• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.5-16
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• 2009

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities have been shown to be potential factors that can improve corporate image and increase the ability of corporations to compete. However, most previous studies related to CSR activities investigated how these activities influence product and corporate evaluation, as well as corporate image. In addition, some researchers treated consumers' perceptions of corporate motives as moderator variables in evaluating the relationship between corporate social responsibilities and consumer response. However, motive-based theories have some weaknesses. Corporate social responsibility activities cause two motives(egoistic vs. altruistic) for consumers, but recently, Vlachos et al. (2008) argued that these motives should be segmented. Thus, it is possible to transform the original theory into a modified theory model (persuasion knowledge model, PKM). Vlachos et al. (2008) segmented corporate social responsibility motives into four types and compared the effects of these motives on customer loyalty. Prior studies have proved that CSR activities with positive motives have positive influences on customer loyalty. However, the psychological reasons underlying this finding have not been determined empirically. Thus, the objectives of this research are twofold. First, we attempt to determine why most customers favor companies that they feel have positive motives for their corporate social responsibility activities. Second, we attempt to measure the effects of consumers' reciprocity when society benefits from corporate social responsibility activities. The following research hypotheses are constructed. H1: Values-driven motives for corporate social responsibility activities have a positive influence on the perceived reciprocity. H2: Stakeholder-driven motives for corporate social responsibility activities have a negative influence on the perceived reciprocity. H3: Egoistic-driven motives for corporate social responsibility activities have a negative influence on perceived reciprocity. H4: Strategic-driven motives for corporate social responsibility activities have a negative influence on perceived reciprocity. H5: Perceived reciprocity for corporate social responsibility activities has a positive influence on consumer loyalty. A single company is selected as a research subject to understand how the motives behind corporate social responsibility influence consumers' perceived reciprocity and customer loyalty. A total sample of 200 respondents was selected for a pilot test. In addition, to ensure a consistent response, we ensured that the respondents were older than 20 years of age. The surveys of 172 respondents (males-82, females-90) were analyzed after 28 invalid questionnaires were excluded. Based on our cutoff criteria, the model fit the data reasonably well. Values-driven motives for corporate social responsibility activities had a positive effect on perceived reciprocity (t = 6.75, p < .001), supporting H1. Morales (2005) also found that consumers appreciate a company's social responsibility efforts and the benefits provided by these efforts to society. Stakeholder-driven motives for corporate social responsibility activities did not affect perceived reciprocity (t = -.049, p > .05). Thus, H2 was rejected. Egoistic-driven motives (t = .3.11, p < .05) and strategic-driven (t = -4.65, p < .05) motives had a negative influence on perceived reciprocity, supporting H3 and H4, respectively. Furthermore, perceived reciprocity had a positive influence on consumer loyalty (t = 4.24, p < .05), supporting H5. Thus, compared with the general public, undergraduate students appear to be more influenced by egoistic-driven motives. We draw the following conclusions from our research findings. First, value-driven attributions have a positive influence on perceived reciprocity. However, stakeholder-driven attributions have no significant effects on perceived reciprocity. Moreover, both egoistic-driven attributions and strategic-driven attributions have a negative influence on perceived reciprocity. Second, when corporate social responsibility activities align with consumers' reciprocity, the efforts directed towards social responsibility activities have a positive influence on customer loyalty. In this study, we examine whether the type of motivation affects consumer responses to CSR, and in particular, we evaluate how CSR motives can influence a key internal factor (perceived reciprocity) and behavioral consumer outcome (customer loyalty). We demonstrate that perceived reciprocity plays a mediating role in the relationship between CSR motivation and customer loyalty. Our study extends the research on consumer CSR-inferred motivations, positing them as a direct indicator of consumer responses. Furthermore, we convincingly identify perceived reciprocity as a sub-process mediating the effect of CSR attributions on customer loyalty. Future research investigating the ultimate behavior and financial impact of CSR should consider that the impacts of CSR also stem from perceived reciprocity. The results of this study also have important managerial implications. First, the central role that reciprocity plays indicates that managers should routinely measure how much their socially responsible actions create perceived reciprocity. Second, understanding how consumers' perceptions of CSR corporate motives relate to perceived reciprocity and customer loyalty can help managers to monitor and enhance these consumer outcomes through marketing initiatives and management of CSR-induced attribution processes. The results of this study will help corporations to understand the relative importance of the four different motivations types in influencing perceived reciprocity.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.177-200
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• 2017

This writer have thus far reviewed the civil and criminal obligations of the directors of a parent company that sponsored financially troubled affiliates. What was discussed here applies to logistics companies in the same manner. Hanjin Shipping cannot expect its parent company, Korean Air to prop it up financially. If such financial aid is offered without any collateral, under Korean criminal law, the directors of the parent company bears the burden of civil and criminal responsibility. One way to get around this is to secure fairness in terms of the process and the content of aid. Fairness in terms of process refers to the board of directors making public all information and approving such aid. Fairness in terms of content refers to impartial transactions that block out any possibilities of the chairman of the corporate group acting in his private interest. In the case of Korean Air bailing out Hanjin, the meeting of board of directors were held five times and a thorough review was conducted on the risks involved in the loans being repaid or not. After the review, measures to guard against undesirable scenarios were established before finally deciding on bailing out Hanjin. As such, there are no issues. In terms of the fairness of content, too, there were practically no room for the majority shareholder or controlling shareholder to pocket profits at the expense of the company. This is because the continued aid offered to a financially troubled company (i.e. Hanjin Shipping) was a posing a burden to even the controlling shareholder. This writer argues that the concept of the interest of the entire corporate group needs to be recognized. That is, it must be recognized that the relationship of control and being controlled between parent company and affiliate company, or between affiliate companies serves a practical benefit to the ongoing concern and growth of the group and is therefore just. Moreover, the corporate group and its affiliates, as well as their directors and management must recognize that they have an obligation to prioritize the interests of the corporate group ahead of the interests of the company that they are directly associated with. As such, even if Korean Air offered a loan to Hanjin Shipping without collateral, the act cannot be treated as an offense to law, nor can the directors be accused of damages that they bear the responsibility of compensating under civil law.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.199-207
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• 2010

For us, there is virtually no distinction between being a responsible citizen and a successful business... they are one and the same for Wal-Mart today." ~ Lee Scott, al-Mart CEO after the 2005 Katrina disaster; cited in Green to Gold (Esty and Winston 2006). Lee Scott's statement signaled a new era in sustainability as manufacturers and retailers around the globe watched the world's largest mass merchandiser confirm its intentions with respect to sustainability. For decades, the environmental movement has grown, slowly bleeding over into the corporate world. Companies have been born, products have been created, academic journals have been launched, and government initiatives have been undertaken - all in the pursuit of sustainability (Peattie and Crane 2005). While progress has been admittedly slower than some may desire, the emergence and entrance of environmentally concerned mass merchandisers has done much to help with sustainable efforts. To better understand this movement, we incorporate the perspectives of both executives and consumers involved in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. This research relies on three underlying themes: (1) Conceptual and anecdotal evidence suggests that companies undertake sustainability initiatives for a plethora of reasons, (2) The number of sustainability initiatives continues to increase in the consumer packaged goods industries, and (3) That it is, therefore, necessary to explore the role that sustainability plays in the minds of consumers. In light of these themes, surveys were administered to and completed by 143 college students and 101 business executives to assess a number of variables in regards to sustainability including willingness-to-pay, behavioral intentions, attitudes, willingness-to-pay, and preferences. Survey results indicate that the top three reasons why executives believe sustainability to be important include (1) the opportunity for profitability, (2) the fulfillment of an obligation to the environment, and (3) a responsibility to customers and shareholders. College students identified the top three reasons as (1) a responsibility to the environment, (2) an indebtedness to future generations, and (3) an effective management of resources. While the rationale for supporting sustainability efforts differed between college students and executives, the executives and consumers reported similar responses for the majority of the remaining sustainability issues. Furthermore, when we asked consumers to assess the importance of six key issues (healthcare, economy, education, crime, government spending, and environment) previously identified as important to consumers by Gallup Poll, protecting the environment only ranked fourth out of the six (Carlson 2005). While all six of these issues were identified as important, the top three that emerged as most important were (1) improvements in education, (2) the economy, and (3) health care. As the pursuit and incorporation of sustainability continues to evolve, so too will the expected outcomes. New definitions of performance that reflect the social/business benefits as well as the lengthened implementation period are relevant and warranted (Ehrenfeld 2005; Hitchcock and Willard 2006). We identified three primary categories of outcomes based on a literature review of both anecdotal and conceptual expectations of sustainability: (1) improvements in constituent satisfaction, (2) differentiation opportunities, and (3) financial rewards. Within each of these categories, several specific outcomes were identified resulting in eleven different outcomes arising from sustainability initiatives. Our survey results indicate that the top five most likely outcomes for companies that pursue sustainability are: (1) green consumers will be more satisfied, (2) company image will be better, (3) corporate responsibility will be enhanced, (4) energy costs will be reduced, and (5) products will be more innovative. Additionally, to better understand the interesting intersection between the environmental "identity" of a consumer and the willingness to manifest that identity with marketplace purchases, we extended prior research developed by Experian Research (2008). Accordingly, respondents were categorized as one of four types of green consumers (Behavioral Greens, Think Greens, Potential Greens, or True Browns) to garner a better understanding of the green consumer in addition to assisting with a more effective interpretation of results. We assessed these consumers' willingness to engage in eco-friendly behavior by evaluating three options: (1) shopping at retailers that support environmental initiatives, (2) paying more for products that protect the environment, and (3) paying higher taxes so the government can support environmental initiatives. Think Greens expressed the greatest willingness to change, followed by Behavioral Greens, Potential Greens, and True Browns. These differences were all significant at p<.01. Further Conclusions and Implications We have undertaken a descriptive study which seeks to enhance our understanding of the strategic domain of sustainability. Specifically, this research fills a gap in the literature by comparing and contrasting the sustainability views of business executives and consumers with specific regard to preferences, intentions, willingness-to-pay, behavior, and attitudes. For practitioners, much can be gained from a strategic standpoint. In addition to the many results already reported, respondents also reported than willing to pay more for products that protect the environment. Other specific results indicate that female respondents consistently communicate a stronger willingness than males to pay more for these products and to shop at eco-friendly retailers. Knowing this additional information, practitioners can now have a more specific market in which to target and communicate their sustainability efforts. While this research is only an initial step towards understanding similarities and differences among practitioners and consumers regarding sustainability, it presents original findings that contribute to both practice and research. Future research should be directed toward examining other variables affecting this relationship, as well as other specific industries.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.49 no.5
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• pp.624-632
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• 2000

Background : Home ventilation can decrease hospital-acquired infection, increase physical activity, improve nutritional status, enhance quality of life, and reduce medical costs. The number of patient using home ventilators has been increasing, particularly in Europe and United States. Although the number of patients with home ventilation has been increasing in Korea, the current status of these patients is not well known. This study was undertaken to obtain basic information upon these patients in addition to evaluating any problems related to patients' home care in our country. Methods : A register of 92 patients with home ventilators in Seoul and Kyunggi Province were obtained from commercial ventilator supply companies. The patients were contacted by phone and 29 of them accepted our visit. Information concerning education about home care before discharge, equipment cost, and problems related to home care were documented. The mode and preset variables of the home ventilator were checked; tidal volume (TV), peak airway pressure, and oxygen saturation were measured. Results : There were 26 males (90%) and their mean age was 48.0 (${\pm}20.1$) years. The underlying diseases were : 21 neuromuscular disorders, 2 spinal cord injuries, 6 chronic lung diseases. Among the caregivers, spouses (n=14) predominated. Education for home care before discharge was performed primarily by intensive care unit nurses and the education for ventilator management by commercial companies. Twenty-five of the 29 patients had tracheostomies. Volume targeted type (VTT ; n=20, 69%) was more frequently used than the pressure targeted type (PTT). Twenty-three of the 29 patients purchased a ventilator privately, which cost 7,450,000 (${\pm}$3,290,000) won for a PTT, and 14,280.000 (${\pm}$3,130,000) won for a VTT. Total cost for the equipment was 11,430,000 (${\pm}$634,000) won. The average cost required for home care per month was 1,120,000 (${\pm}$1,360, 000) won. Conclusion : The commonest underlying disease of the patients was neuromuscular disease. The VTT ventilator was primarily used with tracheostomy. Patients and their families considered the financial difficulties associated with purchasing and maintaining equipment for home care an urgent problem. Some patients were aided by a visiting nurse, however most patients were neglected and left without professional medical supervision.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.71-90
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• 2020

Recently, the global insurance industry is rapidly developing digital transformation through the use of artificial intelligence technologies such as machine learning, natural language processing, and deep learning. As a result, more and more foreign insurers have achieved the success of artificial intelligence technology-based InsurTech and platform business, and Ping An Insurance Group Ltd., China's largest private company, is leading China's global fourth industrial revolution with remarkable achievements in InsurTech and Digital Platform as a result of its constant innovation, using 'finance and technology' and 'finance and ecosystem' as keywords for companies. In response, this study analyzed the InsurTech and platform business activities of Ping An Insurance Group Ltd. through the ser-M analysis model to provide strategic implications for revitalizing AI technology-based businesses of domestic insurers. The ser-M analysis model has been studied so that the vision and leadership of the CEO, the historical environment of the enterprise, the utilization of various resources, and the unique mechanism relationships can be interpreted in an integrated manner as a frame that can be interpreted in terms of the subject, environment, resource and mechanism. As a result of the case analysis, Ping An Insurance Group Ltd. has achieved cost reduction and customer service development by digitally innovating its entire business area such as sales, underwriting, claims, and loan service by utilizing core artificial intelligence technologies such as facial, voice, and facial expression recognition. In addition, "online data in China" and "the vast offline data and insights accumulated by the company" were combined with new technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data analysis to build a digital platform that integrates financial services and digital service businesses. Ping An Insurance Group Ltd. challenged constant innovation, and as of 2019, sales reached $155 billion, ranking seventh among all companies in the Global 2000 rankings selected by Forbes Magazine. Analyzing the background of the success of Ping An Insurance Group Ltd. from the perspective of ser-M, founder Mammingz quickly captured the development of digital technology, market competition and changes in population structure in the era of the fourth industrial revolution, and established a new vision and displayed an agile leadership of digital technology-focused. Based on the strong leadership led by the founder in response to environmental changes, the company has successfully led InsurTech and Platform Business through innovation of internal resources such as investment in artificial intelligence technology, securing excellent professionals, and strengthening big data capabilities, combining external absorption capabilities, and strategic alliances among various industries. Through this success story analysis of Ping An Insurance Group Ltd., the following implications can be given to domestic insurance companies that are preparing for digital transformation. First, CEOs of domestic companies also need to recognize the paradigm shift in industry due to the change in digital technology and quickly arm themselves with digital technology-oriented leadership to spearhead the digital transformation of enterprises. Second, the Korean government should urgently overhaul related laws and systems to further promote the use of data between different industries and provide drastic support such as deregulation, tax benefits and platform provision to help the domestic insurance industry secure global competitiveness. Third, Korean companies also need to make bolder investments in the development of artificial intelligence technology so that systematic securing of internal and external data, training of technical personnel, and patent applications can be expanded, and digital platforms should be quickly established so that diverse customer experiences can be integrated through learned artificial intelligence technology. Finally, since there may be limitations to generalization through a single case of an overseas insurance company, I hope that in the future, more extensive research will be conducted on various management strategies related to artificial intelligence technology by analyzing cases of multiple industries or multiple companies or conducting empirical research.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.1-22
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• 2021

Aspect Based Sentiment Analysis (ABSA), which analyzes sentiment based on aspects that appear in the text, is drawing attention because it can be used in various business industries. ABSA is a study that analyzes sentiment by aspects for multiple aspects that a text has. It is being studied in various forms depending on the purpose, such as analyzing all targets or just aspects and sentiments. Here, the aspect refers to the property of a target, and the target refers to the text that causes the sentiment. For example, for restaurant reviews, you could set the aspect into food taste, food price, quality of service, mood of the restaurant, etc. Also, if there is a review that says, "The pasta was delicious, but the salad was not," the words "steak" and "salad," which are directly mentioned in the sentence, become the "target." So far, in ABSA, most studies have analyzed sentiment only based on aspects or targets. However, even with the same aspects or targets, sentiment analysis may be inaccurate. Instances would be when aspects or sentiment are divided or when sentiment exists without a target. For example, sentences like, "Pizza and the salad were good, but the steak was disappointing." Although the aspect of this sentence is limited to "food," conflicting sentiments coexist. In addition, in the case of sentences such as "Shrimp was delicious, but the price was extravagant," although the target here is "shrimp," there are opposite sentiments coexisting that are dependent on the aspect. Finally, in sentences like "The food arrived too late and is cold now." there is no target (NULL), but it transmits a negative sentiment toward the aspect "service." Like this, failure to consider both aspects and targets - when sentiment or aspect is divided or when sentiment exists without a target - creates a dual dependency problem. To address this problem, this research analyzes sentiment by considering both aspects and targets (Target-Aspect-Sentiment Detection, hereby TASD). This study detected the limitations of existing research in the field of TASD: local contexts are not fully captured, and the number of epochs and batch size dramatically lowers the F1-score. The current model excels in spotting overall context and relations between each word. However, it struggles with phrases in the local context and is relatively slow when learning. Therefore, this study tries to improve the model's performance. To achieve the objective of this research, we additionally used auxiliary loss in aspect-sentiment classification by constructing CNN(Convolutional Neural Network) layers parallel to existing models. If existing models have analyzed aspect-sentiment through BERT encoding, Pooler, and Linear layers, this research added CNN layer-adaptive average pooling to existing models, and learning was progressed by adding additional loss values for aspect-sentiment to existing loss. In other words, when learning, the auxiliary loss, computed through CNN layers, allowed the local context to be captured more fitted. After learning, the model is designed to do aspect-sentiment analysis through the existing method. To evaluate the performance of this model, two datasets, SemEval-2015 task 12 and SemEval-2016 task 5, were used and the f1-score increased compared to the existing models. When the batch was 8 and epoch was 5, the difference was largest between the F1-score of existing models and this study with 29 and 45, respectively. Even when batch and epoch were adjusted, the F1-scores were higher than the existing models. It can be said that even when the batch and epoch numbers were small, they can be learned effectively compared to the existing models. Therefore, it can be useful in situations where resources are limited. Through this study, aspect-based sentiments can be more accurately analyzed. Through various uses in business, such as development or establishing marketing strategies, both consumers and sellers will be able to make efficient decisions. In addition, it is believed that the model can be fully learned and utilized by small businesses, those that do not have much data, given that they use a pre-training model and recorded a relatively high F1-score even with limited resources.

• 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.

• Korean small business review
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.85-102
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• 2009

With the continued globalization of world markets, transfer pricing has become one of the dominant sources of controversy in international taxation. Transfer pricing is the process by which a multinational corporation calculates a price for goods and services that are transferred to affiliated entities. Consider a Korean electronic enterprise that buys supplies from its own subsidiary located in China. How much the Korean parent company pays its subsidiary will determine how much profit the Chinese unit reports in local taxes. If the parent company pays above normal market prices, it may appear to have a poor profit, even if the group as a whole shows a respectable profit margin. In this way, transfer prices impact the taxable income reported in each country in which the multinational enterprise operates. It's importance lies in that around 60% of international trade involves transactions between two related parts of multinationals, according to the OECD. Multinational enterprises (hereafter MEs) exert much effort into utilizing organizational advantages to make global investments. MEs wish to minimize their tax burden. So MEs spend a fortune on economists and accountants to justify transfer prices that suit their tax needs. On the contrary, local governments are not prepared to cope with MEs' powerful financial instruments. Tax authorities in each country wish to ensure that the tax base of any ME is divided fairly. Thus, both tax authorities and MEs have a vested interest in the way in which a transfer price is determined, and this is why MEs' international transfer prices are at the center of disputes concerned with taxation. Transfer pricing issues and practices are sometimes difficult to control for regulators because the tax administration does not have enough staffs with the knowledge and resources necessary to understand them. The authors examine transfer pricing practices to provide relevant resources useful in designing tax incentives and regulation schemes for policy makers. This study focuses on identifying the relevant business and environmental factors that could influence the international transfer pricing of MEs. In this perspective, we empirically investigate how the management perception of related variables influences their choice of international transfer pricing methods. We believe that this research is particularly useful in the design of tax policy. Because it can concentrate on a few selected factors in consideration of the limited budget of the tax administration with assistance of this research. Data is composed of questionnaire responses from foreign firms in Korea with investment balances exceeding one million dollars in the end of 2004. We mailed questionnaires to 861 managers in charge of the accounting departments of each company, resulting in 121 valid responses. Seventy six percent of the sample firms are classified as small and medium sized enterprises with assets below 100 billion Korean won. Reviewing transfer pricing methods, cost-based transfer pricing is most popular showing that 60 firms have adopted it. The market-based method is used by 31 firms, and 13 firms have reported the resale-pricing method. Regarding the nationalities of foreign investors, the Japanese and the Americans constitute most of the sample. Logistic regressions have been performed for statistical analysis. The dependent variable is binary in that whether the method of international transfer pricing is a market-based method or a cost-based method. This type of binary classification is founded on the belief that the market-based method is evaluated as the relatively objective way of pricing compared with the cost-based methods. Cost-based pricing is assumed to give mangers flexibility in transfer pricing decisions. Therefore, local regulatory agencies are thought to prefer market-based pricing over cost-based pricing. Independent variables are composed of eight factors such as corporate tax rate, tariffs, relations with local tax authorities, tax audit, equity ratios of local investors, volume of internal trade, sales volume, and product life cycle. The first four variables are included in the model because taxation lies in the center of transfer pricing disputes. So identifying the impact of these variables in Korean business environments is much needed. Equity ratio is included to represent the interest of local partners. Volume of internal trade was sometimes employed in previous research to check the pricing behavior of managers, so we have followed these footsteps in this paper. Product life cycle is used as a surrogate of competition in local markets. Control variables are firm size and nationality of foreign investors. Firm size is controlled using dummy variables in that whether or not the specific firm is small and medium sized. This is because some researchers report that big firms show different behaviors compared with small and medium sized firms in transfer pricing. The other control variable is also expressed in dummy variable showing if the entrepreneur is the American or not. That's because some prior studies conclude that the American management style is different in that they limit branch manger's freedom of decision. Reviewing the statistical results, we have found that managers prefer the cost-based method over the market-based method as the importance of corporate taxes and tariffs increase. This result means that managers need flexibility to lessen the tax burden when they feel taxes are important. They also prefer the cost-based method as the product life cycle matures, which means that they support subsidiaries in local market competition using cost-based transfer pricing. On the contrary, as the relationship with local tax authorities becomes more important, managers prefer the market-based method. That is because market-based pricing is a better way to maintain good relations with the tax officials. Other variables like tax audit, volume of internal transactions, sales volume, and local equity ratio have shown only insignificant influence. Additionally, we have replaced two tax variables(corporate taxes and tariffs) with the data showing top marginal tax rate and mean tariff rates of each country, and have performed another regression to find if we could get different results compared with the former one. As a consequence, we have found something different on the part of mean tariffs, that shows only an insignificant influence on the dependent variable. We guess that each company in the sample pays tariffs with a specific rate applied only for one's own company, which could be located far from mean tariff rates. Therefore we have concluded we need a more detailed data that shows the tariffs of each company if we want to check the role of this variable. Considering that the present paper has heavily relied on questionnaires, an effort to build a reliable data base is needed for enhancing the research reliability.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.107-122
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• 2017

Volatility in the stock market returns is a measure of investment risk. It plays a central role in portfolio optimization, asset pricing and risk management as well as most theoretical financial models. Engle(1982) presented a pioneering paper on the stock market volatility that explains the time-variant characteristics embedded in the stock market return volatility. His model, Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (ARCH), was generalized by Bollerslev(1986) as GARCH models. Empirical studies have shown that GARCH models describes well the fat-tailed return distributions and volatility clustering phenomenon appearing in stock prices. The parameters of the GARCH models are generally estimated by the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) based on the standard normal density. But, since 1987 Black Monday, the stock market prices have become very complex and shown a lot of noisy terms. Recent studies start to apply artificial intelligent approach in estimating the GARCH parameters as a substitute for the MLE. The paper presents SVR-based GARCH process and compares with MLE-based GARCH process to estimate the parameters of GARCH models which are known to well forecast stock market volatility. Kernel functions used in SVR estimation process are linear, polynomial and radial. We analyzed the suggested models with KOSPI 200 Index. This index is constituted by 200 blue chip stocks listed in the Korea Exchange. We sampled KOSPI 200 daily closing values from 2010 to 2015. Sample observations are 1487 days. We used 1187 days to train the suggested GARCH models and the remaining 300 days were used as testing data. First, symmetric and asymmetric GARCH models are estimated by MLE. We forecasted KOSPI 200 Index return volatility and the statistical metric MSE shows better results for the asymmetric GARCH models such as E-GARCH or GJR-GARCH. This is consistent with the documented non-normal return distribution characteristics with fat-tail and leptokurtosis. Compared with MLE estimation process, SVR-based GARCH models outperform the MLE methodology in KOSPI 200 Index return volatility forecasting. Polynomial kernel function shows exceptionally lower forecasting accuracy. We suggested Intelligent Volatility Trading System (IVTS) that utilizes the forecasted volatility results. IVTS entry rules are as follows. If forecasted tomorrow volatility will increase then buy volatility today. If forecasted tomorrow volatility will decrease then sell volatility today. If forecasted volatility direction does not change we hold the existing buy or sell positions. IVTS is assumed to buy and sell historical volatility values. This is somewhat unreal because we cannot trade historical volatility values themselves. But our simulation results are meaningful since the Korea Exchange introduced volatility futures contract that traders can trade since November 2014. The trading systems with SVR-based GARCH models show higher returns than MLE-based GARCH in the testing period. And trading profitable percentages of MLE-based GARCH IVTS models range from 47.5% to 50.0%, trading profitable percentages of SVR-based GARCH IVTS models range from 51.8% to 59.7%. MLE-based symmetric S-GARCH shows +150.2% return and SVR-based symmetric S-GARCH shows +526.4% return. MLE-based asymmetric E-GARCH shows -72% return and SVR-based asymmetric E-GARCH shows +245.6% return. MLE-based asymmetric GJR-GARCH shows -98.7% return and SVR-based asymmetric GJR-GARCH shows +126.3% return. Linear kernel function shows higher trading returns than radial kernel function. Best performance of SVR-based IVTS is +526.4% and that of MLE-based IVTS is +150.2%. SVR-based GARCH IVTS shows higher trading frequency. This study has some limitations. Our models are solely based on SVR. Other artificial intelligence models are needed to search for better performance. We do not consider costs incurred in the trading process including brokerage commissions and slippage costs. IVTS trading performance is unreal since we use historical volatility values as trading objects. The exact forecasting of stock market volatility is essential in the real trading as well as asset pricing models. Further studies on other machine learning-based GARCH models can give better information for the stock market investors.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.247-269
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• 2007

In recent years, one of the major reasons for the fierce competition amongst firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares and customer acquisition rate in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Because of this change in recent marketing environment, the differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important to gain competitive advantage. Price promotion is the favorite strategy that most retailers use to achieve short-term sales increase, induce consumer's brand switch, in troduce new product into market, and so forth. However, if marketers apply or copy an identical price promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in product and consumer preference, it will cause serious problems because discounted price itself could make people skeptical about product quality, and the changes of perceived value might appear differently depending on other factors such as consumer involvement or brand attitude. Previous studies showed that price promotion would certainly increase sales, and the discounted price compared to regular price would enhance the consumer's perceived values. On the other hand, discounted price itself could make people depreciate or skeptical about product quality, and reduce the consumers' positivity bias because consumers might be unsure whether the current price promotion is the retailer's best price offer. Moreover, we cannot say that discounted price absolutely enhances the consumer's perceived values regardless of product category and purchase situations. That is, the factors that affect consumers' value perceptions and buying behavior are so diverse in reality that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what variable was used or how experiment conditions were designed. Majority of previous researches on the effect of price-comparison advertising have used consumers' buying behavior as dependent variable. In order to figure out consumers' buying behavior theoretically, analysis of value perceptions which influence buying intentions is needed. In addition, they did not combined the independent variables such as brand loyalty and price discount rate together. For this reason, this paper tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception. And we provided with theoretical and managerial implications that marketers need to consider such variables as product attributes, brand loyalty, and consumer involvement at the same time, and then establish a differentiated pricing strategy case by case in order to enhance consumer's perceived values properl. Three research concepts were used in our study and each concept based on past researches was defined. The perceived acquisition value in this study was defined as the perceived net gains associated with the products or services acquired. That is, the perceived acquisition value of the product will be positively influenced by the benefits buyers believe they are getting by acquiring and using the product, and negatively influenced by the money given up to acquire the product. And the perceived transaction value was defined as the perception of psychological satisfaction or pleasure obtained from taking advantage of the financial terms of the price deal. Lastly, the brand loyalty was defined as favorable attitude towards a purchased product. Thus, a consumer loyal to a brand has an emotional attachment to the brand or firm. Repeat purchasers continue to buy the same brand even though they do not have an emotional attachment to it. We assumed that if the degree of brand loyalty is high, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value will increase when higher discount rate is provided. But we found that there are no significant differences in values between two different discount rates as a result of empirical analysis. It means that price reduction did not affect consumer's brand choice significantly because the perceived sacrifice decreased only a little, and customers are satisfied with product's benefits when brand loyalty is high. From the result, we confirmed that consumers with high degree of brand loyalty to a specific product are less sensitive to price change. Thus, using price promotion strategy to merely expect sale increase is not recommendable. Instead of discounting price, marketers need to strengthen consumers' brand loyalty and maintain the skimming strategy. On the contrary, when the degree of brand loyalty is low, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value decreased significantly when higher discount rate is provided. Generally brands that are considered inferior might be able to draw attention away from the quality of the product by making consumers focus more on the sacrifice component of price. But considering the fact that consumers with low degree of brand loyalty are known to be unsatisfied with product's benefits and have relatively negative brand attitude, bigger price reduction offered in experiment condition of this paper made consumers depreciate product's quality and benefit more and more, and consumer's psychological perceived sacrifice increased while perceived values decreased accordingly. We infer that, in the case of inferior brand, a drastic price-cut or frequent price promotion may increase consumers' uncertainty about overall components of product. Therefore, it appears that reinforcing the augmented product such as after-sale service, delivery and giving credit which is one of the levels consisting of product would be more effective in reality. This will be better rather than competing with product that holds high brand loyalty by reducing sale price. Although this study tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception, there are several limitations. This study was conducted in controlled conditions where the high involvement product and two different levels of discount rate were applied. Given the presence of low involvement product, when both pieces of information are available, it is likely that the results we have reported here may have been different. Thus, this research results explain only the specific situation. Second, the sample selected in this study was university students in their twenties, so we cannot say that the results are firmly effective to all generations. Future research that manipulates the level of discount along with the consumer involvement might lead to a more robust understanding of the effects various discount rate. And, we used a cellular phone as a product stimulus, so it would be very interesting to analyze the result when the product stimulus is an intangible product such as service. It could be also valuable to analyze whether the change of perceived value affects consumers' final buying behavior positively or negatively.