• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.29-41
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• 2012

This paper undertakes a conceptual review of transaction cost to broaden the understanding of the transaction cost analysis (TCA) approach. More than 40 years have passed since Coase's fundamental insight that transaction, coordination, and contracting costs must be considered explicitly in explaining the extent of vertical integration. Coase (1937) forced economists to identify previously neglected constraints on the trading process to foster efficient intrafirm, rather than interfirm, transactions. The transaction cost approach to economic organization study regards transactions as the basic units of analysis and holds that understanding transaction cost economy is central to organizational study. The approach applies to determining efficient boundaries, as between firms and markets, and to internal transaction organization, including employment relations design. TCA, developed principally by Oliver Williamson (1975,1979,1981a) blends institutional economics, organizational theory, and contract law. Further progress in transaction costs research awaits the identification of critical dimensions in which transaction costs differ and an examination of the economizing properties of alternative institutional modes for organizing transactions. The crucial investment distinction is: To what degree are transaction-specific (non-marketable) expenses incurred? Unspecialized items pose few hazards, since buyers can turn toalternative sources, and suppliers can sell output intended for one order to other buyers. Non-marketability problems arise when specific parties' identities have important cost-bearing consequences. Transactions of this kind are labeled idiosyncratic. The summarized results of the review are as follows. First, firms' distribution decisions often prompt examination of the make-or-buy question: Should a marketing activity be performed within the organization by company employees or contracted to an external agent? Second, manufacturers introducing an industrial product to a foreign market face a difficult decision. Should the product be marketed primarily by captive agents (the company sales force and distribution division) or independent intermediaries (outside sales agents and distribution)? Third, the authors develop a theoretical extension to the basic transaction cost model by combining insights from various theories with the TCA approach. Fourth, other such extensions are likely required for the general model to be applied to different channel situations. It is naive to assume the basic model appliesacross markedly different channel contexts without modifications and extensions. Although this study contributes to scholastic research, it is limited by several factors. First, the theoretical perspective of TCA has attracted considerable recent interest in the area of marketing channels. The analysis aims to match the properties of efficient governance structures with the attributes of the transaction. Second, empirical evidence about TCA's basic propositions is sketchy. Apart from Anderson's (1985) study of the vertical integration of the selling function and John's (1984) study of opportunism by franchised dealers, virtually no marketing studies involving the constructs implicated in the analysis have been reported. We hope, therefore, that further research will clarify distinctions between the different aspects of specific assets. Another important line of future research is the integration of efficiency-oriented TCA with organizational approaches that emphasize specific assets' conceptual definition and industry structure. Finally, research of transaction costs, uncertainty, opportunism, and switching costs is critical to future study.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.99-124
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• 2012

Our society has long been talking about necessity for innovation. Since companies in particular need to carry out business innovation in their overall processes, they have attempted to apply many innovation factors on sites and become to pay more attention to their innovation. In order to achieve this goal, companies has applied various information technologies (IT) on sites as a means of innovation, and consequently IT have been greatly developed. It is natural for the field of IT to have faced another revolution which is called cloud computing, which is expected to result in innovative changes in software application via the Internet, data storing, the use of devices, and their operations. As a vehicle of innovation, cloud computing is expected to lead the changes and advancement of our society and the business world. Although many scholars have researched on a variety of topics regarding the innovation via IT, few studies have dealt with the issue of could computing as IT. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to set the variables of innovation attributes based on the previous articles as the characteristic variables and clarify how these variables affect "Performance Expectancy" of companies and the intention of using cloud computing. The result from the analysis of data collected in this study is as follows. The study utilized a research model developed on the innovation diffusion theory to identify influences on the adaptation and spreading IT for cloud computing services. Second, this study summarized the characteristics of cloud computing services as a new concept that introduces innovation at its early stage of adaptation for companies. Third, a theoretical model is provided that relates to the future innovation by suggesting variables for innovation characteristics to adopt cloud computing services. Finally, this study identified the factors affecting expectation and the intention to use the cloud computing service for the companies that consider adopting the cloud computing service. As the parameter and dependent variable respectively, the study deploys the independent variables that are aligned with the characteristics of the cloud computing services based on the innovation diffusion model, and utilizes the expectation for performance and Intention to Use based on the UTAUT theory. Independent variables for the research model include Relative Advantage, Complexity, Compatibility, Cost Saving, Trialability, and Observability. In addition, 'Acceptance for Adaptation' is applied as an adjustment variable to verify the influences on the expected performances from the cloud computing service. The validity of the research model was secured by performing factor analysis and reliability analysis. After confirmatory factor analysis is conducted using AMOS 7.0, the 20 hypotheses are verified through the analysis of the structural equation model, accepting 12 hypotheses among 20. For example, Relative Advantage turned out to have the positive effect both on Individual Performance and on Strategic Performance from the verification of hypothesis, while it showed meaningful correlation to affect Intention to Use directly. This indicates that many articles on the diffusion related Relative Advantage as the most important factor to predict the rate to accept innovation. From the viewpoint of the influence on Performance Expectancy among Compatibility and Cost Saving, Compatibility has the positive effect on both Individual Performance and on Strategic Performance, while it showed meaningful correlation with Intention to Use. However, the topic of the cloud computing service has become a strategic issue for adoption in companies, Cost Saving turns out to affect Individual Performance without a significant influence on Intention to Use. This indicates that companies expect practical performances such as time and cost saving and financial improvements through the adoption of the cloud computing service in the environment of the budget squeezing from the global economic crisis from 2008. Likewise, this positively affects the strategic performance in companies. In terms of effects, Trialability is proved to give no effects on Performance Expectancy. This indicates that the participants of the survey are willing to afford the risk from the high uncertainty caused by innovation, because they positively pursue information about new ideas as innovators and early adopter. In addition, they believe it is unnecessary to test the cloud computing service before the adoption, because there are various types of the cloud computing service. However, Observability positively affected both Individual Performance and Strategic Performance. It also showed meaningful correlation with Intention to Use. From the analysis of the direct effects on Intention to Use by innovative characteristics for the cloud computing service except the parameters, the innovative characteristics for the cloud computing service showed the positive influence on Relative Advantage, Compatibility and Observability while Complexity, Cost saving and the likelihood for the attempt did not affect Intention to Use. While the practical verification that was believed to be the most important factor on Performance Expectancy by characteristics for cloud computing service, Relative Advantage, Compatibility and Observability showed significant correlation with the various causes and effect analysis. Cost Saving showed a significant relation with Strategic Performance in companies, which indicates that the cost to build and operate IT is the burden of the management. Thus, the cloud computing service reflected the expectation as an alternative to reduce the investment and operational cost for IT infrastructure due to the recent economic crisis. The cloud computing service is not pervasive in the business world, but it is rapidly spreading all over the world, because of its inherited merits and benefits. Moreover, results of this research regarding the diffusion innovation are more or less different from those of the existing articles. This seems to be caused by the fact that the cloud computing service has a strong innovative factor that results in a new paradigm shift while most IT that are based on the theory of innovation diffusion are limited to companies and organizations. In addition, the participants in this study are believed to play an important role as innovators and early adapters to introduce the cloud computing service and to have competency to afford higher uncertainty for innovation. In conclusion, the introduction of the cloud computing service is a critical issue in the business world.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.28 no.12 s.138
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• pp.1596-1604
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• 2004

Quality Function Deployment(QFD) is a product development tool which ensures that the voice of the customer needs is heard and translated into products. To develop a sensible brassiere for middle-aged women QFD was adopted. In this study the applicability and usefulness of QFD was examined through the engineering design process for a sensible brassiere for middle-aged women. The customer needs for the wear comfort of brassiere was made by one-on-one survey of 100 women who aged 30-40. The customer competitive assessment was generated by wearing tests of 10 commercial brassieres. The subjective assessment was conducted in the enviornmental chamber that was controlled at $28{\pm}1^{\circ}C,\;65{\pm}3\%RH.$ As a results, we developed twenty-one customer needs and corresponding HOWs for the wear comfort of brassiere. The Customer Competitive Assessment was generated by wearing tests of commercial brassiere. The subjective measurement scale and dimension for the evaluation of sensible brassiere were extracted from factor analysis. Four factors were fitting, aesthetic property, pressure sensation, displacement of brassiere due to movement. The most critical design parameter was wire-related property and second one was stretchability of main material of brassiere. Also, wearing comfort of brassiere was affected by the interaction of initial stretchability of wing and support of strap. Engineering design process, QFD was applicable to the development of technical and aesthetic brassieres.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.593-597
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• 2009

The uterus plays a critical role in pregnancy and steroid hormones, and both estrogen (E2) and progesterone (P4) especially play important roles in the cross-talk between embryos and uterus to support the pregnancy. E2 stimulates uterine growth during early pregnancy to prepare for implantation of embryos. This cross-talk during the implantation period involves hormones (E2 and P4) and growth factors, including insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I). In the uterus of a pregnant pig, the action of E2 is mediated by estrogen receptor-${\beta}$ (ER-${\beta}$). The expression of ER-a was much higher in early pregnancy than in mid- and late- pregnancy, suggesting E2 secretion from embryos enhances transcription of ER-a during early pregnancy. In order to prove whether IGF-I is an E2 target gene, quantitative real-time PCR was performed on ovariectomized murine uterus with E2 and/or P4 treatment(s). Increased IGF-I mRNA expression was observed with E2 treatment, however, it was not significantly induced by P4 treatment, which clearly demonstrates that, in mice, E2 depends on the activation of uterine IGF-I gene expression. The expression of IGF-I in the uterus of pigs was much higher in early pregnancy than in mid- and late- pregnancy and these data exhibited the same expression pattern with the ER-${\beta}$ gene expression in the uterus. It suggests that a positive co-relationship between IGF-I and ER-${\beta}$ expression exists in the uterus, and that both gene expressions of IGF-I and ER-${\beta}$ are regulated by E2. It further suggests that uterine the IGF-I gene expression might be initiated by E2 secreted from embryos to increase ER-${\beta}$ gene expression, and that this increased ER-${\beta}$ further stimulates the expression of IGF-I in the uterus during early pregnancy.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.167-175
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the variation of the dose which is delivered to the patients with glottis cancer under IMRT (intensity modulated radiation therapy) by using the 3D registration with CBCT (cone beam CT) images and the DIR (deformable image registration) techniques. The CBCT images which were obtained at a one-week interval were reconstructed by using B-spline algorithm in DIR system, and doses were recalculated based on the newly obtained CBCT images. The dose distributions to the tumor and the critical organs were compared with reference. For the change of volume depending on weight at 3 to 5 weeks, there was increased of 1.38~2.04 kg on average. For the body surface depending on weight, there was decreased of 2.1 mm. The dose with transmitted to the carotid since three weeks was increased compared be more than 8.76% planned, and the thyroid gland was decreased to 26.4%. For the physical evaluation factors of the tumor, PITV, TCI, rDHI, mDHI, and CN were decreased to 4.32%, 5.78%, 44.54%, 12.32%, and 7.11%, respectively. Moreover, $D_{max}$, $D_{mean}$, $V_{67.50}$, and $D_{95}$ for PTV were increased or decreased to 2.99%, 1.52%, 5.78%, and 11.94%, respectively. Although there was no change of volume depending on weight, the change of body types occurred, and IMRT with the narrow composure margin sensitively responded to such a changing. For the glottis IMRT, the patient's weight changes should be observed and recorded to evaluate the actual dose distribution by using the DIR techniques, and more the adaptive treatment planning during the treatment course is needed to deliver the accurate dose to the patients.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.446-453
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• 2020

This study built a model to predict the daily number of visitors to 18 trails in the Taebaeksan National Park using the auto-counter system data to analyze the factors affecting the daily number of visitors to each trail and classified the trails by visitors' behaviors. Results of the multiple regression models with the daily number of visitors of the 18 trails indicated that the events, such as the National Foundation Day celebration of Snow Festival, affected the number of visitors of all of the 18 trails and were the most critical factor that determined the daily number of visitors to the Taebaeksan National Park. The long-holidays of three days or longer and other national holidays also affected the daily number of visitors to the trails. Precipitation had a negative impact on the number of visitors of trails where the intention of most visitors was for sightseeing or camping instead of hiking, whereas had no significant impacts on the number of visitors of trails where many visitors intended for hiking. It indicated that visitors who intended for hiking went ahead hiking even if the weather was poor. The effects of temperature had a positive effect on the number of visitors who intended for hiking but a negative effect on the number of visitor to the trails near Danggol Plaza where the Snow Festival was held in each winter, suggesting that the impact of the Snow Festival was the deterministic factor for trail management. Results of K-mean clustering showed that the 18 trails of the Taekbaeksan National Park could be classified into three types: those affected by the Snow Festival (type 1), those that have sightseeing points and so were visited mostly by non-hikers (type 2), and those visited mostly by hikers (type 3). Since visitor behaviors and illegal actions differ according to the trail type, this study's results can be used to prepare a trail management plan based on the trail characteristics.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.129-142
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• 2016

Customer product reviews have become one of the important factors for purchase decision makings. Customers believe that reviews written by others who have already had an experience with the product offer more reliable information than that provided by sellers. However, there are too many products and reviews, the advantage of e-commerce can be overwhelmed by increasing search costs. Reading all of the reviews to find out the pros and cons of a certain product can be exhausting. To help users find the most useful information about products without much difficulty, e-commerce companies try to provide various ways for customers to write and rate product reviews. To assist potential customers, online stores have devised various ways to provide useful customer reviews. Different methods have been developed to classify and recommend useful reviews to customers, primarily using feedback provided by customers about the helpfulness of reviews. Most shopping websites provide customer reviews and offer the following information: the average preference of a product, the number of customers who have participated in preference voting, and preference distribution. Most information on the helpfulness of product reviews is collected through a voting system. Amazon.com asks customers whether a review on a certain product is helpful, and it places the most helpful favorable and the most helpful critical review at the top of the list of product reviews. Some companies also predict the usefulness of a review based on certain attributes including length, author(s), and the words used, publishing only reviews that are likely to be useful. Text mining approaches have been used for classifying useful reviews in advance. To apply a text mining approach based on all reviews for a product, we need to build a term-document matrix. We have to extract all words from reviews and build a matrix with the number of occurrences of a term in a review. Since there are many reviews, the size of term-document matrix is so large. It caused difficulties to apply text mining algorithms with the large term-document matrix. Thus, researchers need to delete some terms in terms of sparsity since sparse words have little effects on classifications or predictions. The purpose of this study is to suggest a better way of building term-document matrix by deleting useless terms for review classification. In this study, we propose neutrality index to select words to be deleted. Many words still appear in both classifications - useful and not useful - and these words have little or negative effects on classification performances. Thus, we defined these words as neutral terms and deleted neutral terms which are appeared in both classifications similarly. After deleting sparse words, we selected words to be deleted in terms of neutrality. We tested our approach with Amazon.com's review data from five different product categories: Cellphones & Accessories, Movies & TV program, Automotive, CDs & Vinyl, Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry. We used reviews which got greater than four votes by users and 60% of the ratio of useful votes among total votes is the threshold to classify useful and not-useful reviews. We randomly selected 1,500 useful reviews and 1,500 not-useful reviews for each product category. And then we applied Information Gain and Support Vector Machine algorithms to classify the reviews and compared the classification performances in terms of precision, recall, and F-measure. Though the performances vary according to product categories and data sets, deleting terms with sparsity and neutrality showed the best performances in terms of F-measure for the two classification algorithms. However, deleting terms with sparsity only showed the best performances in terms of Recall for Information Gain and using all terms showed the best performances in terms of precision for SVM. Thus, it needs to be careful for selecting term deleting methods and classification algorithms based on data sets.

• The Journal of Korean society of community based occupational therapy
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.23-34
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• 2017

Objective : The purpose of this study was to investigate establishment status of the mandatory courses designated by Ministry of Health & Welfare for qualification of sensory developmental rehabilitation specialist(SDRS), within curriculum of baccalaureate occupational therapy(BOT) programs in Korea Methods : This is a narrative study to investigate and analyze certain courses established in curriculums of all 4-years occupational therapy(OT) programs, which is 32 schools. Results : 1) The shared mandatory subject, 'Understanding Children with Disabilities(UDC)', has been established at 9 schools. For the branch mandatory subjects, 'Neuroscience(NS) or Neuroanatomy' has been established at all 32 schools, 'Sensory Processing Dysfunctions and Intervention(SPDI)' or 'Sensory Integration' has been established at 31 schools, and each of 'Assessment & Evaluation for Children(AEC)' and 'Practicum of Sensory Rehabilitation(PSR)' has been established 7 schools for same. 2) For the mandatory courses, all 32 schools were offering designated- and alternative courses of NS, SPDI, AEC, but there was no change in the number of schools offering the practicum course since there was no case of alterative for it. 3) In terms of general provision score, there were 4 schools for score 7, 4 schools for score 6, 2 schools for score 5, 1 schools for score 4, 2 schools for score 3, and 19 schools for score 2. Conclusion : Establishment of the mandatory courses required to the qualification of SDRS among the BOT programs in nation were investigated. Including alternative courses, all the branch mandatory courses except practicum course are established in all the 32 schools. However, the shared mandatory subject, UDC and the practicum subject were established in only few schools. In the provision level evaluation of BOT programs for the SDRS qualification, it is shown that many schools has been started the provision already but still many schools' curriculum did not reflect the willingness and accuracy well. For the schools planning successful accreditation in near future, it is recommended that they prioritize the establishment of the shared mandatory course and the practicum course since these two subjects are recognized as critical factors for that. In addition, it is also needed of comparative inspections for course title and syllabi based on the guideline provided by Ministry of Health & Welfare.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.986-995
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• 2016

The objective of this study was to analyze the distribution of endangered fish species and elucidate their relations on chemical water quality, physical habitat conditions and ecological stream health. The dominant species in the watershed was Pseudopungtungia nigra (Pn), Gobiobotia macrocephala (Gm), Gobiobotia brevibarba (Gb), Liobagrus obesus (Lo), and Iksookimia choii (Ic) in the order. The species of Pn designated as "critical endangered species (I) (CER)", was most widely distributed species among the endangered species, so the designation of the species should be re-evaluated. The endangered species was most popular (4 species, 384 individuals) in the Cho-River region of eighteen lotic regions. According to the analysis of chemical tolerance limits in the habitats with endangered fish species, biological oxygen demand (BOD) and total phosphorus (TP) was analyzed as "very good" (Ia) and "good condition" in the chemical criteria of the Ministry of Environment, Korea. Also, chemical conditions, based on ammonia-N ($NH_{4+}$), total nitrogen (TN), phosphate-P ($PO_{4^-}P$) were much better in the habitat with endangered species (Hw) than the habitat without endangered species (Ho). In the meantime, the species of Ic showed wide ranges on the chemical tolerance, so physical habitat conditions, such as the size of substrate particles (sand) and hydrological regime, were considered as more important factors than the chemical water quality, if the water quality is not largely degraded. The endangered species were also more distributed in the high-order (4-6) streams than the low-order (1-3) streams. The evaluation of ecological stream health, based on multi-metric model of the Index of Biological Integrity (IBI), showed the large difference between the Hw (21.6, fair condition)and Ho (30.5, good condition), indicating that the habitat maintained well chemically and physically had higher distributions of endangered species. Overall, the designation of CER on the Pn should be re-evaluated due to wide-distributions, and the protections from water pollution and the habitat conservations on the endangered species are necessary in the watershed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.44 no.9
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• pp.1374-1387
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• 2015

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the operational status of youth facilities as well as the degree of students' satisfaction with menus served at youth facilities. The survey was conducted from July 9 to July 31, 2013 using questionnaires. The responses of 55 youth facilities and 249 students who had experienced foodservice at youth facilities were analyzed, utilizing the SPSS V20.0 program. The results on management status of youth facilities were as follows: 41.8% of youth facilities were operated for over 10 years, and 45.5% of facilities served meals for 100 to 200 students per day on average. Meal costs were 4,450 won on average, and food costs accounted for 46.8% of average meal costs. Exactly 78.2% of facilities preserved storage type meals at a temperature under -18 degrees Celsius for more than 144 hours, as the 'Food Sanitation Act' stated. Exactly 12.7% of facilities did not hire professional dietitians and had unsupervised foodservice management. Among 19 kitchen equipments surveyed in this research, Combi steamer was the least frequent at youth facilities. According to the results, most students (38.7%) ate leftovers since the food was not tasty. Overall foodservice satisfaction was on average 3.45 points, and the four factors 'dining room sanitation' (P<0.05), 'food taste' (P<0.01), 'serving various desserts' (P<0.01) and 'temperature of dining room' (P<0.05), significantly affected overall satisfaction. As food taste was critical for customer satisfaction, it is important for each dietitian to consider customers' preferences and develop recipes and menus. Further, detailed regulation and precise guidelines for youth facility foodservice are required to enhance students' foodservice satisfaction and serve nutritionally balanced menus in a hygienic manner.