• 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.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.139-162
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• 2010

In terms of the international air transport, the open skies policy implies freedom in the sky or opening the sky. In the normative respect, the open skies policy is a kind of open-door policy which gives various forms of traffic right to other countries, but on the other hand it is a policy of free competition in the international air transport. Since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the United States has signed an open skies agreement with many countries, starting with the Netherlands, so that competitive large airlines can compete in the international air transport market where there exist a lot of business opportunities. South Korea now has an open skies agreement with more than 20 countries. The frequent flyer program (FFP) is part of a broad-based marketing alliance which has been used as an airfare strategy since the U.S. government's airline deregulation. The membership-based program is an incentive plan that provides mileage points to customers for using airline services and rewards customer loyalty in tangible forms based on their accumulated points. In its early stages, the frequent flyer program was focused on marketing efforts to attract customers, but now in the environment of intense competition among airlines, the program is used as an important strategic marketing tool for enhancing business performance. Therefore, airline companies agree that they need to identify customer needs in order to secure loyal customers more effectively. The outcomes from an airline's frequent flyer program can have a variety of effects on international competition. First, the airline can obtain a more dominant position in the air flight market by expanding its air route networks. Second, the availability of flight products for customers can be improved with an increase in flight frequency. Third, the airline can preferentially expand into new markets and thus gain advantages over its competitors. However, there are few empirical studies on the airline frequent flyer program. Accordingly, this study aims to explore the effects of the program on international competition, after reviewing the types of strategic alliance between airlines. Making strategic airline alliances is a worldwide trend resulting from the open skies policy. South Korea also needs to be making open skies agreements more realistic to promote the growth and competition of domestic airlines. The present study is about the performance of the airline frequent flyer program and international competition under the open skies policy. With a sample of five global alliance groups (Star, Oneworld, Wings, Qualiflyer and Skyteam), the study was attempted as an empirical study of the effects that the resource structures and levels of information technology held by airlines in each group have on the type of alliance, and one-way analysis of variance and regression analysis were used to test hypotheses. The findings of this study suggest that both large airline companies and small/medium-size airlines in an alliance group with global networks and organizations are able to achieve high performance and secure international competitiveness. Airline passengers earn mileage points by using non-flight services through an alliance network with hotels, car-rental services, duty-free shops, travel agents and more and show high interests in and preferences for related service benefits. Therefore, Korean airline companies should develop more aggressive marketing programs based on multilateral alliances with other services including hotels, as well as with other airlines.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.177-189
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• 2013

In Smart Education, the roles of digital textbook is very important as face-to-face media to learners. The standardization of digital textbook will promote the industrialization of digital textbook for contents providers and distributers as well as learner and instructors. In this study, the following three objectives-oriented digital textbooks are looking for ways to standardize. (1) digital textbooks should undertake the role of the media for blended learning which supports on-off classes, should be operating on common EPUB viewer without special dedicated viewer, should utilize the existing framework of the e-learning learning contents and learning management. The reason to consider the EPUB as the standard for digital textbooks is that digital textbooks don't need to specify antoher standard for the form of books, and can take advantage od industrial base with EPUB standards-rich content and distribution structure (2) digital textbooks should provide a low-cost open market service that are currently available as the standard open software (3) To provide appropriate learning feedback information to students, digital textbooks should provide a foundation which accumulates and manages all the learning activity information according to standard infrastructure for educational Big Data processing. In this study, the digital textbook in a smart education environment was referred to open digital textbook. The components of open digital textbooks service framework are (1) digital textbook terminals such as smart pad, smart TVs, smart phones, PC, etc., (2) digital textbooks platform to show and perform digital contents on digital textbook terminals, (3) learning contents repository, which exist on the cloud, maintains accredited learning, (4) App Store providing and distributing secondary learning contents and learning tools by learning contents developing companies, and (5) LMS as a learning support/management tool which on-site class teacher use for creating classroom instruction materials. In addition, locating all of the hardware and software implement a smart education service within the cloud must have take advantage of the cloud computing for efficient management and reducing expense. The open digital textbooks of smart education is consdered as providing e-book style interface of LMS to learners. In open digital textbooks, the representation of text, image, audio, video, equations, etc. is basic function. But painting, writing, problem solving, etc are beyond the capabilities of a simple e-book. The Communication of teacher-to-student, learner-to-learnert, tems-to-team is required by using the open digital textbook. To represent student demographics, portfolio information, and class information, the standard used in e-learning is desirable. To process learner tracking information about the activities of the learner for LMS(Learning Management System), open digital textbook must have the recording function and the commnincating function with LMS. DRM is a function for protecting various copyright. Currently DRMs of e-boook are controlled by the corresponding book viewer. If open digital textbook admitt DRM that is used in a variety of different DRM standards of various e-book viewer, the implementation of redundant features can be avoided. Security/privacy functions are required to protect information about the study or instruction from a third party UDL (Universal Design for Learning) is learning support function for those with disabilities have difficulty in learning courses. The open digital textbook, which is based on E-book standard EPUB 3.0, must (1) record the learning activity log information, and (2) communicate with the server to support the learning activity. While the recording function and the communication function, which is not determined on current standards, is implemented as a JavaScript and is utilized in the current EPUB 3.0 viewer, ths strategy of proposing such recording and communication functions as the next generation of e-book standard, or special standard (EPUB 3.0 for education) is needed. Future research in this study will implement open source program with the proposed open digital textbook standard and present a new educational services including Big Data analysis.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.1-33
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• 2019

The small and medium sized enterprises (hereinafter SMEs) are already at a competitive disadvantaged when compared to large companies with more abundant resources. Manufacturing SMEs not only need a lot of information needed for new product development for sustainable growth and survival, but also seek networking to overcome the limitations of resources, but they are faced with limitations due to their size limitations. In a new era in which connectivity increases the complexity and uncertainty of the business environment, SMEs are increasingly urged to find information and solve networking problems. In order to solve these problems, the government funded research institutes plays an important role and duty to solve the information asymmetry problem of SMEs. The purpose of this study is to identify the differentiating characteristics of SMEs that utilize the public information support infrastructure provided by SMEs to enhance the innovation capacity of SMEs, and how they contribute to corporate performance. We argue that we need an infrastructure for providing information support to SMEs as part of this effort to strengthen of the role of government funded institutions; in this study, we specifically identify the target of such a policy and furthermore empirically demonstrate the effects of such policy-based efforts. Our goal is to help establish the strategies for building the information supporting infrastructure. To achieve this purpose, we first classified the characteristics of SMEs that have been found to utilize the information supporting infrastructure provided by government funded institutions. This allows us to verify whether selection bias appears in the analyzed group, which helps us clarify the interpretative limits of our study results. Next, we performed mediator and moderator effect analysis for multiple variables to analyze the process through which the use of information supporting infrastructure led to an improvement in external networking capabilities and resulted in enhancing product competitiveness. This analysis helps identify the key factors we should focus on when offering indirect support to SMEs through the information supporting infrastructure, which in turn helps us more efficiently manage research related to SME supporting policies implemented by government funded institutions. The results of this study showed the following. First, SMEs that used the information supporting infrastructure were found to have a significant difference in size in comparison to domestic R&D SMEs, but on the other hand, there was no significant difference in the cluster analysis that considered various variables. Based on these findings, we confirmed that SMEs that use the information supporting infrastructure are superior in size, and had a relatively higher distribution of companies that transact to a greater degree with large companies, when compared to the SMEs composing the general group of SMEs. Also, we found that companies that already receive support from the information infrastructure have a high concentration of companies that need collaboration with government funded institution. Secondly, among the SMEs that use the information supporting infrastructure, we found that increasing external networking capabilities contributed to enhancing product competitiveness, and while this was no the effect of direct assistance, we also found that indirect contributions were made by increasing the open marketing capabilities: in other words, this was the result of an indirect-only mediator effect. Also, the number of times the company received additional support in this process through mentoring related to information utilization was found to have a mediated moderator effect on improving external networking capabilities and in turn strengthening product competitiveness. The results of this study provide several insights that will help establish policies. KISTI's information support infrastructure may lead to the conclusion that marketing is already well underway, but it intentionally supports groups that enable to achieve good performance. As a result, the government should provide clear priorities whether to support the companies in the underdevelopment or to aid better performance. Through our research, we have identified how public information infrastructure contributes to product competitiveness. Here, we can draw some policy implications. First, the public information support infrastructure should have the capability to enhance the ability to interact with or to find the expert that provides required information. Second, if the utilization of public information support (online) infrastructure is effective, it is not necessary to continuously provide informational mentoring, which is a parallel offline support. Rather, offline support such as mentoring should be used as an appropriate device for abnormal symptom monitoring. Third, it is required that SMEs should improve their ability to utilize, because the effect of enhancing networking capacity through public information support infrastructure and enhancing product competitiveness through such infrastructure appears in most types of companies rather than in specific SMEs.