• Journal of Ginseng Culture
• /
• v.5
• /
• pp.32-51
• /
• 2023

Because red ginseng was exported in large quantities to the Qing Dynasty in the 19th century, a large-scale ginseng cultivation complex was established in Kaesong. Sibyunje (時邊制), a privately led loan system unique to merchants in Kaesong, made it possible for them to raise the enormous capital required for ginseng cultivation. The imperial family of the Korean Empire promulgated the Posamgyuchik (包蔘規則) in 1895, and this signaled the start of the red ginseng monopoly system. In 1899, when the invasion of ginseng farms by the Japanese became severe, the imperial soldiers were sent to guard the ginseng farms to prevent the theft of ginseng by the Japanese. Furthermore, the stateled compensation mission, Baesanggeum Seongyojedo (賠償金 先交制度), provided 50%-90% of the payment for raw ginseng, which was paid in advance of harvest. In 1895, rising seed prices prompted some merchants to import and sell poor quality seeds from China and Japan. The red ginseng trade order was therefore promulgated in 1920 to prohibit the import of foreign seeds without the government's permission. In 1906-1910, namely, the early period of Japanese colonial rule, ginseng cultivation was halted, and the volume of fresh ginseng stocked as a raw material for red ginseng in 1910 was only 2,771 geun (斤). However, it increased significantly to 10,000 geun between 1915 and 1919 and to 150,000 geun between 1920 and 1934. These increases in the production of fresh ginseng as a raw material for red ginseng were the result of various policies implemented in 1908 with the aim of fostering the ginseng industry, such as prior disclosure of the compensation price for fresh ginseng, loans for cultivation expenditure in new areas, and the payment of incentives to excellent cultivators. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal of Japanese imperialism at the time was not to foster the growth of Korean ginseng farming, but to finance the maintenance of its colonial management using profits from the red ginseng business.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.123-134
• /
• 2010

Considering the benefits for both consumers and suppliers, firms are taking advantage of the Internet as a medium to communicate with and sell products to their consumers. This trend makes the online shopping environment a growing field for both researchers and practitioners. This paper contributes by testing a model of online consumer behavior with websites varying in levels of hedonism. Unlike past studies, we included all three types of emotions (arousal, pleasure, and dominance) and flow into the model. In this study, we assumed that website interfaces, such as background colors, music, and fonts impact the three types of emotions at the initial exposure to the site (Mazaheri, Richard, and Laroche, 2011). In turn, these emotions influence flow and consumers' perceptions of the site atmospherics-perception of site informativeness, effectiveness, and entertainment. This assumption is consistent with Zajonc (1980) who argued that affective reactions are independent of perceptual and cognitive operations and can influence responses. We, then, propose that the perceptions of site atmospherics along with flow, influence customers' attitudes toward the website and toward the product, site involvement, and purchase intentions. In addition, we studied the moderating impact of the level of hedonism of websites on all the relationship in the model. Thus, the path coefficients were compared between "high" and "low" hedonic websites. We used 39 real websites from 12 product categories (8 services and 4 physical goods) to test the model. Among them, 20 were perceived as high hedonic and 19 as low hedonic by the respondents. The result of EQS 6.1 support the overall model: $\chi^2$=1787 (df=504), CFI=.994; RMSEA=.031. All the hypotheses were significant. In addition, the results of multi-groups analyses reveal several non-invariant structural paths between high and low hedonic website groups. The findings supported the model regarding the influence of the three types of emotions on customers' perceptions of site atmospherics, flow, and other customer behavior variables. It was found that pleasure strongly influenced site attitudes and perceptions of site entertainment. Arousal positively impacted the other two types of emotions, perceptions of site informativeness, and site involvement. Additionally, the influence of arousal on flow was found to be highly significant. The results suggested a strong association between dominance and customers' perceptions of site effectiveness. Dominance was also found to be associated with site attitudes and flow. Moreover, the findings suggested that site involvement and attitudes toward the product are the most important antecedents of purchase intentions. Site informativeness and flow also significantly influenced purchase intentions. The results of multi-group analysis supported the moderating impacts of hedonism of the websites. Compared to low (high) hedonic sites, the impacts of utilitarian (hedonic) attributes on other variables were stronger in high (low) hedonic websites. Among the three types of emotions, dominance (controlling feelings) effects were stronger in high hedonic sites and pleasure effects were stronger in low hedonic sites. Moreover, the impact of site informativeness was stronger for high hedonic websites compared to their low-hedonic counterparts. On the other hand, the influence of effectiveness of information on perceptions of site informativeness and the impact of site involvement on product attitudes were stronger for low hedonic websites than for high hedonic ones.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.334-367
• /
• 2017

The ICT industry has been the main driver of Korea's economy with international competitiveness and is expected to be the growth engine that will revitalize the currently depressed economy. A broad range of different perspectives and opinions on the industry exist in Korea and overseas. Some of these are stereotypes, not all of which are based on objective evidence. Stereotypes refer to widely-held fixed opinions on a specific group and do not necessarily have negative connotations. However, they should not be viewed lightly because they can substantially affect decision-making process. In this regard, this study sought to review the stereotypes of ICT industry and identify objective and relative stereotypes. In the study, a decision-tree analysis was conducted on a survey result of 3,300 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in order to identify Korean ICT companies' characteristics that distinguish them from other technology companies. The decision-tree analysis, a data mining process based on machine learning, took a total of 291 variables into account in 10 subjects such as: corporate business in general, technology development activities as well as organization and people in technology development. Identifying the variables that distinguish ICT companies from other technology companies with the decision-tree analysis, the study then came up with a list of objective stereotypes of ICT companies. The findings from the stereotypes of Korean ICT companies are as follows. First, the companies are in need of technology policies that help R&D planning and market penetration. Second, policies must better support the companies working to sell new products or explore new business. Third, the companies need policies that support secure protection of development outcomes and proper management of IP rights. Fourth, the administrative procedures related to governmental support for ICT companies' R&D projects must be simplified. It is hoped that the outcome of this study will provide meaningful guidance in establishment, implementation and evaluation of technology policies for ICT SMEs, particularly to policymakers or researchers in relevant government agencies who determine R&D policies for ICT SMEs.

• Korean small business review
• /
• v.43 no.2
• /
• pp.59-86
• /
• 2021

The platform concept has been used for business operations in various forms: product platforms, transaction platforms and industry platforms. All these platforms have common characteristics of having 'core' that is reused frequently and 'peripherals' that are less reusable and changed often. Companies use platforms to enable efficient development and creation of product family, transactions and innovation. These platforms provide new opportunities for many small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) by bringing changes to traditional industrial structures focused on the products rather than platforms. The service robotics industry in South Korea is mainly composed of technology-intensive SMEs due to its small market size. Although these SMEs succeed in developing technologies, they have difficulties creating and expanding markets to sell products. Thus, this study addresses the characteristics and problems of the South Korean service robotics industry and analyses how ROBOPRINT, one of the SMEs in the service robotics industry, successfully creates and continuously expands the service robot market by adopting platform concept. The results indicate that ROBOPRINT has been applying two types of platforms: product and transaction platforms. First, ROBOPRINT created art robots that were apartment mural service robots. Rather than selling art robots, the company developed various robots such as painting robots, building exterior wall-cleaning robots by reusing the core technology of the robots. The company also developed various robots according to the buyers request. In addition, the company used the robots to directly provide apartment mural services for customers. This mural service has been extended into various areas, not only in apartments but also in soundproof walls, underground passages, and retaining walls. Besides, ROBOPRINT added new services continuously by developing technologies such as virtual reality. Second, ROBOPRINT mediated mural service buyers and mural designers. This platform reduced buyers' workload, which necessitates requesting mural services to ROBOPRINT and searching for mural designers. For designers, this opened up new opportunities to participate in the mural business. The platform attracted both mural buyers and designers who were scattered before. Finally, ROBOPRINT seeks to expand the platform's scope to outside company. To share internally reused ROBOPRINT's technology with other companies, the company participated in Daegu city's 'New Technology Platform Industry'. Furthermore, ROBOPRINT is trying to share the service platform by leasing robots to other companies. This allows external agents to develop technologies and provide services by reusing resources from ROBOPRINT. This study contributes to existing theories by showing that SMEs continuously create and expand markets by building various platforms. Moreover, it provides useful implications for practitioners by describing the firm's specific platform-building strategy.

• Asia Marketing Journal
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.53-81
• /
• 2012

Constructing attractive bundle offers depends on more than an understanding of the distribution of consumer preferences. Consumers are also sensitive to the framing of price information in a bundle offer. In classical economic theory, consumers' utility should not change as long as the total price paid stays same. However, even when total prices are identical, consumers' preferences toward a bundle product could be different depending on the format of price presentation and the locus of price discount. A weighted additive model predicts that the impact of a price discount on the overall evaluation of the bundle will be greater when the discount is assigned to the more important product in the bundle(Yadav 1995). Meanwhile, a reference dependent model asserts that it is better to assign a price discount to a tie-in component that has a negative valuation at its current offer price than to a focal product that has a positive valuation at its current offer price(Janiszewski and Cunha 2004). This paper has expanded previous research regarding price discount presentation format, investigating the reasons for mixed results of prior research and presenting new mechanisms for price discount framing effect. Prior research has hypothesized that bundling is used to sell a tie-in component with an offer price above the consumer's reference price plus a focal product of the same offer price with reference price(e.g., Janiszewski and Cunha 2004). However, this study suggests that bundling strategy can be used for increasing product's attractiveness through the synergy between components even when offer prices of bundle components are the same with reference prices. In this context, this study employed various realistic bundle sets with same price between offer price and reference price in the experiment. Hamilton and Srivastava(2008) demonstrated that when evaluating different partitions of the same total price, consumers prefer partitions in which the price of the high-benefit component is higher. This study determined that their mechanism can be applied to price discount presentation formats. This study hypothesized that price discount framing effect depends not on the negative perception of tie-in component with offer price above reference price but rather on the consumers' perceived consumption benefit in bundle product. This research also hypothesized that preference for low-benefit discount mechanism is that perceived consumption benefit reduces price sensitivity. Furthermore, this study investigated how consumers' concern for quality in a price discount--a factor not considered in previous research--influences price discount framing. Yadav(1995)'s experiment used only one magazine bundle of relatively low quality uncertainty and could not show the influence of perceived uncertainty of quality. This study assumed that as perceived uncertainty of quality increases, the price sensitivity mechanism for assigning the discount to low-benefit will increase. Further, this research investigated the moderating effect of uncertainty of quality in price discount framing. The results of the experiment showed that when evaluating different partitions of the same total price and the same amount of discounts, the partition that discounts in the price of low benefit component is preferred to the partition that decreases the price of high benefit component. This implies that price discount framing effect depends on the perceived consumption benefit. The results also demonstrated that consumers are more price sensitive to low benefit component and less price sensitive to high benefit component. Furthermore, the results showed that the influence of price discount presentation format on the evaluation of bundle product varies with the perceived uncertainty of quality in high consumption benefit. As perceived uncertainty of quality gradually increases, the preference for discounts in the price of low consumption benefit decreases. Besides, the results demonstrate that as perceived uncertainty of quality gradually increases, the effect of price sensitivity in consumption benefit also increases. This paper integrated prior research by using a new mechanism of perceived consumption benefit and moderating effect of perceived quality uncertainty, thus providing a clearer explanation for price discount framing effect.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.17-26
• /
• 2010

Recently concerns have been raised due to the unbalanced supply of crops: the price of crops has been unstable and at one point the price went up so high that the word Agflation(agriculture+ inflation) was coined. Korea, in particular, is a small-sized country and needs to secure the stable supply of crops by investing in the produce importation at a national level. Investment in foreign produce importation is becoming more important as a measure for sufficient supply of crops, limited supply of domestic crops, weakened farming conditions worldwide, as well as recent changes in the use of crops due to the development of bio-fuels, influence of carbon emission on crops, the price increase in crops, and influx of foreign hot money. However, there are many problems with investing in foreign produce importation: lack of support from the government; lack of farming information and technology; difficulty in securing the capital; no immediate pay-off from the investment and insufficient management. Although foreign produce is originally more price-competitive than domestic produce, it loses its competiveness in the process of importation (due to high tariffs) and poor distribution system, which makes it difficult to sell in Korea. Therefore, investment in foreign produce importation is being questioned for feasibility; to make it possible, foreign produce must maintain the price-competitiveness. Especially, harvest of agricultural products depends on natural and geographical conditions of each country and those products have indigenous properties, so distribution system according to import and export of agricultural products should be treated more carefully than that of other industries. Distribution costs are differentiated into each item and include cost of sorting and wrapping, cost of wrapping materials, cost of domestic transport, cost of international transport and cost of clearing customs for import and export. So transporting and storing agricultural products generates considerable costs compared with other products. Also, due to upgrade of dietary life, needs for stability, taste and visible quality toward food including agricultural products are being raised and wrong way of storage causes decomposition of food and loss of freshness, making the storage more difficult than that in room temperature, so storage and transport in distribution of agricultural products needs specialty. In addition, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. However, existing distribution system of agricultural products is exposed to various problems including problems in distribution channel, making distribution and strategy for distribution and those problems are as follows. First, in case of investment in overseas agricultural industry, stable supply of the products is difficult because areas of production are dispersed widely and influenced by outer factors due to including overseas distribution channels. Also, at the aspect of quality, standardization of products is difficult, distribution system is quite complicated and unreasonable due to long distribution channels according to international trade and financial and institutional support is not enough. Especially, there are quite a lot of ineffective factors including multi level distribution process, dramatic gap between production cost and customer's cost, lack of physical distribution facilities and difficulties in storage and transport due to lack of wrapping containers. Besides, because import and export of agricultural products has been manages under the company's own distribution according to transaction contract between manufacturers and exporting company, efficiency is low due to excessive investment in fixed costs and lack of specialty in dealing with agricultural products causes fall of value of products, showing the limit to lose price-competitiveness. Especially, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. Second, among tangible and intangible services which promote the efficiency of the whole distribution, a function building distribution environment which includes distribution information, system for standard and inspection, distribution finance, system for diversification of risks, education and training, distribution administration and tax system is wanted. In general, such a function building distribution environment is difficult to be changed and supplement innovatively because its effect compared with investment does not appear immediately despite of its necessity. Especially, in case of distribution of agricultural products, as a function of collecting and distributing is performed individually through various channels, the importance of distribution information and standardization is getting more focus due to the problem of repetition of work and lack of specialty. Also, efficient management of distribution is quite difficult due to lack of professionals in distribution, so support to professional education is needed. Third, though effort to keep self-sufficiency ratio of staple food, rice is regarded as important at the government level, level of dependency on overseas of others crops is high. Therefore, plan for stable securing food resources aside from staple food is also necessary. Especially, governmental organizations of agricultural products distribution in Korea are production-centered and have unreasonable structure whose function at the aspect of distribution and consumption is quite insufficient. And development of new distribution channels which can deal with changes in distribution environment and they do not achieve actual results of strategy for distribution due to non-positive strategy for price distribution. That is, it implies the possibility that base for supply will become vulnerable because it does not mediate appropriate interests on total distribution channels such as manufacturers, wholesale dealers and vendors by emphasizing consumer protection excessively in the distribution of agricultural products. Therefore, this study examined fundamental concept and actual situation for our investment to overseas agriculture, drew necessities, considerations, problems, etc. of overseas agricultural investment and suggested improvements at the level of distribution for price competitiveness of agricultural products cultivated in overseas under five aspects; government's indirect support, distribution's modernization and distribution information function's strengthening, government's political support for distribution facility, transportation route, load and unloading works' improvement, price competitiveness' securing, professional manpower's cultivation by education and training, etc. Here are some suggestions for foreign produce importation. First, the government should conduct a survey on the current distribution channels and analyze the situation to establish a measure for long-term development plans. By providing each agricultural area with a guideline for planning appropriate production of crops, the government can help farmers be ready for importation, and prevent them from producing same crops all at the same time. Government can sign an MOU with the foreign government and promote the importation so that the development of agricultural resources can be stable and steady. Second, the government can establish a strategy for an effective distribution system by providing farmers and agriculture-related workers with the distribution information such as price, production, demand, market structure and location, feature of each crop, and etc. In order for such distribution system to become feasible, the government needs to reconstruct the current distribution system, designate a public organization for providing distribution information and set the criteria for level of produce quality, trade units, and package units. Third, the government should provide financial support and a policy to seek an efficient distribution channel for foreign produce to be delivered fresh: the government should expand distribution facilities (for selecting, packaging, storing, and processing) and transportation vehicles while modernizing old facilities. There should be another policy to improve the efficiency of unloading, and to lower the cost of distribution. Fourth, it is necessary to enact a new law covering exceptional cases for importing produce in order to maintain the price competitiveness; currently the high tariffs is keeping the imported produce from being distributed domestically. However, the new adjustment should be made carefully within the WTO regulations since it can create a problem from giving preferential tariffs. The government can also simplify the distribution channels in order to reduce the cost in the distribution process. Fifth, the government should educate distributors to raise the efficiency and to modernize the distribution system. It is necessary to develop human resources by educating people regarding the foreign agricultural environment, the produce quality, management skills, and by introducing some successful cases in advanced countries.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.29-41
• /
• 2012

This paper undertakes a conceptual review of transaction cost to broaden the understanding of the transaction cost analysis (TCA) approach. More than 40 years have passed since Coase's fundamental insight that transaction, coordination, and contracting costs must be considered explicitly in explaining the extent of vertical integration. Coase (1937) forced economists to identify previously neglected constraints on the trading process to foster efficient intrafirm, rather than interfirm, transactions. The transaction cost approach to economic organization study regards transactions as the basic units of analysis and holds that understanding transaction cost economy is central to organizational study. The approach applies to determining efficient boundaries, as between firms and markets, and to internal transaction organization, including employment relations design. TCA, developed principally by Oliver Williamson (1975,1979,1981a) blends institutional economics, organizational theory, and contract law. Further progress in transaction costs research awaits the identification of critical dimensions in which transaction costs differ and an examination of the economizing properties of alternative institutional modes for organizing transactions. The crucial investment distinction is: To what degree are transaction-specific (non-marketable) expenses incurred? Unspecialized items pose few hazards, since buyers can turn toalternative sources, and suppliers can sell output intended for one order to other buyers. Non-marketability problems arise when specific parties' identities have important cost-bearing consequences. Transactions of this kind are labeled idiosyncratic. The summarized results of the review are as follows. First, firms' distribution decisions often prompt examination of the make-or-buy question: Should a marketing activity be performed within the organization by company employees or contracted to an external agent? Second, manufacturers introducing an industrial product to a foreign market face a difficult decision. Should the product be marketed primarily by captive agents (the company sales force and distribution division) or independent intermediaries (outside sales agents and distribution)? Third, the authors develop a theoretical extension to the basic transaction cost model by combining insights from various theories with the TCA approach. Fourth, other such extensions are likely required for the general model to be applied to different channel situations. It is naive to assume the basic model appliesacross markedly different channel contexts without modifications and extensions. Although this study contributes to scholastic research, it is limited by several factors. First, the theoretical perspective of TCA has attracted considerable recent interest in the area of marketing channels. The analysis aims to match the properties of efficient governance structures with the attributes of the transaction. Second, empirical evidence about TCA's basic propositions is sketchy. Apart from Anderson's (1985) study of the vertical integration of the selling function and John's (1984) study of opportunism by franchised dealers, virtually no marketing studies involving the constructs implicated in the analysis have been reported. We hope, therefore, that further research will clarify distinctions between the different aspects of specific assets. Another important line of future research is the integration of efficiency-oriented TCA with organizational approaches that emphasize specific assets' conceptual definition and industry structure. Finally, research of transaction costs, uncertainty, opportunism, and switching costs is critical to future study.

• The Journal of Natural Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.83-121
• /
• 2004

This study was carried out to examine how solid the production foundation of rice in Chung-Nam Province is, and, if not, to probe alternative measures through the size of farms specializing in rice, of which direction would be a pivot of rice industry-oriented policy. The results obtained can be summarized as follows : 1. The amount of rice production in Chung-Nam Province is highest in Korea and the size of paddy field area is the second largest : This implying that the probability that rice production in Chung-Nam Province would be severely influenced by a global trend of market conditions. The number of farms specializing in rice becoming the core group of rice farming account for 7.7 percent of the total number of farm household in Korea. Average field area financial support which had been input to farm household by Government had a noticeable effect on the improvement of the policy of farm-size program. 2. Farm-size program in Chung-Nam Province established from 1980 to 2002 in creased the cultivation size of paddy field to 19,484 hectares, and this program enhanced the buying and selling of farmland and the number of farmland bargain reached 6,431 household and 16,517 hectares, respectively, in 1995-2002. Meanwhile, long-term letting and hiring of farmland appeared so active that the bargain acreage reached 6,970 hectares, and farm involved was 7,059 households, however, the farm-exchange-and-unity program did not satisfy our expectation, because the retirement farm operators reluctantly participated to sell their farms. Another reason that had delayed the bargain of farms rested on the general category of social complication attendant upon the exchange and unity operation for scattered farm. Such difficulties would work negative effects out to carry on the target of farm-size work in general. 3. The following measures were presented to propel the farm-size promotion program : a. Occupation shift project, followed by the social security program for retirement and elderly farm operators, should be promptly established and also a number of types of incentives for promoting the letting and hiring work and farm-exchange-and-unity program would also be set up. b. To establish the effective key system of rice production, all the farm operators should increase the unit area yield of rice and lower the production cost. To do so, a great deal of production teams of rice equipped with managerial techniques and capabilities need to be organized. And, also, there should be appropriate arrays of facilities including information system. This plan is desirable to be in line with a diversity of the structural implement of regional integration based on farm system building. c. To extend the size of farm and to improve farm management, we have to devise the enlargement of individual size of farm for maximized management and the utilization of farm-size grouping method. In conclusion, it can be said that the farm-size project in Chung-Nam Province which has continued since the 1980s was satisfactorily achieved. However, we still have a lot of problems to be solved to break down the barrier for attainment of the desirable farm-size operation work.. Farm-size project has fairly close relation with farm specialization in rice and, thus, the positive support for farm household including the integrated program for both retirement farmers and off-farm operators should be considered to pursue the progressive development of the farm-size program, which is key means to successful achievement of rice farming enforcement in Chung-Nam Province.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.77-97
• /
• 2010

Market timing is an investment strategy which is used for obtaining excessive return from financial market. In general, detection of market timing means determining when to buy and sell to get excess return from trading. In many market timing systems, trading rules have been used as an engine to generate signals for trade. On the other hand, some researchers proposed the rough set analysis as a proper tool for market timing because it does not generate a signal for trade when the pattern of the market is uncertain by using the control function. The data for the rough set analysis should be discretized of numeric value because the rough set only accepts categorical data for analysis. Discretization searches for proper "cuts" for numeric data that determine intervals. All values that lie within each interval are transformed into same value. In general, there are four methods for data discretization in rough set analysis including equal frequency scaling, expert's knowledge-based discretization, minimum entropy scaling, and na$\ddot{i}$ve and Boolean reasoning-based discretization. Equal frequency scaling fixes a number of intervals and examines the histogram of each variable, then determines cuts so that approximately the same number of samples fall into each of the intervals. Expert's knowledge-based discretization determines cuts according to knowledge of domain experts through literature review or interview with experts. Minimum entropy scaling implements the algorithm based on recursively partitioning the value set of each variable so that a local measure of entropy is optimized. Na$\ddot{i}$ve and Booleanreasoning-based discretization searches categorical values by using Na$\ddot{i}$ve scaling the data, then finds the optimized dicretization thresholds through Boolean reasoning. Although the rough set analysis is promising for market timing, there is little research on the impact of the various data discretization methods on performance from trading using the rough set analysis. In this study, we compare stock market timing models using rough set analysis with various data discretization methods. The research data used in this study are the KOSPI 200 from May 1996 to October 1998. KOSPI 200 is the underlying index of the KOSPI 200 futures which is the first derivative instrument in the Korean stock market. The KOSPI 200 is a market value weighted index which consists of 200 stocks selected by criteria on liquidity and their status in corresponding industry including manufacturing, construction, communication, electricity and gas, distribution and services, and financing. The total number of samples is 660 trading days. In addition, this study uses popular technical indicators as independent variables. The experimental results show that the most profitable method for the training sample is the na$\ddot{i}$ve and Boolean reasoning but the expert's knowledge-based discretization is the most profitable method for the validation sample. In addition, the expert's knowledge-based discretization produced robust performance for both of training and validation sample. We also compared rough set analysis and decision tree. This study experimented C4.5 for the comparison purpose. The results show that rough set analysis with expert's knowledge-based discretization produced more profitable rules than C4.5.

• Asia Marketing Journal
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.137-164
• /
• 2011

In the past, retailers secured customer loyalty by offering convenient locations, unique assortments of goods, better services than competitors, and good credit policy. All this has changed. Goods assortments among stores have become more alike as national-brand manufacturers place their goods in more and more retail stores. Service differentiation also has eroded. Many department stores have trimmed services, and many discount stores have increased theirs. Customers have become smarter shoppers. They don't pay more for identical brands, especially when service differences have diminished. In the face of increased competition from discount storess and specialty stores, department stores are waging a comeback war. Growth of intertype competition, competition between store-based and non-store-based retailing and growing investment in technology are changing the way consumers shop and retailers sell. Different types of stores-discount stores, catalog showrooms, department stores-all compete for the same consumers by carrying the same type of merchandise. The biggest winners are retailers that have helped shoppers to be economically cautious, simplified their increasingly busy and complicated lives, and provided an emotional connection. The growth of e-retailers has forced traditional brick-and-mortar retailers to respond. Basically brick-and-mortar retailers utilize their natural advantages, such as products that shoppers can actually see, touch, and test, real-life customer service, and no delivery lag time for small-sized purchases. They also provide a shopping experience as a strong differentiator. They are adopting practices as calling each shopper a "guest". The store atmosphere should match the basic motivations of the shopper. If target consumers are more likely to be in a task-oriented and functional mindset, then a simpler, more restrained in-store environment may be better. Consistent with this reasoning, some retailers of experiential products are creating in-store entertainment to attract customers who want fun and excitement. The retail experience must deliver value to turn a one-time visitor into a loyal customer. Retailers need a tool that measures the full range of components that define experience-based value. This study uses an experiential value scale(EVS) developed by Mathwick, Malhotra and Rigdon(2001) which reflects the benefits derived from perceptions of playfulness, aesthetics, customer "return on investment" and service excellence. EVS is useful to predict differences in shopping preferences and patronage behavior of customers. EVS consists of items measuring efficiency, economic value, visual appeal, entertainment value, service excellence, escapism, and intrinsic enjoyment, which are subscales of experiencial value. Efficiency, economic value, service excellence are linked to the utilitarian shopping value. And visual appeal, entertainment value, escapism and intrinsic enjoyment are linked to hedonic shopping value. It has been found that consumers value hedonic experiences activated from escapism and attractiveness of shopping environment as much as the product quality, price, and the convenient location. As a result, many department stores, discount stores, and other retailers are introducing differential marketing strategy based on emotional/hedonic values. Many researches suggest that consumers go shopping not only for buying products but also for various shopping experiences. In other words, they seek the practical, rational value as well as social, recreational values in the shopping process(Babin et al, 1994; Bloch et al, 1994). Retailers may enhance buyer's loyalty to store by providing excellent emotional/hedonic value such as the excitement from shopping, not just the practical value of buying good products efficiently. We investigate the effect of perceived shopping values on the emotional experience and store loyalty based on the EVS(Experiential Value Scales) developed by Holbrook(1994), Mathwick, Malhotra and Rigdon(2001). This study assumes that the relative effect of shopping value dimensions on the responses of shoppers will differ according to types of stores and analyzes the moderating effect of store type(department store VS. discount store) on the causal relationship between shopping value dimensions and store loyalty. Emprical results show that utilitarian values of shopping experience and hedonic value of shipping experience give the positive effect on the emotional response of consumers and store loyalty. We also found the moderating effect of store types. The effect of utilitarian shopping values on the attitude toward discount store is higher than the effect of utilitarian shopping values on the attitude toword department store. And the effect of hedonic shopping value on the emotional response to discount store is higher than on the emotional response to department store. The empirical results reflect on the recent trend that discount stores try to fulfill the hedonic needs of consumers as well as utilitarian needs(i.e, low price) that discount stores traditionally have focused on