• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.113-145
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• 2008

Marketing for the distribution industry is making an ongoing progress in the changes of customers, the competitive environment, and the internal marketing environment. Integrated marketing communication activities are required for the enhancement of efficiency in the market.oriented activities. In this study, IMC is defined as "a notion that a market oriented business integrated marketing communication means, conducting and evaluating marketing activities with consistent messages in order to communicate with customers based on databases." In this study, an IMC planning model for the improvement of marketing efficiency in the distribution industry was derived from a pilot study. This model may be broken down into the following phases: IMC goals setting, situational analysis (customer analysis, competition analysis and company analysis), customer data analysis, contact management, budgeting, the establishment of an IMC strategy, the IMC mix and execution, an evaluation system, and feedback. In consideration of the characteristics of the distribution industry, this study was accompanied by a vocational study on IMC means employed by, in particular, department stores and other distributors such as: advertising, sales promotion, sales promotion advertising, direct marketing, public relations, personal selling, the Internet, mobile, visual merchandising, words of mouth. In addition, this study also covered the correlation among variables such as IMC activities of distributors, the process of forming customer's brand attitudes, brand loyalty and repurchase intention. This research would enhance the utilization of IMC. The analysis on customer's brand attitudes toward the IMC activities of distributors requires the simultaneous consideration of how they are linked to purchase as well as their attitudes toward both distributors and stores. The formation of brand loyalty and repurchase intention is related to the integration of marketing communication and the maintenance of consistency in contents, which requires integrated brand communication (IBC) strategies. IBC is a concept of using IMC means to manage the brand in a continuing and consistent manner and measuring their effect, which is a process to establish enterprise.level brand identity and maximize brand loyalty and repurchase intention by integrating IMC means. For an empirical analysis in this study, an online questionnaire survey was conducted among those department store customers from 20's to 50's who reside either in the Seoul and Gyeonggi areas and have made purchase at department stores. In this study, the research model consisted of four theoretical variables: IMC activities, IMC attitudes, brand loyalty, and repurchase intention, on which variables a pilot study was conducted. A number of hypotheses were constructed on the relations between IMC activities and IMC attitudes, between IMC attitudes and repurchase intention, and between brand loyalty and repurchase intention. The test of the hypotheses may be summarized as follows: Firstly, the test of the hypothesis concerning the relation between IMC attitudes and IMC activities - advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, public relations, personal selling, the Web, mobile, visual merchandising, and word of mouth - indicates that advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, public relations, personal selling, mobile, visual merchandising, and word of mouth have significant impact on IMC activities. In addition to the result similar to those of previous studies that such marketing communication means as word of mouth, advertising, personal selling and sales promotion, in particular, play very important roles, a notable finding of this study is that visual merchandising performed by department stores is shown to have very significant impact on IMC activities. On a separate note, it is also noteworthy that Internet marketing activities engaged by department stores are not shown to have significant impact on IMC attitudes. Secondly, the test of the hypothesis on the relation between IMC attitudes and brand loyalty attests that IMC attitudes for the distribution industry significantly affect brand loyalty. Thirdly, the test of the hypothesis concerning the relation between IMC attitudes and repurchase intention confirms that IMC attitudes for the distribution industry significantly affect repurchase intention. Fourthly, the test of the hypothesis concerning the relation between brand loyalty and repurchase intention indicates that brand loyalty significantly affect repurchase intention. A comprehensive view of these findings points to the conclusion that the IMC activities for the distribution industry do affect IMC attitudes, brand loyalty, and repurchase intention.

• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.11
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• pp.69-99
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• 1984

A dramatic development in the new technology of copying materials has presented us with massive problems on reconciling the conflicts between copyright owners and potential users of copyrighted materials. The adaptation to this changing condition led some countries to revise their copyright laws such as in the U. S. in 1976 and in Korea in 1984 for merging with the international or universal copyright conventions in the future. Copyright defined as exclusive rights given to copyright owners aims to secure a fair return for an author's creative labor and to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good. The exclusive rights on copyrightable matters, generally for reproduction, preparation of derivative works, public distribution, public performance, and public display, are limited by fair use for scholarship and criticism and by library reproduction for its preservation and interlibrary loan. These limitations on the exclusive rights are concerned with all aspects of library services and cause a great burden on librarian's daily duty to provide balance between the rights of creators and the needs of library patrons. The fair use as one of the limitations on it has been coupled with enormous growth of a new technology and extended from xerography to online database systems. The implementation of the fair use and library reprography in Korean law to the local practices is examined on the basis of the new American copyright act of 1976. Under the draft revision of Korean law, librarians will face many potential problems as summarized below. 1. Because the new provision of 'life time plus 50 years' will tie up substantial bodies of material longer than the old law, until that date librarians would need permissions from the owners and should pay attention to the author's death date. 2. Because the copyright can be sold, distributed, given to the heirs, donated, as a whole or a part, librarians should chase down the heirs and other second owners. In case of a derivative work, this is a real problem. 3. Since a work has its protection from the moment of its creation, the coverage of copyrightable matter would be extended to the published or the unpublished works and librarian's work load would be heavier. Without copyright registration, no one can be certain that a work is in the public domain. Therefore, librarians will need to check with an authority. 4. For implementation of limitations on exclusive rights, fair use and library reproduction for interlibrary loan, there can be no substantial aggregate use and there can be no systematic distribution of multicopies. Therefore, librarians should not substitute reproductions for subscriptions or purchases. 5. For the interlibrary loan by photocopying, librarians should understand the procedure of royalty payment. 6. Compulsory licenses should be understood by librarians. 7. Because the draft revision of Korean law is a reciprocal treaty, librarians should take care of other countries' copyright law to protect foreign authors from Korean law. In order to solve the above problems, some suggestions are presented below. 1. That copyright clearinghouse or central agency as a centralized royalty payment mechanism be established. 2. That the Korean Library Association establish a committee on copyright. 3. That the Korean Library Association propose guidelines for each occasion, e.g. for interlibrary loan, books and periodicals and music, etc. 4. That the Korean government establish a copyright office or an official organization for copyright control other than the copyright committee already organized by the government. 5. That the Korean Library Association establish educational programs on copyright for librarians through seminars or articles written in its magazines. 6. That individual libraries provide librarian's copyright kits. 7. That school libraries distribute subject bibliographies on copyright law to teachers. However, librarians should keep in mind that limitations on exclusive rights are not for an exemption from library reprography but as a convenient access to library resources.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.335-373
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• 2014

According to one Medicare report, in the US, total federal spending on health care expends almost 18 percent of the nation's GDP, about double what most industrialized nations spend on health care. And in 2011, Medicare spending reached close to $554 billion, which amounted to 21 percent of the total spent on U.S. health care in that year. Of that $554 billion, Medicare spent 28 percent, or about $170 billion, on patients' last six months of life. So what are the reasons of this high cost in EOL care and its possible solutions? Much spendings of Medicare on End-of-Life care for the terminally ill/chronically ill in the US has led health economics experts to assess the characteristics of the care. Decades of study shows that EOL care is usually supply-sensitive and poor in cost-effectiveness. The volume of care is sensitively depending on the supply of resources, rather than the severity of illness or preferences of patients. This means at the End-of-Life care, the medical resources are being overused. On the other hand, opposed to the common assumption, "The more care the better utility", the study shows that the outcome is very poor. Actually the patient preference and concerns are quite the opposite from what intense EOL care would bring about. This study analyzes the reasons for the supply-sensitiveness of EOL care. It can be resulted from the common misconception about the intense care and the outcome, physicians' mission for patients, lack of End-of-Life Care Decision which helps the patients choose their own preferred treatment intensity. It also could be resulted from physicians' fear of legal liabilities, and the management strategy since the hospitals are also seeking for financial benefits. This study suggests the possible solutions for over-treatment at the End-of-Life resulting from supply-sensitiveness. Solutions can be sought in two aspects, legal implementation and management strategy. In order to implement advance directive properly, active ethics education for physicians to change their attitude toward EOL care and more conversations about end-of-life care between physicians and patients is crucial, and incentive system for the physicians who actively have the conversations with patients will also help. Also, the general education towards the public is also important in the long run, and easy and official advance directive registry system-such as online registry-has to be built and utilized more widely. Alternative strategies in management are also needed. For example, the new strategic cost management and management education, such as cutting unnecessary costs and resetting values as medical providers have to be considered. In order to effectively resolve the problem in EOL care for the terminally ill/chronically ill and provide better experience to the patients, first of all, the misconception and the wrong conventional wisdom among doctors, patients, and the government have to be overcome. And then there should be improvements in systems and cultures of the EOL care.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.59-70
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• 2018

With the breakthrough of speech recognition technology, conversational agents have become pervasive through smartphones and smart speakers. The recognition accuracy of speech recognition technology has developed to the level of human beings, but it still shows limitations on understanding the underlying meaning or intention of words, or understanding long conversation. Accordingly, the users experience various errors when interacting with the conversational agents, which may negatively affect the user experience. In addition, in the case of smart speakers with a voice as the main interface, the lack of feedback on system and transparency was reported as the main issue when the users using. Therefore, there is a strong need for research on how users can better understand the capability of the conversational agents and mitigate negative emotions in error situations. In this study, we applied social strategies, "forewarning" and "apology", to conversational agent and investigated how these strategies affect users' perceptions of the agent in breakdown situations. For the study, we created a series of demo videos of a user interacting with a conversational agent. After watching the demo videos, the participants were asked to evaluate how they liked and trusted the agent through an online survey. A total of 104 respondents were analyzed and found to be contrary to our expectation based on the literature study. The result showed that forewarning gave a negative impression to the user, especially the reliability of the agent. Also, apology in a breakdown situation did not affect the users' perceptions. In the following in-depth interviews, participants explained that they perceived the smart speaker as a machine rather than a human-like object, and for this reason, the social strategies did not work. These results show that the social strategies should be applied according to the perceptions that user has toward agents.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.739-756
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• 2016

The purpose of the study is to reflect on 'myself' as a teacher educator of college of education in depth and to improve my instruction through self-study with three critical collaborators. 17 pre-service science teachers and I have participated in this study of a teacher educator's course since March 2016 after the preliminary practice in 2015. The video recorded the course for 11 weeks with about 40 hours of lessons. The data source also included teacher educator's reflective journals, lecture evaluations, online boards and so on. Questionnaires were distributed and answered both at the beginning and at the end of the course and pre-service teachers wrote their reflective journals. Four of them were in the focus group interviews. During the course, the weekly group meeting of critical collaborators analyzed the emerging issues based on the lesson clips and teacher educator's reflective journals with discussion for the course innovation. Four phases were revealed in the process and for the purpose of the course such as exploration, conflicts, challenges, and changes. The results showed that first, we identified tensions among the teacher educator's multiple identities as a lecturer, a faculty member, and a researcher. Second, there were differences between goals of teacher educator and pre-service teachers in the course, and this obstructed the success of the course sometimes. Third, these practices led to explore balanced alternative views and interpretations of the problem by critical views and to expand and improve our teaching practice and thinking. In addition, the self-study with critical collaborators helped to bring conflicts and issues below my practice to light for collaborative reflection and it gave a chance to understand ourselves as teacher educators in different ways.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.131-150
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to observe the spread pattern of open source software (OSS) while establishing relations with surrounding actors during its operation period. In order to investigate the change pattern of participants in the OSS, we use a netnography on the basis of online data, which can trace the change patterns of the OSS depending on the passage of time. For this, the cases of three OSSs (e.g. jQuery, MooTools, and YUI), which are JavaScript frameworks, were compared, and the corresponding data were collected from the open application programming interface (API) of GitHub as well as blog and web searches. This research utilizes the translation process of the actor-network theory to categorize the stages of the change patterns on the OSS translation process. In the project commencement stage, we identified the type of three different OSS-related actors and defined associated relationships among them. The period, when a master commences a project at first, is refined through the course for the maintenance of source codes with persons concerned (i.e. project growth stage). Thereafter, the period when the users have gone through the observation and learning period by being exposed to promotion activities and codes usage respectively, and becoming to active participants, is regarded as the 'leap of participants' stage. Our results emphasize the importance of promotion processes in participants' selection of the OSS for participation and confirm the crowding-out effect that the rapid speed of OSS development retarded the emergence of participants.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.125-146
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• 2013

Nowadays, the performance of the mobile game sales is influencing the ranking of game companies listed on KOSDAQ. In the meantime, venture capital companies had focused on online game. Recently, however, they have great interest in mobile games and mobile game companies. In addition, angel investors and accelerators are increasing investment for the mobile game companies. The most important issues for mobile game investor is how to evaluate the mobile game companies and their contents. Therefore, this study derived the evaluation factors for the mobile game company. And research method converged of the opinions of both supply side and demand side of the game industry. Ten professionals who are responsible for the supply of the game industry and CEO group & development experts of game development company were selected for survey in this study. Also ten professionals who are responsible for the demand of the game industry and the investment company were selected for survey in this study. And Delphi technique was performed according to the survey. Management skills, development capabilities, game play, feasibility, operational capabilities has emerged as five evaluation factors to evaluate the mobile game company. And the 20 sub-factors including CEO's reliability were derived. AHP(Analytic Hierarchy Process) theory is applied to analyze the importance of the qualitative elements which were derived by Delphi technique. As a result, the analysis hierarchy of evaluation factors for the mobile game company was created. Pair-wise comparison for each element was performed to analyze the importance. As a result, 'Core fun of the game' (12,2%), 'Involvement of the game' (10.3%), 'Security Reliability' (8.9%), 'Core developers' ability' (7.6%) appeared in order of importance. The significance of this study is offering more objective methodology for realistic assessment and importance of elements to evaluate mobile game company.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.193-231
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• 2013

As developed IT, Word-of-Mouth(WOM) used varied terms as buzz marketing and viral marketing, and impressed that importance. Despite introduced new marketing tool on managers and professionals, online word-of-mouth including SNS lack of study on social network what based viral in marketing. In social network, patterns of relationship between individuals influence each other individual behaviors. Therefore this research grouped friendship-network and advice-network by characteristics, studied on trust of information source that antecedents of word-of-mouth in network. This study examined that affect- and cognition based trust affect WOM acceptance as WOM behaviors and examined effect of type of product as moderating variable. Additional this literature studied that WOM acceptance affect WOM recommend. To find the Influence of Trust on Word-of-Mouth Behaviors, a survey has done 206 samples(undergraduate students). The results of this study are as following : First, type of trust different friendship network and advice network. Affect-based trust is outstanding in friendship network than in advice network, while cognition-based trust stands out in advice network than another. Second, affect- and cognition based trust positive affect WOM acceptance. Contrary to expectations, what is preconceived trust in network have a similar effect for WOM acceptance regardless of type of trust. Third, WOM acceptance positive affect WOM recommend. Fourth, affect based trust affect WOM acceptance of hedonic product rather than utilitarian product. Upon especially in friendship network terms, affect-based trust has a more effect on WOM acceptance than cognition-based trust. This study has many implications. First, it is important that trust what have an influence WOM acceptance grouped affect- and cognition based trust. Second, it confirmed that trust is antecedents of positive WOM. Third, it is important that network grouped friendship network and advice-network by trust. Fourth, it gave managerial implications that they have to supply WOM through which network by type of product. We This study classified network and trust based on previous study. Then it examined relations between WOM behaviors. Further research could do enrich various things for example various age group, valence of message, quality of information.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.119-142
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• 2015

With the explosive growth in the volume of information, Internet users are experiencing considerable difficulties in obtaining necessary information online. Against this backdrop, ever-greater importance is being placed on a recommender system that provides information catered to user preferences and tastes in an attempt to address issues associated with information overload. To this end, a number of techniques have been proposed, including content-based filtering (CBF), demographic filtering (DF) and collaborative filtering (CF). Among them, CBF and DF require external information and thus cannot be applied to a variety of domains. CF, on the other hand, is widely used since it is relatively free from the domain constraint. The CF technique is broadly classified into memory-based CF, model-based CF and hybrid CF. Model-based CF addresses the drawbacks of CF by considering the Bayesian model, clustering model or dependency network model. This filtering technique not only improves the sparsity and scalability issues but also boosts predictive performance. However, it involves expensive model-building and results in a tradeoff between performance and scalability. Such tradeoff is attributed to reduced coverage, which is a type of sparsity issues. In addition, expensive model-building may lead to performance instability since changes in the domain environment cannot be immediately incorporated into the model due to high costs involved. Cumulative changes in the domain environment that have failed to be reflected eventually undermine system performance. This study incorporates the Markov model of transition probabilities and the concept of fuzzy clustering with CBCF to propose predictive clustering-based CF (PCCF) that solves the issues of reduced coverage and of unstable performance. The method improves performance instability by tracking the changes in user preferences and bridging the gap between the static model and dynamic users. Furthermore, the issue of reduced coverage also improves by expanding the coverage based on transition probabilities and clustering probabilities. The proposed method consists of four processes. First, user preferences are normalized in preference clustering. Second, changes in user preferences are detected from review score entries during preference transition detection. Third, user propensities are normalized using patterns of changes (propensities) in user preferences in propensity clustering. Lastly, the preference prediction model is developed to predict user preferences for items during preference prediction. The proposed method has been validated by testing the robustness of performance instability and scalability-performance tradeoff. The initial test compared and analyzed the performance of individual recommender systems each enabled by IBCF, CBCF, ICFEC and PCCF under an environment where data sparsity had been minimized. The following test adjusted the optimal number of clusters in CBCF, ICFEC and PCCF for a comparative analysis of subsequent changes in the system performance. The test results revealed that the suggested method produced insignificant improvement in performance in comparison with the existing techniques. In addition, it failed to achieve significant improvement in the standard deviation that indicates the degree of data fluctuation. Notwithstanding, it resulted in marked improvement over the existing techniques in terms of range that indicates the level of performance fluctuation. The level of performance fluctuation before and after the model generation improved by 51.31% in the initial test. Then in the following test, there has been 36.05% improvement in the level of performance fluctuation driven by the changes in the number of clusters. This signifies that the proposed method, despite the slight performance improvement, clearly offers better performance stability compared to the existing techniques. Further research on this study will be directed toward enhancing the recommendation performance that failed to demonstrate significant improvement over the existing techniques. The future research will consider the introduction of a high-dimensional parameter-free clustering algorithm or deep learning-based model in order to improve performance in recommendations.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.117-129
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• 2015

As the Internet becomes ubiquitous, a large volume of information is posted on the Internet with exponential growth every day. Accordingly, it is not unusual that investors in stock markets gather and compile firm-specific or market-wide information through online searches. Importantly, it becomes easier for investors to acquire value-relevant information for their investment decision with the help of powerful search tools on the Internet. Our study examines whether or not the Internet helps investors assess a firm's value better by using firm-level data over long periods spanning from January 2004 to December 2013. To this end, we construct weekly-based search volume for information technology (IT) services firms on the Internet. We limit our focus to IT firms since they are often equipped with intangible assets and relatively less recognized to the public which makes them hard-to measure. To obtain the information on those firms, investors are more likely to consult the Internet and use the information to appreciate the firms more accurately and eventually improve their investment decisions. Prior studies have shown that changes in search volumes can reflect the various aspects of the complex human behaviors and forecast near-term values of economic indicators, including automobile sales, unemployment claims, and etc. Moreover, search volume of firm names or stock ticker symbols has been used as a direct proxy of individual investors' attention in financial markets since, different from indirect measures such as turnover and extreme returns, they can reveal and quantify the interest of investors in an objective way. Following this line of research, this study aims to gauge whether the information retrieved from the Internet is value relevant in assessing a firm. We also use search volume for analysis but, distinguished from prior studies, explore its impact on return comovements with market returns. Given that a firm's returns tend to comove with market returns excessively when investors are less informed about the firm, we empirically test the value of information by examining the association between Internet searches and the extent to which a firm's returns comove. Our results show that Internet searches are negatively associated with return comovements as expected. When sample is split by the size of firms, the impact of Internet searches on return comovements is shown to be greater for large firms than small ones. Interestingly, we find a greater impact of Internet searches on return comovements for years from 2009 to 2013 than earlier years possibly due to more aggressive and informative exploit of Internet searches in obtaining financial information. We also complement our analyses by examining the association between return volatility and Internet search volumes. If Internet searches capture investors' attention associated with a change in firm-specific fundamentals such as new product releases, stock splits and so on, a firm's return volatility is likely to increase while search results can provide value-relevant information to investors. Our results suggest that in general, an increase in the volume of Internet searches is not positively associated with return volatility. However, we find a positive association between Internet searches and return volatility when the sample is limited to larger firms. A stronger result from larger firms implies that investors still pay less attention to the information obtained from Internet searches for small firms while the information is value relevant in assessing stock values. However, we do find any systematic differences in the magnitude of Internet searches impact on return volatility by time periods. Taken together, our results shed new light on the value of information searched from the Internet in assessing stock values. Given the informational role of the Internet in stock markets, we believe the results would guide investors to exploit Internet search tools to be better informed, as a result improving their investment decisions.