• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.101-123
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• 2013

Recently due to the advancements of science and information technology, the socio-economic business areas are changing from the industrial economy to a knowledge economy. Furthermore, companies need to do creation of new value through continuous innovation, development of core competencies and technologies, and technological convergence. Therefore, the identification of major trends in technology research and the interdisciplinary knowledge-based prediction of integrated technologies and promising techniques are required for firms to gain and sustain competitive advantage and future growth engines. The aim of this paper is to understand the recent research trend in management of technology (MOT) and to foresee promising technologies with deep knowledge for both technology and business. Furthermore, this study intends to give a clear way to find new technical value for constant innovation and to capture core technology and technology convergence. Bibliometrics is a metrical analysis to understand literature's characteristics. Traditional bibliometrics has its limitation not to understand relationship between trend in technology management and technology itself, since it focuses on quantitative indices such as quotation frequency. To overcome this issue, the network focused bibliometrics has been used instead of traditional one. The network focused bibliometrics mainly uses "Co-citation" and "Co-word" analysis. In this study, a keywords network analysis, one of social network analysis, is performed to analyze recent research trend in MOT. For the analysis, we collected keywords from research papers published in international journals related MOT between 2002 and 2011, constructed a keyword network, and then conducted the keywords network analysis. Over the past 40 years, the studies in social network have attempted to understand the social interactions through the network structure represented by connection patterns. In other words, social network analysis has been used to explain the structures and behaviors of various social formations such as teams, organizations, and industries. In general, the social network analysis uses data as a form of matrix. In our context, the matrix depicts the relations between rows as papers and columns as keywords, where the relations are represented as binary. Even though there are no direct relations between papers who have been published, the relations between papers can be derived artificially as in the paper-keyword matrix, in which each cell has 1 for including or 0 for not including. For example, a keywords network can be configured in a way to connect the papers which have included one or more same keywords. After constructing a keywords network, we analyzed frequency of keywords, structural characteristics of keywords network, preferential attachment and growth of new keywords, component, and centrality. The results of this study are as follows. First, a paper has 4.574 keywords on the average. 90% of keywords were used three or less times for past 10 years and about 75% of keywords appeared only one time. Second, the keyword network in MOT is a small world network and a scale free network in which a small number of keywords have a tendency to become a monopoly. Third, the gap between the rich (with more edges) and the poor (with fewer edges) in the network is getting bigger as time goes on. Fourth, most of newly entering keywords become poor nodes within about 2~3 years. Finally, keywords with high degree centrality, betweenness centrality, and closeness centrality are "Innovation," "R&D," "Patent," "Forecast," "Technology transfer," "Technology," and "SME". The results of analysis will help researchers identify major trends in MOT research and then seek a new research topic. We hope that the result of the analysis will help researchers of MOT identify major trends in technology research, and utilize as useful reference information when they seek consilience with other fields of study and select a new research topic.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.17-26
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• 2010

Recently concerns have been raised due to the unbalanced supply of crops: the price of crops has been unstable and at one point the price went up so high that the word Agflation(agriculture+ inflation) was coined. Korea, in particular, is a small-sized country and needs to secure the stable supply of crops by investing in the produce importation at a national level. Investment in foreign produce importation is becoming more important as a measure for sufficient supply of crops, limited supply of domestic crops, weakened farming conditions worldwide, as well as recent changes in the use of crops due to the development of bio-fuels, influence of carbon emission on crops, the price increase in crops, and influx of foreign hot money. However, there are many problems with investing in foreign produce importation: lack of support from the government; lack of farming information and technology; difficulty in securing the capital; no immediate pay-off from the investment and insufficient management. Although foreign produce is originally more price-competitive than domestic produce, it loses its competiveness in the process of importation (due to high tariffs) and poor distribution system, which makes it difficult to sell in Korea. Therefore, investment in foreign produce importation is being questioned for feasibility; to make it possible, foreign produce must maintain the price-competitiveness. Especially, harvest of agricultural products depends on natural and geographical conditions of each country and those products have indigenous properties, so distribution system according to import and export of agricultural products should be treated more carefully than that of other industries. Distribution costs are differentiated into each item and include cost of sorting and wrapping, cost of wrapping materials, cost of domestic transport, cost of international transport and cost of clearing customs for import and export. So transporting and storing agricultural products generates considerable costs compared with other products. Also, due to upgrade of dietary life, needs for stability, taste and visible quality toward food including agricultural products are being raised and wrong way of storage causes decomposition of food and loss of freshness, making the storage more difficult than that in room temperature, so storage and transport in distribution of agricultural products needs specialty. In addition, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. However, existing distribution system of agricultural products is exposed to various problems including problems in distribution channel, making distribution and strategy for distribution and those problems are as follows. First, in case of investment in overseas agricultural industry, stable supply of the products is difficult because areas of production are dispersed widely and influenced by outer factors due to including overseas distribution channels. Also, at the aspect of quality, standardization of products is difficult, distribution system is quite complicated and unreasonable due to long distribution channels according to international trade and financial and institutional support is not enough. Especially, there are quite a lot of ineffective factors including multi level distribution process, dramatic gap between production cost and customer's cost, lack of physical distribution facilities and difficulties in storage and transport due to lack of wrapping containers. Besides, because import and export of agricultural products has been manages under the company's own distribution according to transaction contract between manufacturers and exporting company, efficiency is low due to excessive investment in fixed costs and lack of specialty in dealing with agricultural products causes fall of value of products, showing the limit to lose price-competitiveness. Especially, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. Second, among tangible and intangible services which promote the efficiency of the whole distribution, a function building distribution environment which includes distribution information, system for standard and inspection, distribution finance, system for diversification of risks, education and training, distribution administration and tax system is wanted. In general, such a function building distribution environment is difficult to be changed and supplement innovatively because its effect compared with investment does not appear immediately despite of its necessity. Especially, in case of distribution of agricultural products, as a function of collecting and distributing is performed individually through various channels, the importance of distribution information and standardization is getting more focus due to the problem of repetition of work and lack of specialty. Also, efficient management of distribution is quite difficult due to lack of professionals in distribution, so support to professional education is needed. Third, though effort to keep self-sufficiency ratio of staple food, rice is regarded as important at the government level, level of dependency on overseas of others crops is high. Therefore, plan for stable securing food resources aside from staple food is also necessary. Especially, governmental organizations of agricultural products distribution in Korea are production-centered and have unreasonable structure whose function at the aspect of distribution and consumption is quite insufficient. And development of new distribution channels which can deal with changes in distribution environment and they do not achieve actual results of strategy for distribution due to non-positive strategy for price distribution. That is, it implies the possibility that base for supply will become vulnerable because it does not mediate appropriate interests on total distribution channels such as manufacturers, wholesale dealers and vendors by emphasizing consumer protection excessively in the distribution of agricultural products. Therefore, this study examined fundamental concept and actual situation for our investment to overseas agriculture, drew necessities, considerations, problems, etc. of overseas agricultural investment and suggested improvements at the level of distribution for price competitiveness of agricultural products cultivated in overseas under five aspects; government's indirect support, distribution's modernization and distribution information function's strengthening, government's political support for distribution facility, transportation route, load and unloading works' improvement, price competitiveness' securing, professional manpower's cultivation by education and training, etc. Here are some suggestions for foreign produce importation. First, the government should conduct a survey on the current distribution channels and analyze the situation to establish a measure for long-term development plans. By providing each agricultural area with a guideline for planning appropriate production of crops, the government can help farmers be ready for importation, and prevent them from producing same crops all at the same time. Government can sign an MOU with the foreign government and promote the importation so that the development of agricultural resources can be stable and steady. Second, the government can establish a strategy for an effective distribution system by providing farmers and agriculture-related workers with the distribution information such as price, production, demand, market structure and location, feature of each crop, and etc. In order for such distribution system to become feasible, the government needs to reconstruct the current distribution system, designate a public organization for providing distribution information and set the criteria for level of produce quality, trade units, and package units. Third, the government should provide financial support and a policy to seek an efficient distribution channel for foreign produce to be delivered fresh: the government should expand distribution facilities (for selecting, packaging, storing, and processing) and transportation vehicles while modernizing old facilities. There should be another policy to improve the efficiency of unloading, and to lower the cost of distribution. Fourth, it is necessary to enact a new law covering exceptional cases for importing produce in order to maintain the price competitiveness; currently the high tariffs is keeping the imported produce from being distributed domestically. However, the new adjustment should be made carefully within the WTO regulations since it can create a problem from giving preferential tariffs. The government can also simplify the distribution channels in order to reduce the cost in the distribution process. Fifth, the government should educate distributors to raise the efficiency and to modernize the distribution system. It is necessary to develop human resources by educating people regarding the foreign agricultural environment, the produce quality, management skills, and by introducing some successful cases in advanced countries.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.119-155
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• 2008

Customer Relationship Management(CRM) has been a sustainable competitive edge of many companies. CRM analyzes customer data for designing and executing targeted marketing analysing customer behavior in order to make decisions relating to products and services including management information system. It is critical for companies to get and maintain profitable customers. How to manage relationships with customers effectively has become an important issue for both academicians and practitioners in recent years. However, the existing academic literature and the practical applications of customer relationship management(CRM) strategies have been focused on the technical process and organizational structure about the implementation of CRM. These limited focus on CRM lead to the result of numerous reports of failed implementations of various types of CRM projects. Many of these failures are also related to the absence of marketing approach. Identifying successful factors and outcomes focused on marketing concept before introducing a CRM project are a pre-implementation requirements. Many researchers have attempted to find the factors that contribute to the success of CRM. However, these research have some limitations in terms of marketing approach without explaining how the marketing based factors contribute to the CRM success. An understanding of how to manage relationship with crucial customers effectively based marketing approach has become an important topic for both academicians and practitioners. However, the existing papers did not provide a clear antecedent and outcomes factors focused on marketing approach. This paper attempt to validate whether or not such various marketing factors would impact on relational quality and CRM performance in terms of marketing oriented perceptivity. More specifically, marketing oriented factors involving market orientation, customer orientation, customer information orientation, and core customer orientation can influence relationship quality(satisfaction and trust) and CRM outcome(customer retention and customer share). Another major goals of this research are to identify the effect of relationship quality on CRM outcomes consisted of customer retention and share to show the relationship strength between two factors. Based on meta analysis for conventional studies, I can construct the following research model. An empirical study was undertaken to test the hypotheses with data from various companies. Multiple regression analysis and t-test were employed to test the hypotheses. The reliability and validity of our measurements were tested by using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and principal factor analysis respectively, and seven hypotheses were tested through performing correlation test and multiple regression analysis. The first key outcome is a theoretically and empirically sound CRM factors(marketing orientation, customer orientation, customer information orientation, and core customer orientation.) in the perceptive of marketing. The intensification of ${\beta}$coefficient among antecedents factors in terms of marketing was not same. In particular, The effects on customer trust of marketing based CRM antecedents were significantly confirmed excluding core customer orientation. It was notable that the direct effects of core customer orientation on customer trust were not exist. This means that customer trust which is firmly formed by long term tasks will not be directly linked to the core customer orientation. the enduring management concerned with this interactions is probably more important for the successful implementation of CRM. The second key result is that the implementation and operation of successful CRM process in terms of marketing approach have a strong positive association with both relationship quality(customer trust/customer satisfaction) and CRM performance(customer retention and customer possession). The final key fact that relationship quality has a strong positive effect on customer retention and customer share confirms that improvements in customer satisfaction and trust improve accessibility to customers, provide more consistent service and ensure value-for-money within the front office which result in growth of customer retention and customer share. Particularly, customer satisfaction and trust which is main components of relationship quality are found to be positively related to the customer retention and customer share. Interactive managements of these main variables play key roles in connecting the successful antecedent of CRM with final outcome involving customer retention and share. Based on research results, This paper suggest managerial implications concerned with constructions and executions of CRM focusing on the marketing perceptivity. I can conclude in general the CRM can be achieved by the recognition of antecedents and outcomes based on marketing concept. The implementation of marketing concept oriented CRM will be connected with finding out about customers' purchasing habits, opinions and preferences profiling individuals and groups to market more effectively and increase sales changing the way you operate to improve customer service and marketing. Benefiting from CRM is not just a question of investing the right software, but adapt CRM users to the concept of marketing including marketing orientation, customer orientation, and customer information orientation. No one deny that CRM is a process or methodology used to develop stronger relationships being composed of many technological components, but thinking about CRM in primarily technological terms is a big mistake. We can infer from this paper that the more useful way to think and implement about CRM is as a process that will help bring together lots of pieces of marketing concept about customers, marketing effectiveness, and market trends. Finally, a real situation we conducted our research may enable academics and practitioners to understand the antecedents and outcomes in the perceptive of marketing more clearly.