• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.231-249
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• 2014

We define $21^{st}$ century as an amalgamation of globalization and localization, or Glocalization. Additionally, due to the increasing supply of smart phones and wide usage of social networking services, the ability to utilize such global and regional information has increased a coperation's competitiveness in its market, and even the business models have evolved from the conventional "production and distribution" to E-commerce, through which either a direct or a non-direct transaction is possible. My hypothesis is that the ability to adapt to this trend is possible through transfer of learning, and consequently, this will have an impact on company's performance. Thus, this thesis analyzes the mid- to the long-term impact of such ability and environmental factors on the performance and technology innovation of Korean companies in China. Ultimately, this study intends to engender a basic foundation for a corporation's management strategy in China. Finally this research focuses on those Korean companies in China only and on the proof of influential factors' impact on technological innovation and technological innovation's impact on those corporations' future performances. Section I is an abstract and section II, the case examines the uniqueness and current status of Korean companies in China identifies the concept and the definition of influential factors such as education-orientation, technological innovation, and performance, and then scrutinizes each factors through a closer look at their past researches. Section III explains the thesis model, the survey's method and target, the thesis, variable factors, the content, and the method of analysis. In section IV, the thesis is proved based on the outcome of the survey. The result in Section V highlights the high comprehension of technological innovation: both education-orientation and technological innovation prove to have a positive (+) correlation with the performance. The vision on education orientation proves to have a positive (+) influence on technological innovation. The vision on education-orientation and technological innovation prove to have a positive (+) influence individually on company's performance.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.81-96
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• 2016

As the internet has become widespread and easy to access everywhere, it is common for people to search information via online search engines such as Google and Naver in everyday life. Recent studies have used online search volume of specific keyword as a measure of the internet users' attention in order to predict disease outbreaks such as flu and cancer, an unemployment rate, and an index of a nation's economic condition, and etc. For stock traders, web search is also one of major information resources to obtain data about individual stock items. Therefore, search volume of a stock item can reflect the amount of investors' attention on it. The investor attention has been regarded as a crucial factor influencing on stock price but it has been measured by indirect proxies such as market capitalization, trading volume, advertising expense, and etc. It has been theoretically and empirically proved that an increase of investors' attention on a stock item brings temporary increase of the stock price and the price recovers in the long run. Recent development of internet environment enables to measure the investor attention directly by the internet search volume of individual stock item, which has been used to show the attention-induced price pressure. Previous studies focus mainly on Dow Jones and NASDAQ market in the United States. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the individual investors' attention measured by the internet search volumes and stock price changes of individual stock items in the KOSDAQ market in Korea, where the proportion of the trades by individual investors are about 90% of the total. In addition, we examine the difference between industries in the influence of investors' attention on stock return. The internet search volume of stocks were gathered from "Naver Trend" service weekly between January 2007 and June 2015. The regression model with the error term with AR(1) covariance structure is used to analyze the data since the weekly prices in a stock item are systematically correlated. The market capitalization, trading volume, the increment of trading volume, and the month in which each trade occurs are included in the model as control variables. The fitted model shows that an abnormal increase of search volume of a stock item has a positive influence on the stock return and the amount of the influence varies among the industry. The stock items in IT software, construction, and distribution industries have shown to be more influenced by the abnormally large internet search volume than the average across the industries. On the other hand, the stock items in IT hardware, manufacturing, entertainment, finance, and communication industries are less influenced by the abnormal search volume than the average. In order to verify price pressure caused by investors' attention in KOSDAQ, the stock return of the current week is modelled using the abnormal search volume observed one to four weeks ahead. On average, the abnormally large increment of the search volume increased the stock return of the current week and one week later, and it decreased the stock return in two and three weeks later. There is no significant relationship with the stock return after 4 weeks. This relationship differs among the industries. An abnormal search volume brings particularly severe price reversal on the stocks in the IT software industry, which are often to be targets of irrational investments by individual investors. An abnormal search volume caused less severe price reversal on the stocks in the manufacturing and IT hardware industries than on average across the industries. The price reversal was not observed in the communication, finance, entertainment, and transportation industries, which are known to be influenced largely by macro-economic factors such as oil price and currency exchange rate. The result of this study can be utilized to construct an intelligent trading system based on the big data gathered from web search engines, social network services, and internet communities. Particularly, the difference of price reversal effect between industries may provide useful information to make a portfolio and build an investment strategy.

• Asia-pacific Journal of Multimedia Services Convergent with Art, Humanities, and Sociology
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.757-772
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• 2019

The purpose of this paper is to measure the clustering change and analyze empirical results, and choose the clustering ports for Busan, Incheon, and Gwangyang ports by using Artificial Neural Network, Social Network, and Tabu Search models on 38 Asian container ports over the period 2007-2016. The models consider number of cranes, depth, birth length, and total area as inputs and container throughput as output. Followings are the main empirical results. First, the variables ranking order which affects the clustering according to artificial neural network are TEU, birth length, depth, total area, and number of cranes. Second, social network analysis shows the same clustering in the benevolent and aggressive models. Third, the efficiency of domestic ports are worsened after clustering using social network analysis and tabu search models. Forth, social network and tabu search models can increase the efficiency by 37% compared to that of the general CCR model. Fifth, according to the social network analysis and tabu search models, 3 Korean ports could be clustered with Asian ports like Busan Port(Kobe, Osaka, Port Klang, Tanjung Pelepas, and Manila), Incheon Port(Shahid Rajaee, and Gwangyang), and Gwangyang Port(Aqaba, Port Sulatan Qaboos, Dammam, Khor Fakkan, and Incheon). Korean seaport authority should introduce port improvement plans by using the methods used in this paper.

• Korea Science and Art Forum
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• v.21
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• pp.105-116
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• 2015

This study intended to give helps in planning a specialized exhibition by carrying out a survey objecting to KOREA PACK 2015 attendees including visitors who possessed mobile coupons after finishing advance registration through on-line, and then investigating, analyzing satisfactions of attendees together with effects of the specialized exhibition using IT technology. As a lot of relevant preceeding researches have been made by focussing on exhibition organizer and exhibitors, the viewpoints of attendees at the specialized exhibition using IT conversing technology such as mobile and etc. were to be investigated and analyzed. Thus, this research tried to do an empirical identification on effects of the exhibition by analyzing relations between its watching forms and satisfactions including a survey on the on-line PR route utility of IT technology in addition to visiting motives of attendees who watched the exhibition. A summarization of the current study is followed: First, in case of attending in the exhibition for specific purposes, they searched related information positively, and were shown as doing information gathering behaviors and also high possibility on purchases was confirmed. Second, it was confirmed that positive attendees had decision-making on purchases. This finding means that attendees who watch the specialized exhibition have authority and responsibility of being able to purchase in many cases, so methods of improving sales by effectively doing PR on own products and technical competitiveness in the exhibition are necessary to exhibitors. Third, attendees who have specific purposes showed higher satisfactions on the exhibition than general visitors, but satisfactions on consultation, staff attitudes, and facility were turn out to be higher than providing related information on products or technology. Accordingly, the necessity of improving this outcome was confirmed. Therefore, exhibitors have to endeavor in providing more advanced services to attendees of the exhibition by grasping technical trends in advance as well as cultivating professional staff who can promote products well.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.31-56
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• 2009

As the competition intensifies and the market matures, marketers are more and more concerned with the relationship marketing. Many of the previous researches have pointed out that not all of the consumers are relationship-oriented. But none of the previous research has systematically investigated this issue. This research investigated the relationship among the three concepts: consumers' intrinsic characteristics, perceived importance of relational benefits, and relationship building intention with the salesperson. In this research the perceived importance of relational benefits is treated as mediating variable in the relationship between consumers' intrinsic characteristics and relationship building intention with the salesperson. The conceptual model in this study can be depicted as follows. From the consumers' perspective relational benefits can be defined as "the additional benefits consumers can receive in addition to core services through the long-term relationship with the service provider." And in this study two kinds of relational benefits are adopted by reviewing the previous research: confidence benefits and social benefits. Relational benefit received from the salesperson is very important to predict consumers' relationship building intention with the salesperson. The more relational benefits consumer wants from the salesperson, the more relationship building intention he/she has. From this point two hypotheses are derived as follows. Hypothesis 1: As the perceived importance of confidence benefit from the salesperson increases, the relationship building intention with the salesperson increases. Hypothesis 2: As the perceived importance of social benefit from the salesperson increases, the relationship building intention with the salesperson increases. In this study four individual characteristics(risk taking tendency, variety-seeking tendency, product knowledge, trust orientation) are hypothesized to influence the perceived importance of confidence benefits from the salesperson. And three individual characteristics(interpersonal orientation, price consciousness, trust orientation) are hypothesized to influence the perceived importance of social benefits from the salesperson. These 7 hypotheses are as follows. Hypothesis 3: As the risk taking tendency increases, the perceived importance of confidence benefits from the salesperson decreases. Hypothesis 4: As the variety-seeking tendency increases, the perceived importance of confidence benefits from the salesperson decreases. Hypothesis 5: As the product knowledge increases, the perceived importance of confidence benefits from the salesperson decreases. Hypothesis 6: As the trust orientation increases, the perceived importance of confidence benefits from the salesperson increases. Hypothesis 7: As the interpersonal orientation increases, the perceived importance of social benefits from the salesperson increases. Hypothesis 8: As the price consciousness increases, the perceived importance of social benefits from the salesperson decreases. Hypothesis 9: As the trust orientation increases, the perceived importance of social benefits from the salesperson increases. The whole model in this study can be depicted as follows: Data were collected from the 396 consumers who actually trade stocks through the salesperson and were analyzed using structural equation model. The analysis results show that consumers' perceived importance of relational benefits(confidence benefit and social benefit) play the roles of mediating variables in the causal relationship between consumers' inherent characteristics and their relationship building intention with the salesperson. As for the individual characteristics, the influences of variety-seeking tendency, trust orientation, and price consciousness are statistically significant. It was found that variety-seeking tendency has a significant negative effect on the perceived importance of confidence benefit, and that trust orientation has a significant positive effect on the perceived importance of both of confidence and social benefit. Finally it was also found that, on the contrary to the influence direction suggested in the hypothesis, price consciousness has a significant positive effect on the perceived importance of social benefit.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.17-26
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• 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 Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.195-220
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• 2018

In this study, we conducted an empirical analysis of the factors that affect the change of Bitcoin Closing Price. Previous studies have focused on the security of the block chain system, the economic ripple effects caused by the cryptocurrency, legal implications and the acceptance to consumer about cryptocurrency. In various area, cryptocurrency was studied and many researcher and people including government, regardless of country, try to utilize cryptocurrency and applicate to its technology. Despite of rapid and dramatic change of cryptocurrencies' price and growth of its effects, empirical study of the factors affecting the price change of cryptocurrency was lack. There were only a few limited studies, business reports and short working paper. Therefore, it is necessary to determine what factors effect on the change of closing Bitcoin price. For analysis, hypotheses were constructed from three dimensions of consumer, industry, and macroeconomics for analysis, and time series data were collected for variables of each dimension. Consumer variables consist of search traffic of Bitcoin, search traffic of bitcoin ban, search traffic of ransomware and search traffic of war. Industry variables were composed GPU vendors' stock price and memory vendors' stock price. Macro-economy variables were contemplated such as U.S. dollar index futures, FOMC policy interest rates, WTI crude oil price. Using above variables, we did times series regression analysis to find relationship between those variables and change of Bitcoin Closing Price. Before the regression analysis to confirm the relationship between change of Bitcoin Closing Price and the other variables, we performed the Unit-root test to verifying the stationary of time series data to avoid spurious regression. Then, using a stationary data, we did the regression analysis. As a result of the analysis, we found that the change of Bitcoin Closing Price has negative effects with search traffic of 'Bitcoin Ban' and US dollar index futures, while change of GPU vendors' stock price and change of WTI crude oil price showed positive effects. In case of 'Bitcoin Ban', it is directly determining the maintenance or abolition of Bitcoin trade, that's why consumer reacted sensitively and effected on change of Bitcoin Closing Price. GPU is raw material of Bitcoin mining. Generally, increasing of companies' stock price means the growth of the sales of those companies' products and services. GPU's demands increases are indirectly reflected to the GPU vendors' stock price. Making an interpretation, a rise in prices of GPU has put a crimp on the mining of Bitcoin. Consequently, GPU vendors' stock price effects on change of Bitcoin Closing Price. And we confirmed U.S. dollar index futures moved in the opposite direction with change of Bitcoin Closing Price. It moved like Gold. Gold was considered as a safe asset to consumers and it means consumer think that Bitcoin is a safe asset. On the other hand, WTI oil price went Bitcoin Closing Price's way. It implies that Bitcoin are regarded to investment asset like raw materials market's product. The variables that were not significant in the analysis were search traffic of bitcoin, search traffic of ransomware, search traffic of war, memory vendor's stock price, FOMC policy interest rates. In search traffic of bitcoin, we judged that interest in Bitcoin did not lead to purchase of Bitcoin. It means search traffic of Bitcoin didn't reflect all of Bitcoin's demand. So, it implies there are some factors that regulate and mediate the Bitcoin purchase. In search traffic of ransomware, it is hard to say concern of ransomware determined the whole Bitcoin demand. Because only a few people damaged by ransomware and the percentage of hackers requiring Bitcoins was low. Also, its information security problem is events not continuous issues. Search traffic of war was not significant. Like stock market, generally it has negative in relation to war, but exceptional case like Gulf war, it moves stakeholders' profits and environment. We think that this is the same case. In memory vendor stock price, this is because memory vendors' flagship products were not VRAM which is essential for Bitcoin supply. In FOMC policy interest rates, when the interest rate is low, the surplus capital is invested in securities such as stocks. But Bitcoin' price fluctuation was large so it is not recognized as an attractive commodity to the consumers. In addition, unlike the stock market, Bitcoin doesn't have any safety policy such as Circuit breakers and Sidecar. Through this study, we verified what factors effect on change of Bitcoin Closing Price, and interpreted why such change happened. In addition, establishing the characteristics of Bitcoin as a safe asset and investment asset, we provide a guide how consumer, financial institution and government organization approach to the cryptocurrency. Moreover, corroborating the factors affecting change of Bitcoin Closing Price, researcher will get some clue and qualification which factors have to be considered in hereafter cryptocurrency study.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.127-146
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• 2017

Services using artificial intelligence have begun to emerge in daily life. Artificial intelligence is applied to products in consumer electronics and communications such as artificial intelligence refrigerators and speakers. In the financial sector, using Kensho's artificial intelligence technology, the process of the stock trading system in Goldman Sachs was improved. For example, two stock traders could handle the work of 600 stock traders and the analytical work for 15 people for 4weeks could be processed in 5 minutes. Especially, big data analysis through machine learning among artificial intelligence fields is actively applied throughout the financial industry. The stock market analysis and investment modeling through machine learning theory are also actively studied. The limits of linearity problem existing in financial time series studies are overcome by using machine learning theory such as artificial intelligence prediction model. The study of quantitative financial data based on the past stock market-related numerical data is widely performed using artificial intelligence to forecast future movements of stock price or indices. Various other studies have been conducted to predict the future direction of the market or the stock price of companies by learning based on a large amount of text data such as various news and comments related to the stock market. Investing on commodity asset, one of alternative assets, is usually used for enhancing the stability and safety of traditional stock and bond asset portfolio. There are relatively few researches on the investment model about commodity asset than mainstream assets like equity and bond. Recently machine learning techniques are widely applied on financial world, especially on stock and bond investment model and it makes better trading model on this field and makes the change on the whole financial area. In this study we made investment model using Support Vector Machine among the machine learning models. There are some researches on commodity asset focusing on the price prediction of the specific commodity but it is hard to find the researches about investment model of commodity as asset allocation using machine learning model. We propose a method of forecasting four major commodity indices, portfolio made of commodity futures, and individual commodity futures, using SVM model. The four major commodity indices are Goldman Sachs Commodity Index(GSCI), Dow Jones UBS Commodity Index(DJUI), Thomson Reuters/Core Commodity CRB Index(TRCI), and Rogers International Commodity Index(RI). We selected each two individual futures among three sectors as energy, agriculture, and metals that are actively traded on CME market and have enough liquidity. They are Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Corn, Wheat, Gold and Silver Futures. We made the equally weighted portfolio with six commodity futures for comparing with other commodity indices. We set the 19 macroeconomic indicators including stock market indices, exports & imports trade data, labor market data, and composite leading indicators as the input data of the model because commodity asset is very closely related with the macroeconomic activities. They are 14 US economic indicators, two Chinese economic indicators and two Korean economic indicators. Data period is from January 1990 to May 2017. We set the former 195 monthly data as training data and the latter 125 monthly data as test data. In this study, we verified that the performance of the equally weighted commodity futures portfolio rebalanced by the SVM model is better than that of other commodity indices. The prediction accuracy of the model for the commodity indices does not exceed 50% regardless of the SVM kernel function. On the other hand, the prediction accuracy of equally weighted commodity futures portfolio is 53%. The prediction accuracy of the individual commodity futures model is better than that of commodity indices model especially in agriculture and metal sectors. The individual commodity futures portfolio excluding the energy sector has outperformed the three sectors covered by individual commodity futures portfolio. In order to verify the validity of the model, it is judged that the analysis results should be similar despite variations in data period. So we also examined the odd numbered year data as training data and the even numbered year data as test data and we confirmed that the analysis results are similar. As a result, when we allocate commodity assets to traditional portfolio composed of stock, bond, and cash, we can get more effective investment performance not by investing commodity indices but by investing commodity futures. Especially we can get better performance by rebalanced commodity futures portfolio designed by SVM model.

• 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.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.53-84
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• 2013

With rapid development of ICT (Information and Communications Technology), new services by the convergence of mobile network and application technology began to appear. Today, smart phone with new ICT convergence network capabilities is exceedingly popular and very useful as a new tool for the development of business opportunities. Previous studies based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) suggested critical factors, which should be considered for acquiring new customers and maintaining existing users in smart phone market. However, they had a limitation to focus on technology acceptance, not value based approach. Prior studies on customer's adoption of electronic utilities like smart phone product showed that the antecedents such as the perceived benefit and the perceived sacrifice could explain the causality between what is perceived and what is acquired over diverse contexts. So, this research conceptualizes perceived value as a trade-off between perceived benefit and perceived sacrifice, and we need to research the perceived value to grasp user's continuous intention to use of smart phone. The purpose of this study is to investigate the structured relationship between benefit (quality, usefulness, playfulness) and sacrifice (technicality, cost, security risk) of smart phone users, perceived value, and continuous intention to use. In addition, this study intends to analyze the differences between two subgroups of smart phone users by the degree of personal innovativeness. Personal innovativeness could help us to understand the moderating effect between how perceptions are formed and continuous intention to use smart phone. This study conducted survey through e-mail, direct mail, and interview with smart phone users. Empirical analysis based on 330 respondents was conducted in order to test the hypotheses. First, the result of hypotheses testing showed that perceived usefulness among three factors of perceived benefit has the highest positive impact on perceived value, and then followed by perceived playfulness and perceived quality. Second, the result of hypotheses testing showed that perceived cost among three factors of perceived sacrifice has significantly negative impact on perceived value, however, technicality and security risk have no significant impact on perceived value. Also, the result of hypotheses testing showed that perceived value has significant direct impact on continuous intention to use of smart phone. In this regard, marketing managers of smart phone company should pay more attention to improve task efficiency and performance of smart phone, including rate systems of smart phone. Additionally, to test the moderating effect of personal innovativeness, this research conducted multi-group analysis by the degree of personal innovativeness of smart phone users. In a group with high level of innovativeness, perceived usefulness has the highest positive influence on perceived value than other factors. Instead, the analysis for a group with low level of innovativeness showed that perceived playfulness was the highest positive factor to influence perceived value than others. This result of the group with high level of innovativeness explains that innovators and early adopters are able to cope with higher level of cost and risk, and they expect to develop more positive intentions toward higher performance through the use of an innovation. Also, hedonic behavior in the case of the group with low level of innovativeness aims to provide self-fulfilling value to the users, in contrast to utilitarian perspective, which aims to provide instrumental value to the users. However, with regard to perceived sacrifice, both groups in general showed negative impact on perceived value. Also, the group with high level of innovativeness had less overall negative impact on perceived value compared to the group with low level of innovativeness across all factors. In both group with high level of innovativeness and with low level of innovativeness, perceived cost has the highest negative influence on perceived value than other factors. Instead, the analysis for a group with high level of innovativeness showed that perceived technicality was the positive factor to influence perceived value than others. However, the analysis for a group with low level of innovativeness showed that perceived security risk was the second high negative factor to influence perceived value than others. Unlike previous studies, this study focuses on influencing factors on continuous intention to use of smart phone, rather than considering initial purchase and adoption of smart phone. First, perceived value, which was used to identify user's adoption behavior, has a mediating effect among perceived benefit, perceived sacrifice, and continuous intention to use smart phone. Second, perceived usefulness has the highest positive influence on perceived value, while perceived cost has significant negative influence on perceived value. Third, perceived value, like prior studies, has high level of positive influence on continuous intention to use smart phone. Fourth, in multi-group analysis by the degree of personal innovativeness of smart phone users, perceived usefulness, in a group with high level of innovativeness, has the highest positive influence on perceived value than other factors. Instead, perceived playfulness, in a group with low level of innovativeness, has the highest positive factor to influence perceived value than others. This result shows that early adopters intend to adopt smart phone as a tool to make their job useful, instead market followers intend to adopt smart phone as a tool to make their time enjoyable. In terms of marketing strategy for smart phone company, marketing managers should pay more attention to identify their customers' lifetime value by the phase of smart phone adoption, as well as to understand their behavior intention to accept the risk and uncertainty positively. The academic contribution of this study primarily is to employ the VAM (Value-based Adoption Model) as a conceptual foundation, compared to TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) used widely by previous studies. VAM is useful for understanding continuous intention to use smart phone in comparison with TAM as a new IT utility by individual adoption. Perceived value dominantly influences continuous intention to use smart phone. The results of this study justify our research model adoption on each antecedent of perceived value as a benefit and a sacrifice component. While TAM could be widely used in user acceptance of new technology, it has a limitation to explain the new IT adoption like smart phone, because of customer behavior intention to choose the value of the object. In terms of theoretical approach, this study provides theoretical contribution to the development, design, and marketing of smart phone. The practical contribution of this study is to suggest useful decision alternatives concerned to marketing strategy formulation for acquiring and retaining long-term customers related to smart phone business. Since potential customers are interested in both benefit and sacrifice when evaluating the value of smart phone, marketing managers in smart phone company has to put more effort into creating customer's value of low sacrifice and high benefit so that customers will continuously have higher adoption on smart phone. Especially, this study shows that innovators and early adopters with high level of innovativeness have higher adoption than market followers with low level of innovativeness, in terms of perceived usefulness and perceived cost. To formulate marketing strategy for smart phone diffusion, marketing managers have to pay more attention to identify not only their customers' benefit and sacrifice components but also their customers' lifetime value to adopt smart phone.