• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.79-91
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• 2015

Purpose - First, the study identifies and analyzes consumer preferences with regard to health foods and supplements. Second, it identifies and analyzes consumer preferences with regard to the properties of Vitamin C supplements. Third, in order to provide a basic data for the development of Vitamin C supplements and to measure how consumers value the properties of different Vitamin C products, a consumer survey was conducted through the choice-based conjoint model. Based on the results, the research estimates consumers' relative product-related priorities as well as price levels and willingness to pay (WTP) for different product types, and makes suggestions regarding consumer-oriented new product development and progressive directions for the successful launch of health foods and supplements. Research design, data, and methodology - This study aims to define the attributes of health foods and supplements based on several characteristics including their natural ingredients, product price, product originality, natural ingredient content, and additional functional ingredients, and makes suggestions regarding strategic market pricing and product development for health foods and supplements according to customer attitudes and characteristics. The research used choice-based conjoint analysis methodology based on the Multinomial Logic Model and collected 94 questionnaires filled out by users of Korean Vitamin C supplements. Results - Product price is the most influential factor among the five analyzed properties. When consumers buy Vitamin C products, the relative significance level of four of the examined properties is as follows: 40.9% for product price, 23.3% for product originality, 21.9% for natural ingredient content, and 13.9% for additional functional ingredients. Vitamin C content is excluded as it is not a statistically significant factor. It is interesting that supplement manufacturers and retailers consider Vitamin C content to be very important whereas consumers do not regard it as an important factor at the time of purchase. The results for the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for each property of Vitamin C supplements show that consumers are willing to pay an additional 11,146 Korean won for a 50% increase in the natural ingredient content. With regard to product originality, consumers are willing to pay an additional 11,301 Korean won for products manufactured in Europe than for products manufactured in China. Moreover, consumers show a greater preference for products manufactured in Korea than in Europe. However, consumers are not willing to pay more for additional Vitamin C or additional functional ingredients added to Vitamin C products. Conclusions - According to the results of consumer research on Vitamin C supplements, which represent a popular health food supplement in Korea, most Korean health food and supplement companies are not consumer- or market-oriented when developing new products. Companies gather information from either R&D specialists or sales managers and their opinions are highly reflected in new product development. The study's results will help companies recognize the importance of understanding consumers' unmet needs in advance to develop new products in the future.

• Strategy21
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• s.31
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• pp.220-250
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• 2013

South Korean national security strategy should be developed to effectively handle and counter increasing maritime threats and challenges. There are three major maritime threats South Korea faces today; maritime disputes on the EEZ boundary and Dokdo islet issues, North Korean threats, and international maritime security. Maritime disputes in the region are getting intensified and turned into a military confrontation after 2010. Now regional countries confront each other with military and police forces and use economic leverage to coerce the others. They are very eager to create advantageous de facto situations to legitimize their territorial claims. North Korean threat is also increasing in the sea as we witnessed in the Cheonan incident and Yeonpyoung shelling in 2010. North Korea resorts to local provocations and nuclear threats to coerce South Korea in which it may enjoy asymmetric advantages. The NLL area of the west sea would be a main hot spot that North Korea may continue to make a local provocation. Also, South Korean national economy is heavily dependent upon foreign trade and national strategic resources such as oil are all imported. Without an assurance on the safety of sea routes, these economic activities cannot be maintained and expanded. This paper argues that South Korea should make national maritime strategy and enhance the strength of naval forces. As a middle power, its national security strategy needs to consider all the threats and challenges not only from North Korea but also to maritime security. This is not a matter of choice but a mandate for national survival and prosperity. This paper discusses the importance of maritime security, changing characteristics of maritime threats and challenges, regional maritime disputes and its threat to South Korea's security, and South Korea's future security strategy and ways to enhance the role of naval forces. Our national maritime strategy needs to show middle and long term policy directions on how we will protect our maritime interests. Especially, it is important to build proper naval might to carry out all the roles and missions required to the military.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.12
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• pp.600-612
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• 2009

Special banks primarily using Internet have different properties in transactions with customers, risk management, capital strength, and branch networks with general banks. The success and failure factors of Internet banks have been explained only by the economies of scale, and learning and experience effects of Internet banks based on the perspective of organizational ecologies. In this study, the success factors of Internet banks are investigated based on strategic choice by organizations and resource-based view of the firms instead of organizational ecology perspective. To this end, 31 major Internet banks operating in overseas market have been classified by the size and profitability of banks, and three strategic groups have been derived. three representative company cases were analyzed. critical success factors of Internet banks were derived, and considerable points when operating Internet banks were discussed.

• International Journal of Industrial Entomology and Biomaterials
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.69-75
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• 2009

Daba ecorace of Antheraea mylitta Drury (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae), the semi domesticated Indian tropical tasar silkworm being reared outdoor; the egg and silk yields are dependent of genotype environment interaction. The insufficient maintenance and multiplication of its P4 seed stock need a coherent as well as scientific strategy to safeguard breed potential, being commercially applied ecorace. The sort-out lines of P4 stock studied over five generations highlighting on commercial trait up gradation suits for a tropical crop season, revealed enhanced performance. The line with high pupal parents (T2) shown improved fecundity (12.9%) and the line with high shell parents (T3) recorded higher shell weight (40.0%) and silk ratio (24.1%). While, the line of high pupal female and high shell male (T4) reveal enhancement in fecundity (9.0%), egg hatching (14.1%), shell weight (50.0%), silk ratio (35.2%) and absolute silk yield (52.0%) indicating the need and role of varied basic seed stock lines. The approach could improve economically vital egg fecundity and cocoon shell weights besides balancing them in same line for commercial operation. The progressive show of lines (T1 to T4) along successive generations (G1 to G5), in spite of passing through seed crop (Jul-Aug) and commercial crop (Sep-Nov) seasons emphasize their compatibility. The study infers that the strategic plan of combining preferred parental phenotypes, methodical selection for desired commercial trait(s) through generations with best possible genotype environment interaction has enriched P4 stock with elevation in needy trait(s) besides assuring choice of suitable lines for seasons and regions and timely replenishment of basic seed of Daba ecorace.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.36-44
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• 2016

This article serves as a guideline to the policy on Korea brain science program. Given limited resources within Korea, setting priorities in brain science topics is important in science policy. In this study, we determined the priorities of important brain science topics based on the frontier properties, innovativeness, and prospective outcome. Firstly, the significant topics were chosen after the interview with the top nationwide brain scientists, which were neuroglia, brain precision medicine, neuromorphic engineering, neuroepigenetics, and brain oscillation. Secondly, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) survey were conducted to prioritize and assign the important weight for not only the criteria but also the research topics in pair choice evaluation. In regards to the importance among the criteria, prospects of the topic was determined to be the top criterion to ranked criterion to consider in the government investment. The priority of the research topics was determined by the order for the project to be considered in national science policy in a comparative way.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.127-143
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• 2011

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether strategic decision-making processes are related to decision effectiveness, using a longitudinal field study design. We studied 120 decisions to determine if procedural rationality and political behavior influence decision success, controlling for the goodwill of the environment and decision implementation. Our results indicate that decision-making processes are indeed related to decision success. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of strategic choice in environmental organizations. these studies often provided simple fragments of empirical tests without a well developed theoretical framework. This study attempts to fill this gap by examining policy adoption, specifically by investigating influences on policy decision making across 120 nations using multiple-regression analysis. The greater the number of international NGOs in which a national governmental participates, the more the nation is apt to adopt international environmental policies to see how real affect.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.23-42
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• 2013

To overcome the profitability challenge these days, many global banks are increasingly focusing on cost efficiency through more efficient banking processes, such as online and mobile banking, whereas a number of other banks choose to differentiate their services for retaining and attracting the most valuable customer segment (Deloitte, 2011). While global banks in the retail banking industry are adopting either of these two business models as a strategic choice for their long-term growth, KB Kookmin Bank, one of the leading retail banks in South Korea, has begun to operate 'KB Rockstar' as a strategic channel, particularly designed to target college students in the youth market. The new marketing strategy has resulted in a positive impact on its brand image in customers' perception as well as a drastic increase in the number of youth customers. In this study, we analyze the case of 'KB Rockstar' and summarize the key factors for its success from a marketing perspective. First, 'KB Rockstar' is not simply a good channel strategy, but an innovative marketing strategy that aligns place, product and promotion together in order to create a synergy effect, resulting in the successful implementation of the bank's targeting strategy. Second, the strategy effectively establishes 'KB Rockstar' as a brand targeted to youth customers while also competently strengthening the image of the corporate brand, KB Kookmin Bank. The skillful implementation of organically combined marketing mix strategies has enabled the successful launch of the bank's sub-brand. Third, the strategy considers a retail bank branch as not only the place that makes sales transactions in order to generate short-term profits, but also the place that builds a long-term relationship with customers in order to maximize their lifetime values in the long run.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.32 no.8B
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• pp.553-562
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• 2007

Consumer needs becomes various in a mature mobile telecommunication market, while service differentiation is hard to achieve. Because of the introduction of number portability, switching barrier becomes lower and the competition among telecommunication service providers is getting fierce in order to maintain and obtain customers. Moreover, HSDPA, which is a new telecommunication service, caused the intense marketing activity for the move to the next generation customers. Under these circumstances, brand equity can be a key to a long-term competitive edge for mobile phone service providers. However, there were few researches reporting the mobile telecommunication brand equity, and none of them analyzed if customer equity which particularly is developed at the CDMA market has an effect on HSDPA service. In this study, we identified the determinants of mobile telecommunication brand equity, which is focused on brand image, customer benefit, price, service quality, and marketing activity, and its influence on the HSDPA service subscription behavior. Finally, we suggested the strategic implication of brand management strategies for mobile phone service providers.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.227-248
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• 2016

World aviation market has been expanded every year caused by improvement of economic level quality of individual life, increase of the development of tourist industry. Aviation companies have compete to develpe the service program for the maintaining of sustainable choice by customer and develop the market share. This study aims to suggest customer service strategy which is based on the relations between satisfaction by providing a differentiated service quality. This paper is focusing on the investigation with the mediating role of commitments on customer satisfaction in Aviation company. For this purpose, we do literature reviews, develop research model and conduct an empirical research. The literature review covers theoretical discussion on customer satisfaction and core variables for hypothesis setting. This analysis shows the airline service factors have a positive effect on the customers' satisfaction and re-choice intention. And it is necessary to improve airlines' systematic management and strategic development on airline service factors for better airlines' customer service.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.1-29
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• 2017

We examine the extent to which students' performance relative to peers affects their career choice. Specifically, we analyze the relationship between a student's mathematics ranking in his/her school and the likelihood of choosing Mathematics and Science track in high school. Using a panel dataset of students in Seoul, we measure a student's performance using two variables: absolute performance and relative performance. The former measures a student's performance relative to the entire sample, while the latter measures performance relative to the student's peers in the same school. After controlling for test scores and other characteristics, we find that the students with a poor relative ranking are 11 percentage points less likely to choose the Mathematics and Science track. Relative performance affects girls more greatly than boys. Although relative performance affects a student's self-efficacy and class participation, our accounting exercise suggests that this channel accounts for only 12 percent of the impact, implying that students may respond to the relative ranking mostly due to other factors, such as strategic consideration to perform well in college applications.