Open Skies Policy : A Study on the Alliance Performance and International Competition of FFP (항공자유화정책상 상용고객우대제도의 제휴성과와 국제경쟁에 관한 연구)
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- The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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- v.25 no.2
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- pp.139-162
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- 2010
In terms of the international air transport, the open skies policy implies freedom in the sky or opening the sky. In the normative respect, the open skies policy is a kind of open-door policy which gives various forms of traffic right to other countries, but on the other hand it is a policy of free competition in the international air transport. Since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the United States has signed an open skies agreement with many countries, starting with the Netherlands, so that competitive large airlines can compete in the international air transport market where there exist a lot of business opportunities. South Korea now has an open skies agreement with more than 20 countries. The frequent flyer program (FFP) is part of a broad-based marketing alliance which has been used as an airfare strategy since the U.S. government's airline deregulation. The membership-based program is an incentive plan that provides mileage points to customers for using airline services and rewards customer loyalty in tangible forms based on their accumulated points. In its early stages, the frequent flyer program was focused on marketing efforts to attract customers, but now in the environment of intense competition among airlines, the program is used as an important strategic marketing tool for enhancing business performance. Therefore, airline companies agree that they need to identify customer needs in order to secure loyal customers more effectively. The outcomes from an airline's frequent flyer program can have a variety of effects on international competition. First, the airline can obtain a more dominant position in the air flight market by expanding its air route networks. Second, the availability of flight products for customers can be improved with an increase in flight frequency. Third, the airline can preferentially expand into new markets and thus gain advantages over its competitors. However, there are few empirical studies on the airline frequent flyer program. Accordingly, this study aims to explore the effects of the program on international competition, after reviewing the types of strategic alliance between airlines. Making strategic airline alliances is a worldwide trend resulting from the open skies policy. South Korea also needs to be making open skies agreements more realistic to promote the growth and competition of domestic airlines. The present study is about the performance of the airline frequent flyer program and international competition under the open skies policy. With a sample of five global alliance groups (Star, Oneworld, Wings, Qualiflyer and Skyteam), the study was attempted as an empirical study of the effects that the resource structures and levels of information technology held by airlines in each group have on the type of alliance, and one-way analysis of variance and regression analysis were used to test hypotheses. The findings of this study suggest that both large airline companies and small/medium-size airlines in an alliance group with global networks and organizations are able to achieve high performance and secure international competitiveness. Airline passengers earn mileage points by using non-flight services through an alliance network with hotels, car-rental services, duty-free shops, travel agents and more and show high interests in and preferences for related service benefits. Therefore, Korean airline companies should develop more aggressive marketing programs based on multilateral alliances with other services including hotels, as well as with other airlines.
Currently, Social Media, it has widely a renown keyword and its related social trends and businesses have been fastly applied into various contexts. Social media has become an important research area for scholars interested in online technologies and cyber space and their social impacts. Social media is not only including web-based services but also mobile-based application services that allow people to share various style information and knowledge through online connection. Social media users have tendency to common identity- and bond-attachment through interactions such as 'thumbs up', 'reply note', 'forwarding', which may have driven from various factors and may result in delivering information, sharing knowledge, and specific experiences et al. Even further, almost of all social media sites provide and connect unknown strangers depending on shared interests, political views, or enjoyable activities, and other stuffs incorporating the creation of contents, which provides benefits to users. As fast developing digital devices including smartphone, tablet PC, internet based blogging, and photo and video clips, scholars desperately have began to study regarding diverse issues connecting human beings' motivations and the behavioral results which may be articulated by the format of antecedents as well as consequences related to contents that people create via social media. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, or Cyworld users are more and more getting close each other and build up their relationships by a different style. In this sense, people use social media as tools for maintain pre-existing network, creating new people socially, and at the same time, explicitly find some business opportunities using personal and unlimited public networks. In terms of theory in explaining this phenomenon, social capital is a concept that describes the benefits one receives from one's relationship with others. Thereby, social media use is closely related to the form and connected of people, which is a bridge that can be able to achieve informational benefits of a heterogeneous network of people and common identity- and bonding-attachment which emphasizes emotional benefits from community members or friend group. Social capital would be resources accumulated through the relationships among people, which can be considered as an investment in social relations with expected returns and may achieve benefits from the greater access to and use of resources embedded in social networks. Social media using for their social capital has vastly been adopted in a cyber world, however, there has been little explaining the phenomenon theoretically how people may take advantages or opportunities through interaction among people, why people may interactively give willingness to help or their answers. The individual consciously express themselves in an online space, so called, common identity- or bonding-attachments. Common-identity attachment is the focus of the weak ties, which are loose connections between individuals who may provide useful information or new perspectives for one another but typically not emotional support, whereas common-bonding attachment is explained that between individuals in tightly-knit, emotionally close relationship such as family and close friends. The common identify- and bonding-attachment are mainly studying on-offline setting, which individual convey an impression to others that are expressed to own interest to others. Thus, individuals expect to meet other people and are trying to behave self-presentation engaging in opposite partners accordingly. As developing social media, individuals are motivated to disclose self-disclosures of open and honest using diverse cues such as verbal and nonverbal and pictorial and video files to their friends as well as passing strangers. Social media context, common identity- and bond-attachment for self-presentation seems different compared with face-to-face context. In the realm of social media, social users look for self-impression by posting text messages, pictures, video files. Under the digital environments, people interact to work, shop, learn, entertain, and be played. Social media provides increasingly the kinds of intention and behavior in online. Typically, identity and bond social capital through self-presentation is the intentional and tangible component of identity. At social media, people try to engage in others via a desired impression, which can maintain through performing coherent and complementary communications including displaying signs, symbols, brands made of digital stuffs(information, interest, pictures, etc,). In marketing area, consumers traditionally show common-identity as they select clothes, hairstyles, automobiles, logos, and so on, to impress others in any given context in a shopping mall or opera. To examine these social capital and attachment, we combined a social capital theory with an attachment theory into our research model. Our research model focuses on the common identity- and bond-attachment how they are formulated through social capitals: cognitive capital, structural capital, relational capital, and individual characteristics. Thus, we examined that individual online kindness, self-rated expertise, and social relation influence to build common identity- and bond-attachment, and the attachment effects make an impact on both the willingness to help, however, common bond seems not to show directly impact on information sharing. As a result, we discover that the social capital and attachment theories are mainly applicable to the context of social media and usage in the individual networks. We collected sample data of 256 who are using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Cyworld and analyzed the suggested hypotheses through the Structural Equation Model by AMOS. This study analyzes the direct and indirect relationship between the social network service usage and outcomes. Antecedents of kindness, confidence of knowledge, social relations are significantly affected to the mediators common identity-and bond attachments, however, interestingly, network externality does not impact, which we assumed that a size of network was a negative because group members would not significantly contribute if the members do not intend to actively interact with each other. The mediating variables had a positive effect on toward willingness to help. Further, common identity attachment has stronger significant on shared information.
South Korea's area-based heritage preservation system originates from the "Preservation of Traditional Buildings Act" enacted in 1984. However, this system was abolished in 1996. As there was a need for protection of ancient cities in the 1960s, Japan enacted the Historic City Preservation Act in 1966, and 'Preservation Areas for Historic Landscapes' and 'Special Preservation Districts for Historic Landscapes' were introduced. For the preservation of area-based heritage sites, the 'Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings' system introduced as part of the revision of the Cultural Heritage Protection Act in 1975 was the beginning. Then, in the early-2000s, discussions on the preservation of area-based heritage sites began in earnest, and the 'Important Cultural Landscape' system was introduced for protection of the space and context between heritage sites. Also, '33 Groups of Modernization Industry Heritage Sites' were designated in 2007, covering various material and immaterial resources related to the modernization of Japan, and '100 Beautiful Historic Landscapes of Japan' were selected for protection of local landscapes with historic value in the same year. In 2015, the "Japanese Heritage" system was established for the integrated preservation and management of tangible and intangible heritage aspects located in specific areas; in 2016, the "Japanese Agricultural Heritage" system was established for the succession and fostering of the disappearing agriculture and fishery industries; and in 2017, "the 20th Century Heritage," was established, representing evidence of modern and contemporary Japanese technologies in the 20th century. As a result, presently (in September 2020), 30 'Historic Landscape Preservation Areas', 60 'Historic Landscape Special Districts,' 120 'Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings," 65 'Important Cultural Landscapes,' 66 'Groups of Modernization Industry Heritage Sites,' 264 "100 Beautiful Historic Landscapes of Japan,' 104 'Japanese Heritage Sites,' and 15 'Japanese Agricultural Heritage Sites' have been designated. According to this perception of situations, the research process for this study with its basic purpose of extracting the general characteristics of Japan's area-based heritage preservation system, has sequentially spread since 1976 as follows. First, this study investigates Japan's area-based heritage site preservation system and sets the scope of research through discussions of literature and preceding studies. Second, this study investigates the process of the spread of the area-based heritage site preservation system and analyzes the relationship between the systems according to their development, in order to draw upon their characteristics. Third, to concretize content related to relationships and characteristics, this study involves in-depth analysis of three representative examples and sums them up to identify the characteristics of Japan's area-based heritage system. A noticeable characteristic of Japan's area-based heritage site preservation system drawn from this is that new heritage sites are born each year. Consequently, an overlapping phenomenon takes place between heritage sites, and such phenomena occur alongside revitalization of related industries, traditional industry, and cultural tourism and the improvement of localities as well as the preservation of area-based heritage. These characteristics can be applied as suggestions for the revitalization of the 'modern historical and cultural space' system implemented by South Korea.