• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.54 no.10
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• pp.835-848
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• 2021

In Jeju Island which has peculiarity for its geological features and hydrology system, hydrological factor analysis for the effective water management is necessary. Because in-situ hydro-meteorological data is affected by surrounding environment, the in-situ dataset could not be the spatially representative for the study area. For this reason, remote sensing data may be used to overcome the limit of the in-situ data. In this study, applicability assessment of MOD16 evapotranspiration data, Globas Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) based evapotranspiration/soil moisture data, and Advanced SCATterometer (ASCAT) soil moisture product which were evaluated their applicability on other study areas was conducted. In the case of evapotranspiration, comparison with total precipitation and flux-tower based evapotranspiration were conducted. And for soil moisture, 6 in-situ data and ASCAT soil moisture product were compared on each site. As a result, 57% of annual precipitation was calculated as evapotranspiration, and the correlation coefficient between MOD16 evapotranspiration and GLDAS evapotranspiration was 0.759, which was a robust value. The correlation coefficient was 0.434, indicating a relatively low fit. In the case of soil moisture, in the case of the GLDAS data, the RMSE value was less than 0.05 at all sites compared to the in-situ data, and a statistically significant result was obtained as a result of the significance test of the correlation coefficient. However, for satellite data, RMSE over than 0.05 were found at Wolgak and there was no correlation at Sehwa and Handong points. It is judged that the above results are due to insufficient quality control and spatial representation of the evapotranspiration and soil moisture sensors installed in Jeju Island. It is estimated as the error that appears when adjacent to the coast. Through this study, the necessity of improving the existing ground observation data of hydrometeorological factors is emphasized.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.59-71
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• 2019

The domestic unemployment rate is now seriously increasing due to the impact of the international trend of incurring high costs using only a small number of manpower in a situation where the business has been being reduced in size. The nation is taking start-up promotion policies as a way to overcome the problem, but with the advent of excessive entrepreneurs and their concentration on specific areas, their survival is in an unclear situation. Thus, this study was intended to provide a useful direction for successful start-ups by identifying the impact of entrepreneurial motivation and entrepreneurship, internal characteristics of entrepreneurs, and of competency characteristics, external characteristics of them, on sustainability through business performance. Thus, the purpose of this study was to provide a useful direction for successful start-ups by identifying the impact of entrepreneurial motivation and entrepreneurship, internal characteristics of entrepreneurs, competency, and external characteristics, on sustainability through business performance. The result of verifying the hypothesis has showed that entrepreneurial motivation, entrepreneurship, and competency characteristics had a positive effect on business performance, and on the other hand, the business performance had a positive effect on sustainability. In addition, in terms of the impact of entrepreneurial motivation, entrepreneurship, and competency characteristics on sustainability, all of them had mediating effects on business performance. It is obvious that studies on the factors affecting business performance and corporate sustainability up to now have been carried out by only collecting the independent variables of this study individually or two of them. so it is judged that if the study, which has verified the practical direction in general through the verification of entrepreneurs's internal and external characteristics from various angles, is performed more comprehensively along with the addition of background characteristics of entrepreneurs, such as characteristics of start-up preparation, etc., in the future, more in-depth results will be able to be obtained.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.105-117
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• 2022

This study analyzes the effects between stock returns and interest rate spread, difference between long-term and short-term interest rate through the polynomial linear regression analysis. The existing research concentrated on the business forecast through the interest rate spread focusing on the US market. The previous studies verified the interest rate spread based on the leading indicators of business forecast by moderating the period of long-term/short-term interest rates and analyzing the degree of leading. After the 7th reform of composite indices of business indicators in Korea of 2006, the interest rate spread was included in the items of composing the business leading indicators, which is utilized till today. Nevertheless, there are a few research on stock returns of each industry and interest rate spread in domestic stock market. Therefore, this study analyzed the stock returns of each industry and interest rate spread targeting Korean stock market. This study selected the long-term/short-term interest rates with high causality through the regression analysis, and then understood the correlations with each leading period and industry. To overcome the limitation of the simple linear regression analysis, polynomial linear regression analysis is used, which raised explanatory power. As a result, the high causality was verified when using differences between returns of corporate bond(AA-) without guarantee for three years by leading six months and call rate returns as interest rate spread. In addition, analyzing the stock returns of each industry, the relation between the relevant interest rate spread and returns of the automobile industry was the closest. This study is significant in the aspect of verifying the causality of interest rate spread, business forecast, and stock returns in Korea. Even though it could be limited to forecast the stock price by using only the interest rate spread, it would be working as a strong factor when it is properly utilized with other various factors.

• Journal of Appropriate Technology
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.28-36
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• 2020

Sustainable appropriate technology requires user-centered design with consideration of the political, cultural and environmental aspects of the area. However, in the preparation of appropriate technology, there is a limit to the prior grasp of the user's intention and experience leading to the actual behavior of the user after the dissemination. As a result, appropriate technologies are often inconvenient for practical use or used for other purposes, contrary to the designer's intention. This study analyzes the case of appropriate technology with an analysis framework that reflects Maier's affordance theory, and proposes a design solution that can overcome the limitations of existing design. Affordance theory is the theory of factors that cause the user to identify and use features through interpretation based on prior knowledge and experience about things. The analysis cases in this study are the interviews with the designers, management education materials, and manager interviews for water purification systems at three of six schools in Binh Dinh Province, Vietnam, from August 2015 to January 2018. The case was attempted to be improved by periodic installation, maintenance, and inspection, but similar problems continued to occur. First, the facility inspections and manager interviews are compared with manager training materials distributed at the time of installation to find inconsistencies. Next, we analyze the designer's intended affordance and the affordances that actually influenced the management behavior. And then, we propose design solutions based on commonly found problems and affordances. This study suggests that it is necessary to apply the design considering the user's behavior before distributing the appropriate technology, and this study will be precedent in the process of finding the improvement through the analysis framework based on the affordance.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.83-92
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• 2022

The amount of the plastic waste has been increasing according to global demand for plastic. Microplastics are the most hazardous among all plastic pollutants due to their toxicity and unknown physicochemical properties. This study investigates the optimal methodology that can be applied to sewage samples for detecting microplastics before discussing reducing microplastics in MWTPs. In this study, the effect of different pretreatment methods while detecting microplastic analysis of MWTP influent samples was investigated; the samples were collected from the J sewage treatment plant. There are many pretreatment methods but two of them are widely used: Fenton digestion and hydrogen peroxide oxidation. Although there are many pretreatment methods that can be applied to investigate microplastics, the most widely used methods for sewage treatment plant samples are Fenton digestion and H₂O₂ oxidation. For each pretreatment method, there were factors that could cause an error in the measurement. To overcome this, in the case of the Fenton digestion pretreatment, it is recommended to proceed with the analysis by filtration instead of the density separation method. In the case of the H₂O₂ oxidation method, the process of washing with distilled water after the reaction is recommended. As a result of the analysis, the concentration of microplastics was measured to be 2.75ea/L for the sample using the H₂O₂ oxidation method and 3.2ea/L for the sample using the Fenton oxidation method, and most of them were present in the form of fibers. In addition, it is difficult to guarantee the reliability of measurement results from quantitative analysis performed via microscope with eyes. A calibration curve was created for prove the reliability. A total of three calibration curves were drawn, and as a result of analysis of the calibration curves, all R² values were more than 0.9. This ensures high reliability for quantitative analysis. The qualitative analysis could determine the series of microplastics flowing into the MWTP, but could not confirm the chemical composition of each microplastic. This study can be used to confirm the chemical composition of microplastics introduced into MWTP in the future research.

• Korean small business review
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.73-88
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• 2009

This study examines the characteristics of 24 Korean hidden champions such as key success factors, core competences, strategic problems, and desirable future directions. The study categorized them into 8 types with Danny Miller's four trajectories and top manager's decision making style(rationality and passion). Danny Miller argued in his book, Icarus paradox, that outstanding firms will extend their orientations until they reach dangerous extremes and their momentum will result in common trajectories of decline. He suggested four very common success types: Craftsmen, Builders, Pioneers, Salesmen. He also suggested common trajectories of decline:Focusing(from Craftsmen to Tinkers), Venturing(from Builders to Imperialists), Inventing(from Pioneers to Escapists), Decoupling(from Salesmen to Drifts). In Korea, successful startups appear to possess three kinds of drive: Technology-drive, Vision-drive, Market-drive. Successful technology-driven firms tend to grow as craftsmen or pioneers. Successful vision-driven and market-driven ones tend to grow as builders and salesmen respectively. Korean top managers or founders seem to have two kinds of decision making style: Passion-based and Rationality-bases. Passion-based(passionate) entrepreneurs are biased towards action or proactiveness in competing and getting things done. Rationality- based ones tend to emphasis the effort devoted to scanning and analysing information to better understand a company's threats, opportunities and options. Consequently this study suggested 4*2 types of Korean hidden champions: (1) passionate craftsmen, (2) rational craftsmen, (3) passionate builders, (4) rational builders, (5) passionate pioneers, (6) rational pioneers, (7) passionate salesmen, (8) rational salesmen. These 8 type firms showed different success stories and appeared to possess different trajectories of decline. These hidden champions have acquired competitive advantage within domestic or globally niche markets in spite of the weak market power and lack of internal resources. They have maintained their sustainable competitiveness by utilizing three types of growth strategy; (1) penetrating into the global market, (2) exploring new service market, (3) occupying the domestic market. According to the types of growth strategy, these firms showed different financial outcomes and possessed different issues for maintaining their competitiveness. This study found that Korean hidden champions were facing serious challenges from the transforming economic structure these days and possessed the decline potential from their success momentum or self-complacence. It argues that they need to take a new growth engine not to decline in the turbulent environment. It also discusses how firms overcome the economic crisis and find a new business area in promising industries for the future. It summarized the recent policy of Korean government called as "Green Growth" and discussed how small firms utilize such benefits and supports from the government. Other implications for firm strategies and governmental policies were discussed.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.69-93
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• 2017

The development of ICT has leaded the diversification and changes of supplies and demands in markets. It also caused the creations of a variety of values which are differentiated from those in the existing market. Therefore, a new-type market is created, which can include multi-value chains which are from ICT-based created markets as well as the existing markets. We defined the platform as the new-type market. In the platform, the multi-value chains can be coexisted with multi-values. In true market, when a new-type value chain entered into an existing market, it is general that it can be conflicted with the existing value chain in the market. The conflicted problem among multi-value chains in a market is caused by the sharing of limited market resources like suppliers, consumers, services or products among the value chains. In other words, if there are multi-value chains in the platform, then it is possible to have conflictions, overlapping, creations or losses of values among the value chains. To solve the problem, we introduce coexistence factors to reduce the conflictions to reach market equilibrium in the platform. In the other hand, it is possible to lead the creations of differentiated values from the existing market and to augment the total market values in the platform. In the early era of ICT development, ICT was introduced for improvement of efficiency and effectiveness of the value chains in the existing market. However, according to the changed role of ICT from the supporter to the promotor of the market, ICT became to lead the variations of the value chains and creations of various values in the markets. For instance, Uber Taxi created a new value chain with ICT-based new-type service or products with new resources like new suppliers and consumers. When Uber and Traditional Taxi services are playing at the same time in Taxi service platform, it is possible to create values or make conflictions among values between the new and old value chains. In this research, like Uber and traditional taxi services, if there are conflictions among the multi-value chains, then it is necessary to minimize the conflictions in the platform for the coexistence of multi-value chains which can create the value-added values in the platform. So, it is important to predict and discuss the possible conflicted problems between new and old value chains. The confliction should be solved to reach market equilibrium with multi-value chains in the platform. That is, we discuss the possibility of the coexistence of multi-value chains in the platform which are comprised of a variety of suppliers and customers. To do this, especially we are focusing on the healthcare markets. Nowadays healthcare markets are popularized in global market as well as domestic. Therefore, there are a lot of and a variety of healthcare services like Traditional-, Tele-, or Intelligent- healthcare services and so on. It shows that there are multi-suppliers, -consumers and -services as components of each different value chain in the same platform. The platform can be shared by different values that are created or overlapped by confliction and loss of values in the value chains. In this research, as was said, we focused on the healthcare services to show if a platform can be shared by different value chains like traditional-, tele-healthcare and intelligent-healthcare services and products. Additionally, we try to show if it is possible to increase the value of each value chain as well as the total value of the platform. As the result, it is possible to increase of each value of each value chain as well as the total value in the platform. Finally, we propose a coexistence model to overcome such problems and showed the possibility of coexistence between the value chains through experimentation.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.95-115
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• 2011

Food service is the major part of franchise business in Korea, accounting for 69.9% of the brands in the market. As the food service industry becomes mature, many franchisees have struggled to survive in the market. In general, consumers have higher levels of expectation toward service quality of franchised outlets compared that of (non-franchised) independent ones. They also tend to believe that franchisees deliver standardized service at the uniform food price, regardless of their locations. Such beliefs seem to be important reasons that consumers prefer franchised outlets to independent ones. Nevertheless, few studies examined the impact of qualify features of franchisees on customer satisfaction so far. To this end, this study examined the characteristics of various quality features of franchisees in the food service industry, regarding their relationship with customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The quality perception of heavy-users was also compared with that of light-users in order to find insights for developing differentiated marketing strategy for the two segments. Customer satisfaction has been understood as a one-dimensional construct while there are recent studies that insist two-dimensional nature of the construct. In this regard, Kano et al. (1984) suggested to categorize quality features of a product or service into five types, based on their relation to customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction: Must-be quality, Attractive quality, One-dimensional quality, Indifferent quality, and Reverse quality. According to the Kano model, customers are more dissatisfied when Must-be quality(M) are not fulfilled, but their satisfaction does not arise above neutral no matter how fully the quality fulfilled. In comparison, customers are more satisfied with a full provision of Attactive quality(A) but manage to accept its dysfunction. One-dimensional quality(O) results in satisfaction when fulfilled and dissatisfaction when not fulfilled. For Indifferent quality(I), its presence or absence influences neither customer satisfaction nor dissatisfaction. Lastly, Reverse quality(R) refers to the features whose high degree of achievement results in customer dissatisfaction rather than satisfaction. Meanwhile, the basic guidelines of the Kano model have a limitation in that the quality type of each feature is simply determined by calculating the mode statistics. In order to overcome such limitation, the relative importance of each feature on customer satisfaction (Better value; b) and dissatisfaction (Worse value; w) were calculated following the formulas below (Timko, 1993). The Better value indicates how much customer satisfaction is increased by providing the quality feature in question. In contrast, the Worse value indicates how much customer dissatisfaction is decreased by providing the quality feature. Better = (A + O)/(A+O+M+I) Worse = (O+M)/(A+O+M+I)(-1) An on-line survey was performed in order to understand the nature of quality features of franchisees in the food service industry by applying the Kano Model. A total of twenty quality features (refer to the Table 2) were identified as the result of literature review in franchise business and a pre-test with fifty college students in Seoul. The potential respondents of our main survey was limited to the customers who have visited more than two restaurants/stores of the same franchise brand. Survey invitation e-mails were sent out to the panels of a market research company and a total of 257 responses were used for analysis. Following the guidelines of Kano model, each of the twenty quality features was classified into one of the five types based on customers' responses to a set of questions: "(1) how do you feel if the following quality feature is fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit," and "(2) how do you feel if the following quality feature is not fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit." The analyses revealed that customers' dissatisfaction with franchisees is commonly associated with the poor level of cleanliness of the store (w=-0.872), kindness of the staffs(w=-0.890), conveniences such as parking lot and restroom(w=-0.669), and expertise of the staffs(w=-0.492). Such quality features were categorized as Must-be quality in this study. While standardization or uniformity across franchisees has been emphasized in franchise business, this study found that consumers are interested only in uniformity of price across franchisees(w=-0.608), but not interested in standardizations of menu items, interior designs, customer service procedures, and food tastes. Customers appeared to be more satisfied when the franchise brand has promotional events such as giveaways(b=0.767), good accessibility(b=0.699), customer loyalty programs(b=0.659), award winning history(b=0.641), and outlets in the overseas market(b=0.506). The results are summarized in a matrix form in Table 1. Better(b) and Worse(w) index indicate relative importance of each quality feature on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction, respectively. Meanwhile, there were differences in perceiving the quality features between light users and heavy users of any specific franchise brand in the food service industry. Expertise of the staffs was labeled as Must-be quality for heavy users but Indifferent quality for light users. Light users seemed indifferent to overseas expansion of the brand and offering new menu items on a regular basis, while heavy users appeared to perceive them as Attractive quality. Such difference may come from their different levels of involvement when they eat out. The results are shown in Table 2. The findings of this study help practitioners understand the quality features they need to focus on to strengthen the competitive power in the food service market. Above all, removing the factors that cause customer dissatisfaction seems to be the most critical for franchisees. To retain loyal customers of the franchise brand, it is also recommended for franchisor to invest resources in the development of new menu items as well as training programs for the staffs. Lastly, if resources allow, promotional events, loyalty programs, overseas expansion, award-winning history can be considered as tools for attracting more customers to the business.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.191-207
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• 2021

Up to this day, mobile communications have evolved rapidly over the decades, mainly focusing on speed-up to meet the growing data demands of 2G to 5G. And with the start of the 5G era, efforts are being made to provide such various services to customers, as IoT, V2X, robots, artificial intelligence, augmented virtual reality, and smart cities, which are expected to change the environment of our lives and industries as a whole. In a bid to provide those services, on top of high speed data, reduced latency and reliability are critical for real-time services. Thus, 5G has paved the way for service delivery through maximum speed of 20Gbps, a delay of 1ms, and a connecting device of 106/㎢ In particular, in intelligent traffic control systems and services using various vehicle-based Vehicle to X (V2X), such as traffic control, in addition to high-speed data speed, reduction of delay and reliability for real-time services are very important. 5G communication uses high frequencies of 3.5Ghz and 28Ghz. These high-frequency waves can go with high-speed thanks to their straightness while their short wavelength and small diffraction angle limit their reach to distance and prevent them from penetrating walls, causing restrictions on their use indoors. Therefore, under existing networks it's difficult to overcome these constraints. The underlying centralized SDN also has a limited capability in offering delay-sensitive services because communication with many nodes creates overload in its processing. Basically, SDN, which means a structure that separates signals from the control plane from packets in the data plane, requires control of the delay-related tree structure available in the event of an emergency during autonomous driving. In these scenarios, the network architecture that handles in-vehicle information is a major variable of delay. Since SDNs in general centralized structures are difficult to meet the desired delay level, studies on the optimal size of SDNs for information processing should be conducted. Thus, SDNs need to be separated on a certain scale and construct a new type of network, which can efficiently respond to dynamically changing traffic and provide high-quality, flexible services. Moreover, the structure of these networks is closely related to ultra-low latency, high confidence, and hyper-connectivity and should be based on a new form of split SDN rather than an existing centralized SDN structure, even in the case of the worst condition. And in these SDN structural networks, where automobiles pass through small 5G cells very quickly, the information change cycle, round trip delay (RTD), and the data processing time of SDN are highly correlated with the delay. Of these, RDT is not a significant factor because it has sufficient speed and less than 1 ms of delay, but the information change cycle and data processing time of SDN are factors that greatly affect the delay. Especially, in an emergency of self-driving environment linked to an ITS(Intelligent Traffic System) that requires low latency and high reliability, information should be transmitted and processed very quickly. That is a case in point where delay plays a very sensitive role. In this paper, we study the SDN architecture in emergencies during autonomous driving and conduct analysis through simulation of the correlation with the cell layer in which the vehicle should request relevant information according to the information flow. For simulation: As the Data Rate of 5G is high enough, we can assume the information for neighbor vehicle support to the car without errors. Furthermore, we assumed 5G small cells within 50 ~ 250 m in cell radius, and the maximum speed of the vehicle was considered as a 30km ~ 200 km/hour in order to examine the network architecture to minimize the delay.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.32-43
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• 2009

Trust has been studied extensively in psychology, economics, and sociology, and its importance has been emphasized not only in marketing, but also in business disciplines in general. Unlike past relationships between suppliers and buyers, which take considerable advantage of private networks and may involve unethical business practices, partnerships between suppliers and buyers are at the core of success for industrial marketing amid intense global competition in the 21st century. A high level of mutual cooperation occurs through an exchange relationship based on trust, which brings long-term benefits, competitive enhancements, and transaction cost reductions, among other benefits, for both buyers and suppliers. In spite of the important role of trust, existing studies in buy-supply situations overlook the role of trust and do not systematically analyze the effect of trust on relational performance. Consequently, an in-depth study that determines the relation of trust to the relational performance between buyers and suppliers of business services is absolutely needed. Business services in this study, which include those supporting the manufacturing industry, are drawing attention as the economic growth engine for the next generation. The Korean government has selected business services as a strategic area for the development of manufacturing sectors. Since the demands for opening business services markets are becoming fiercer, the competitiveness of the business service industry must be promoted now more than ever. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the mutual trust between buyers and suppliers on relational performance. Specifically, this study proposed a theoretical model of trust-relational performance in the transactions of business services and empirically tested the hypotheses delineated from the framework. The study suggests strategic implications based on research findings. Empirical data were collected via multiple methods, including via telephone, mail, and in-person interviews. Sample companies were knowledge-based companies supplying and purchasing business services in Korea. The present study collected data on a dyadic basis. Each pair of sample companies includes a buying company and its corresponding supplying company. Mutual trust was traced for each pair of companies. This study proposes a model of trust-relational performance of buying-supplying for business services. The model consists of trust and its antecedents and consequences. The trust of buyers is classified into trust toward the supplying company and trust toward salespersons. Viewing trust both at the individual level and the organizational level is based on the research of Doney and Cannon (1997). Normally, buyers are the subject of trust, but this study supposes that suppliers are the subjects. Hence, it uniquely focused on the bilateral perspective of perceived risk. In other words, suppliers, like buyers, are the subject of trust since transactions are normally bilateral. From this point of view, suppliers' trust in buyers is as important as buyers' trust in suppliers. The suppliers' trust is influenced by the extent to which it trusts the buying companies and the buyers. This classification of trust using an individual level and an organization level is based on the suggestion of Doney and Cannon (1997). Trust affects the process of supplier selection, which works in a bilateral manner. Suppliers are actively involved in the supplier selection process, working very closely with buyers. In addition, the process is affected by the extent to which each party trusts its partners. The selection process consists of certain steps: recognition, information search, supplier selection, and performance evaluation. As a result of the process, both buyers and suppliers evaluate the performance and take corrective actions on the basis of such outcomes as tangible, intangible, and/or side effects. The measurement of trust used for the present study was developed on the basis of the studies of Mayer, Davis and Schoorman (1995) and Mayer and Davis (1999). Based on their recommendations, the three dimensions of trust used for the study include ability, benevolence, and integrity. The original questions were adjusted to the context of the transactions of business services. For example, a question such as "He/she has professional capabilities" has been changed to "The salesperson showed professional capabilities while we talked about our products." The measurement used for this study differs from those used in previous studies (Rotter 1967; Sullivan and Peterson 1982; Dwyer and Oh 1987). The measurements of the antecedents and consequences of trust used for this study were developed on the basis of Doney and Cannon (1997). The original questions were adjusted to the context of transactions in business services. In particular, questions were developed for both buyers and suppliers to address the following factors: reputation (integrity, customer care, good-will), market standing (company size, market share, positioning in the industry), willingness to customize (product, process, delivery), information sharing (proprietary information, private information), willingness to maintain relationships, perceived professionalism, authority empowerment, buyer-seller similarity, and contact frequency. As a consequential variable of trust, relational performance was measured. Relational performance is classified into tangible effects, intangible effects, and side effects. Tangible effects include financial performance; intangible effects include improvements in relations, network developing, and internal employee satisfaction; side effects include those not included either in the tangible or intangible effects. Three hundred fifty pairs of companies were contacted, and one hundred five pairs of companies responded. After deleting five company pairs because of incomplete responses, one hundred five pairs of companies were used for data analysis. The response ratio of the companies used for data analysis is 30% (105/350), which is above the average response ratio in industrial marketing research. As for the characteristics of the respondent companies, the majority of the companies operate service businesses for both buyers (85.4%) and suppliers (81.8%). The majority of buyers (76%) deal with consumer goods, while the majority of suppliers (70%) deal with industrial goods. This may imply that buyers process the incoming material, parts, and components to produce the finished consumer goods. As indicated by their report of the length of acquaintance with their partners, suppliers appear to have longer business relationships than do buyers. Hypothesis 1 tested the effects of buyer-supplier characteristics on trust. The salesperson's professionalism (t=2.070, p<0.05) and authority empowerment (t=2.328, p<0.05) positively affected buyers' trust toward suppliers. On the other hand, authority empowerment (t=2.192, p<0.05) positively affected supplier trust toward buyers. For both buyers and suppliers, the degree of authority empowerment plays a crucial role in the maintenance of their trust in each other. Hypothesis 2 tested the effects of buyerseller relational characteristics on trust. Buyers tend to trust suppliers, as suppliers make every effort to contact buyers (t=2.212, p<0.05). This tendency has also been shown to be much stronger for suppliers (t=2.591, p<0.01). On the other hand suppliers trust buyers because suppliers perceive buyers as being similar to themselves (t=2.702, p<0.01). This finding confirmed the results of Crosby, Evans, and Cowles (1990), which reported that suppliers and buyers build relationships through regular meetings, either for business or personal matters. Hypothesis 3 tested the effects of trust on perceived risk. It has been found that for both suppliers and buyers the lower is the trust, the higher is the perceived risk (t=-6.621, p<0.01 for buyers; t=-2.437, p<0.05). Interestingly, this tendency has been shown to be much stronger for buyers than for suppliers. One possible explanation for this higher level of perceived risk is that buyers normally perceive higher risks than do suppliers in transactions involving business services. For this reason, it is necessary for suppliers to implement risk reduction strategies for buyers. Hypothesis 4 tested the effects of trust on information searching. It has been found that for both suppliers and buyers, contrary to expectation, trust depends on their partner's reputation (t=2.929, p<0.01 for buyers; t=2.711, p<0.05 for suppliers). This finding shows that suppliers with good reputations tend to be trusted. Prior experience did not show any significant relationship with trust for either buyers or suppliers. Hypothesis 5 tested the effects of trust on supplier/buyer selection. Unlike buyers, suppliers tend to trust buyers when they think that previous transactions with buyers were important (t=2.913 p<0.01). However, this study did not show any significant relationship between source loyalty and the trust of buyers in suppliers. Hypothesis 6 tested the effects of trust on relational performances. For buyers and suppliers, financial performance reportedly improved when they trusted their partners (t=2.301, p<0.05 for buyers; t=3.692, p<0.01 for suppliers). It is interesting that this tendency was much stronger for suppliers than it was for buyers. Similarly, competitiveness was reported to improve when buyers and suppliers trusted their partners (t=3.563, p<0.01 for buyers; t=3.042, p<0.01 for suppliers). For suppliers, efficiency and productivity were reportedly improved when they trusted buyers (t=2.673, p<0.01). Other performance indices showed insignificant relationships with trust. The findings of this study have some strategic implications. First and most importantly, trust-based transactions are beneficial for both suppliers and buyers. As verified in the study, financial performance can be improved through efforts to build and maintain mutual trust. Similarly, competitiveness can be increased through the same kinds of effort. Second, trust-based transactions can facilitate the reduction of perceived risks inherent in the purchasing situation. This finding has implications for both suppliers and buyers. It is generally believed that buyers perceive higher risks in a highly involved purchasing situation. To reduce risks, previous studies have recommended that suppliers devise risk-reducing tactics. Moving beyond these recommendations, the present study uniquely focused on the bilateral perspective of perceived risk. In other words, suppliers are also susceptible to perceived risks, especially when they supply services that require very technical and sophisticated manipulations and maintenance. Consequently, buyers and suppliers must solve problems together in close collaboration. Hence, mutual trust plays a crucial role in the problem-solving process. Third, as found in this study, the more authority a salesperson has, the more he or she can be trusted. This finding is very important with regard to tactics. Building trust is a long-term assignment; however, when mutual trust has not been developed, suppliers can overcome the problems they encounter by empowering a salesperson with the authority to make certain decisions. This finding applies to suppliers as well.