• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.35 no.6B
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• pp.908-920
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• 2010

In recent years, mobile phone market is saturated in number of user term. Associated service providers struggle to provide various mobile services such as Internet, e-commerce, game, music etc. to increase ARPU (average revenue per user) instead. In this study we explore the factors which affect price tabs of mobile communication. As a conceptual foundation, this study introduces user factors-users' propensity to use mobile phones-as independent variables and mobile service functions as mediating variables. The research model was phones-as independent variables and mobile service functions as mediating variables. The research model was tested with data from Web-based survey of 1,500 mobile users and analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM). Our results suggest that user factors impact the usage of mobile service functions and mobile service functions for information and convenience are positively related to price tabs of mobile communication. Implications for mobile service providers and policy makers are discussed.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.225-233
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• 2023

Urban rivers and their surrounding environments have been altered due to factors such as rapid economic growth and urban development. This alteration have caused the rivers to lose their original value and become exposed to various pollution, resulting decrease in citizens' quality of life. This study aims to estimate citizens' Willingness To Pay (WTP) for water quality improvement in Suyeong River in Busan. To estimate the non-market value of the Suyeong River, the WTP of Busan citizens for water quality improvement was estimated, applying Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). The WTP for improving the water quality from Grade 4(polluted water) to Grade 2(game fish like bass can live in it) was estimated using the water quality ladder concept of the US Environmental Protection Agency, assuming annual donations for five years. For the CVM, the logistic distribution and Spike Model were adopted. As a result, citizens residing in the surrounding area of Suyeong River expressed a higher WTP. Considering more than half of the Busan citizens are aware of the "conservation of nature and ecosystems" as a major function of the Suyeong River, this higher WTP could serve as a basis for improving the value of urban rivers.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.123-137
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• 2007

The advent of the Internet and related Web technologies has created an easily accessible link between a firm and its customers, and has provided opportunities to a firm to use information technology to support supplementary after-sale services associated with a product or service. It has been widely recognized that supplementary services are an important source of customer value and of competitive advantage as the characteristics of the product itself. Many of these supplementary services are information-based and need not be co-located with the product, so more and more companies are delivering these services electronically. Net-based customer service, which is defined as an Internet-based computerized information system that delivers services to a customer, therefore, is the core infrastructure for supplementary service provision. The importance of net-based customer service in delivering supplementary after-sale services associated with product has been well documented. The strategic advantages of well-implemented net-based customer service are enhanced customer loyalty and higher lock-in of customers, and a resulting reduction in competition and the consequent increase in profits. However, not all customers utilize such net-based customer service. The digital divide is the phenomenon in our society that captures the observation that not all customers have equal access to computers. Socioeconomic factors such as race, gender, and education level are strongly related to Internet accessibility and ability to use. This is due to the differences in the ability to bear the cost of a computer, and the differences in self-efficacy in the use of a technology, among other reasons. This concept, applied to e-commerce, has been called the "e-commerce divide." High Internet penetration is not eradicating the digital divide and e-commerce divide as one would hope. Besides, to accommodate personalized support, a customer must often provide personal information to the firm. This personal information includes not only name and address, but also preferences information and perhaps valuation information. However, many recent studies show that consumers may not be willing to share information about themselves due to concerns about privacy online. Due to the e-commerce divide, and due to privacy and security concerns of the customer for sharing personal information with firms, limited numbers of customers adopt net-based customer service. The limited level of customer adoption of net-based customer service affects the firm profits and the customers' welfare. We use a game-theoretic model in which we model the net-based customer service system as a mechanism to enhance customers' loyalty. We model a market entry scenario where a firm (the incumbent) uses the net-based customer service system in inducing loyalty in its customer base. The firm sells one product through the traditional retailing channels and at a price set for these channels. Another firm (the entrant) enters the market, and having observed the price of the incumbent firm (and after deducing the loyalty levels in the customer base), chooses its price. The profits of the firms and the surplus of the two customers segments (the segment that utilizes net-based customer service and the segment that does not) are analyzed in the Stackelberg leader-follower model of competition between the firms. We find that an increase in adoption of net-based customer service by the customer base is not always desirable for firms. With low effectiveness in enhancing customer loyalty, firms prefer a high level of customer adoption of net-based customer service, because an increase in adoption rate decreases competition and increases profits. A firm in an industry where net-based customer service is highly effective loyalty mechanism, on the other hand, prefers a low level of adoption by customers.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.658-675
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• 2022

With the advent of the OTT platform, the world has become an era in which the same media content is shared and reacted in real time by being grouped into one culture. This study attempts a producer study of web novel writers, who are producers of the web novel market that is expanding into webtoons, dramas, and movies with IP (intellectual property rights) of the original story at a time when Korean K-content such as "Squid Game" and "Weird Lawyer Woo Young-woo" leads the global market. In this study, web novel writers were viewed as producers of commercial media content, not just 'Novelist', and their identities and characteristics of the labor process were examined. Web novel writers began writing web novels as a side job or two jobs, and cited the fact that they can make profits alone without barriers to entry and without incurring capital or facility costs. Although there is no barrier to entry, most writers experience severe failure in their first work, which is attributed to the misunderstanding that the word "writer" is someone who writes what they want in any genre. Web novels are different, so writers go through the process of realizing that in order to succeed by writing web novels, they must be thoroughly in the audience's shoes and write them according to the trends and codes they want. Web novel writers expressed their identity as "story sellers," "story producers," "people who can produce IP alone," and "people who satisfy fantasies that cannot be achieved in reality," and in common, there was a strong sense of being a person who provides stories and makes profits or sales. Regarding the burden of writing a huge amount of web novels, the writer with a high income expressed a generous position that "the income is higher than the effort," but ordinary writers complained of difficulties in the hard work, saying, "It seems like I am working hard on writing that I have to write constantly.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.41
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• pp.553-578
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• 2015

The Korean society was forcefully merged with the invasion of Japan in 20th century, and traditional culture of Korea was damaged severely by colonization from Japan. After liberation, Korean society experienced drastic social change with Korean War, and industrial economy and democratic system developed as modernization and democratization occurred. However, Korean traditional culture dissolved more severely as Korean society developed industrial economy and democracy. As criticism of existing Western center of society and the emphasis of cultural identity of non-western regions and third-world, world society preferred exchange of culture of diverse nations and people with each other in advent of postmodernism thoughts in mid-late 20th century. If the cultural identity of Korea was dissolving meanwhile, it was needed to be recovered again. Despite the research in Korean history, language, art, architecture was performed to recover cultural identity of Korea, it did not go in-depth with Korean mythology, for Korean mythology is considered as superstition or savage. Mythology shows subconscious group psychology of people who live in certain specific region. Studying Korean mythology is one of the ways to rediscover cultural identity of Korea. In order for Korean mythology to be known to many people, its stories should be told by media. There were movies, plays, drama, and novels produced based on existing Korean mythology as introduction, then these mythical stories are appear in subculture contents such as recent comics, animation, webtoon, games, and light novels. Then population of game players and webtoon readers increased as dissemination of PC and smart phones, and increasing market scale of subculture contents increased a population of consumers of comics, animation, and light novel. Consumers of sub-culture contents were interested as many of these contents were created, base on Korean mythology. Therefore, this paper is written as research on Korean mythology and its signification in sub-cultural contents which were produced base on Korean mythology.