• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.89-97
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• 2010

This study researches the effects of common features on a no-choice option with respect to regulatory focus theory. The primary interest is in three factors and their interrelationship: common features, no-choice option, and regulatory focus. Prior studies have compiled vast body of research in these areas. First, the "common features effect" has been observed bymany noted marketing researchers. Tversky (1972) proposed the seminal theory, the EBA model: elimination by aspect. According to this theory, consumers are prone to focus only on unique features during comparison processing, thereby dismissing any common features as redundant information. Recently, however, more provocative ideas have attacked the EBA model by asserting that common features really do affect consumer judgment. Chernev (1997) first reported that adding common features mitigates the choice gap because of the increasing perception of similarity among alternatives. Later, however, Chernev (2001) published a critically developed study against his prior perspective with the proposition that common features may be a cognitive load to consumers, and thus consumers are possible that they are prone to prefer the heuristic processing to the systematic processing. This tends to bring one question to the forefront: Do "common features" affect consumer choice? If so, what are the concrete effects? This study tries to answer the question with respect to the "no-choice" option and regulatory focus. Second, some researchers hold that the no-choice option is another best alternative of consumers, who are likely to avoid having to choose in the context of knotty trade-off settings or mental conflicts. Hope for the future also may increase the no-choice option in the context of optimism or the expectancy of a more satisfactory alternative appearing later. Other issues reported in this domain are time pressure, consumer confidence, and alternative numbers (Dhar and Nowlis 1999; Lin and Wu 2005; Zakay and Tsal 1993). This study casts the no-choice option in yet another perspective: the interactive effects between common features and regulatory focus. Third, "regulatory focus theory" is a very popular theme in recent marketing research. It suggests that consumers have two focal goals facing each other: promotion vs. prevention. A promotion focus deals with the concepts of hope, inspiration, achievement, or gain, whereas prevention focus involves duty, responsibility, safety, or loss-aversion. Thus, while consumers with a promotion focus tend to take risks for gain, the same does not hold true for a prevention focus. Regulatory focus theory predicts consumers' emotions, creativity, attitudes, memory, performance, and judgment, as documented in a vast field of marketing and psychology articles. The perspective of the current study in exploring consumer choice and common features is a somewhat creative viewpoint in the area of regulatory focus. These reviews inspire this study of the interaction possibility between regulatory focus and common features with a no-choice option. Specifically, adding common features rather than omitting them may increase the no-choice option ratio in the choice setting only to prevention-focused consumers, but vice versa to promotion-focused consumers. The reasoning is that when prevention-focused consumers come in contact with common features, they may perceive higher similarity among the alternatives. This conflict among similar options would increase the no-choice ratio. Promotion-focused consumers, however, are possible that they perceive common features as a cue of confirmation bias. And thus their confirmation processing would make their prior preference more robust, then the no-choice ratio may shrink. This logic is verified in two experiments. The first is a $2{\times}2$ between-subject design (whether common features or not X regulatory focus) using a digital cameras as the relevant stimulus-a product very familiar to young subjects. Specifically, the regulatory focus variable is median split through a measure of eleven items. Common features included zoom, weight, memory, and battery, whereas the other two attributes (pixel and price) were unique features. Results supported our hypothesis that adding common features enhanced the no-choice ratio only to prevention-focus consumers, not to those with a promotion focus. These results confirm our hypothesis - the interactive effects between a regulatory focus and the common features. Prior research had suggested that including common features had a effect on consumer choice, but this study shows that common features affect choice by consumer segmentation. The second experiment was used to replicate the results of the first experiment. This experimental study is equal to the prior except only two - priming manipulation and another stimulus. For the promotion focus condition, subjects had to write an essay using words such as profit, inspiration, pleasure, achievement, development, hedonic, change, pursuit, etc. For prevention, however, they had to use the words persistence, safety, protection, aversion, loss, responsibility, stability etc. The room for rent had common features (sunshine, facility, ventilation) and unique features (distance time and building state). These attributes implied various levels and valence for replication of the prior experiment. Our hypothesis was supported repeatedly in the results, and the interaction effects were significant between regulatory focus and common features. Thus, these studies showed the dual effects of common features on consumer choice for a no-choice option. Adding common features may enhance or mitigate no-choice, contradictory as it may sound. Under a prevention focus, adding common features is likely to enhance the no-choice ratio because of increasing mental conflict; under the promotion focus, it is prone to shrink the ratio perhaps because of a "confirmation bias." The research has practical and theoretical implications for marketers, who may need to consider common features carefully in a practical display context according to consumer segmentation (i.e., promotion vs. prevention focus.) Theoretically, the results suggest some meaningful moderator variable between common features and no-choice in that the effect on no-choice option is partly dependent on a regulatory focus. This variable corresponds not only to a chronic perspective but also a situational perspective in our hypothesis domain. Finally, in light of some shortcomings in the research, such as overlooked attribute importance, low ratio of no-choice, or the external validity issue, we hope it influences future studies to explore the little-known world of the "no-choice option."

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.159-219
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• 2016

Mathematical ability is important for academic achievement and technological renovations in the STEM disciplines. This study concentrated on the relationship between neural basis of mathematical cognition and its mechanisms. These cognitive functions include domain specific abilities such as numerical skills and visuospatial abilities, as well as domain general abilities which include language, long term memory, and working memory capacity. Individuals can perform higher cognitive functions such as abstract thinking and reasoning based on these basic cognitive functions. The next topic covered in this study is about individual differences in mathematical abilities. Neural efficiency theory was incorporated in this study to view mathematical talent. According to the theory, a person with mathematical talent uses his or her brain more efficiently than the effortful endeavour of the average human being. Mathematically gifted students show different brain activities when compared to average students. Interhemispheric and intrahemispheric connectivities are enhanced in those students, particularly in the right brain along fronto-parietal longitudinal fasciculus. The third topic deals with growth and development in mathematical capacity. As individuals mature, practice mathematical skills, and gain knowledge, such changes are reflected in cortical activation, which include changes in the activation level, redistribution, and reorganization in the supporting cortex. Among these, reorganization can be related to neural plasticity. Neural plasticity was observed in professional mathematicians and children with mathematical learning disabilities. Last topic is about mathematical creativity viewed from Neural Darwinism. When the brain is faced with a novel problem, it needs to collect all of the necessary concepts(knowledge) from long term memory, make multitudes of connections, and test which ones have the highest probability in helping solve the unusual problem. Having followed the above brain modifying steps, once the brain finally finds the correct response to the novel problem, the final response comes as a form of inspiration. For a novice, the first step of acquisition of knowledge structure is the most important. However, as expertise increases, the latter two stages of making connections and selection become more important.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.107-125
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to analyze the dietary life units of Korean and American high school home economics textbook according to Habermas's three systems of action and to find out how the three systems of action are reflected in the learning objectives and activity tasks of the textbook. To achieve this purpose, this study analyzed the learning objectives and activity tasks of the dietary life units in the textbooks of 'technology & home economics' and 'home economics science' in Korea, and 'succeeding in life and career' in America using a content analysis technique based on Habermas's three systems of action. In analyzing the content, each learning objective or activity was matched with one of the three systems of action by examining the context. In some cases, two or more systems of actions were integrated in one activity. This is a case where a series of learning tasks that involve different action system were grouped into one. The numbers of learning objectives and activities of the units of 'technology & home economics', 'home economics science' textbooks of Korean high schools and 'succeeding in life and career' dietary life of American high schools were 3, 26, and 248, respectively. In Korean textbooks, the percentage of communicative action was highest among the three systems, that is, 66.7% for 'technology & home economics' textbooks and 50% for 'home economics science' textbooks. In comparison technical action was the highest in American textbooks at 66.5%. Activities related to technical action included cooking, conducting research on health and food, or conducting experiments. The activities related to communicative action included role play related to health and table manners, or writing reports after conducting surveys or interviewing professionals. The activities related to emancipative action were to social participation activities such as service project in relation to health and food, or to find problems that occur in dietary life and think about be best solution through practical reasoning.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.49-71
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• 2010

Franchise businesses in South Korea have contributed to economic growth and job creation, and its growth potential remains very high. However, despite such virtues, domestic franchise businesses face many problems such as the instability of franchisor's business structure and weak financial conditions. To solve these problems, the government enacted legislation and strengthened franchise related laws. However, the strengthening of laws regulating franchisors had many side effects that interrupted the development of the franchise business. For example, legal regulations regarding franchisors have had the effect of suppressing the franchisor's leadership activities (e.g. activities such as the ability to advocate the franchisor's policies and strategies to the franchisees, in order to facilitate change and innovation). One of the main goals of the franchise business is to build cooperation between the franchisor and the franchisee for their combined success. However, franchisees can refuse to follow the franchisor's strategies because of the current state of franchise-related law and government policy. The purpose of this study to explore the effects of franchisor's leadership style on franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. We classified leadership styles according to the path-goal theory (House & Mitchell, 1974), and it was hypothesized and tested that the four leadership styles proposed by the path-goal theory (i.e. directive, supportive, participative and achievement-oriented leadership) have different effects on franchisee's commitment. Another purpose of this study to explore the how the level of franchisee's self-efficacy influences both the franchisor's leadership style and franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. Results of the present study are expected to provide important theoretical and practical implications as to the role of franchisor's leadership style, as restricted by government regulations and the franchisee's self-efficacy, which could be needed to improve the quality of the long-term relationship between the franchisor and franchisee. Quoted by Northouse(2007), one problem regarding the investigation of leadership is that there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are people who have tried to define it. But despite the multitude of ways in which leadership has been conceptualized, the following components can be identified as central to the phenomenon: (a) leadership is a process, (b) leadership involves influence, (c) leadership occurs in a group context, and (d) leadership involves goal attainment. Based on these components, in this study leadership is defined as a process whereby franchisor's influences a group of franchisee' to achieve a common goal. Focusing on this definition, the path-goal theory is about how leaders motivate subordinates to accomplish designated goals. Drawing heavily from research on what motivates employees, path-goal theory first appeared in the leadership literature in the early 1970s in the works of Evans (1970), House (1971), House and Dessler (1974), and House and Mitchell (1974). The stated goal of this leadership theory is to enhance employee performance and employee satisfaction by focusing on employee motivation. In brief, path-goal theory is designed to explain how leaders can help subordinates along the path to their goals by selecting specific behaviors that are best suited to subordinates' needs and to the situation in which subordinates are working (Northouse, 2007). House & Mitchell(1974) predicted that although many different leadership behaviors could have been selected to be a part of path-goal theory, this approach has so far examined directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented leadership behaviors. And they suggested that leaders may exhibit any or all of these four styles with various subordinates and in different situations. However, due to restrictive government regulations, franchisors are not in a position to change their leadership style to suit their circumstances. In addition, quoted by Northouse(2007), ssubordinate characteristics determine how a leader's behavior is interpreted by subordinates in a given work context. Many researchers have focused on subordinates' needs for affiliation, preferences for structure, desires for control, and self-perceived level of task ability. In this study, we have focused on the self-perceived level of task ability, namely, the franchisee's self-efficacy. According to Bandura (1977), self-efficacy is chiefly defined as the personal attitude of one's ability to accomplish concrete tasks. Therefore, it is not an indicator of one's actual abilities, but an opinion of the extent of how one can use that ability. Thus, the judgment of maintain franchisee's commitment depends on the situation (e.g., government regulation and policy and leadership style of franchisor) and how it affects one's ability to mobilize resources to deal with the task, so even if people possess the same ability, there may be differences in self-efficacy. Figure 1 illustrates the model investigated in this study. In this model, it was hypothesized that leadership styles would affect the franchisee's commitment, and self-efficacy would moderate the relationship between leadership style and franchisee's commitment. Theoretically, quoted by Northouse(2007), the path-goal approach suggests that leaders need to choose a leadership style that best fits the needs of subordinates and the work they are doing. According to House & Mitchell (1974), the theory predicts that a directive style of leadership is best in situations in which subordinates are dogmatic and authoritarian, the task demands are ambiguous, and the organizational rule and procedures are unclear. In these situations, franchisor's directive leadership complements the work by providing guidance and psychological structure for franchisees. For work that is structured, unsatisfying, or frustrating, path-goal theory suggests that leaders should use a supportive style. Franchisor's Supportive leadership offers a sense of human touch for franchisees engaged in mundane, mechanized activity. Franchisor's participative leadership is considered best when a task is ambiguous because participation gives greater clarity to how certain paths lead to certain goals; it helps subordinates learn what actions leads to what outcome. Furthermore, House & Mitchell(1974) predicts that achievement-oriented leadership is most effective in settings in which subordinates are required to perform ambiguous tasks. Marsh and O'Neill (1984) tested the idea that organizational members' anger and decline in performance is caused by deficiencies in their level of effort and found that self-efficacy promotes accomplishment, decreases stress and negative consequences like depression and emotional instability. Based on the extant empirical findings and theoretical reasoning, we posit positive and strong relationships between the franchisor's leadership styles and the franchisee's commitment. Furthermore, the level of franchisee's self-efficacy was thought to maintain their commitment. The questionnaires sent to participants consisted of the following measures; leadership style was assessed using a 20 item 7-point likert scale developed by Indvik (1985), self-efficacy was assessed using a 24 item 6-point likert scale developed by Bandura (1977), and commitment was assessed using a 6 item 5-point likert scale developed by Morgan & Hunt (1994). Questionnaires were distributed to Korean optical franchisees in Seoul. It took about 20 days to complete the data collection. A total number of 140 questionnaires were returned and complete data were available from 137 respondents. Results of multiple regression analyses testing the relationships between the each of the four styles of leadership shown by the franchisor as independent variables and franchisee's commitment as the dependent variable showed that the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.13, p<.001),and the relationship between participative leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.07, p<.001)were significant. However, when participants divided into high and low self-efficacy groups, results of multiple regression analyses showed that only the relationship between achievement-oriented leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.14, p<.001) was significant in the high self-efficacy group. In the low self-efficacy group, the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.17, p<.001),and the relationship between participative leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.10, p<.001) were significant. The study focused on the franchisee's self-efficacy in order to explore the possibility that regulation, originally intended to protect the franchisee, may not be the most effective method to maintain the relationships in a franchise business. The key results of the data analysis regarding the moderating role of self-efficacy between leadership behavior style as proposed by path-goal and commitment theory were as follows. First, this study proposed that franchisor should apply the appropriate type of leadership behavior to strengthen the franchisees commitment because the results demonstrated that supportive and participative leadership styles by the franchisors have a positive influence on the franchisee's level of commitment. Second, it is desirable for franchisor to validate the franchisee's efforts, since the franchisee's characteristics such as self-efficacy had a substantial, positive effect on the franchisee's commitment as well as being a meaningful moderator between leadership and commitment. Third, the results as a whole imply that the government should provide institutional support, namely to put the franchisor in a position to clearly identify the characteristics of their franchisees and provide reasonable means to administer the franchisees to achieve the company's goal.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.71-94
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• 1990

This paper reviews the rationale of monetary and banking intervention by an outside authority, either the government or the central bank, and seeks to delineate clearly the optimal limits to the monetary and banking deregulation currently underway in Korea as well as on a global scale. Furthermore, this paper seeks to establish an objective and balanced view on the role of the central bank, especially in light of the current discussion on the restructuring of Korea's central bank, which has been severely contaminated by interest-group politics. The discussion begins with the recognition that the modern free banking school and the new monetary economics are becoming formidable challenges to the traditional role of the government or the central bank in the monetary and banking sector. The paper reviews six arguments that have traditionally been presented to support intervention: (1) the possibility of an over-issue of bank notes under free banking instead of central banking; (2) externalities in and the public good nature of the use of money; (3) economies of scale and natural monopoly in producing money; (4) the need for macro stabilization policy due to the instability of the real sector; (5) the external effects of bank failure due to the inherent instability of the existing banking system; and (6) protection for small banknote users and depositors. Based on an analysis of the above arguments, the paper speculates on the optimal role of the government or central bank in the monetary and banking system and the optimal degree of monetary and banking deregulation. By contrast to the arguments for free banking or laissez-faire monetary systems, which become fashionable in recent years, monopoly and intervention by the government or central bank in the outside money system can be both necessary and optimal. In this case, of course, an over-issue of fiat money may be possible due to political considerations, but this issue is beyond the scope of this paper. On the other hand, the issue of inside monies based on outside money could indeed be provided for optimally under market competition by private institutions. A competitive system in issuing inside monies would help realize, to the maxim urn extent possible, external economies generated by using a single outside money. According to this reasoning, free banking activities will prevail in the inside money system, while a government monopoly will prevail in the outside money system. This speculation, then, also implies that the monetary and banking deregulation currently underway should and most likely will be limited to the inside money system, which could be liberalized to the fullest degree. It is also implied that it will be impractical to deregulate the outside money system and to allow market competition to provide outside money, in accordance with the arguments of the free banking school and the new monetary economics. Furthermore, the role of the government or central bank in this new environment will not be significantly different from their current roles. As far as the supply of fiat money continues to be monopolized by the government, the control of the supply of base money and such related responsibilities as monetary policy (argument(4)) and the lender of the last resort (argument (5)) will naturally be assigned to the outside money supplier. However, a mechanism for controlling an over-issue of fiat money by a monopolistic supplier will definitely be called for (argument(1)). A monetary policy based on a certain policy rule could be one possibility. More importantly, the deregulation of the inside money system would further increase the systemic risk inherent in the current fractional banking system, while enhancing the efficiency of the system (argument (5)). In this context, the role of the lender of the last resort would again become an instrument of paramount importance in alleviating liquidity crises in the early stages, thereby disallowing the possibility of a widespread bank run. Similarly, prudential banking supervision would also help maintain the safety and soundness of the fully deregulated banking system. These functions would also help protect depositors from losses due to bank failures (argument (6)). Finally, these speculations suggest that government or central bank authorities have probably been too conservative on the issue of the deregulation of the financial system, beyond the caution necessary to preserve system safety. Rather, only the fullest deregulation of the inside money system seems to guarantee the maximum enjoyment of external economies in the single outside money system.