• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.105-117
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• 2019

Purpose - Underdog positioning is often used to evoke a positive attitude when interacting with consumers. However, little research has been conducted on the market competition structure and innovation contexts in which underdog positioning produces the most impact. This research aims to investigate unexplored boundary conditions of underdog positioning and addresses two issues: market structures (oligopoly vs monopolistic competition) and perceived firm innovativeness (PFI). Design/methodology - Two one-way ANOVA designs (market structures: monopolistic competitions vs. oligopoly; perceived frim innovativeness: strong vs. weak) were randomly assigned to 297 graduate and undergraduate students (52 % female) majoring in business. Study 1 examined the effect of underdog positioning on consumer attitudes in the different market structures. Study 2 investigated the relationship between underdog effect and consumer attitudes through viewing conditions that varied in PFI. Findings - Drawing on the results of the study, the authors conclude that underdog positioning is effective to generate more positive consumer attitudes when employed in the market structure of monopolistic competition rather than oligopoly. Moreover, both underdog and top dog positioning are likely to generate more positive consumer attitudes when accompanied with strong PFI than weak PFI. Originality/value -This is the first study to distinguish between monopolistic competition and oligopoly market structures with underdog positioning as well as to demonstrate a positive effect of PFI, regardless of the type of brand narratives.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.35-69
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• 2014

The impact of competition on pricing has been studied in the context of counterfactual merger analyses where expected optimal prices in a hypothetical monopoly are compared with observed prices in an oligopolistic market. Such analyses would typically assume static decision making by consumers and firms and thus have been applied mostly to data obtained from consumer packed goods such as cereal and soft drinks. However such static modeling approach is not suitable when decision makers are forward looking. When it comes to the markets for durable products with indirect network effects, consumer purchase decisions and firm pricing decisions are inherently dynamic as they take into account future states when making purchase and pricing decisions. Researchers need to take into account the dynamic aspects of decision making both in the consumer side and in the supplier side for such markets. Firms in a two-sided market typically subsidize one side of the market to exploit the indirect network effect. Such pricing behaviors would be more prevalent in competitive markets where firms would try to win over the battle for standard. While such qualitative expectation on the relationship between pricing behaviors and competitive structures could be easily formed, little empirical studies have measured the extent to which the distinct pricing structure in two-sided markets depends on the competitive structure of the market. This paper develops an empirical model to measure the impact of competition on optimal pricing of durable products under indirect network effects. In order to measure the impact of exogenously determined competition among firms on pricing, we compare the equilibrium prices in the observed oligopoly market to those in a hypothetical monopoly market. In computing the equilibrium prices, we account for the forward looking behaviors of consumers and supplier. We first estimate a demand function that accounts for consumers' forward-looking behaviors and indirect network effects. And then, for the supply side, the pricing equation is obtained as an outcome of the Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium in pricing. In doing so, we utilize numerical dynamic programming techniques. We apply our model to a data set obtained from the U.S. video game console market. The video game console market is considered a prototypical case of two-sided markets in which the platform typically subsidizes one side of market to expand the installed base anticipating larger revenues in the other side of market resulting from the expanded installed base. The data consist of monthly observations of price, hardware unit sales and the number of compatible software titles for Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 from September 1996 to August 2002. Sony PlayStation was released to the market a year before Nintendo 64 was launched. We compute the expected equilibrium price path for Nintendo 64 and Playstation for both oligopoly and for monopoly. Our analysis reveals that the price level differs significantly between two competition structures. The merged monopoly is expected to set prices higher by 14.8% for Sony PlayStation and 21.8% for Nintendo 64 on average than the independent firms in an oligopoly would do. And such removal of competition would result in a reduction in consumer value by 43.1%. Higher prices are expected for the hypothetical monopoly because the merged firm does not need to engage in the battle for industry standard. This result is attributed to the distinct property of a two-sided market that competing firms tend to set low prices particularly at the initial period to attract consumers at the introductory stage and to reinforce their own networks and eventually finally to dominate the market.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers A
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.214-219
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• 2006

Oligopoly differs from perfect competition and monopoly in that a firm must consider rival firms' behavior to determine its own best policy. This interrelationship among firms is the issue examined in this paper. In the oligopoly market, the complete information market means that each producer has full information about itself, the market, and its rivals. That is, each producer knows the market demand function, its own cost function and the cost functions of rivals. On the other hand, the incomplete information market means that in general each producer lacks full information about the market or its rivals. Here, we assume that each firm doesn't know the cost functions and the strategic biddings of its rivals. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze firm' strategic behaviors and equilibrium in an electricity market with incomplete information. In the case study, the complete information market and the incomplete market are compared at the Nash Equilibrium from the viewpoints of market price, transaction quantities, consumer benefits, and Social Welfare.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.145-155
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• 2020

This study analyzes the degree of competition in the oil refinery market in Korea, which is considered an oligopoly market. The price of gasoline and diesel and the quantity of supply are used to identify the market competition. We also analyze whether the oil tax reduction policy has affected market competition. The competitiveness of the market was examined using monthly data from 2008 to 2019. Bresnahan-Lau method was employed to estimate the degree of competition in the oil refinery market, which is frequently used in the industrial studies. The analysis shows that the gasoline and diesel markets seem close to a perfect competitive market. Also, the tax cut has weakened market competition. In other words, the monopolistic power has increased in the market, so consumers have not benefit from the price cuts as much as tax cuts. Although the oil refinery market where four major companies are competing, the government's monitoring and price disclosure system help the market to be highly competitive as much as a perfect competition market. The tax cut, in the high oil price era, has a negative effect on the competition because of an information asymmetry about the price-setting process between suppliers and consumers.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2005.07a
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• pp.778-780
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• 2005

Electric power industry throughout the world is restructured. The electric power industry has a characteristics of an oligopoly with an imperfect competition. In Korea rules, all information is not available. So the strategy under such incomplete information market differ firm those under complete information system in game theory. This paper presents a analysis technique if Korea ma rket model with incomplete information.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.79-100
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• 2023

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to analyze the market power of the Korea Container Shipping Market (Intra Asia, Korea-Europe, and Korea-U.S.) to verify the existence of collusion empirically, and to answer whether the joint actions of liner market participants in Korea have formed market dominance for each route. Precisely, it will be verified through the Lerner index as to whether the regional market of Asia is a monopoly, oligopoly, or perfect competition. Design/methodology - This study used a Lerner index adjusted with elasticity presented in the New Imperial Organization (NEIO) studies. NEIO refers to a series of empirical studies that estimate parameters to judge market power from industrial data. This study uses B-L empirical models by Bresnahan (1982) and Lau (1982). In addition, NEIO research data statistically contain self-regression and stability problems as price and time series data. A dynamic model following Steen and Salvanes' Error Correction Model was used to solve this problem. Findings - The empirical results are as follows. First, λ, representing market power, is nearly zero in all three markets. Second, the Korean shipping market shows low demand elasticity on average. Nevertheless, the markup is low, a characteristic that is difficult to see in other industries. Third, the Korean shipping market generally remains close to perfect competition from 2014 to 2022, but extreme market power appears in a specific period, such as COVID-19. Fourth, there was no market power in the Intra Asia market from 2008 to 2014. Originality/value - Doubts about perfect competition in the liner market continued, but there were few empirical cases. This paper confirmed that the Korea liner market is a perfect competition market. This paper is the first to implement dynamics using ECM and recursive regression to demonstrate market power in the Korean liner market by dividing the shipping market into Deep Sea and Intra Asia separately. It is also the first to prove the most controversial problems in the current shipping industry numerically and academically.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.3-25
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• 2014

The megatrends of the Korean distribution industry market in 2014 reflect opportunities in parallel import & overseas direct purchase. Korean government addressed that "Monopoly & Oligopoly consumer goods import improvement plan" to stabilizing importing goods prices and domestic consumers' burden relief through accelerating market competition. and moreover it is to improving distribution channel and promoting parallel import market business. The Korean market is very unique in that consumers' real sensory index of open up importation effect level is low, but nominal open up importation effect level is high. This is due to difficulties in creating a proper importing goods distribution market and alternative importing routes are very rare. Thus, the purpose of this study is to analyze the market situation and parallel import to improve Korean government's "Monopoly & Oligopoly consumer goods import improvement plan" policy for the revitalization of the domestic market economy and to boost up a new growth engine industry.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.71-88
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• 2009

The Korean online gaming industry has seen rapid growth since the boom of information technology (IT) related industries, especially Internet and PC-bang or local area network (LAN) use, throughout the country. Online games are real-time games in which two or more players meet, compete, and cooperate in the same game space using the same communication network. Even though the growth rates of IT-related industries have recently slowed, the growth of the online gaming industry has increased, and Korean firms are expanding their businesses to countries all over the world. However, the online gaming industry is becoming an oligopoly, in which 4-5 leading companies occupy most online gaming markets. This situation presents a disadvantage to the Korean online gaming industry, since online players usually seek a diversity of online gaming contents and high quality online game services. Therefore, small- and medium-sized game developers must survive in this market by upgrading the quality of their online gaming services in an effort to provide differentiated goods and services in monopolistic competition markets. However, most venture companies in the online game industry, whether new or previously existing, are not able to obtain adequate financing. The objective of this paper is to examine the management environment for medium- and small-sized game developers in the Korean online gaming industry. By introducing the case of Grigon Entertainment, we try to identify the source of difficulty obtaining external financing for Korean venture firms in the online gaming industry.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.35-60
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• 2010

In this paper, we develop a dynamic structural model based on a dynamic supergame and measure market power for the Dallas-Forth Worth fluid milk market in the U.S. In particular, we compare the conduct parameter estimates from a static model with that from the dynamic model and illustrate bias in the market-power measure in a static model. And we also analyze the cyclical behavior of firm conduct. We find that the conduct parameter in a static model underestimates true market power if firms' behaviors are posited by a dynamic oligopoly game. We also verify that firm conduct in the Dallas-Forth Worth fluid milk market is countercyclical against demand shocks and expected future cost shocks. Our results indicate that the firms' conduct in the Dallas-Forth Worth fluid milk market is consistent with what dynamic oligopoly models predict. This implies that the firms consider not only the contemporary reactions of the other firms' but also future market competition. Therefore, the measurement of market power requires the specification of fully dynamic pricing relationship.

• Proceedings of the Technology Innovation Conference
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• 2006.02a
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• pp.248-263
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• 2006

The convergence in telecommunication and broadcasting is one of the most popular topics in these days. For example, the characteristic of IPTV -internet protocol television-is controversial in the extreme. In Korea the IPTV operators are mainly the telecommunication service operators. So it is natural that the IPTV services are categorized to the telecommunication services. But the Broadcasting service providers, especially the CATV providers who can serve the TPS-triple play service- like IPTV players insist that the IPTV should be regulated as a broadcasting service. This paper will analyze whether the regulation in which the IPTV is categorized to one of the broadcasting services is better than the case of telecommunication services. To examine this, the social welfare analysis is conduced and the differential oligopoly market model is used. Together with that, this paper suggests that we can improve the social welfare by the asymmetric regulation between IPTV and D-CA TV. This means that in Korea the IPTV has a weak substitution relation with the D-CA TV and the IPTV should be dealed as a new convergence service that differs from traditional broadcasting services.