• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.10
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• pp.47-57
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• 2016

Purpose - This study's purpose is to investigate the market structure of the Korean duty free shop industry that has received recent attention from researchers and practitioners. By raising the question of whether or not the Korean duty free shop industry is unequivocally monopolistic, a wider viewpoint is provided. The study seeks to offer insights and managerial implications for marketers and policy makers who are in charge of regulating major Korean duty free shops. Research design, data, and methodology - The authors use secondary data from various sources, including Korea Customs Service and the Moodie Report, to investigate the structure of the duty free shop industry of Korea. Based on several theories, they present various criteria and statistical evidence such as K-firm concentration ratio, HHI, consumer substitutability, excess profit, and marketing costs. Results - In terms of consumer substitutability, it is difficult to confirm whether or not the Korean duty free shop industry is monopolistic. Notwithstanding monopoly characteristics in terms of market share, neither the company Lotte nor Shilla appear to have market dominating power. It is not easy for either of them to control prices or to achieve a much lower operational profit ratio due to a dominant bargaining power. Moreover, the license is not an economic rent. In this situation, it is not easy for these companies to obtain an excessive profit. Conclusions - Considering that most global duty free shops are trying to go upscale to improve bargaining power, it does not seem likely that rigid regulations are needed in the industry. Even though the Korean duty free industry ostensibly has a monopolistic structure, government and policy-makers should look beyond the surface. They should take global and other reasonable criteria into consideration when they establish or change regulation policies. Thorough understanding and appropriate support are needed for the Korean duty free shop industry. Additionally, duty free shops should position themselves as global companies struggling against unlimited international competition, rather than Korean domestic companies. At the same time, they need to give customers appropriate information about the benefits they provide.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.105-120
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• 2017

This study analyzed changes in the competitive structure of the global shipping container market and the appropriate capacity of the container fleet in Korea from three perspectives. The competitive market analysis applied the market concentration ratio and Hirschman-Herfindahl index, while the appropriate capacity analysis was based on the following three aspects: (1) Fleet capacity to secure competitiveness in the global shipping alliance; (2) Fleet capacity to increase national fleet coverage of domestic import and export container cargo; and (3) Fleet capacity analysis through the panel model considering the characteristics of the major shipping countries. Analysis of the global shipping container market reveals an oligopoly industry, and Korea's container fleet capacity is insufficient across all three analyses.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.231-248
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• 2014

The relationship between market structure and social welfare outcomes has received considerable critical attention in the field of competition policy research. In particular, it is necessary to study in greater depth the impact of market power on social welfare in the telecommunications industry, which is highly likely to form a monopolistic market structure. This is because, when market powers are concentrated on few upper carriers, there are negative effects on social welfare due to an excess of profits. Against this background, the present study investigates the relationship between the market structure of the mobile communications industry (the level of market power) and social welfare outcomes (the retail rate cut) through an international comparison. The results demonstrate that both the market structure and competition status of the Korean market have had significant gaps in global trends. It also points out that the monopolistic market structure (when the leading provider has more than 50% of the market share) has significantly negative effects on consumer welfare (the retail price cut). In addition, the findings of this study suggest that the direction of competition policy should focus on not only improving market concentration(HHI), but also on mitigating the monopoly of power of a dominant operator.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.299-322
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• 2012

Biotechnology is considered a new propeller to national economic growth. Although BT-based converging technology is one of keywords in nowadays, few studies analyze the characteristics of Korean BT convergence market. This study has conducted the analysis of BT-based converging technology market by using patent database in KIPO (Korean Intellectual Property Office) from 2000 to 2010. We, especially, have classified BT convergence into homogeneous and heterogeneous ones, and compare the nature of BT convergence market with that of non-convergence one. To achieve the object of this study, the following methods are used: concentration across IPC technological classes; concentration of patenting activity across firms; PFS (Patent Family Size) index. Furthermore, according to FOS technology-industry table, we have intended to find new converging industry of BT heterogeneous converging technologies. As very few studies have focused on Korean converging technology market so far, this analysis is considered to be meaningful. It is found that the market of BT converging technology is rather robust than that of BT non-converging one, which refers that BT convergence shows the tendency of concentration towards few technologies by few conglomerate firms in Korea. Meanwhile, we have derived a BINET keyword map to research the convergence of sub-technologies in detail and the related industries. We expect the implications of this study to be utilized in establishing the BT-based converging technology policy.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.69-97
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• 2006

This research aimed to establish and test a empirical model for antecedents and consequences of manufacturer's degree of channel concentration in multiple channels from strategic perspective. For this purpose, I suggested new concept of channel concentration based on related literature review and developed the measurement index of channel concentration. Second, I examined and applied the transaction cost theory and market power theory to provide broad understanding of multiple channel structure and to explain it. Finally, I present the theoretical and managerial implications to the firms that build up channel strategy under multiple channel contexts on this research results. For the purpose of these goals, eight hypotheses were drawn from the previous researches. To verify these hypotheses, 248 data were collected as samples, and the data were tested by reliability test, factor analysis, and covariance structure analysis. Empirical findings strongly support that strategic management of distribution channel especially are important in multiple channels. The overall implications to researchers and practitioners are presented, and limits and further study direction were discussed as a final.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.1035-1045
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• 2010

Products and/or services should be objectively verified in terms of the technological and use-conditional considerations before entering a market. Every organization or company tries to find the better procedure and method for checking the core needs of customers based on their experience in the market and looks for continuous ways to evaluate the power of products and services(PoP). They also prefer the overall evaluation of indices that could reflect various customer needs, rather than a separate evaluation index for each characteristic of the product or service. S. Ko (2008) proposes a Multi-characteristics Sigma Level(MSL) that can simultaneously evaluate many characteristics of a product or service. In this research, using MSL and a new Blue Ocean Index(BOI), an application of NPS, mobile phone field test is considered from a practical and statistical point of view.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.33-49
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• 2016

The market of platform business is typically served by a few dominant players, presenting "winner-takes-all" phenomenon. This study aims to find service characteristics leading to the phenomenon. Six different service-characteristics were considered : Same-side network effect, cross-side network effects, entry barrier, multi-homing cost, switching cost, and heterogeneity of preference. To assess the degree of concentration of market share, HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index) is calculated for top three major players. Based on the HHI value, 10 most eminent platform businesses are classified into three different segments and each segment is characterized with key factors. The results from this study provide some insight into the strategic management of platform business.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.151-167
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• 2015

Korean movie maintain their market share from the highest 59.7% to the lowest 42.1% during the last ten years in Korea. However, with the multiplex and wide release strategy, the monopolies of four major distribution companies and three multiplex chain, the polarization of Korean movie's Box Office performance is deepening. With Gini-Index, concentration of film admission has been deepened in intensity from 0.53 in 2004 to 0.85 in 2014. Using Thomas Piketty's method, Movie attendance proportion of Highest 10% of the box office ranking for 2014 sharply increased to 71.2% from 30.28% in 2004 and the lowest 50% of box office ranking dropped from 11.03% in 2004 to 0.08% in 2014. Concentrations of the number of Screen, Screening, the seating Capacity have the same analogy with the polarization of film admission. However, concentration of seating share has maintained a modest increase from 0.22 in 2004 to 0.38 in 2014. This analysis shows that polarization of Korean movie box office performance is not the sole result of Natural selection of market but the result of the monopolies of distribution companies and Multiplex chains.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.238-246
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• 2019

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the distribution of mineral components, health and taste index for water supply plants, spring water located in northern Gyeonggi area and bottled waters in market to analyze Ca, K, Mg Na, Si, $F^-$ and $SO_4{^{2-}}$. Method: The samples were source and tap water in 15 water supply plants over 9 river basin, 172 spring water and 20 bottled water. The Ca, K, Mg Na and Si were analyzed by ICP-OES. The $F^-$ and $SO_4{^{2-}}$ were determined by Ion Chromatograph. Then, taste and health index were calculated using Hashimoto equation. Results: The average concentration of major minerals showed in same order of Ca > Na > Mg > K for all kinds of drinking water from water supply plants, spring waters and bottled waters. Total concentration of major minerals (Ca, K, Mg, Na) was calculated that showed 26.79 mg/L of tap water, 21.81 mg/L of spring water, 32.94 mg/L of bottled water on average. So, the spring waters indicated the lowest minerals sum. The tap water from water supply plants was categorized to Group I, II for 33.3, 44.4% according to K-index and O-index. Otherwise, spring water was classified as Group I, II for 44.0, 46.3%. Conclusion: According to the results of K and O-index, water from water supply plant showed higher K-index which means good for the health. Otherwise, spring water indicated higher O-index that people can feel more delicious than tap water. Futhermore, the mineral distribution of source water from water supply plants and spring water had indicated high correlation with geological effect.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.7
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• pp.349-360
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• 2020

The study aims to empirically examine the determinants of bank margins from Pakistan, an emerging South Asian economy. To elucidate the importance of the Pakistani banking sector, secondary data has been used, which was extracted from the annual accounts of twenty-four Pakistani scheduled commercial banks (20 conventional, four full-fledged Islamic) over a sample period of 2006 to 2017. The factors identified in the dealership model and the subsequent empirical developments in the dealership model categorized as bank-specific, diversification, regulatory, and industry concentration are analyzed by applying the most-common linear dynamic panel-data estimator, the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator, developed by Arellano and Bond (1991). The findings reveal that, among the bank-specific variables, funding cost, credit risk, managerial efficiency, market share, and operating cost are significant predictors of bank margins. For diversification variables employed in the study, both variables including net non-interest income and asset diversity are as well significant predictors of bank margins. It is also found that the market concentration variable proxied by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) is significantly predicting bank margins. Subsequently, one of the regulatory variables, the opportunity cost of holding reserves, and one bank-specific variable, the degree of risk aversion, are insignificant in the model.