Participation Level in Online Knowledge Sharing: Behavioral Approach on Wikipedia (온라인 지식공유의 참여정도: 위키피디아에 대한 행태적 접근)
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- Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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- v.19 no.4
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- pp.97-121
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- 2013
With the growing importance of knowledge for sustainable competitive advantages and innovation in a volatile environment, many researches on knowledge sharing have been conducted. However, previous researches have mostly relied on the questionnaire survey which has inherent perceptive errors of respondents. The current research has drawn the relationship among primary participant behaviors towards the participation level in knowledge sharing, basically from online user behaviors on Wikipedia, a representative community for online knowledge collaboration. Without users' participation in knowledge sharing, knowledge collaboration for creating knowledge cannot be successful. By the way, the editing patterns of Wikipedia users are diverse, resulting in different revisiting periods for the same number of edits, and thus varying results of shared knowledge. Therefore, we illuminated the participation level of knowledge sharing from two different angles of number of edits and revisiting period. The behavioral dimensions affecting the level of participation in knowledge sharing includes the article talk for public discussion and user talk for private messaging, and community registration, which are observable on Wiki platform. Public discussion is being progressed on article talk pages arranged for exchanging ideas about each article topic. An article talk page is often divided into several sections which mainly address specific type of issues raised during the article development procedure. From the diverse opinions about the relatively trivial things such as what text, link, or images should be added or removed and how they should be restructured to the profound professional insights are shared, negotiated, and improved over the course of discussion. Wikipedia also provides personal user talk pages as a private messaging tool. On these pages, diverse personal messages such as casual greetings, stories about activities on Wikipedia, and ordinary affairs of life are exchanged. If anyone wants to communicate with another person, he or she visits the person's user talk page and leaves a message. Wikipedia articles are assessed according to seven quality grades, of which the featured article level is the highest. The dataset includes participants' behavioral data related with 2,978 articles, which have reached the featured article level, with editing histories of articles, their article talk histories, and user talk histories extracted from user talk pages for each article. The time period for analysis is from the initiation of articles until their promotion to the featured article level. The number of edits represents the total number of participation in the editing of an article, and the revisiting period is the time difference between the first and last edits. At first, the participation levels of each user category classified according to behavioral dimensions have been analyzed and compared. And then, robust regressions have been conducted on the relationships among independent variables reflecting the degree of behavioral characteristics and the dependent variable representing the participation level. Especially, through adopting a motivational theory adequate for online environment in setting up research hypotheses, this work suggests a theoretical framework for the participation level of online knowledge sharing. Consequently, this work reached the following practical behavioral results besides some theoretical implications. First, both public discussion and private messaging positively affect the participation level in knowledge sharing. Second, public discussion exerts greater influence than private messaging on the participation level. Third, a synergy effect of public discussion and private messaging on the number of edits was found, whereas a pretty weak negative interaction effect of them on the revisiting period was observed. Fourth, community registration has a significant impact on the revisiting period, whereas being insignificant on the number of edits. Fifth, when it comes to the relation generated from private messaging, the frequency or depth of relation is shown to be more critical than the scope of relation for the participation level.
There are increasing needs for understanding and fathoming of business management environment through big data analysis at industrial and corporative level. The research using the company disclosure information, which is comprehensively covering the business performance and the future plan of the company, is getting attention. However, there is limited research on developing applicable analytical models leveraging such corporate disclosure data due to its unstructured nature. This study proposes a text-mining-based analytical model for industrial and firm level analyses using publicly available company disclousre data. Specifically, we apply LDA topic model and word2vec word embedding model on the U.S. SEC data from the publicly listed firms and analyze the trends of business topics at the industrial and corporate levels. Using LDA topic modeling based on SEC EDGAR 10-K document, whole industrial management topics are figured out. For comparison of different pattern of industries' topic trend, software and hardware industries are compared in recent 20 years. Also, the changes of management subject at firm level are observed with comparison of two companies in software industry. The changes of topic trends provides lens for identifying decreasing and growing management subjects at industrial and firm level. Mapping companies and products(or services) based on dimension reduction after using word2vec word embedding model and principal component analysis of 10-K document at firm level in software industry, companies and products(services) that have similar management subjects are identified and also their changes in decades. For suggesting methodology to develop analysis model based on public management data at industrial and corporate level, there may be contributions in terms of making ground of practical methodology to identifying changes of managements subjects. However, there are required further researches to provide microscopic analytical model with regard to relation of technology management strategy between management performance in case of related to various pattern of management topics as of frequent changes of management subject or their momentum. Also more studies are needed for developing competitive context analysis model with product(service)-portfolios between firms.
This study looked in-depth at the importance of cultivating and manifesting entrepreneurship, which is emphasized for companies to gain a competitive advantage and promote innovation in the uncertain environment that organizations face and in the development of technology due to recent industrial advancement, the following innovative performance, and the mechanisms in the performance process. Entrepreneurship is emphasized as a key factor in inducing creative work performance, creation and application of new ideas, and innovative performance at various levels within the organization in various global companies. In particular, this study examined the influence of the CEO's cultivation and expression of entrepreneurship as an organizational leader on the innovative behavior of organizational members, which is a leading factor in the organization's innovative performance, and the role of creative self-efficacy as a mechanism. Through this, the study was to verify the importance of creativity and cultivating a sense of self-efficacy for demonstrating innovative performance within an organization. Additionally, it was to confirm the role of organizational commitment of organizational members as a situational factor. For the empirical analysis, a total of 247 office workers were surveyed, sampled from 10 venture companies engaged in the manufacturing industry in industrial complexes in Daejeon, Korea. As the result of empirical analysis showed, it was confirmed that each sub-factor of the CEO's entrepreneurship had a positive effect on the innovative behavior of organizational members. And in the process, the importance of the creative self-efficacy of members to demonstrate innovative performance was verified by confirming positively significant mediating effect of creative self-efficacy. Furthermore, in the case of organizational commitment, it was found that the innovativeness and proactiveness of the CEO strengthened the positive influence on the creative efficacy of the organization members. Based on the results of empirical analysis, theoretical and practical implications were provided to improve the importance of cultivating and manifesting the CEO's entrepreneurship to demonstrate innovation within the organization.
The popularity of communities on the internet has captured the attention of marketing scholars and practitioners. By adapting to the culture of the internet, however, and providing consumer with the ability to interact with one another in addition to the company, businesses can build new and deeper relationships with customers. The economic potential of online communities has been discussed with much hope in the many popular papers. In contrast to this enthusiastic prognostications, empirical and practical evidence regarding the economic potential of the online community has shown a little different conclusion. To date, even communities with high levels of membership and vibrant social arenas have failed to build financial viability. In this perspective, this study investigates the role of various kinds of influencing factors to online community loyalty and basically suggests the framework that explains the process of building purchase loyalty. Even though the importance of building loyalty in an online environment has been emphasized from the marketing theorists and practitioners, there is no sufficient research conclusion about what is the process of building purchase loyalty and the most powerful factors that influence to it. In this study, the process of building purchase loyalty is divided into three levels; characteristics of community site such as content superiority, site vividness, navigation easiness, and customerization, the mediating variables such as self congruency, consumer experience, and consumer to consumer interactivity, and finally various factors about online community loyalty such as visit loyalty, affect, trust, and purchase loyalty are those things. And the findings of this research are as follows. First, consumer-to-consumer interactivity is an important factor to online community purchase loyalty and other loyalty factors. This means, in order to interact with other people more actively, many participants in online community have the willingness to buy some kinds of products such as music, content, avatar, and etc. From this perspective, marketers of online community have to create some online environments in order that consumers can easily interact with other consumers and make some site environments in order that consumer can feel experience in this site is interesting and self congruency is higher than at other community sites. It has been argued that giving consumers a good experience is vital in cyber space, and websites create an active (rather than passive) customer by their nature. Some researchers have tried to pin down the positive experience, with limited success and less empirical support. Web sites can provide a cognitively stimulating experience for the user. We define the online community experience as playfulness based on the past studies. Playfulness is created by the excitement generated through a website's content and measured using three descriptors Marketers can promote using and visiting online communities, which deliver a superior web experience, to influence their customers' attitudes and actions, encouraging high involvement with those communities. Specially, we suggest that transcendent customer experiences(TCEs) which have aspects of flow and/or peak experience, can generate lasting shifts in beliefs and attitudes including subjective self-transformation and facilitate strong consumer's ties to a online community. And we find that website success is closely related to positive website experiences: consumers will spend more time on the site, interacting with other users. As we can see figure 2, visit loyalty and consumer affect toward the online community site didn't directly influence to purchase loyalty. This implies that there may be a little different situations here in online community site compared to online shopping mall studies that shows close relations between revisit intention and purchase intention. There are so many alternative sites on web, consumers do not want to spend money to buy content and etc. In this sense, marketers of community websites must know consumers' affect toward online community site is not a last goal and important factor to influnece consumers' purchase. Third, building good content environment can be a really important marketing tool to create a competitive advantage in cyberspace. For example, Cyworld, Korea's number one community site shows distinctive superiority in the consumer evaluations of content characteristics such as content superiority, site vividness, and customerization. Particularly, comsumer evaluation about customerization was remarkably higher than the other sites. In this point, we can conclude that providing comsumers with good, unique and highly customized content will be urgent and important task directly and indirectly impacting to self congruency, consumer experience, c-to-c interactivity, and various loyalty factors of online community. By creating enjoyable, useful, and unique online community environments, online community portals such as Daum, Naver, and Cyworld are able to build customer loyalty to a degree that many of today's online marketer can only dream of these loyalty, in turn, generates strong economic returns. Another way to build good online community site is to provide consumers with an interactive, fun, experience-oriented or experiential Web site. Elements that can make a dot.com's Web site experiential include graphics, 3-D images, animation, video and audio capabilities. In addition, chat rooms and real-time customer service applications (which link site visitors directly to other visitors, or with company support personnel, respectively) are also being used to make web sites more interactive. Researchers note that online communities are increasingly incorporating such applications in their Web sites, in order to make consumers' online shopping experience more similar to that of an offline store. That is, if consumers are able to experience sensory stimulation (e.g. via 3-D images and audio sound), interact with other consumers (e.g., via chat rooms), and interact with sales or support people (e.g. via a real-time chat interface or e-mail), then they are likely to have a more positive dot.com experience, and develop a more positive image toward the online company itself). Analysts caution, however, that, while high quality graphics, animation and the like may create a fun experience for consumers, when heavily used, they can slow site navigation, resulting in frustrated consumers, who may never return to a site. Consequently, some analysts suggest that, at least with current technology, the rule-of-thumb is that less is more. That is, while graphics etc. can draw consumers to a site, they should be kept to a minimum, so as not to impact negatively on consumers' overall site experience.
In terms of the international air transport, the open skies policy implies freedom in the sky or opening the sky. In the normative respect, the open skies policy is a kind of open-door policy which gives various forms of traffic right to other countries, but on the other hand it is a policy of free competition in the international air transport. Since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the United States has signed an open skies agreement with many countries, starting with the Netherlands, so that competitive large airlines can compete in the international air transport market where there exist a lot of business opportunities. South Korea now has an open skies agreement with more than 20 countries. The frequent flyer program (FFP) is part of a broad-based marketing alliance which has been used as an airfare strategy since the U.S. government's airline deregulation. The membership-based program is an incentive plan that provides mileage points to customers for using airline services and rewards customer loyalty in tangible forms based on their accumulated points. In its early stages, the frequent flyer program was focused on marketing efforts to attract customers, but now in the environment of intense competition among airlines, the program is used as an important strategic marketing tool for enhancing business performance. Therefore, airline companies agree that they need to identify customer needs in order to secure loyal customers more effectively. The outcomes from an airline's frequent flyer program can have a variety of effects on international competition. First, the airline can obtain a more dominant position in the air flight market by expanding its air route networks. Second, the availability of flight products for customers can be improved with an increase in flight frequency. Third, the airline can preferentially expand into new markets and thus gain advantages over its competitors. However, there are few empirical studies on the airline frequent flyer program. Accordingly, this study aims to explore the effects of the program on international competition, after reviewing the types of strategic alliance between airlines. Making strategic airline alliances is a worldwide trend resulting from the open skies policy. South Korea also needs to be making open skies agreements more realistic to promote the growth and competition of domestic airlines. The present study is about the performance of the airline frequent flyer program and international competition under the open skies policy. With a sample of five global alliance groups (Star, Oneworld, Wings, Qualiflyer and Skyteam), the study was attempted as an empirical study of the effects that the resource structures and levels of information technology held by airlines in each group have on the type of alliance, and one-way analysis of variance and regression analysis were used to test hypotheses. The findings of this study suggest that both large airline companies and small/medium-size airlines in an alliance group with global networks and organizations are able to achieve high performance and secure international competitiveness. Airline passengers earn mileage points by using non-flight services through an alliance network with hotels, car-rental services, duty-free shops, travel agents and more and show high interests in and preferences for related service benefits. Therefore, Korean airline companies should develop more aggressive marketing programs based on multilateral alliances with other services including hotels, as well as with other airlines.
The emergence of the field of organizational buying behavior in the mid-1960’s with the publication of Industrial Buying and Creative Marketing (1967) set the stage for a new paradigm of thinking about how business was conducted in markets other than those serving ultimate consumers. Whether it is "industrial marketing" or "business-to-business marketing" (B-to-B), organizational buying behavior remains the core differentiating characteristic of this domain of marketing. This paper explores the impact of several dynamic factors that have influenced how organizations relate to one another in a rapidly increasing interdependence, which in turn can impact organizational buying behavior. The paper also raises the question of whether or not the major conceptual models of organizational buying behavior in an interdependent world are still relevant to guide research and managerial thinking, in this dynamic business environment. The paper is structured to explore three questions related to organizational interdependencies: 1. What are the factors and trends driving the emergence of organizational interdependencies? 2. Will the major conceptual models of organizational buying behavior that have developed over the past half century be applicable in a world of interdependent organizations? 3. What are the implications of organizational interdependencies on the research and practice of organizational buying behavior? Consideration of the factors and trends driving organizational interdependencies revealed five critical drivers in the relationships among organizations that can impact their purchasing behavior: Accelerating Globalization, Flattening Networks of Organizations, Disrupting Value Chains, Intensifying Government Involvement, and Continuously Fragmenting Customer Needs. These five interlinked drivers of interdependency and their underlying technological advances can alter the relationships within and among organizations that buy products and services to remain competitive in their markets. Viewed in the context of a customer driven marketing strategy, these forces affect three levels of strategy development: (1) evolving customer needs, (2) the resulting product/service/solution offerings to meet these needs, and (3) the organization competencies and processes required to develop and implement the offerings to meet needs. The five drivers of interdependency among organizations do not necessarily operate independently in their impact on how organizations buy. They can interact with each other and become even more potent in their impact on organizational buying behavior. For example, accelerating globalization may influence the emergence of additional networks that further disrupt traditional value chain relationships, thereby changing how organizations purchase products and services. Increased government involvement in business operations in one country may increase costs of doing business and therefore drive firms to seek low cost sources in emerging markets in other countries. This can reduce employment opportunitiesn one country and increase them in another, further accelerating the pace of globalization. The second major question in the paper is what impact these drivers of interdependencies have had on the core conceptual models of organizational buying behavior. Consider the three enduring conceptual models developed in the Industrial Buying and Creative Marketing and Organizational Buying Behavior books: the organizational buying process, the buying center, and the buying situation. A review of these core models of organizational buying behavior, as originally conceptualized, shows they are still valid and not likely to change with the increasingly intense drivers of interdependency among organizations. What will change however is the way in which buyers and sellers interact under conditions of interdependency. For example, increased interdependencies can lead to increased opportunities for collaboration as well as conflict between buying and selling organizations, thereby changing aspects of the buying process. In addition, the importance of communication processes between and among organizations will increase as the role of trust becomes an important criterion for a successful buying relationship. The third question in the paper explored consequences and implications of these interdependencies on organizational buying behavior for practice and research. The following are considered in the paper: the need to increase understanding of network influences on organizational buying behavior, the need to increase understanding of the role of trust and value among organizational participants, the need to improve understanding of how to manage organizational buying in networked environments, the need to increase understanding of customer needs in the value network, and the need to increase understanding of the impact of emerging new business models on organizational buying behavior. In many ways, these needs deriving from increased organizational interdependencies are an extension of the conceptual tradition in organizational buying behavior. In 1977, Nicosia and Wind suggested a focus on inter-organizational over intra-organizational perspectives, a trend that has received considerable momentum since the 1990's. Likewise for managers to survive in an increasingly interdependent world, they will need to better understand the complexities of how organizations relate to one another. The transition from an inter-organizational to an interdependent perspective has begun, and must continue so as to develop an improved understanding of these important relationships. A shift to such an interdependent network perspective may require many academicians and practitioners to fundamentally challenge and change the mental models underlying their business and organizational buying behavior models. The focus can no longer be only on the dyadic relations of the buying organization and the selling organization but should involve all the related members of the network, including the network of customers, developers, and other suppliers and intermediaries. Consider for example the numerous partner networks initiated by SAP which involves over 9000 companies and over a million participants. This evolving, complex, and uncertain reality of interdependencies and dynamic networks requires reconsideration of how purchase decisions are made; as a result they should be the focus of the next phase of research and theory building among academics and the focus of practical models and experiments undertaken by practitioners. The hope is that such research will take place, not in the isolation of the ivory tower, nor in the confines of the business world, but rather, by increased collaboration of academics and practitioners. In conclusion, the consideration of increased interdependence among organizations revealed the continued relevance of the fundamental models of organizational buying behavior. However to increase the value of these models in an interdependent world, academics and practitioners should improve their understanding of (1) network influences, (2) how to better manage these influences, (3) the role of trust and value among organizational participants, (4) the evolution of customer needs in the value network, and (5) the impact of emerging new business models on organizational buying behavior. To accomplish this, greater collaboration between industry and academia is needed to advance our understanding of organizational buying behavior in an interdependent world.
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.
Previous research has presupposed that the evaluation of consumer who received any recovery after experiencing product failure should be better than the evaluation of consumer who did not receive any recovery. The major purposes of this article are to examine impacts of product defect failures rather than service failures, and to explore effects of recovery on postrecovery product attitudes. First, this article deals with the occurrence of severe and unsevere failure and corresponding service recovery toward tangible products rather than intangible services. Contrary to intangible services, purchase and usage are separable for tangible products. This difference makes it clear that executing an recovery strategy toward tangible products is not plausible right after consumers find out product failures. The consumers may think about backgrounds and causes for the unpleasant events during the time gap between product failure and recovery. The deliberation may dilutes positive effects of recovery efforts. The recovery strategies which are provided to consumers experiencing product failures can be classified into three types. A recovery strategy can be implemented to provide consumers with a new product replacing the old defective product, a complimentary product for free, a discount at the time of the failure incident, or a coupon that can be used on the next visit. This strategy is defined as "a rewarding effort." Meanwhile a product failure may arise in exchange for its benefit. Then the product provider can suggest a detail explanation that the defect is hard to escape since it relates highly to the specific advantage to the product. The strategy may be called as "a strengthening effort." Another possible strategy is to recover negative attitude toward own brand by giving prominence to the disadvantages of a competing brand rather than the advantages of its own brand. The strategy is reflected as "a weakening effort." This paper emphasizes that, in order to confirm its effectiveness, a recovery strategy should be compared to being nothing done in response to the product failure. So the three types of recovery efforts is discussed in comparison to the situation involving no recovery effort. The strengthening strategy is to claim high relatedness of the product failure with another advantage, and expects the two-sidedness to ease consumers' complaints. The weakening strategy is to emphasize non-aversiveness of product failure, even if consumers choose another competitive brand. The two strategies can be effective in restoring to the original state, by providing plausible motives to accept the condition of product failure or by informing consumers of non-responsibility in the failure case. However the two may be less effective strategies than the rewarding strategy, since it tries to take care of the rehabilitation needs of consumers. Especially, the relative effect between the strengthening effort and the weakening effort may differ in terms of the severity of the product failure. A consumer who realizes a highly severe failure is likely to attach importance to the property which caused the failure. This implies that the strengthening effort would be less effective under the condition of high product severity. Meanwhile, the failing property is not diagnostic information in the condition of low failure severity. Consumers would not pay attention to non-diagnostic information, and with which they are not likely to change their attitudes. This implies that the strengthening effort would be more effective under the condition of low product severity. A 2 (product failure severity: high or low) X 4 (recovery strategies: rewarding, strengthening, weakening, or doing nothing) between-subjects design was employed. The particular levels of product failure severity and the types of recovery strategies were determined after a series of expert interviews. The dependent variable was product attitude after the recovery effort was provided. Subjects were 284 consumers who had an experience of cosmetics. Subjects were first given a product failure scenario and were asked to rate the comprehensibility of the failure scenario, the probability of raising complaints against the failure, and the subjective severity of the failure. After a recovery scenario was presented, its comprehensibility and overall evaluation were measured. The subjects assigned to the condition of no recovery effort were exposed to a short news article on the cosmetic industry. Next, subjects answered filler questions: 42 items of the need for cognitive closure and 16 items of need-to-evaluate. In the succeeding page a subject's product attitude was measured on an five-item, six-point scale, and a subject's repurchase intention on an three-item, six-point scale. After demographic variables of age and sex were asked, ten items of the subject's objective knowledge was checked. The results showed that the subjects formed more favorable evaluations after receiving rewarding efforts than after receiving either strengthening or weakening efforts. This is consistent with Hoffman, Kelley, and Rotalsky (1995) in that a tangible service recovery could be more effective that intangible efforts. Strengthening and weakening efforts also were effective compared to no recovery effort. So we found that generally any recovery increased products attitudes. The results hint us that a recovery strategy such as strengthening or weakening efforts, although it does not contain a specific reward, may have an effect on consumers experiencing severe unsatisfaction and strong complaint. Meanwhile, strengthening and weakening efforts were not expected to increase product attitudes under the condition of low severity of product failure. We can conclude that only a physical recovery effort may be recognized favorably as a firm's willingness to recover its fault by consumers experiencing low involvements. Results of the present experiment are explained in terms of the attribution theory. This article has a limitation that it utilized fictitious scenarios. Future research deserves to test a realistic effect of recovery for actual consumers. Recovery involves a direct, firsthand experience of ex-users. Recovery does not apply to non-users. The experience of receiving recovery efforts can be relatively more salient and accessible for the ex-users than for non-users. A recovery effort might be more likely to improve product attitude for the ex-users than for non-users. Also the present experiment did not include consumers who did not have an experience of the products and who did not perceive the occurrence of product failure. For the non-users and the ignorant consumers, the recovery efforts might lead to decreased product attitude and purchase intention. This is because the recovery trials may give an opportunity for them to notice the product failure.
In Korea, there is a growing competitive for water resources between industrial, domestic and agricultural consumer, and the environment as many other OECD countries. The demand on water use is also affecting aquatic ecosystems particularly where withdrawals are in excess of minimum environmental needs for rivers, lakes and wetland habits. OECD developed three indicators related to water use by the agriculture in above contexts : the first is a water use intensity indicator, which is expressed as the quantity or share of agricultural water use in total national water utilization; the second is a water stress indicator, which is expressed as the proportion of rivers (in length) subject to diversion or regulation for irrigation without reserving a minimum of limiting reference flow; and the third is a water use efficiency indicator designated as the technical and the economic efficiency. These indicators have different meanings in the aspect of water resource conservation and sustainable water use. So, it will be more significant that the indicators should reflect the intrinsic meanings of them. The problem is that the aspect of an overall water flow in the agro-ecosystem and recycling of water use not considered in the assessment of agricultural water use needed for calculation of these water use indicators. Namely, regional or meteorological characteristics and site-specific farming practices were not considered in the calculation of these indicators. In this paper, we tried to calculate water use indicators suggested in OECD and to modify some other indicators considering our situation because water use pattern and water cycling in Korea where paddy rice farming is dominant in the monsoon region are quite different from those of semi-arid regions. In the calculation of water use intensity, we excluded the amount of water restored through the ground from the total agricultural water use because a large amount of water supplied to the farm was discharged into the stream or the ground water. The resultant water use intensity was 22.9% in 2001. As for water stress indicator, Korea has not defined nor monitored reference levels of minimum flow rate for rivers subject to diversion of water for irrigation. So, we calculated the water stress indicator in a different way from OECD method. The water stress indicator was calculated using data on the degree of water storage in agricultural water reservoirs because 87% of water for irrigation was taken from the agricultural water reservoirs. Water use technical efficiency was calculated as the reverse of the ratio of irrigation water to a standard water requirement of the paddy rice. The efficiency in 2001 was better than in 1990 and 1998. As for the economic efficiency for water use, we think that there are a lot of things to be taken into considerations to make a useful indicator to reflect socio-economic values of agricultural products resulted from the water use. Conclusively, site-specific, regional or meteorogical characteristics as in Korea were not considered in the calculation of water use indicators by methods suggested in OECD(Volume 3, 2001). So, it is needed to develop a new indicators for the indicators to be more widely applicable in the world.
With the advent of knowledge-based society, the revitalization of technological innovation type SMEs, termed "inno-biz" hereafter, has been globally recognized as a government policymakers' primary concern in strengthening national competitiveness, and much effort is being put into establishing polices of boosting the start-ups and innovation capability of SMEs. Especially, in that the inno-biz enables national economy to get vitalized by widening world markets with its superior technology, and thus, taking the initiative of extremely competitive world markets, its growth and development has greater significance. In the case of Korea, the government has been maintaining the policies since the late 1990s of stimulating the growth of SMEs as well as building various infrastructures to foster the start-ups of the SMEs such as venture businesses with high technology. In addition, since the enactment of "Innovation Promotion Law for SMEs" in 2001, the government has been accelerating the policies of prioritizing the growth and development of inno-biz. So, for the sound growth and development of Korean inno-biz, this paper intends to offer effective management strategies for SMEs and suggest proper policies for the government, by researching into the effect of technological innovation capability and technology commercialization capability as the primary business resources on business performance in Korean SMEs in the light of market information orientation. The research is carried out on Korean companies characterized as inno-biz. On the basis of OSLO manual and prior studies, the research categorizes their status. R&D capability, technology accumulation capability and technological innovation system are categorized into technological innovation capability; product development capability, manufacturing capability and marketing capability into technology commercialization capability; and increase in product competitiveness and merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. Then the effect of each component on business performance is substantially analyzed. In addition, the mediation effect of technological innovation and technology commercialization capability on business performance is observed by the use of the market information orientation as a parameter. The following hypotheses are proposed. H1 : Technology innovation capability will positively influence business performance. H1-1 : R&D capability will positively influence product competitiveness. H1-2 : R&D capability will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H1-3 : Technology accumulation capability will positively influence product competitiveness. H1-4 : Technology accumulation capability will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H1-5 : Technological innovation system will positively influence product competitiveness. H1-6 : Technological innovation system will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H2 : Technology commercializing capability will positively influence business performance. H2-1 : Product development capability will positively influence product competitiveness. H2-2 : Product development capability will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H2-3 : Manufacturing capability will positively influence product competitiveness. H2-4 : Manufacturing capability will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H2-5 : Marketing capability will positively influence product competitiveness. H2-6 : Marketing capability will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H3 : Technology innovation capability will positively influence market information orientation. H3-1 : R&D capability will positively influence information generation. H3-2 : R&D capability will positively influence information diffusion. H3-3 : R&D capability will positively influence information response. H3-4 : Technology accumulation capability will positively influence information generation. H3-5 : Technology accumulation capability will positively influence information diffusion. H3-6 : Technology accumulation capability will positively influence information response. H3-7 : Technological innovation system will positively influence information generation. H3-8 : Technological innovation system will positively influence information diffusion. H3-9 : Technological innovation system will positively influence information response. H4 : Technology commercialization capability will positively influence market information orientation. H4-1 : Product development capability will positively influence information generation. H4-2 : Product development capability will positively influence information diffusion. H4-3 : Product development capability will positively influence information response. H4-4 : Manufacturing capability will positively influence information generation. H4-5 : Manufacturing capability will positively influence information diffusion. H4-6 : Manufacturing capability will positively influence information response. H4-7 : Marketing capability will positively influence information generation. H4-8 : Marketing capability will positively influence information diffusion. H4-9 : Marketing capability will positively influence information response. H5 : Market information orientation will positively influence business performance. H5-1 : Information generation will positively influence product competitiveness. H5-2 : Information generation will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H5-3 : Information diffusion will positively influence product competitiveness. H5-4 : Information diffusion will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H5-5 : Information response will positively influence product competitiveness. H5-6 : Information response will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H6 : Market information orientation will mediate the relationship between technology innovation capability and business performance. H7 : Market information orientation will mediate the relationship between technology commercializing capability and business performance. The followings are the research results : First, as for the effect of technological innovation on business performance, the technology accumulation capability and technological innovating system have a positive effect on increase in product competitiveness and merits for new technology and/or product development, while R&D capability has little effect on business performance. Second, as for the effect of technology commercialization capability on business performance, the effect of manufacturing capability is relatively greater than that of merits for new technology and/or product development. Third, the mediation effect of market information orientation is identified to exist partially in information generation, information diffusion and information response. Judging from these results, the following analysis can be made : On Increase in product competitiveness, directly related to successful technology commercialization of technology, management capability including technological innovation system, manufacturing capability and marketing capability has a relatively strong effect. On merits for new technology and/or product development, on the other hand, capability in technological aspect including R&D capability, technology accumulation capability and product development capability has relatively strong effect. Besides, in the cast of market information orientation, the level of information diffusion within an organization plays and important role in new technology and/or product development. Also, for commercial success like increase in product competitiveness, the level of information response is primarily required. Accordingly, the following policies are suggested : First, as the effect of technological innovation capability and technology commercialization capability on business performance differs among SMEs; in order for SMEs to secure competitiveness, the government has to establish microscopic policies for SMEs which meet their needs and characteristics. Especially, the SMEs lacking in capital and labor are required to map out management strategies of focusing their resources primarily on their strengths. And the government needs to set up policies for SMEs, not from its macro-scaled standpoint, but from the selective and concentrative one that meets the needs and characteristics of respective SMEs. Second, systematic infrastructures are urgently required which lead technological success to commercial success. Namely, as technological merits at respective SME levels do not always guarantee commercial success, the government should make and effort to build systematic infrastructures including encouragement of M&A or technology trade, systematic support for protecting intellectual property, furtherance of business incubating and industrial clusters for strengthening academic-industrial network, and revitalization of technology financing, in order to make successful commercialization from technological success. Finally, the effort to innovate technology, R&D, for example, is essential to future national competitiveness, but its result is often prolonged. So the government needs continuous concern and funding for basic science, in order to maximize technological innovation capability. Indeed the government needs to examine continuously whether technological innovation capability or technological success leads satisfactorily to commercial success in market economic system. It is because, when the transition fails, it should be left to the government.