• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.1-13
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• 2020

Tencent is an internet-based entertainment platform corporation using technology to enrich the lives of Tencent platform users and assist the contents expansion. Since 2000, Tencent have developed a great growth and innovation in entertainment contents domain. Tencent have become the market leading innovator due to the imitative innovation and M&A. The present study designed case study analyses to investigate the mechanism with regard to the growth strategy of Tencent corporation. Tencent began with imitative internet-based game and social messaging services but then added its own wechat messenger platform, now being extended to other products or services. This imitative innovation strategy enabled Tencent corporation to grow rapidly, to achieve outstanding growth. In addition, Tencent's M&A investment drive is underpinned by a vision of top management team and flexible organizational culture, from building out the Tencent's entertainment platform, game, finance, e-commerce, to global market expansion. While our results shed light on the implications to understanding Tencent's growth, there are limitations of the current study that should be considered when designing next research.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.46-56
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• 2022

This study aimed to analyze the locational characteristics of heritage sites in Seoul in order to identify flood susceptibility by type. As for the location factors related to flood susceptibility, elevation, slope, distance to streams, and topographic location were analyzed. Literature review was supplemented for the historical and humanistic environments of heritage sites. The results of the study are as follows. First, heritage sites in Seoul are distributed throughout the city, and are especially highly dense in the Hanyangdoseong fortress. It was also confirmed that heritage sites were concentrated around Jung-gu, Jongno-gu, Jingwan-dong, and Ui-dong in the quantitative spatial analyses. Second, types of heritage sites at the circumstance susceptible to flood damage were related to commerce and distribution, traffic, modern traffic and communication, geological monument, residence, government office, and palace. Third, heritage types with locational characteristics that showed low flood susceptibility were found to be natural scenic spots, telecommunication, ceramics, Buddhism, tombs, and tomb sculptural heritage assets. In a time when risk factors that can damage the value of heritage are gradually increasing due to anthropogenic influences along with changes in the natural environment, this study provides basic data for vulnerability analysis that reflects the unique characteristics of heritage assets. The results can contribute to more comprehensive and comprehensive insights for the management and protection of heritage by including the humanities and social science data together with natural factors in the analysis.

• Economic Analysis
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.54-95
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to analyze quantitatively and qualitatively the effects of the increase in online shopping and its effects on real-world commercial outlets. The empirical analysis of this study is based on the results of "Census on Establishments" and "Online Shopping Survey" that cover 15 years, from 2002 to 2016. According to the results of this study, the increase in the number of online transactions affects the decrease in the number of stores in the real-world retail sector. However, non-specialized large stores and chain convenience stores showed an increase in the number of stores. In addition, the number of F&B stores increased the most in line with the increase in online transactions. This is because the increase in online transactions and in internet users led to the use of more delivery applications and the introduction of popular places on blogs or through social media. Street-level rents for medium and large-sized locations increased. In other words, it is seen that the demand for differentiated real-world stores that provide a good user experience increases, even though online transactions also increase. These results suggest that real-world stores should provide good user experiences in their physical locations with a certain size and assortment of goods.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.75-92
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• 2020

As population and generation structures change, more and more customers tend to avoid facing relation due to the development of information technology and spread of smart phones. This phenomenon consists with efficiency and immediacy, which are the consumption patterns of modern customers who are used to information technology, so offline network-oriented distribution companies actively try to switch their sales and services to untact patterns. Recently, untact services are boosted in various fields, but beauty products are not easy to be recommended through untact services due to many options depending on skin types and conditions. There have been many studies on recommendations and development of recommendation systems in the online beauty field, but most of them are the ones that develop recommendation algorithm using survey or social data. In other words, there were not enough studies that classify segments based on user information such as skin types and product preference. Therefore, this study classifies customer segments using machine learning technique K-prototypesalgorithm based on customer information and search log data of mobile application, which is one of untact services in the beauty field, based on which, untact marketing strategy is suggested. This study expands the scope of the previous literature by classifying customer segments using the machine learning technique. This study is practically meaningful in that it classifies customer segments by reflecting new consumption trend of untact service, and based on this, it suggests a specific plan that can be used in untact services of the beauty field.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.61
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• pp.285-305
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• 2019

In the bill of [Act on Certified Detective and Certified Detective Business] (hereinafter referred to as the Certified Detective Act) proposed and represented by the member of National Assembly, Lee Wan-Yong in 2017, the legislative point of view showed that various incidents and accidents, including new crimes, are frequently increasing as society develops and becomes more complex, however, it is not possible to solve all the incidents and accidents with the investigation force of the state alone due to manpower and budget, and therefore, a certified detective or private investigator are required. According to the decision of the Constitutional Court in June 2018, Article 40 (4) of the Act on the Use and Protection of Credit Information is concerned with 'finding the location and contact information of a specific person or investigating privacy other than commerce relations such as financial transactions' are prohibited. It is for the purpose of preventing illegal acts in the process of investigation such as the location, contact information, and the privacy of a specific person and protecting the privacy and tranquility of personal privacy from misuse and abuse of the personal information etc. Such 'privacy investigation business' currently operates in the form of self-employment business, which becomes a social issue as some companies illegally collect and provide such privacy information by using illegal cameras or vehicle location trackers and also comes to be the objects of clampdown of the investigative agency. Considering this reality, because it is difficult to find a resolution to materialize the legislative purpose of the Act on the use and protection of credit information other than prohibiting 'investigation business including privacy etc' and it is possible to run a similar type of business as a detective business in the scope that the laws of credit research business, security service business, the position of the Constitutional Court is that 'the ban on the investigations of privacy etc' does not infringe the claimant's freedom to choose a job. In addition to this decision, the precedent positions of the Constitutional Court have been that, in principle, the legislative regulation of a particular occupation was a matter of legislative policy determined by the legislator's political, economic and social considerations, unless otherwise there were any special circumstances, and. the Constitutional Court also widely recognized the legislative formation rights of legislators in the qualifications system related to the freedom of a job. In this regard, this study examines the problems and improvement plans of the certified detective system, focusing on the certified detective bill recently under discussion, and tries to establish a legal basis for the certified detective and certified detective business, in order to cultivate and institutionalize the certified detective business, and to suggest methodologies to seek for the development of the businesses and protect the rights of the people.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.29-52
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• 2012

Consumers differ in the way they make a purchase. An audio mania would willingly make a bold, yet serious, decision to buy a top-of-the-line home theater system, while he is not interested in replacing his two-decade-old shabby car. On the contrary, an automobile enthusiast wouldn't mind spending forty thousand dollars to buy a new Jaguar convertible, yet cares little about his junky component system. It is product involvement that helps us explain such differences among individuals in the purchase style. Product involvement refers to the extent to which a product is perceived to be important to a consumer (Zaichkowsky, 2001). Product involvement is an important factor that strongly influences consumer's purchase decision-making process, and thus has been of prime interest to consumer behavior researchers. Furthermore, researchers found that involvement is closely related to perceived risk (Dholakia, 2001). While abundant research exists addressing how product involvement relates to overall perceived risk, little attention has been paid to the relationship between involvement and different types of perceived risk in an electronic commerce setting. Given that perceived risk can be a substantial barrier to the online purchase (Jarvenpaa, 2000), research addressing such an issue will offer useful implications on what specific types of perceived risk an online firm should focus on mitigating if it is to increase sales to a fullest potential. Meanwhile, past research has focused on such consumer responses as information search and dissemination as a consequence of involvement, neglecting other behavioral responses like online merchant selection. For one example, will a consumer seriously considering the purchase of a pricey Guzzi bag perceive a great degree of risk associated with online buying and therefore choose to buy it from a digital storefront rather than from an online marketplace to mitigate risk? Will a consumer require greater trust on the part of the online merchant when the perceived risk of online buying is rather high? We intend to find answers to these research questions through an empirical study. This paper explores the impact of enduring product involvement and perceived risks on required trust level, and further on online merchant choice. For the purpose of the research, five types or components of perceived risk are taken into consideration, including financial, performance, delivery, psychological, and social risks. A research model has been built around the constructs under consideration, and 12 hypotheses have been developed based on the research model to examine the relationships between enduring involvement and five components of perceived risk, between five components of perceived risk and required trust level, between enduring involvement and required trust level, and finally between required trust level and preference toward an e-tailer. To attain our research objectives, we conducted an empirical analysis consisting of two phases of data collection: a pilot test and main survey. The pilot test was conducted using 25 college students to ensure that the questionnaire items are clear and straightforward. Then the main survey was conducted using 295 college students at a major university for nine days between December 13, 2010 and December 21, 2010. The measures employed to test the model included eight constructs: (1) enduring involvement, (2) financial risk, (3) performance risk, (4) delivery risk, (5) psychological risk, (6) social risk, (7) required trust level, (8) preference toward an e-tailer. The statistical package, SPSS 17.0, was used to test the internal consistency among the items within the individual measures. Based on the Cronbach's ${\alpha}$ coefficients of the individual measure, the reliability of all the variables is supported. Meanwhile, the Amos 18.0 package was employed to perform a confirmatory factor analysis designed to assess the unidimensionality of the measures. The goodness of fit for the measurement model was satisfied. Unidimensionality was tested using convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. The statistical evidences proved that the three types of validity were all satisfied. Now the structured equation modeling technique was used to analyze the individual paths along the relationships among the research constructs. The results indicated that enduring involvement has significant positive relationships with all the five components of perceived risk, while only performance risk is significantly related to trust level required by consumers for purchase. It can be inferred from the findings that product performance problems are mostly likely to occur when a merchant behaves in an opportunistic manner. Positive relationships were also found between involvement and required trust level and between required trust level and online merchant choice. Enduring involvement is concerned with the pleasure a consumer derives from a product class and/or with the desire for knowledge for the product class, and thus is likely to motivate the consumer to look for ways of mitigating perceived risk by requiring a higher level of trust on the part of the online merchant. Likewise, a consumer requiring a high level of trust on the merchant will choose a digital storefront rather than an e-marketplace, since a digital storefront is believed to be trustworthier than an e-marketplace, as it fulfills orders by itself rather than acting as an intermediary. The findings of the present research provide both academic and practical implications. The first academic implication is that enduring product involvement is a strong motivator of consumer responses, especially the selection of a merchant, in the context of electronic shopping. Secondly, academicians are advised to pay attention to the finding that an individual component or type of perceived risk can be used as an important research construct, since it would allow one to pinpoint the specific types of risk that are influenced by antecedents or that influence consequents. Meanwhile, our research provides implications useful for online merchants (both online storefronts and e-marketplaces). Merchants may develop strategies to attract consumers by managing perceived performance risk involved in purchase decisions, since it was found to have significant positive relationship with the level of trust required by a consumer on the part of the merchant. One way to manage performance risk would be to thoroughly examine the product before shipping to ensure that it has no deficiencies or flaws. Secondly, digital storefronts are advised to focus on symbolic goods (e.g., cars, cell phones, fashion outfits, and handbags) in which consumers are relatively more involved than others, whereas e- marketplaces should put their emphasis on non-symbolic goods (e.g., drinks, books, MP3 players, and bike accessories).

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.147-165
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• 2009

Virtual community(VC) will increasingly be organized as commercial enterprises, with the objective of earning an attractive financial return by providing members with valuable resources and environment. For example, Cyworld.com in Korea uses several community services to enable customers of Cyworld to take control of their own value as potential purchasers of products and services. Although initial adoption is important for online network service success, it does not necessarily result in the desired managerial performance unless the initial usage is continuously related to the continuous usage and purchase. Particularly, the customer who receives relevant online services and is well equipped with online network services, will trust the online service provider and perceive less risk and experience more activities such as continuous usage and purchase. Thus, how to promote continued online service usage or, alternatively, how to prevent discontinuance is a critical issue for VC service providers to consider. By aggregating a wide range of information and online environments for customers and providing trust to its members, the service providers of virtual communities help to reduce the perceived risk of continuous usage and purchase. Drill down, online service managers realize that achieving strong and sustained customers who continuously use online service and purchase on it is crucial. Therefore, the research into this online service continuance will identify the relationship between the initial usage and the continuous usage and purchase. The research of continuous usage or post adoption has recently emerged as an important issue in the IS literature. Individuals' information systems(IS) continuous usage decisions are congruent with consumers' repeat purchase decisions. The TAM(Technology Acceptance Model) paradigm has been strongly confirmed across a wide range from product purchase on EC to online service usage contexts. The analysis of IS usage based on TAM has proven to be successful across almost online service contexts. However, most of previous studies have focused on only an area (i.e., VC or EC). Just little research has tried to analyze the relationship between VC and EC. The effect of some factors on user intention, captured through several theories such as TAM, has been demonstrated. Yet, few studies have explored the salient relationships of VC users' EC acceptance. To fill this gap between VC and EC research, this paper attempts to develop a research model that extends the TAM perspective in view of the additional contributions of trust in the service provider and trust in members on some factors that affect EC and VC adoption. In this extension, we applied the TAM-to-TAM(T2T) model, and analyzed the transfer effect of trust between these two TAMs. The research model was empirically tested on the context of a social network service. The model was to extend TAM with the trust concept for the virtual community environment from the perspective of tasks. By building an extended model of TAM and examining the relationships between trust and the existing variables of TAM, it is aimed to explain a user's continuous intention to use VC and purchase on EC. The unit of analysis in this paper is an individual user of a virtual community. The population of interest is the individual with the experiences in virtual community. The data for this paper was made available via a Web survey of VC users. In total, 281 cases were gathered for about one week, but there were some missing values in the sample and there were some inappropriate cases. Thus, only 248 cases were finally analyzed. We chose the structural equation analysis to test the hypotheses and it is better suited for explaining complex relationships than the other methods. In this test, AMOS was used to test the Structural Equation Model (SEM). Noticeable results have been found in the T2T model regarding the factors affecting the intention to use of virtual community and loyalty. Our result showed that trust transfer plays a key role in forming the two adoption beliefs. Overall, this study preliminarily confirms the salience of trust transfer in online service.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.237-255
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• 2010

The Korean Pharmacist Law has limited the sales of medicine to pharmacies. This has caused difficulty in purchasing medicine late at night or on holidays, which has limited the range of customers' selections and accelerated customers' discomfort, accordingly. Also, the rapid progress of aging has quickly boosted medical expenses for seniors, and has served as a factor that aggravates the budget of national medical insurance. Meanwhile, advanced countries, including the USA and Japan, have allowed the sales of general medicine, of which the safety and efficacy have been tested, in general retail stores such as convenience stores or super markets from the perspective of supporting self-medication. In particular, Japan, which has a strong tendency of pursuing safety in the world, diversified sales channels for general medicine in order to control quickly rising medical expenses. As a result, Japan has achieved the effect of easing various regulations as follows in the economic and social fields. First, the increasing distribution channels of general medicine from pharmacies to general retail stores provoked a potential demand, which also expanded related markets. Second, the competition between sales channels resulted in the reduction of the price of medicine. Third, the growing sales channels of medicine have extended the options of consumers and, subsequently, the convenience in the use of consumers has increased. Fourth, the creation of a competitive environment owing to the diversification of sales channels has accelerated an effort to enhance corporate competitiveness. Fifth, the foundation of enhancing the financial soundness of medical expenses has been prepared through the formation of a self-medication environment. In 2000, the Korean population aged 65 or over exceeded 7%, and it is anticipated to be over 14% by 2018; thus, the increase of national medical expenses will be sped up. As a way of being prepared for the era of aging, we, just as other advanced countries, need to create a self-treatment environment by diversifying the sellers of general medicine, and, thus, reduce spending on personal medical expenses, enhance the financial soundness of national medical insurance, and, further, promote the welfare of consumers.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.33-60
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• 2020

Along with the rapid advance in internet technologies, ubiquitous mobile device usage has enabled consumers to access real-time information and increased interaction with others through various social media. Consumers can now get information more easily when making purchase decisions, and these changes are affecting the brand landscape. In a digitally connected world, brand image is not communicated to the consumers one-sidedly. Rather, with consumers' growing influence, it is a result of co-creation where consumers have an active role in building brand image. This explains a reality where people no longer purchase products just because they know the brand or because it is a famous brand. However, there has been little discussion on the matter, and many practitioners still rely on the traditional measures of brand indicators. The goal of this research is to present the limitations of traditional definition and measurement of brand and brand image, and propose a more direct and adequate measure that reflects the nature of a connected world. Inspired by the proverb, "A man is known by the company he keeps," the proposed measurement offers insight to the position of brand (or brand image) through co-purchased product networks. This paper suggests a framework of network analysis that clusters brands of cosmetics by the frequency of other products purchased together. This is done by analyzing product networks of a brand extracted from actual purchase data on Amazon.com. This is a more direct approach, compared to past measures where consumers' intention or cognitive aspects are examined through survey. The practical implication is that our research attempts to close the gap between brand indicators and actual purchase behavior. From a theoretical standpoint, this paper extends the traditional conceptualization of brand image to a network perspective that reflects the nature of a digitally connected society.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.157-176
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• 2016

For a long time, mobile phone had a sole function of communication. Recently however, abrupt innovations in technology allowed extension of the sphere in mobile phone activities. Development of technology enabled realization of almost computer-like environment even on a very small device. Such advancement yielded several forms of new high-tech devices such as smartphone and tablet PC, which quickly proliferated. Simultaneously with the diffusion of the mobile devices, mobile applications for those devices also prospered and soon became deeply penetrated in consumers' daily lives. Numerous mobile applications have been released in app stores yielding trillions of cumulative downloads. However, a big majority of the applications are disregarded from consumers. Even after the applications are purchased, they do not survive long in consumers' mobile devices and are soon abandoned. Nevertheless, it is imperative for both app developers and app-store operators to understand consumer behaviors and to develop marketing strategies aiming to make sustainable business by first increasing sales of mobile applications and by also designing surviving strategy for applications. Therefore, this research analyzes consumers' mobile application usage behavior in a frame of substitution/supplementary of application categories and several explanatory variables. Considering that consumers of mobile devices use multiple apps simultaneously, this research adopts multivariate probit models to explain mobile application usage behavior and to derive correlation between categories of applications for observing substitution/supplementary of application use. The research adopts several explanatory variables including sociodemographic data, user experiences of purchased applications that reflect future purchasing behavior of paid applications as well as consumer attitudes toward marketing efforts, variables representing consumer attitudes toward rating of the app and those representing consumer attitudes toward app-store promotion efforts (i.e., top developer badge and editor's choice badge). Results of this study can be explained in hedonic and utilitarian framework. Consumers who use hedonic applications, such as those of game and entertainment-related, are of young age with low education level. However, consumers who are old and have received higher education level prefer utilitarian application category such as life, information etc. There are disputable arguments over whether the users of SNS are hedonic or utilitarian. In our results, consumers who are younger and those with higher education level prefer using SNS category applications, which is in a middle of utilitarian and hedonic results. Also, applications that are directly related to tangible assets, such as banking, stock and mobile shopping, are only negatively related to experience of purchasing of paid app, meaning that consumers who put weights on tangible assets do not prefer buying paid application. Regarding categories, most correlations among categories are significantly positive. This is because someone who spend more time on mobile devices tends to use more applications. Game and entertainment category shows significant and positive correlation; however, there exists significantly negative correlation between game and information, as well as game and e-commerce categories of applications. Meanwhile, categories of game and SNS as well as game and finance have shown no significant correlations. This result clearly shows that mobile application usage behavior is quite clearly distinguishable - that the purpose of using mobile devices are polarized into utilitarian and hedonic purpose. This research proves several arguments that can only be explained by second-hand real data, not by survey data, and offers behavioral explanations of mobile application usage in consumers' perspectives. This research also shows substitution/supplementary patterns of consumer application usage, which then explain consumers' mobile application usage behaviors. However, this research has limitations in some points. Classification of categories itself is disputable, for classification is diverged among several studies. Therefore, there is a possibility of change in results depending on the classification. Lastly, although the data are collected in an individual application level, we reduce its observation into an individual level. Further research will be done to resolve these limitations.