GA is known as an efficient and effective search method that attempts to simulate the biological evolution phenomenon. By applying genetic operations such as selection, crossover, and mutation, it is designed to gradually improve the search results. Especially, mutation operator prevents GA from falling into the local optima, thus we can find the globally optimal or near-optimal solution using it. GA has popularly been applied to search optimal parameters or feature subset selections of AI techniques including MSVM. With these reasons, we also adopt GA as an optimization tool. To empirically validate the usefulness of GAMSVM, we applied it to a real-world case of credit rating in Korea. Our application is in bond rating, which is the most frequently studied area of credit rating for specific debt issues or other financial obligations. The experimental dataset was collected from a large credit rating company in South Korea. It contained 39 financial ratios of 1,295 companies in the manufacturing industry, and their credit ratings. Using various statistical methods including the one-way ANOVA and the stepwise MDA, we selected 14 financial ratios as the candidate independent variables. The dependent variable, i.e. credit rating, was labeled as four classes: 1(A1); 2(A2); 3(A3); 4(B and C). 80 percent of total data for each class was used for training, and remaining 20 percent was used for validation. And, to overcome small sample size, we applied five-fold cross validation to our dataset. In order to examine the competitiveness of the proposed model, we also experimented several comparative models including MDA, MLOGIT, CBR, ANN and MSVM. In case of MSVM, we adopted One-Against-One (OAO) and DAGSVM (Directed Acyclic Graph SVM) approaches because they are known to be the most accurate approaches among various MSVM approaches. GAMSVM was implemented using LIBSVM-an open-source software, and Evolver 5.5-a commercial software enables GA. Other comparative models were experimented using various statistical and AI packages such as SPSS for Windows, Neuroshell, and Microsoft Excel VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). Experimental results showed that the proposed model-GAMSVM-outperformed all the competitive models. In addition, the model was found to use less independent variables, but to show higher accuracy. In our experiments, five variables such as X7 (total debt), X9 (sales per employee), X13 (years after founded), X15 (accumulated earning to total asset), and X39 (the index related to the cash flows from operating activity) were found to be the most important factors in predicting the corporate credit ratings. However, the values of the finally selected kernel parameters were found to be almost same among the data subsets. To examine whether the predictive performance of GAMSVM was significantly greater than those of other models, we used the McNemar test. As a result, we found that GAMSVM was better than MDA, MLOGIT, CBR, and ANN at the 1% significance level, and better than OAO and DAGSVM at the 5% significance level.
This study analyzes the effect of Computer Aided Innovation (CAI) to improve R&D Capabilities empirically. Survey was distributed by e-mail and Google Docs, targeting CTO of 235 SMEs. 142 surveys were returned back (rate of return 60.4%) from companies. Survey results from 119 companies (83.8%) which are effective samples except no-response, insincere response, estimated value, etc. were used for statistics analysis. Companies with less than 50billion KRW sales of entire researched companies occupy 76.5% in terms of sample traits. Companies with less than 300 employees occupy 83.2%. In terms of the type of company business Partners (called 'partners with big companies' hereunder) who work with big companies for business occupy 68.1%. SMEs based on their own business (called 'independent small companies') appear to occupy 31.9%. The present status of holding IT system according to traits of company business was classified into partners with big companies versus independent SMEs. The present status of ERP is 18.5% to 34.5%. QMS is 11.8% to 9.2%. And PLM (Product Life-cycle Management) is 6.7% to 2.5%. The holding of 3D CAD is 47.1% to 21%. IT system-holding and its application of independent SMEs seemed very vulnerable, compared with partner companies of big companies. This study is comprised of IT infra and IT Utilization as CAI capacity factors which are independent variables. factors of R&D capabilities which are independent variables are organization capability, process capability, HR capability, technology-accumulating capability, and internal/external collaboration capability. The highest average value of variables was 4.24 in organization capability 2. The lowest average value was 3.01 in IT infra which makes users access to data and information in other areas and use them with ease when required during new product development. It seems that the inferior environment of IT infra of general SMEs is reflected in CAI itself. In order to review the validity used to measure variables, Factors have been analyzed. 7 factors which have over 1.0 pure value of their dependent and independent variables were extracted. These factors appear to explain 71.167% in total of total variances. From the result of factor analysis about measurable variables in this study, reliability of each item was checked by Cronbach's Alpha coefficient. All measurable factors at least over 0.611 seemed to acquire reliability. Next, correlation has been done to explain certain phenomenon by correlation analysis between variables. As R&D capabilities factors which are arranged as dependent variables, organization capability, process capability, HR capability, technology-accumulating capability, and internal/external collaboration capability turned out that they acquire significant correlation at 99% reliability level in all variables of IT infra and IT Utilization which are independent variables. In addition, correlation coefficient between each factor is less than 0.8, which proves that the validity of this study judgement has been acquired. The pair with the highest coefficient had 0.628 for IT utilization and technology-accumulating capability. Regression model which can estimate independent variables was used in this study under the hypothesis that there is linear relation between independent variables and dependent variables so as to identify CAI capability's impact factors on R&D. The total explanations of IT infra among CAI capability for independent variables such as organization capability, process capability, human resources capability, technology-accumulating capability, and collaboration capability are 10.3%, 7%, 11.9%, 30.9%, and 10.5% respectively. IT Utilization exposes comprehensively low explanatory capability with 12.4%, 5.9%, 11.1%, 38.9%, and 13.4% for organization capability, process capability, human resources capability, technology-accumulating capability, and collaboration capability respectively. However, both factors of independent variables expose very high explanatory capability relatively for technology-accumulating capability among independent variable. Regression formula which is comprised of independent variables and dependent variables are all significant (P<0.005). The suitability of regression model seems high. When the results of test for dependent variables and independent variables are estimated, the hypothesis of 10 different factors appeared all significant in regression analysis model coefficient (P<0.01) which is estimated to affect in the hypothesis. As a result of liner regression analysis between two independent variables drawn by influence factor analysis for R&D capability and R&D capability. IT infra and IT Utilization which are CAI capability factors has positive correlation to organization capability, process capability, human resources capability, technology-accumulating capability, and collaboration capability with inside and outside which are dependent variables, R&D capability factors. It was identified as a significant factor which affects R&D capability. However, considering adjustable variables, a big gap is found, compared to entire company. First of all, in case of partner companies with big companies, in IT infra as CAI capability, organization capability, process capability, human resources capability, and technology capability out of R&D capacities seems to have positive correlation. However, collaboration capability appeared insignificance. IT utilization which is a CAI capability factor seemed to have positive relation to organization capability, process capability, human resources capability, and internal/external collaboration capability just as those of entire companies. Next, by analyzing independent types of SMEs as an adjustable variable, very different results were found from those of entire companies or partner companies with big companies. First of all, all factors in IT infra except technology-accumulating capability were rejected. IT utilization was rejected except technology-accumulating capability and collaboration capability. Comprehending the above adjustable variables, the following results were drawn in this study. First, in case of big companies or partner companies with big companies, IT infra and IT utilization affect improving R&D Capabilities positively. It was because most of big companies encourage innovation by using IT utilization and IT infra building over certain level to their partner companies. Second, in all companies, IT infra and IT utilization as CAI capability affect improving technology-accumulating capability positively at least as R&D capability factor. The most of factor explanation is low at around 10%. However, technology-accumulating capability is rather high around 25.6% to 38.4%. It was found that CAI capability contributes to technology-accumulating capability highly. Companies shouldn't consider IT infra and IT utilization as a simple product developing tool in R&D section. However, they have to consider to use them as a management innovating strategy tool which proceeds entire-company management innovation centered in new product development. Not only the improvement of technology-accumulating capability in department of R&D. Centered in new product development, it has to be used as original management innovative strategy which proceeds entire company management innovation. It suggests that it can be a method to improve technology-accumulating capability in R&D section and Dynamic capability to acquire sustainable competitive advantage.
Service failure is one of the major reasons for customer defection. As the business environment gets tougher and more competitive, a single service failure might bring about fatal consequences to a service provider or a firm. Sometimes a failure won't end up with an unsatisfied customer's simple complaining but with a wide-spread animosity against the service provider or the firm, leading to a threat to the firm's survival itself in the society. Therefore, we are in need of comprehensive understandings of complainants' attitudes and behaviors toward service failures and firm's recovery efforts. Even though a failure itself couldn't be fixed completely, marketers should repair the mind and heart of unsatisfied customers, which can be regarded as an successful recovery strategy in the end. As the outcome of recovery efforts exerted by service providers or firms, recovery of the relationship between customer and service provider need to put on the top in the recovery goal list. With these motivations, the study investigates how service failure and recovery makes the changes in dynamics of fundamental elements of customer-firm relationship, such as customer affection, customer trust and loyalty intention by comparing two time points, before the service failure and after the recovery, focusing on the effects of recovery satisfaction and the failure severity. We adopted La & Choi (2012)'s framework for development of the research model that was based on the previous research stream like Yim et al. (2008) and Thomson et al. (2005). The pivotal background theories of the model are mainly from relationship marketing and social relationships of social psychology. For example, Love, Emotional attachment, Intimacy, and Equity theories regarding human relationships were reviewed. As the results, when recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust that were established before the service failure are carried over to the future after the recovery. However, when recovery satisfaction is low, customer-firm relationship that had already established in the past are not carried over but broken up. Regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, once a failure occurs loyalty intention is not carried over to the future and the impact of customer trust on loyalty intention becomes stronger. Such changes imply that customers become more prudent and more risk-aversive than the time prior to service failure. The impact of severity of failure on customer affection and customer trust matters only when recovery satisfaction is low. When recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust become severity-proof. Interestingly, regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, failure severity has a significant negative influence on loyalty intention. Loyalty intention is the most fragile target when a service failure occurs no matter how severe the failure criticality is. Consequently, the ultimate goal of service recovery should be the restoration of customer-firm relationship and recovery of customer trust should be the primary objective to accomplish for a successful recovery performance. Especially when failure severity is high, service recovery should be perceived highly satisfied by the complainants because failure severity matters more when recovery satisfaction is low. Marketers can implement recovery strategies to enhance emotional appeals as well as fair treatments since the both impacts of affection and trust on loyalty intention are significant. In the case of high severity of failure, recovery efforts should be exerted to overreach customer expectation, designed to directly repair customer trust and elaborately designed in the focus of customer-firm communications during the interactional recovery process to affect customer trust rebuilding indirectly. Because it is a longer and harder way to rebuild customer-firm relationship for high severity cases, low recovery satisfaction cannot guarantee customer retention. To prevent customer defection due to service failure of high severity, unexpected rewards as a recovery will be likely to be useful since those will lead to customer delight or customer gratitude toward the service firm. Based on the results of analyses, theoretical and managerial implications are presented. Limitations and future research ideas are also discussed.
Food service is the major part of franchise business in Korea, accounting for 69.9% of the brands in the market. As the food service industry becomes mature, many franchisees have struggled to survive in the market. In general, consumers have higher levels of expectation toward service quality of franchised outlets compared that of (non-franchised) independent ones. They also tend to believe that franchisees deliver standardized service at the uniform food price, regardless of their locations. Such beliefs seem to be important reasons that consumers prefer franchised outlets to independent ones. Nevertheless, few studies examined the impact of qualify features of franchisees on customer satisfaction so far. To this end, this study examined the characteristics of various quality features of franchisees in the food service industry, regarding their relationship with customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The quality perception of heavy-users was also compared with that of light-users in order to find insights for developing differentiated marketing strategy for the two segments. Customer satisfaction has been understood as a one-dimensional construct while there are recent studies that insist two-dimensional nature of the construct. In this regard, Kano et al. (1984) suggested to categorize quality features of a product or service into five types, based on their relation to customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction: Must-be quality, Attractive quality, One-dimensional quality, Indifferent quality, and Reverse quality. According to the Kano model, customers are more dissatisfied when Must-be quality(M) are not fulfilled, but their satisfaction does not arise above neutral no matter how fully the quality fulfilled. In comparison, customers are more satisfied with a full provision of Attactive quality(A) but manage to accept its dysfunction. One-dimensional quality(O) results in satisfaction when fulfilled and dissatisfaction when not fulfilled. For Indifferent quality(I), its presence or absence influences neither customer satisfaction nor dissatisfaction. Lastly, Reverse quality(R) refers to the features whose high degree of achievement results in customer dissatisfaction rather than satisfaction. Meanwhile, the basic guidelines of the Kano model have a limitation in that the quality type of each feature is simply determined by calculating the mode statistics. In order to overcome such limitation, the relative importance of each feature on customer satisfaction (Better value; b) and dissatisfaction (Worse value; w) were calculated following the formulas below (Timko, 1993). The Better value indicates how much customer satisfaction is increased by providing the quality feature in question. In contrast, the Worse value indicates how much customer dissatisfaction is decreased by providing the quality feature. Better = (A + O)/(A+O+M+I) Worse = (O+M)/(A+O+M+I)(-1) An on-line survey was performed in order to understand the nature of quality features of franchisees in the food service industry by applying the Kano Model. A total of twenty quality features (refer to the Table 2) were identified as the result of literature review in franchise business and a pre-test with fifty college students in Seoul. The potential respondents of our main survey was limited to the customers who have visited more than two restaurants/stores of the same franchise brand. Survey invitation e-mails were sent out to the panels of a market research company and a total of 257 responses were used for analysis. Following the guidelines of Kano model, each of the twenty quality features was classified into one of the five types based on customers' responses to a set of questions: "(1) how do you feel if the following quality feature is fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit," and "(2) how do you feel if the following quality feature is not fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit." The analyses revealed that customers' dissatisfaction with franchisees is commonly associated with the poor level of cleanliness of the store (w=-0.872), kindness of the staffs(w=-0.890), conveniences such as parking lot and restroom(w=-0.669), and expertise of the staffs(w=-0.492). Such quality features were categorized as Must-be quality in this study. While standardization or uniformity across franchisees has been emphasized in franchise business, this study found that consumers are interested only in uniformity of price across franchisees(w=-0.608), but not interested in standardizations of menu items, interior designs, customer service procedures, and food tastes. Customers appeared to be more satisfied when the franchise brand has promotional events such as giveaways(b=0.767), good accessibility(b=0.699), customer loyalty programs(b=0.659), award winning history(b=0.641), and outlets in the overseas market(b=0.506). The results are summarized in a matrix form in Table 1. Better(b) and Worse(w) index indicate relative importance of each quality feature on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction, respectively. Meanwhile, there were differences in perceiving the quality features between light users and heavy users of any specific franchise brand in the food service industry. Expertise of the staffs was labeled as Must-be quality for heavy users but Indifferent quality for light users. Light users seemed indifferent to overseas expansion of the brand and offering new menu items on a regular basis, while heavy users appeared to perceive them as Attractive quality. Such difference may come from their different levels of involvement when they eat out. The results are shown in Table 2. The findings of this study help practitioners understand the quality features they need to focus on to strengthen the competitive power in the food service market. Above all, removing the factors that cause customer dissatisfaction seems to be the most critical for franchisees. To retain loyal customers of the franchise brand, it is also recommended for franchisor to invest resources in the development of new menu items as well as training programs for the staffs. Lastly, if resources allow, promotional events, loyalty programs, overseas expansion, award-winning history can be considered as tools for attracting more customers to the business.
As the world becomes more globalized, business competition becomes fiercer, while consumers' needs for less expensive quality products are on the increase. Business operations make an effort to secure a competitive edge in costs and services, and the logistics industry, that is, the industry operating the storing and transporting of goods, once thought to be an expense, begins to be considered as the third cash cow, a source of new income. Logistics centers are central to storage, loading and unloading of deliveries, packaging operations, and dispensing goods' information. As hubs for various deliveries, they also serve as a core infrastructure to smoothly coordinate manufacturing and selling, using varied information and operation systems. Logistics centers are increasingly on the rise as centers of business supply activities, growing beyond their previous role of primarily storing goods. They are no longer just facilities; they have become logistics strongholds that encompass various features from demand forecast to the regulation of supply, manufacturing, and sales by realizing SCM, taking into account marketability and the operation of service and products. However, despite these changes in logistics operations, some centers have been unable to shed their past roles as warehouses. For the continuous development of logistics centers, various measures would be needed, including a revision of current supporting policies, formulating effective management plans, and establishing systematic standards for founding, managing, and controlling logistics centers. To this end, the research explored previous studies on the use and effectiveness of logistics centers. From a theoretical perspective, an evaluation of the overall introduction, purposes, and transitions in the use of logistics centers found issues to ponder and suggested measures to promote and further advance logistics centers. First, a fact-finding survey to establish demand forecast and standardization is needed. As logistics newspapers predicted that after 2012 supply would exceed demand, causing rents to fall, the business environment for logistics centers has faltered. However, since there is a shortage of fact-finding surveys regarding actual demand for domestic logistic centers, it is hard to predict what the future holds for this industry. Accordingly, the first priority should be to get to the essence of the current market situation by conducting accurate domestic and international fact-finding surveys. Based on those, management and evaluation indicators should be developed to build the foundation for the consistent advancement of logistics centers. Second, many policies for logistics centers should be revised or developed. Above all, a guideline for fair trade between a shipper and a commercial logistics center should be enacted. Since there are no standards for fair trade between them, rampant unfair trades according to market practices have brought chaos to market orders, and now the logistics industry is confronting its own difficulties. Therefore, unfair trade cases that currently plague logistics centers should be gathered by the industry and fair trade guidelines should be established and implemented. In addition, restrictive employment regulations for foreign workers should be eased, and logistics centers should be charged industry rates for the use of electricity. Third, various measures should be taken to improve the management environment. First, we need to find out how to activate value-added logistics. Because the traditional purpose of logistics centers was storage and loading/unloading of goods, their profitability had a limit, and the need arose to find a new angle to create a value added service. Logistic centers have been perceived as support for a company's storage, manufacturing, and sales needs, not as creators of profits. The center's role in the company's economics has been lowering costs. However, as the logistics' management environment spiraled, along with its storage purpose, developing a new feature of profit creation should be a desirable goal, and to achieve that, value added logistics should be promoted. Logistics centers can also be improved through cost estimation. In the meantime, they have achieved some strides in facility development but have still fallen behind in others, particularly in management functioning. Lax management has been rampant because the industry has not developed a concept of cost estimation. The centers have since made an effort toward unification, standardization, and informatization while realizing cost reductions by establishing systems for effective management, but it has been hard to produce profits. Thus, there is an urgent need to estimate costs by determining a basic cost range for each division of work at logistics centers. This undertaking can be the first step to improving the ineffective aspects of how they operate. Ongoing research and constant efforts have been made to improve the level of effectiveness in the manufacturing industry, but studies on resource management in logistics centers are hardly enough. Thus, a plan to calculate the optimal level of resources necessary to operate a logistics center should be developed and implemented in management behavior, for example, by standardizing the hours of operation. If logistics centers, shippers, related trade groups, academic figures, and other experts could launch a committee to work with the government and maintain an ongoing relationship, the constraint and cooperation among members would help lead to coherent development plans for logistics centers. If the government continues its efforts to provide financial support, nurture professional workers, and maintain safety management, we can anticipate the continuous advancement of logistics centers.
As stage equipment export markets along with special lighting service lack the attraction for already globally established businesses, such markets can be viewed as an advantageous opportunity for SMEs as in general. In reality, global businesses tend to focus on large construction projects and this indicates relatively less substantial markets such as stage equipment and special lighting service export are more suitable for SME businesses. However, possible problems may be recognized as following; doubtful capabilities by such businesses to join in the vast and competitive global market and pursue manufacturing and service based export. This point is also supported by the fact that such in general SME businesses have substantially less experience in exporting products and services abroad. Realizing the distinctive features of the Korean economy, it is unarguable that every sector and area of global market must be regarded and monitored closely. Hence, it can be argued that there is an imminent need for establishment of supportive institution to assist export process of combination of stage equipments and special lighting service. This study emphasizes the need to improve export process of stage equipments, special lighting services as well as other related products and services which have been focused in domestic market only until now. Further, it also analyzed the potential prospect of such direction reconciling current crisis our manufacturing industry is facing. Even though it maybe regarded as one of the niche market for export of Korea in the short term view, stage equipment and special lighting service industry may rapidly grow as the global cultural industries have grown along with the increase of national income earnings overall. Due to such advantageous features, it can be expected that such industries will show strong growth in the near future. After analyzing the fact that Korea's plants (eg. powerplants) export sector is at its boom, there is a need to transform stage equipment and special lighting service export market into a primary market from a secondary(niche) market for SMEs. This study is viewed from the Korean economic and export sector aspect in the aim of seeking a solution to conquest our realistic limit in our export sector by developing a suitable export model. There have been cases of very few attempts to expand abroad by SMEs who have failed miserably due to their failure to adapt to foreign culture, practice and languages as well as substantial lack in experience in export marketing. Despite this, neglecting our manufacturing industry as it is which is showing its limit and problems is out of option therefore, it is imminent that we come up with an effective measure to address this problem and service export can be suggested as one of them. This study reveals manufacturing-service export model of stage equipment and special lighting service and its related areas is recognized as a field with a very strong future and furthermore, it is expected to bring synergy effects in manufacturing and services sector as well. Further, the operation strategy contains combination, composition and fusion(convergence) of manufacturing and service sectors which could derive various of export products which displays greater success probability or this export model. The outcome of this research is expected to become a useful source for enterprises related to such industry which are seeking a possible global expansion. Furthermore, it is also expected to become a catalyst which fastens the process of global expansion and not only that, we are firmly assured that this study will become an opportunity to improve our current policies and institutions related to this area's export market.
This study developed a model to empirically investigate the effects of market orientation and relationship orientation with suppliers on business performance and examine the moderating effects of entrepreneur's characteristics (working tenure) and clinic's location. The data was collected from 200 animal clinics which belong to Korean Animal Hospital Association (KAHA)'s national conference in April, 2007. Descriptive statistic, factor analysis, reliability analysis, and regression analysis were conducted to analyze the data using SPSS/PC+ 12.0. The findings are as follows. First, the market orientation of animal clinics influences significantly both financial and non-financial performance. When the moderating effect of entrepreneur's working tenure is considered, market orientation has significant effect on animal clinic's financial and non-financial performance. However, when the moderating effect of animal clinic's location is considered, market orientation has not significant effect on animal clinic's financial and non-financial performance. Second, animal clinic's relationship orientation with suppliers mostly affects the financial and non-financial performance significantly. When entrepreneur's working tenure in the clinic is longer (above 4 years group), relationship orientation with suppliers significantly affects both financial and non-financial performance. Meanwhile, when the entrepreneur's working tenure in the clinic is shorter (less than 3 years group), relationship orientation with suppliers doesn't affect clinic's financial performance but affect non-financial performance partially. In other words, when entrepreneur's working tenure is shorter (less than 3 years group), market orientation more influences on clinic's financial and non-financial performance while relationship orientation with suppliers does less. It is thought that their relation with suppliers and relationship orientation activities with suppliers are less strongly established and maintained yet. So, they primarily focus on market orientation strategy when entrepreneur's working tenure is shorter. Third, when animal clinics are located in non-metropolitan area, relationship orientation with suppliers significantly affects financial and non-financial performance. However, when animal clinics are located in metropolitan area, it doesn't affect financial and non-financial performance either. It is thought that animal clinics which are located in non-metropolitan area need stronger relationship with suppliers and need support more from them as most of suppliers actively work in metropolitan area not in the non-metropolitan area and animal clinics in metropolitan area can easily get better market information than animal clinics in non-metropolitan area. Lastly, while the effect of the market orientation significantly influences animal clinic's business performance continuously, the effect of the relationship orientation differently influences business performance as it is moderated by entrepreneur's working tenure and animal clinic's location. So, relationship orientation with suppliers can be selectively applied to improve the clinic's financial and no-financial performance. In summary, both of animal clinic's marketing orientation and animal clinic's relationship orientation with suppliers positively influence their business performance. However, entrepreneur's working tenure and animal clinic location moderate the relationship between market orientation and relationship orientation and their business performance differently. This study is quite meaningful to empirically investigate the effects of both of market orientation and relationship orientation with suppliers on business performance and examine the moderating effects of entrepreneur's characteristics (working tenure) and clinic's location. And, as this kind of study has been very few in the context of animal clinic industry, it helps practically understand the effects of market orientation and relationship orientation with suppliers on the financial and non-financial performance in animal clinic industry. Furthermore, as the market conditions in animal clinic industry have been in difficulty for a few years, this study can help improve animal clinic's financial and non-financial business performance together with their suppliers as business partners. Lastly, this study can help find mid-term and long-term cooperation between animal clinics and their suppliers. This study has some limitations. So, care should be taken when generalizing the results of the study. First, our samples were collected from only the animal clinics industry. However, a comparison of the results presented here with those form other marketing contexts (e.g., general hospitals) would be worthwhile. Future comparative research will enhance the generality of our contingency theory cross industry context. Second, this study found that market orientation and relationship orientation affect business performance. However, there may be other antecedents, such as internal market orientation and relationship orientation with customers. Also, this research did not consider other moderators, such as overall market conditions, competitive situations, and power/conflict between suppliers and buyers in the relationship between market and relationship orientation and business performance.
Since the implementation of economic reforms in 1978, the Chinese economy grows rapidly at an average annul growth rate of 9% over the post two decades. Franchising has been widely recognized as an important source of entrepreneurial activity. Trust is important in that it facilitates relational exchanges by permits partners to transcend short-run inequities or risks to concentrate on long-term profits or gains. In the relationship between the franchisors and franchisees, trust has been described as an important source of competitive advantage. However, little research has been done on the factors affecting trust in Chinese franchisor-franchisee relationships. The purpose of this study is to investigate what factors affect the trust in the franchise system in China, and to provide guidelines and insights to franchisors which enter Chinese market. In this study, according to Morgan and Hunt (1994), trust is defined as the extending when one party has confidence in an exchange partner's reliability and integrity. We offered a conceptual model of the empirical study. The model shows that the factors affecting the trust include franchisor's supports, communication, satisfaction with previous outcome and conflict. We also suggested the franchisor's supports and communication like to enhance the franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome, and the franchisor's supports, communication and he franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome tend to decrease conflict. Before the formal study, a pretest involving exploratory interviews with owners from three franchisees was conducted to make sure the questionnaire was relevant and clear to the respondents. The data were collected using trained interviewers to carry out personal interviews with the aid of an unidentified, muti-page, structured questionnaire. The respondents comprised of owners, managers, and owner managers of franchisee-owned food service franchises located in Beijing, China. Even though a total of 256 potential franchises were initially contacted, the finally usable sample consisted of 125 respondents. As expected, the sampling method was successful in soliciting respondents with waried personal and firm characteristics. Self-administrated questionnaires were used for all measures. And established scales were used to measure the latent constructs in this study. The measures tapped the franchisees' perceptions of the relationship with the referent franchisor. Five-point Likert-type scales ranging from "strongly disagree" (=1) to "strongly agree" (=7) were used throughout the constructs (trust, eight items; support, five items; communication, four items; satisfaction, six items; conflict, three items). The reliability measurements traditionally employed, such as the Cronbach's alpha, were used. All the reliabilities were greater than.80. The proposed measurement model was estimated using SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 5.0 analysis package. We conducted A series of exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses to assess the convergent validity, discriminant validity, and reliability. The results indicate reasonable overall fits between the model and the observed data. The overall fit of measurement model were
The study examines the relationships among employee's goal orientation, IT personnel competency, personal effectiveness. The goal orientation includes learning goal orientation, performance approach goal orientation, and performance avoid goal orientation. Personal effectiveness consists of personal work satisfaction and personal work performance. In general, IT personnel competency refers to IT expert's skills, expertise, and knowledge required to perform IT activities in organizations. However, due to the advent of the internet and the generalization of IT, IT personnel competency turns out to be an important competency of technological experts as well as employees in organizations. While the competency of IT itself is important, the appropriate harmony between IT personnel's business capability and technological capability enhances the value of human resources and thus provides organizations with sustainable competitive advantages. The rapid pace of organization change places increased pressure on employees to continually update their skills and adapt their behavior to new organizational realities. This challenge raises a number of important questions concerning organizational behavior? Why do some employees display remarkable flexibility in their behavioral responses to changes in the organization, whereas others firmly resist change or experience great stress when faced with the need to alter behavior? Why do some employees continually strive to improve themselves over their life span, whereas others are content to forge through life using the same basic knowledge and skills? Why do some employees throw themselves enthusiastically into challenging tasks, whereas others avoid challenging tasks? The goal orientation proposed by organizational psychology provides at least a partial answer to these questions. Goal orientations refer to stable personally characteristics fostered by "self-theories" about the nature and development of attributes (such as intelligence, personality, abilities, and skills) people have. Self-theories are one's beliefs and goal orientations are achievement motivation revealed in seeking goals in accordance with one's beliefs. The goal orientations include learning goal orientation, performance approach goal orientation, and performance avoid goal orientation. Specifically, a learning goal orientation refers to a preference to develop the self by acquiring new skills, mastering new situations, and improving one's competence. A performance approach goal orientation refers to a preference to demonstrate and validate the adequacy of one's competence by seeking favorable judgments and avoiding negative judgments. A performance avoid goal orientation refers to a preference to avoid the disproving of one's competence and to avoid negative judgements about it, while focusing on performance. And the study also examines the moderating role of work career of employees to investigate the difference in the relationship between IT personnel competency and personal effectiveness. The study analyzes the collected data using PASW 18.0 and and PLS(Partial Least Square). The study also uses PLS bootstrapping algorithm (sample size: 500) to test research hypotheses. The result shows that the influences of both a learning goal orientation (