• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.37-63
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• 2012

In franchise business, exclusive sales territory (sometimes EST in table) protection is a very important issue from an economic, social and political point of view. It affects the growth and survival of both franchisor and franchisee and often raises issues of social and political conflicts. When franchisee is not familiar with related laws and regulations, franchisor has high chance to utilize it. Exclusive sales territory protection by the manufacturer and distributors (wholesalers or retailers) means sales area restriction by which only certain distributors have right to sell products or services. The distributor, who has been granted exclusive sales territories, can protect its own territory, whereas he may be prohibited from entering in other regions. Even though exclusive sales territory is a quite critical problem in franchise business, there is not much rigorous research about the reason, results, evaluation, and future direction based on empirical data. This paper tries to address this problem not only from logical and nomological validity, but from empirical validation. While we purse an empirical analysis, we take into account the difficulties of real data collection and statistical analysis techniques. We use a set of disclosure document data collected by Korea Fair Trade Commission, instead of conventional survey method which is usually criticized for its measurement error. Existing theories about exclusive sales territory can be summarized into two groups as shown in the table below. The first one is about the effectiveness of exclusive sales territory from both franchisor and franchisee point of view. In fact, output of exclusive sales territory can be positive for franchisors but negative for franchisees. Also, it can be positive in terms of sales but negative in terms of profit. Therefore, variables and viewpoints should be set properly. The other one is about the motive or reason why exclusive sales territory is protected. The reasons can be classified into four groups - industry characteristics, franchise systems characteristics, capability to maintain exclusive sales territory, and strategic decision. Within four groups of reasons, there are more specific variables and theories as below. Based on these theories, we develop nine hypotheses which are briefly shown in the last table below with the results. In order to validate the hypothesis, data is collected from government (FTC) homepage which is open source. The sample consists of 1,896 franchisors and it contains about three year operation data, from 2006 to 2008. Within the samples, 627 have exclusive sales territory protection policy and the one with exclusive sales territory policy is not evenly distributed over 19 representative industries. Additional data are also collected from another government agency homepage, like Statistics Korea. Also, we combine data from various secondary sources to create meaningful variables as shown in the table below. All variables are dichotomized by mean or median split if they are not inherently dichotomized by its definition, since each hypothesis is composed by multiple variables and there is no solid statistical technique to incorporate all these conditions to test the hypotheses. This paper uses a simple chi-square test because hypotheses and theories are built upon quite specific conditions such as industry type, economic condition, company history and various strategic purposes. It is almost impossible to find all those samples to satisfy them and it can't be manipulated in experimental settings. However, more advanced statistical techniques are very good on clean data without exogenous variables, but not good with real complex data. The chi-square test is applied in a way that samples are grouped into four with two criteria, whether they use exclusive sales territory protection or not, and whether they satisfy conditions of each hypothesis. So the proportion of sample franchisors which satisfy conditions and protect exclusive sales territory, does significantly exceed the proportion of samples that satisfy condition and do not protect. In fact, chi-square test is equivalent with the Poisson regression which allows more flexible application. As results, only three hypotheses are accepted. When attitude toward the risk is high so loyalty fee is determined according to sales performance, EST protection makes poor results as expected. And when franchisor protects EST in order to recruit franchisee easily, EST protection makes better results. Also, when EST protection is to improve the efficiency of franchise system as a whole, it shows better performances. High efficiency is achieved as EST prohibits the free riding of franchisee who exploits other's marketing efforts, and it encourages proper investments and distributes franchisee into multiple regions evenly. Other hypotheses are not supported in the results of significance testing. Exclusive sales territory should be protected from proper motives and administered for mutual benefits. Legal restrictions driven by the government agency like FTC could be misused and cause mis-understandings. So there need more careful monitoring on real practices and more rigorous studies by both academicians and practitioners.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.1143-1153
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• 1998

Background : Recent outbreaks of pulmonary disease due to drug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis have resulted in significant morbidity and mortality in patients worldwide. We reviewed our experience to evaluate the effects of pulmonary resection on the management of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. Method : A retrospective review was performed of 41 patients undergoing pulmonary resection for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis between January 1993 and December 1997. We divided these into 3 groups according to the radiologic findings : (1) patients who have reasonably localized lesion (Localized Lesion Group ; LLG) (2) patients who have cavitary lesions after pulmonary resection on chest roentgenogram (Remained Cavity Group : RCG) (3) patients who have Remained infiltrative lesions postoperatively (Remained infiltrative group : RIG). We evaluated the negative conversion rate after resection and overall response rate of the groups. Then they were compared with the results of the chemotherapy on the multi drug-resistant tuberculosis which has been outcome by Goble et al. Goble et al reported that negative conversion rate was 65% and overall response rate, 56% over a mean period of 5.1 months. Results : Seventy five point six percent were men and 24.4% women with a median age of 31 years (range, 16 to 60 years). Although the patients were treated preoperatively with multidrug regimens in an effort to reduce the mycobacterial burden, 22 of 41 were still sputum culture positive at the time of surgery. 20 of 22 patients(90.9%, p<0.01) responded which is defined as negative sputum cultures within 2 months postoperative. Of 26 patients with the sufficient follow up data, 19 have Remained sputum culture negative for a mean duration of 25.7 months (73.1%, p<0.05). The bulk of the disease was manifest in one lung, but lesser amounts of contralateral disease were demonstrated in 15, consisted of 8 in RIG and 7 in RCG, of 41. 12 of 12 patients (100%, p<0.01) who were sputum positive at the time of surgery in LLG converted successfully. 14 of 15 patients (93.3%, p<0.05) with the follow up have completed treatment and not relapsed for a mean period of 25. 7 months. The mean length of postoperative drug therapy of LLG was 12.2 months. In RIG, postoperative negative conversion rate was 83.3% which was not significant statistically. There was a statistical significance in overall response rate (100%, p<0.05) of RIG for a mean period of 24.4 months with a mean length of postoperative chemotherapy, 11.8 months. In RCG a statistically lower overall response rate (14.3%, p<0.01) has been revealed for a mean duration of follow up, 24.2 months. A negative conversion rate of RCG was 75% which was not significant statistically. Conclusion : Surgery plays an important role in the management of patients with multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. Aggressive pulmonary resection should be performed for resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection to avoid treatment failure or relapse. Especially all cavitary lesions on preoperative chest roentgenogram should be resected completely. If all of them could not be resected perfectly, you should not open the thorax.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.330-338
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• 1997

This study investigated the method to adjust acquisition time(a) and injection dose (i) to make the best basal and subtraction images in consecutive SPECT. Image quality was assumed to be mainly affected by signal to noise ratio(S/N). Basal image was subtracted from the second image consecutively acquired at the same position. We calculated S/N ratio in basal SPECT images($S_1/N_1$) and subtraction SPECT images(Ss/Ns) to find a(time) and i(dose) to maximize S/N of both images at the same time. From phantom images, we drew the relation of image counts and a(time) and i(dose) in our system using fanbeam-high-resolution collimated triple head SPECT. Noise by imaging process depended on Poisson distribution. We took maximum tolerable duration of consecutive acquisition as 30 minutes and maximum injectible dose as 1,850MBq(50 mCi)(sum of two injections) per study. Counts of second-acquired image($S_2$), counts($S_s$) and noise($N_s$) of subtraction SPECT were as follows. $C_1$ was the coefficient of measurement with our system. $$S_2=S_1{\cdot}(\frac{30-a}{a})+background{\cdot}(1-\frac{30-a}{a})+C_1{\cdot}(30-a){\cdot}{\epsilon}{\cdot}(50-i)$$ $$Ss=S_2-\{S_1{\cdot}(\frac{30-a}{a})+background{\cdot}(1-\frac{(30-a)}{a})\}$$ $$Ns={\sqrt{N_2^2+N_1^2{\cdot}\frac{(30-a)^2}{a^2}}={\sqrt{S_2+S_1{\cdot}\frac{(30-a)^2}{a^2}}$$ In case of rest/acetazolamide study, effect(${\epsilon}$) of acetazolamide to increase global brain uptake of Tc-99m-HMPAO could be 1.5 or less. Varying ${\epsilon}$ from 1 to 1.5, a(time) and i(dose) pair to maximize both $S_1/N_l$ and Ss/Ns was determined. 15 mCi/17 min and 35mCi/13min was the best a(time) and i(dose) pair for rest/acetazolamide study(when ${\epsilon}$ were 1.2) and came to be used for our clinical routine after this study. We developed simple method to maximize S/N ratios of basal and subtraction SPECT from consecutive acquisition. This method could be applied to ECD/HMPAO and brain activation studies as well as rest/acetazolamide studies.