• The Journal of Korean Obstetrics and Gynecology
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.18-44
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• 2017

Purpose: The object of this study was to observe the anti-climacterium activity of Gagamguibiondam-tang (GGOT) on ovariectomized (OVX) rats, a well-documented rodent models resembles with women postmenopausal climacterium symptoms, as including cardiovascular diseases, obesity, hyperlipidemia, osteoporosis, organ steatosis and mental disorders. Methods: In this study, anti-climacteric effects were evaluated separated into three categories; 1) anti-obese, 2) anti-uterine atrophy and 3) anti-osteoporotic effects. Five groups were used (8 rats in each group); sham control, OVX control, GGOT 500, 250 and 125 mg/kg administered groups. Twenty-eight days after bilateral OVX surgery, GGOT were orally administered, once a day for 84 days, and then the changes on the body weight and gain during experimental periods, serum estradiol levels, abdominal fat pad and uterus weights with histopathology of abdominal fat pads (total thickness and mean adipocyte diameters) and uterus (total, epithelial and mucosal thickness, percentages of uterine gland regions) for anti-obese and estrogenic effects. In addition, femur, tibia and fourth or fifth lumbar vertebrae (L4 or L5) wet, dry and ash weights, mineral density (BMD), bone strength (failure load), serum osteocalcin and bone specific alkaline phosphatase (bALP) contents, histological and histomorphometrical analyses - bone mass and structure with bone resorption, were monitored for anti-osteoporosis activity. Results: As a result of OVX, noticeable increases of body weight and gains, food and water consumption, weights of abdominal fat pad deposited in dorsal abdominal cavity, serum osteocalcin levels were demonstrated in this experiment with decrease of uterus, femur, tibia and L5 weights, serum bALP and estradiol levels. In addition, marked hypertrophic changes of adipocytes located in deposited abdominal fat pads, uterine disused atrophic changes, decreases of bone mass and structures of femur, tibia and L4 were also observed in OVX control rats with dramatic increases of bone resorption markers, the Ocn and OS/BS at histopathological and histomorphometrical analysis in this study as compared with sham-operated control rats, suggesting the estrogen-deficient climacterium symptoms - obese and osteoporosis were induced by OVX, respectively. However, these estrogen-deficient climacterium symptoms induced by bilateral OVX in rats were significantly inhibited by 84 days of continuous oral treatment of GGOT 500, 250 and 125 mg/kg, respectively. Especially, GGOT 500, 250 and 125 mg/kg showed clear dose-dependent inhibitory activities on the OVX-induced climacterium signs. Conclusion: The results suggest that oral administration of GGOT 500, 250 and 125 mg/kg has clear dose-dependent favorable anti-climacterium effects - estrogenic, anti-obese and anti-osteoporotic activities in OVX rats in this experiment.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.79-111
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• 2011

Digital economy has grown rapidly so that the new business area called 'Internet business' has been dramatically extended as time goes on. However, in the case of Internet business, market shares of individual companies seem to fluctuate very extremely. Thus marketing managers who operate the Internet sites have seriously observed the competition structure of the Internet business market and carefully analyzed the competitors' behavior in order to achieve their own business goals in the market. The newly created Internet business might differ from the offline ones in management styles, because it has totally different business circumstances when compared with the existing offline businesses. Thus, there should be a lot of researches for finding the solutions about what the features of Internet business are and how the management style of those Internet business companies should be changed. Most marketing literatures related to the Internet business have focused on individual business markets. Specifically, many researchers have studied the Internet portal sites and the Internet shopping mall sites, which are the most general forms of Internet business. On the other hand, this study focuses on the entire Internet business industry to understand the competitive circumstance of online market. This approach makes it possible not only to have a broader view to comprehend overall e-business industry, but also to understand the differences in competition structures among Internet business markets. We used time-series data of Internet connection rates by consumers as the basic data to figure out the competition patterns in the Internet business markets. Specifically, the data for this research was obtained from one of Internet ranking sites, 'Fian'. The Internet business ranking data is obtained based on web surfing record of some pre-selected sample group where the possibility of double-count for page-views is controlled by method of same IP check. The ranking site offers several data which are very useful for comparison and analysis of competitive sites. The Fian site divides the Internet business areas into 34 area and offers market shares of big 5 sites which are on high rank in each category daily. We collected the daily market share data about Internet sites on each area from April 22, 2008 to August 5, 2008, where some errors of data was found and 30 business area data were finally used for our research after the data purification. This study performed several empirical analyses in focusing on market shares of each site to understand the competition among sites in Internet business of Korea. We tried to perform more statistically precise analysis for looking into business fields with similar competitive structures by applying the cluster analysis to the data. The research results are as follows. First, the leading sites in each area were classified into three groups based on averages and standard deviations of daily market shares. The first group includes the sites with the lowest market shares, which give more increased convenience to consumers by offering the Internet sites as complimentary services for existing offline services. The second group includes sites with medium level of market shares, where the site users are limited to specific small group. The third group includes sites with the highest market shares, which usually require online registration in advance and have difficulty in switching to another site. Second, we analyzed the second place sites in each business area because it may help us understand the competitive power of the strongest competitor against the leading site. The second place sites in each business area were classified into four groups based on averages and standard deviations of daily market shares. The four groups are the sites showing consistent inferiority compared to the leading sites, the sites with relatively high volatility and medium level of shares, the sites with relatively low volatility and medium level of shares, the sites with relatively low volatility and high level of shares whose gaps are not big compared to the leading sites. Except 'web agency' area, these second place sites show relatively stable shares below 0.1 point of standard deviation. Third, we also classified the types of relative strength between leading sites and the second place sites by applying the cluster analysis to the gap values of market shares between two sites. They were also classified into four groups, the sites with the relatively lowest gaps even though the values of standard deviation are various, the sites with under the average level of gaps, the sites with over the average level of gaps, the sites with the relatively higher gaps and lower volatility. Then we also found that while the areas with relatively bigger gap values usually have smaller standard deviation values, the areas with very small differences between the first and the second sites have a wider range of standard deviation values. The practical and theoretical implications of this study are as follows. First, the result of this study might provide the current market participants with the useful information to understand the competitive circumstance of the market and build the effective new business strategy for the market success. Also it might be useful to help new potential companies find a new business area and set up successful competitive strategies. Second, it might help Internet marketing researchers take a macro view of the overall Internet market so that make possible to begin the new studies on overall Internet market beyond individual Internet market studies.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.27-52
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• 2010

It is not new that today's business organizations are expected to exhibit ethical and moral management and to carry out social responsibility as a good corporate citizen. Since South Korea emerged as a newly industrialized country during the 1980s, Korean corporations have become active in carrying out their social responsibility as a good corporate citizen to society. In spite of the short history of corporate social responsibility, Korean companies have actively participated in corporate philanthropy. Corporations' significant donations to various social causes, no-lay-off policies, corporate volunteerism and green marketing are evidences of their commitment to corporate citizenship. Corporate social responsibility is now an essential management practice whereby corporation can strengthen its sustainable value creation processes by enhancing the trust assets underlying the relationships between the business and the stakeholders. Much of the conceptual work in the area of corporate social responsibility(CSR) has originated from researches conducted in the management field. Carroll(1979) proposed that corporations have four types of social responsibilities: economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibility. Most past research has investigated CSR and its impact on consumers' attitudes toward the corporations and corporate performances. Although there exists a large body of literature on how consumers perceive and respond to CSR, the majority of past studies were conducted in the United States. The stability and applicability of past findings need to be tested across different national/cultural settings, especially since corporate social responsibility is a reflection of implicit conformation with the expectations and criticism that society may have toward a corporation(Matten and Moon, 2004). In this study, we explored whether people in Korea perceive CSR of Korean corporations in the same four dimensions as done in the United States and what were the measurement items tapping each of these four dimensions. In order to investigate the dimensions of CSR and the measurement items for CSR perceived by Korean people, nine focus group interviews were conducted with several stakeholder groups(two with undergraduate students, two with graduate students, three with general consumers, and two with NGO groups). Scripts from the interviews revealed that the Korean stakeholders perceived four types of CSR which are the same as those proposed by Carroll(1979). However we found CSR issues unique to Korean corporations. For example for the economic responsibility, Korean people mentioned that the corporation needed to contribute to the economic development of the country by generating corporate profits. For the legal responsibility, Koreans included the "corporation need to follow the consumer protection law." For the ethical responsibility, they considered that the corporation needed to not promote false advertisement. In addition, Koreans thought that an ethical company should do transparent management. For the philanthropic responsibility, people in Korea thought that a corporation needed to return parts of its profits to the society for the betterment of society. The 28 items were developed based on the results of the nine focus group interviews, while considering the scale developed by Maignan and Ferrell(2001). Following the procedure proposed by Churchill(1979), we started by developing an item poll consisting of 28 items and purified the initial pool of items through exploratory, confirmatory factor analyses. 176 samples were sued for this analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the 28 items in order to verify the underlying four factor structure. Study 1 provided new measurement items for tapping the Korean CSR dimensions, which can be useful for the future studies exploring the effects of CSR on Korean consumers' attitudes toward the corporations and corporate performances. And we found the CSR scale(17 items) has good reliability, discriminant validity and nomological validity. Economic Responsibility: "XYZ company continuously improves the quality of our products", "XYZ company has a procedure in place to respond to customer complaint", "XYZ company contributes to the economic development of our country by generating profits", "XYZ company is eager to hire people". Legal Responsibility: "XYZ company's products meet legal standards", "XYZ company seeks to comply with all laws regulating hiring and employee benefits", "XYZ company honors contractual obligations to its suppliers", "XYZ company's managers try to comply with the law related to the business operation". Ethical Responsibility: "XYZ company has a comprehensive code of conduct", "XYZ company does not promote a false or misleading advertisement", "XYZ company seems to conduct a transparent business", "XYZ company does a fair business with its suppliers or sub-contractors". Philanthropic Responsibility: "XYZ company encourages partnerships with local businesses and schools", "XYZ company supports sports and cultural activities", "XYZ company gives adequate contributions to charities considering its business size", "XYZ company encourages employees to support our community". Study 2 was condusted for comprehensive validity. 655 samples were used for this anlysis. Collected samples were tested by factor analysis and Crnbach's Alpha coefficiednts and were found to be satisfactory in terms of validity and reliability. Furthermore, fitness of the measurement model was tested by using conformatory factor analysis. χ²=880.73(df=160), GFI=0.891, AGFI=0.854, NFI=0.908, NNFI=0.913, RMR=0.059, RMESA=0.070. We hope that CSR scale could greatly facilitate research on Corporate social resposibility, it is by no means the final answer.