• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.59-66
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• 1974

This paper describes how location influences on the development of dairy farming. It compares Chuncheon, which in the mountains, Daejeon, which is a transportation center and on flat ground, and Incheon, which is the gate to Seoul and an industrial city. The results analyzed are summarized as follows : 1. Incheon, due to her vast market, influenced strongly on the development of management. But shortage of roughage for feeds is the critical problem there. 2. Owing to the side job of raising chicks, which involves 92% of dairy farmers there, Chuncheon does not make smooth utilization of vast grass pasture. 3. In Daejeon's case, running orchards concurrently is the problem. 4. There exists no gap in wages between the region. The labor supply is most affluent in Incheon and there is competition with other forms of agriculture in the mountainous area. 5. The full-time employee tends to be skillful in accordance with his career. Family labor has been skillful, but the full-time employee is very fluid and shows varieties of skill. 6. Because of the obscurity of the distribution of labor with other jobs in Chuncheon and Daejeon, many unspecialized men serve. 7. The prices of milk are different in each region. The income of dairy farmers is strongly influenced by the low purchasing price of milk plants, and this is one of the important factors hindering the development of dairy farm ing in Chuncheon.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.95-120
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• 1990

The underpricing of new shares of a firm that are offered to the public for the first time (initial offerings) is well known and has puzzled financial economists for a long time since it seems at odds with the optimal behavior of the owners of issuing firms. Past attempts by financial economists to explain this phenomenon have not been successful in the sense that the explanations given by them are either inconsistent with the equilibrium theory or implausible. Approaches by such authors as Welch or Allen and Faulhaber are no exceptions. In this paper, we develop a signalling model of capital investment to explain the underpricing phenomenon and also analyze the efficiency of investment. The model focuses on the information asymmetry between the owners of issuing firms and general investors. We consider a firm that has been owned and operated by a single owner and that has a profitable project but has no capital to develop it. The profit from the project depends on the capital invested in the project as well as a profitability parameter. The model also assumes that the financial market is represented by a single investor who maximizes the expected wealth. The owner has superior information as to the value of the firm to investors in the sense that it knows the true value of the parameter while investors have only a probability distribution about the parameter. The owner offers the representative investor a fraction of the ownership of the firm in return for a certain amount of investment in the firm. This offer condition is equivalent to the usual offer condition consisting of the number of issues to sell and the unit price of a share. Thus, the model is a signalling game. Using Kreps' criterion as the solution concept, we obtained an essentially unique separating equilibrium offer condition. Analysis of this separating equilibrium shows that the owner of the firm with high profitability chooses an offer condition that raises an amount of capital that is short of the amount that maximizes the potential profit from the project. It also reveals that the fraction of the ownership of the firm that the representative investor receives from the owner of the highly profitable firm in return for its investment has a value that exceeds the investment. In other words, the initial offering in the model is underpriced when the profitability of the firm is high. The source of underpricing and underinvestment is the signalling activity by the owner of the highly profitable firm who attempts to convince investors that his firm has a highly profitable project by choosing an offer condition that cannot be imitated by the owner of a firm with low profitability. Thus, we obtained two main results. First, underpricing is a result of a signalling activity by the owner of a firm with high profitability when there exists information asymmetry between the owner of the issuing firm and investors. Second, such information asymmetry also leads to underinvestment in a highly profitable project. Those results clearly show the underpricing entails underinvestment and that information asymmetry leads to a social cost as well as a private cost. The above results are quite general in the sense that they are based upon a neoclassical profit function and full rationality of economic agents. We believe that the results of this paper can be used as a basis for further research on the capital investment process. For instance, one can view the results of this paper as a subgame equilibrium in a larger game in which a firm chooses among diverse ways to raise capital. In addition, the method used in this paper can be used in analyzing a wide range of problems arising from information asymmetry that the Korean financial market faces.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.161-177
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• 2015

With the rapid evolution of technology, the size, number, and the type of databases has increased concomitantly, so data mining approaches face many challenging applications from databases. One such application is discovery of fraud patterns from agricultural product wholesale transaction instances. The agricultural product wholesale market in Korea is huge, and vast numbers of transactions have been made every day. The demand for agricultural products continues to grow, and the use of electronic auction systems raises the efficiency of operations of wholesale market. Certainly, the number of unusual transactions is also assumed to be increased in proportion to the trading amount, where an unusual transaction is often the first sign of fraud. However, it is very difficult to identify and detect these transactions and the corresponding fraud occurred in agricultural product wholesale market because the types of fraud are more intelligent than ever before. The fraud can be detected by verifying the overall transaction records manually, but it requires significant amount of human resources, and ultimately is not a practical approach. Frauds also can be revealed by victim's report or complaint. But there are usually no victims in the agricultural product wholesale frauds because they are committed by collusion of an auction company and an intermediary wholesaler. Nevertheless, it is required to monitor transaction records continuously and to make an effort to prevent any fraud, because the fraud not only disturbs the fair trade order of the market but also reduces the credibility of the market rapidly. Applying data mining to such an environment is very useful since it can discover unknown fraud patterns or features from a large volume of transaction data properly. The objective of this research is to empirically investigate the factors necessary to detect fraud transactions in an agricultural product wholesale market by developing a data mining based fraud detection model. One of major frauds is the phantom transaction, which is a colluding transaction by the seller(auction company or forwarder) and buyer(intermediary wholesaler) to commit the fraud transaction. They pretend to fulfill the transaction by recording false data in the online transaction processing system without actually selling products, and the seller receives money from the buyer. This leads to the overstatement of sales performance and illegal money transfers, which reduces the credibility of market. This paper reviews the environment of wholesale market such as types of transactions, roles of participants of the market, and various types and characteristics of frauds, and introduces the whole process of developing the phantom transaction detection model. The process consists of the following 4 modules: (1) Data cleaning and standardization (2) Statistical data analysis such as distribution and correlation analysis, (3) Construction of classification model using decision-tree induction approach, (4) Verification of the model in terms of hit ratio. We collected real data from 6 associations of agricultural producers in metropolitan markets. Final model with a decision-tree induction approach revealed that monthly average trading price of item offered by forwarders is a key variable in detecting the phantom transaction. The verification procedure also confirmed the suitability of the results. However, even though the performance of the results of this research is satisfactory, sensitive issues are still remained for improving classification accuracy and conciseness of rules. One such issue is the robustness of data mining model. Data mining is very much data-oriented, so data mining models tend to be very sensitive to changes of data or situations. Thus, it is evident that this non-robustness of data mining model requires continuous remodeling as data or situation changes. We hope that this paper suggest valuable guideline to organizations and companies that consider introducing or constructing a fraud detection model in the future.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.195-209
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• 2021

According to the 2019-2020 social media usage survey conducted by the Seoul e-commerce center, 5 out of 10 consumers have experienced shopping through social media. The cost of traditional advertising media has been reduced and advertising spending on social media has risen by 74%, indicating that social media is becoming a more important marketing element. While the number of users of social media has increased and corporate marketing activities have increased accordingly, research has been conducted in various aspects of marketing such as user motivation for social media, satisfaction, and purchase intention. There was no subdivided study on the differences in the social media usage frequency of consumers in actual purchasing behavior. This study attempted to identify differences in consumer characteristics by cluster in the agrifood purchase situation by grouping them by type according to the frequency of use of social media for consumers who purchase agri-food online. Product involvement, product need, and online purchase channel Consumer characteristics such as demographic distribution, perceived risk, and eating and lifestyle in each cluster were checked for the three agrifood purchase situations including choice, and types for each cluster were presented. To this end, questionnaire data on the frequency of social media use and online agrifood purchase behavior were collected from 245 consumers, and the validity of the measurement variables was secured through factor analysis and reliability analysis. As a result of cluster analysis according to the frequency of social media use, it was divided into three clusters. The first cluster was a group that mainly used open social media, and the second cluster was a group that used both open and closed social media and online shopping malls; The third cluster was a group with low online media usage overall, and the characteristics of each cluster appeared. Through regression analysis, the effect on product involvement, product need, and purchase channel selection when purchasing agri-food online through each of the three clusters was confirmed through regression analysis. As a result of the regression analysis, the characteristic of cluster 1 in the situation of purchasing agri-food online is a male in his 30s living in a rural area who has no reluctance to purchase agri-food on social media or online shopping malls. The characteristics of cluster 2 are mainly consumers who are interested in purchasing health food, and the consumer characteristics are represented. In the case of cluster 3, when purchasing products online, they purchase after considering quality and price a lot, and the consumer characteristics are represented as people who are more confident in purchasing offline than online. Through this study, it is judged that by identifying the differences in consumer characteristics that appear in the agri-food purchase situation according to the frequency of social media use, it can be helpful in strategic judgments in marketing practice on social media customer targeting and customer segmentation.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-24
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• 2013

The purpose of this work is to analyze the case that Yeongju Municipality Government of Gyeongbuk and Jung Donuts Co., Ltd., a franchise company, activated local economy through Farm's Franchise Commercialization (FCC) and to establish the concept of FCC. As a food service franchise company, Jung Donuts specializes in making and selling glutinous rice donuts. In cooperation with Commodity Dept. of Yeongju Municipality Government, the company cultivates raw materials under contract. Such farm's franchise business has the following advantages: First, it is meaningful in the point that it contributes to opening a new market of local agricultural products in a stable way. In short, by using most agricultural products of Yeongju as raw materials, the business serves as a stable market for farmers. Secondly, it is possible to set a reasonable price through stable supply of raw materials. It is to advantages of both producers and consumers. Thirdly, the business brings about the effect of employment rise. It can cause increases in employment of franchise head office and its agencies, and of the Commodity Dept.. Lastly, it produces the promotion effect of local special products. By expanding its agencies across the country, a franchise business can promote the items of raw materials in terms of marketing. The successful FCC needs to meet three requirements as follows. The first one is to establish systematic logistic system. Stable logistic system is required in order to directly distribute and deliver products to nationwide agencies by a producing place. The second one is constant R&D activity. Through the activity of R&D of raw materials and equipment, they should be used most effectively. The third one is to build mutual trust relationship. For long-term business achievements, it is required to establish mutual trust relationship in which relevant entities share their visions with each other and cooperate with each other.

• Journal of the Korean Society of International Agriculture
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.428-436
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• 2019

As the main objective of rice breeding programs, rice eating quality is one of critical factors directly determining the market price and the consumer preference. However, the genetic complexity of eating quality and the difficulty in accurate evaluation often constrain improvement of the eating quality in rice breeding programs. In addition, given that the rice eating quality of current cultivars has already reached some high-level, diversifying of genetic resources are demanded more than ever to improve the rice eating quality. In this study, we developed a recombinant inbred lines (RILs) population derive from Wandoaengmi6, a japonica-type Korean weedy rice with high eating quality and a high degree of glossiness of cooked rice. Year-to-year correlations between the traits in three years were shown normal distribution for major agronomic traits and physicochemical characteristics. After evaluating tested traits related to eating quality procedure, a total of ten lines were ultimately selected from the population. Increasement of the taste of cooked rice (TA) and the overall eating quality (OE) were confirmed in the selected lines, which are caused by alleles derived from Wandoaengmi6 without any linkage drag. These results indicate that the utility of wide genomic resources in Korean landrace could be of application in various rice breeding programs and countermeasure to contribute to properly response to climate change.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.83-153
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• 2015

As our economy grows and the number of aircraft increase, the number of civil execution against aircraft cases are likely to increase as well in the future. The purpose of this article is to present the legal theory on the civil execution against aircrafts by drawing on the legal theory on the civil execution against vessels which constitute a relatively large number of cases thus observed. The provisions of the civil execution against immovables or vessel, shall basically apply mutatis mutandis to the civil execution against aircraft or light aircraft. The civil execution against ultra-light flying devices or a foreign aircraft shall be executed in conformity with the civil execution against movables. There are a compulsory auction, an auction to execute a security right to aircraft, and an auction under the right of retention, etc. in the civil execution against an aircraft. A compulsory execution against an aircraft means an execution carried out by a creditor against a debtor's aircraft to obtain satisfaction of claims for the purpose of payment of money. The court of execution of a compulsory execution against an aircraft shall be the district court having jurisdiction over the airport of stoppage or storage of such aircraft at the time of seizure. The forums of execution of a compulsory execution against an aircraft shall be exclusive forums. When a court has rendered an order on commencing an auction, it shall order an execution officer to receive a certificate of the aircraft's registration and other documents as required for its operation, and to submit them to the court. A court may revoke the procedures for a compulsory auction when an execution officer fails to obtain a transfer of the aircraft's registration certificate, etc. and the location of the aircraft is not evident, not later than an elapse of 2 months from the date on which an order on commencing an auction has been rendered. In the case where it is deemed that there exists a business-related need or other based on proper reasoning, the court may permit the aircraft's operation, upon the motion submitted by the debtor. In this case, there shall be a consent from the creditor, the highest bidder, the next highest bidder and successful bidder. A court may, upon a motion submitted by the creditor, make the dispositions required for observing and preserving the aircraft. When a debtor has submitted the documents under subparagraph 2 or 4 of the Article 49 of the Civil Execution Act, and furnished the guarantee equivalent to the claims of the execution creditors and the creditors demanding a distribution and to the costs for execution, before a declaration of bid, the court shall, upon request, revoke other procedures than those for distribution. The provisions of a obligatory auction against vessel or aircraft and an auction to execute a security right to real estate or vessel, shall apply mutatis mutandis to an auction to execute the security right to aircraft. In an auction to execute the security right to aircraft case, an executive title is not necessary. An executory exemplification is not necessary in an application for an auction to execute the security right to aircraft. A court should examine the existence of security right and claim secured. No order on commencing an auction procedure shall be issued with non-existence or invalidity of the security right and absence or extinguishment of the claim secured. Furthermore, these prohibitions are the reason of a decision on non-permit for sale, the court overlooked these prohibitions, and the decision on a permit for sale became final and conclusive, the successful bidder who paid the price and registered of ownership could not acquire ownership of the aircraft sold. A court may render a ruling to put plural aircrafts up for a blanket auction, only when they are in restraint and related matter (Supreme Court Order 2001Ma3688 dated on August 22, 2001). A righter of retention on aircraft may file a request for an auction against the aircraft. The provisions of an auction to execute a security right to aircraft shall apply mutatis mutandis to the formal auction. Airport facility fee and an aircraft are not in restraint and related matter, so an airport management corporation does not hold the right of retention on the aircraft (Supreme Court Decision 2011Da29291 decided on April 10, 2014). In an auction in accordance with the right of retention, all encumbrances (e.g., mortgages) on the sold aircraft shall be extinguished by a sale under the legal conditions for sale. Not only creditors who have claims for preferential payment but also general creditors could demand for distribution. The precedence of the claim of the right of retention on aircraft and that of general creditor's claims are equal.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.49-56
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• 2010

At the initial stage of Internet advertising, banner advertising came into fashion. As the Internet developed into a central part of daily lives and the competition in the on-line advertising market was getting fierce, there was not enough space for banner advertising, which rushed to portal sites only. All these factors was responsible for an upsurge in advertising prices. Consequently, the high-cost and low-efficiency problems with banner advertising were raised, which led to an emergence of keyword advertising as a new type of Internet advertising to replace its predecessor. In the beginning of 2000s, when Internet advertising came to be activated, display advertisement including banner advertising dominated the Net. However, display advertising showed signs of gradual decline, and registered minus growth in the year 2009, whereas keyword advertising showed rapid growth and started to outdo display advertising as of the year 2005. Keyword advertising refers to the advertising technique that exposes relevant advertisements on the top of research sites when one searches for a keyword. Instead of exposing advertisements to unspecified individuals like banner advertising, keyword advertising, or targeted advertising technique, shows advertisements only when customers search for a desired keyword so that only highly prospective customers are given a chance to see them. In this context, it is also referred to as search advertising. It is regarded as more aggressive advertising with a high hit rate than previous advertising in that, instead of the seller discovering customers and running an advertisement for them like TV, radios or banner advertising, it exposes advertisements to visiting customers. Keyword advertising makes it possible for a company to seek publicity on line simply by making use of a single word and to achieve a maximum of efficiency at a minimum cost. The strong point of keyword advertising is that customers are allowed to directly contact the products in question through its more efficient advertising when compared to the advertisements of mass media such as TV and radio, etc. The weak point of keyword advertising is that a company should have its advertisement registered on each and every portal site and finds it hard to exercise substantial supervision over its advertisement, there being a possibility of its advertising expenses exceeding its profits. Keyword advertising severs as the most appropriate methods of advertising for the sales and publicity of small and medium enterprises which are in need of a maximum of advertising effect at a low advertising cost. At present, keyword advertising is divided into CPC advertising and CPM advertising. The former is known as the most efficient technique, which is also referred to as advertising based on the meter rate system; A company is supposed to pay for the number of clicks on a searched keyword which users have searched. This is representatively adopted by Overture, Google's Adwords, Naver's Clickchoice, and Daum's Clicks, etc. CPM advertising is dependent upon the flat rate payment system, making a company pay for its advertisement on the basis of the number of exposure, not on the basis of the number of clicks. This method fixes a price for advertisement on the basis of 1,000-time exposure, and is mainly adopted by Naver's Timechoice, Daum's Speciallink, and Nate's Speedup, etc, At present, the CPC method is most frequently adopted. The weak point of the CPC method is that advertising cost can rise through constant clicks from the same IP. If a company makes good use of strategies for maximizing the strong points of keyword advertising and complementing its weak points, it is highly likely to turn its visitors into prospective customers. Accordingly, an advertiser should make an analysis of customers' behavior and approach them in a variety of ways, trying hard to find out what they want. With this in mind, her or she has to put multiple keywords into use when running for ads. When he or she first runs an ad, he or she should first give priority to which keyword to select. The advertiser should consider how many individuals using a search engine will click the keyword in question and how much money he or she has to pay for the advertisement. As the popular keywords that the users of search engines are frequently using are expensive in terms of a unit cost per click, the advertisers without much money for advertising at the initial phrase should pay attention to detailed keywords suitable to their budget. Detailed keywords are also referred to as peripheral keywords or extension keywords, which can be called a combination of major keywords. Most keywords are in the form of texts. The biggest strong point of text-based advertising is that it looks like search results, causing little antipathy to it. But it fails to attract much attention because of the fact that most keyword advertising is in the form of texts. Image-embedded advertising is easy to notice due to images, but it is exposed on the lower part of a web page and regarded as an advertisement, which leads to a low click through rate. However, its strong point is that its prices are lower than those of text-based advertising. If a company owns a logo or a product that is easy enough for people to recognize, the company is well advised to make good use of image-embedded advertising so as to attract Internet users' attention. Advertisers should make an analysis of their logos and examine customers' responses based on the events of sites in question and the composition of products as a vehicle for monitoring their behavior in detail. Besides, keyword advertising allows them to analyze the advertising effects of exposed keywords through the analysis of logos. The logo analysis refers to a close analysis of the current situation of a site by making an analysis of information about visitors on the basis of the analysis of the number of visitors and page view, and that of cookie values. It is in the log files generated through each Web server that a user's IP, used pages, the time when he or she uses it, and cookie values are stored. The log files contain a huge amount of data. As it is almost impossible to make a direct analysis of these log files, one is supposed to make an analysis of them by using solutions for a log analysis. The generic information that can be extracted from tools for each logo analysis includes the number of viewing the total pages, the number of average page view per day, the number of basic page view, the number of page view per visit, the total number of hits, the number of average hits per day, the number of hits per visit, the number of visits, the number of average visits per day, the net number of visitors, average visitors per day, one-time visitors, visitors who have come more than twice, and average using hours, etc. These sites are deemed to be useful for utilizing data for the analysis of the situation and current status of rival companies as well as benchmarking. As keyword advertising exposes advertisements exclusively on search-result pages, competition among advertisers attempting to preoccupy popular keywords is very fierce. Some portal sites keep on giving priority to the existing advertisers, whereas others provide chances to purchase keywords in question to all the advertisers after the advertising contract is over. If an advertiser tries to rely on keywords sensitive to seasons and timeliness in case of sites providing priority to the established advertisers, he or she may as well make a purchase of a vacant place for advertising lest he or she should miss appropriate timing for advertising. However, Naver doesn't provide priority to the existing advertisers as far as all the keyword advertisements are concerned. In this case, one can preoccupy keywords if he or she enters into a contract after confirming the contract period for advertising. This study is designed to take a look at marketing for keyword advertising and to present effective strategies for keyword advertising marketing. At present, the Korean CPC advertising market is virtually monopolized by Overture. Its strong points are that Overture is based on the CPC charging model and that advertisements are registered on the top of the most representative portal sites in Korea. These advantages serve as the most appropriate medium for small and medium enterprises to use. However, the CPC method of Overture has its weak points, too. That is, the CPC method is not the only perfect advertising model among the search advertisements in the on-line market. So it is absolutely necessary that small and medium enterprises including independent shopping malls should complement the weaknesses of the CPC method and make good use of strategies for maximizing its strengths so as to increase their sales and to create a point of contact with customers.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.65-93
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• 2011

As relationship between buyer and seller has been brought closer and long-term relationship has been more important in B2B markets, the importance of service and service convenience increases as well as product. In homogeneous markets, where service offerings are similar and therefore not key competitive differentiator, providing greater convenience may enable a competitive advantage. Service convenience, as conceptualized by Berry et al. (2002), is defined as the consumers' time and effort perceptions related to buying or using a service. For this reason, B2B customers are interested in how fast the service is provided and how much save non-monetary cost like time or effort by the service convenience along with service quality. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impact of service convenience on relationship factors such as relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The purpose of this study is to find out whether service convenience can be a new antecedent of relationship quality and relationship performance. In addition, this study tries to examine how five-dimensional service convenience constructs (decision convenience, access convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affect customers' relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The service convenience comprises five fundamental components - decision convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with service purchase or use decisions), access convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with initiating service delivery), transaction convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with finalizing the transaction), benefit convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with experiencing the core benefits of the offering) and post-benefit convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with reestablishing subsequent contact with the firm). Earlier studies of perceived service convenience in the industrial market are none. The conventional studies that have dealt with service convenience have usually been made in the consumer market, or they have dealt with convenience aspects in the service process. This service convenience measure for consumer market can be useful tool to estimate service quality in B2B market. The conceptualization developed by Berry et al. (2002) reflects a multistage, experiential consumption process in which evaluations of convenience vary at each stage. For this reason, the service convenience measure is good for B2B service environment which has complex processes and various types. Especially when categorizing B2B service as sequential stage of service delivery like Kumar and Kumar (2004), the Berry's service convenience measure which reflect sequential flow of service deliveries suitable to establish B2B service convenience. For this study, data were gathered from respondents who often buy business service and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The sample size in the present study is 119. Composite reliability values and average variance extracted values were examined for each variable to have reliability. We determine whether the measurement model supports the convergent validity by CFA, and discriminant validity was assessed by examining the correlation matrix of the constructs. For each pair of constructs, the square root of the average variance extracted exceeded their correlations, thus supporting the discriminant validity of the constructs. Hypotheses were tested using the Smart PLS 2.0 and we calculated the PLS path values and followed with a bootstrap re-sampling method to test the hypotheses. Among the five dimensional service convenience constructs, four constructs (decision convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affected customers' positive relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. This result means that service convenience is important cue to improve relationship between buyer and seller. One of the five service convenience dimensions, access convenience, does not affect relationship quality and performance, which implies that the dimension of service convenience is not important factor of cumulative satisfaction. The Cumulative satisfaction can be distinguished from transaction-specific customer satisfaction, which is an immediate post-purchase evaluative judgment or an affective reaction to the most recent transactional experience with the firm. Because access convenience minimizes the physical effort associated with initiating an exchange, the effect on relationship satisfaction similar to cumulative satisfaction may be relatively low in terms of importance than transaction-specific customer satisfaction. Also, B2B firms focus on service quality, price, benefit, follow-up service and so on than convenience of time or place in service because it is relatively difficult to change existing transaction partners in B2B market compared to consumer market. In addition, this study using partial least squares methods reveals that customers' satisfaction and commitment toward relationship has mediating role between the service convenience and relationship performance. The result shows that management and investment to improve service convenience make customers' positive relationship satisfaction, and then the positive relationship satisfaction can enhance the relationship commitment and relationship performance. And to conclude, service convenience management is an important part of successful relationship performance management, and the service convenience is an important antecedent of relationship between buyer and seller such as the relationship commitment and relationship performance. Therefore, it has more important to improve relationship performance that service providers enhance service convenience although competitive service development or service quality improvement is important. Given the pressure to provide increased convenience, it is not surprising that organizations have made significant investments in enhancing the convenience aspect of their product and service offering.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.61-118
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• 2008

The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.