• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.89-101
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• 2022

This study investigated the effects of individual characteristics (entrepreneurial self-efficacy) and environmental characteristics (social support, government support policy) on entrepreneurial intention for college students in Korea and China. In particular, the moderating effect of differences between countries (Korea and China) was demonstrated in the relationship between individual and environmental characteristics and entrepreneurial intention. The results of the empirical analysis of 626 Korean and Chinese university students are as follows. First, all of the entrepreneurial self-efficacy, social support, and government support policies perceived by Korean college students had a positive effect on entrepreneurial intention. In particular, Korean college students' entrepreneurial intentions were influenced in the order of social support, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and government support policies. Second, all of the entrepreneurial self-efficacy, social support, and government support policies perceived by Chinese college students had a positive effect on start-up intention. In particular, entrepreneurial intention of Chinese college students was influenced in the order of government support policy, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and social support. Third, the relationship between environmental characteristics (social support, government support policy) and entrepreneurial intention was adjusted by differences between countries. First, the positive relationship between social support and entrepreneurial intention was generally higher for Chinese college students than for Korean college students. In addition, the positive relationship between government support policy and entrepreneurial intention was higher for Chinese college students than for Korean college students as the level of awareness of government support policy increased. Finally, theoretical and practical implications for the intention of Korean and Chinese college students to start a business were presented, and the limitations of the study and future research directions were presented based on this study.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.173-189
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• 2023

As supreme technologies continue to be developed, industries such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robots, aerospace, electric vehicles, and solar energy are created, and the macro business environment is rapidly changing. Due to these large-scale changes and increased complexity, it is necessary to pay attention to the effect of social capital, which can create new value by utilizing capital increasing the importance of relationships rather than technology or asset ownership itself at the level of start-up strategy. Social capital is a concept first proposed by Hanifan in 1916, and refers to the overall sum of capabilities or resources that are latent or available for use in mutual, continuous, organic relationships or accumulated human relationship networks between individuals or social members. In addition, the diversity of start-up teams with diverse backgrounds, characteristics, and capabilities, rather than one exceptional founder, has been emphasized. Founding team diversity refers to the diversity of in-depth factors such as demographic factors, beliefs, and values of the founding team. In addition, changes in the macro environment are emphasizing the importance of technology start-ups and laboratory start-ups that lead industrial innovation and create the nation's core growth engines. This study focused on the I-Corps' program. I-Corps, which means innovation corps, is a laboratory startup program launched by the National Research Foundation (NSF) in 2011 to encourage entrepreneurship and commercialization of research results. It focuses on forming a startup team involving professors, researchers and market discovery activities. Taking these characteristics into account, this study empirically verified the impact of social capital from a network perspective and founding team diversity on I-Corps start-up performance. As a result of the analysis, the educational diversity of the founding team had a negative (-) effect on the financial performance of the founding team. On the other side, the gender diversity and the cognitive dimension of social capital had a positive (+) effect on the financial performance of the founding team. This study is expected to provide more useful theoretical and practical implications regarding the diversity, social capital, and performance interpretation of the I-Corps Lab startup team.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.119-133
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• 2024

As a result of significant investments by the government in promoting public technology commercialization and fostering a venture startup ecosystem, there have been quantitative achievements, such as the registration of over 1,600 Innopolis Start-ups since 2006, generating a total revenue of 1.1 trillion won as of 2021. However, these achievements have been overshadowed by critical qualitative challenges, including a continuous decline in average revenue per Innopolis Start-up. This led to a focus on whether managers' technological and market orientations affect business performance. This study aims to provide insights into improving the qualitative growth of Innopolis Start-ups by analyzing the effects of technological and market orientations on business performance, as well as the moderating effects of adjusting marketing and research and development (R&D) costs on this relationship. Through prior research and empirical analysis, this study derives three main findings. First, technological excellence and innovation significantly influence the business performance of Innopolis Start-ups, while technological intensity does not. Second, customer orientation and competitive orientation significantly impact business performance, whereas entry barriers as a single factor do not. Third, adjusting marketing and R&D costs, as controlled variables obtained through general situations, has no direct impact on other variables. However, it interacts with entry barriers, influencing financial business performance, with R&D costs exhibiting a negative buffering effect and marketing costs showing a positive enhancing effect. This study confirms that both technological and market orientations directly influence the business performance of Innopolis Start-ups, thus being crucial factors affecting their growth. Moreover, it establishes that investments in marketing and R&D play significant roles in alleviating initial entry barriers and enhancing financial performance. Consequently, it underscores the importance of reinforcing technological and market orientations tailored to the characteristics of Innopolis Start-ups. Additionally, it proposes five theoretical contributions: strengthening institutional support systems for technology commercialization and innovation, improving qualitative evaluation criteria during the selection process of Innopolis Start-ups, conducting comprehensive analyses of technological and market aspects during startup selection, enhancing support for marketing education and consulting for smooth market entry, and supporting expenditure strategies and milestone setting tailored to the industrial characteristics of individual Innopolis Start-ups.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.11-27
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• 2024

This study aimed to investigate the role of scientific empathy in influencing students' productive disciplinary engagement in scientific activities and analyze the key factors of scientific empathy that manifest during this process. Twelve fifth-grade students were divided into three subgroups based on their general empathic abilities. Lessons promoting productive disciplinary engagement, integrating design thinking processes, were conducted. Subgroup discourse analysis during idea generation and prototype stages, two of five problem-solving steps, enabled observation of scientific empathy and practice aspects. The results showed that applying scientific empathy effectively through design thinking facilitated students' productive disciplinary engagement in science. In the idea generation stage, we observed an initial increase followed by a decrease in scientific empathy and practice utterances, while during the prototyping stage, utterance frequency increased, particularly in the later part. However, subgroups with lower empathic abilities displayed decreased discourse frequency in scientific empathy and practice during the prototype stage due to a lack of collaborative communication. Across all empathic ability levels, the students articulated all five key factors of scientific empathy through their utterances in situations involving productive science engagement. In the high empathic ability subgroup, empathic understanding and concern were emphasized, whereas in the low empathic ability subgroup, sensitivity, scientific imagination, and situational interest, factors of empathizing with the research object, were prominent. These results indicate that experiences of scientific empathy with research objects, beyond general empathetic abilities, serve as a distinct and crucial factor in stimulating diverse participation and sustaining students' productive engagement in scientific activities during science classes. By suggesting the potential multidimensional impact of scientific empathy on productive disciplinary engagement, this study contributes to discussions on the theoretical structure and stability of scientific empathy in science education.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.155-172
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• 2024

The COVID-19 pandemic not only posed an enormous human crisis, but also had a profound impact on firms' survival. Social distancing and global lockdown measures designed to protect human lives have paradoxically impaired the business environment. As a result, firms that sought to gain competitive advantage by leveraging external resources were cut off from the external world and faced unexpected challenges. Under these circumstances, researches were conducted in the early stage of the pandemic to explore how certain firms survived while others fell, but they were limited to re-examining business performance using traditional financial factors. However, this study aims to investigate the role of entrepreneurs' competency in crisis situations from the Resource-Based View (RBV), as such competency plays an important role in improving business performance and subsequently the probability of startups' survival. Specifically, we evaluated the performance as of end of 2019 of 1,127 startups evaluated by the Korea Technology Finance Corporation (KOTEC), which provides policy financing based on technology assessment, in 2016. We then conducted an empirical study to determine the mediating role of business performance in the relationship between entrepreneurial competencies and firm survival by verifying how many of the sample firms were still in operation at the end of June 2023, when the Korean government declared COVID-19 as an endemic. For this purpose, we defined technological, financial, and marketing competencies as the sub-factors of entrepreneurial competency, and sales growth rate and employment growth rate as the sub-factors of business performance. The results of the empirical analysis showed that technological and financial competencies of the entrepreneur had a positive impact on both business performance and firm survival, and that sales growth rate and employment growth rate mediated the relationship between technological competence and firm survival. However, the positive influence of entrepreneurs' financial competence of the survival of startups was only evident through the growth of employment. This study is the first study in South Korea to define the survival factors of startups in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is expected to contribute to the theoretical and practical discussions on the importance of entrepreneurs' competency as a firms' survival factor based on RVB.

• Journal of Christian Education in Korea
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• v.77
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• pp.47-62
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• 2024

Purpose of the study : The purpose of this study was to analyze research on Christian infant parents in terms of research period, research content, and research method, and seek directions for research projects related to Christian infant parents. Research content and methods : For this study, domestic master's and doctoral dissertation published from 1995 to 2023 by the national assembly library and the research information sharing service (RISS) were collected under the categories 'Christianity', 'infant', 'infancy', and 'parent'. A total of 40 studies were extracted by searching with these keywords and excluding redundant studies. In addition, the frequency and percentage were calculated by classifying and analyzing the results into three criteria: research period, research content, and research method. Conclusions and Recommendations : Research on Christian infant parents increased significantly between 2016 and 2020, with 10 studies (25%) conducted during this period, indicating a more active engagement in this area compared to other times. Master's theses accounted for 39 studies (97.5%), while doctoral dissertation comprised 1 study (2.5%), suggesting a predominance of research at the master's level. Regarding the content of the research on Christian infant parents, practice studies accounted for 34 studies (85%), while basic research accounted for 6 studies (15%). Field-related studies such as the development of parental education programs and materials for infants continued to be carried out steadily, but there was a lack of theoretical, philosophical, perceptual, and factual investigation research on Christian infant parents. Methodologically, literature reviews were prevalent, with 27 studies (67.5%), followed by quantitative studies with 10 studies (25%), and qualitative studies with 3 studies (7.5%). Various types of research, including quantitative, qualitative, and literature reviews, were conducted between 2016 and 2020. Based on the research findings, in-depth qualitative studies conducted through observation and interviews, as well as mixed-method studies complementing single studies, should be conducted for a long-term perspective on research involving Christian infant and child parents.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.49-71
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• 2010

Franchise businesses in South Korea have contributed to economic growth and job creation, and its growth potential remains very high. However, despite such virtues, domestic franchise businesses face many problems such as the instability of franchisor's business structure and weak financial conditions. To solve these problems, the government enacted legislation and strengthened franchise related laws. However, the strengthening of laws regulating franchisors had many side effects that interrupted the development of the franchise business. For example, legal regulations regarding franchisors have had the effect of suppressing the franchisor's leadership activities (e.g. activities such as the ability to advocate the franchisor's policies and strategies to the franchisees, in order to facilitate change and innovation). One of the main goals of the franchise business is to build cooperation between the franchisor and the franchisee for their combined success. However, franchisees can refuse to follow the franchisor's strategies because of the current state of franchise-related law and government policy. The purpose of this study to explore the effects of franchisor's leadership style on franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. We classified leadership styles according to the path-goal theory (House & Mitchell, 1974), and it was hypothesized and tested that the four leadership styles proposed by the path-goal theory (i.e. directive, supportive, participative and achievement-oriented leadership) have different effects on franchisee's commitment. Another purpose of this study to explore the how the level of franchisee's self-efficacy influences both the franchisor's leadership style and franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. Results of the present study are expected to provide important theoretical and practical implications as to the role of franchisor's leadership style, as restricted by government regulations and the franchisee's self-efficacy, which could be needed to improve the quality of the long-term relationship between the franchisor and franchisee. Quoted by Northouse(2007), one problem regarding the investigation of leadership is that there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are people who have tried to define it. But despite the multitude of ways in which leadership has been conceptualized, the following components can be identified as central to the phenomenon: (a) leadership is a process, (b) leadership involves influence, (c) leadership occurs in a group context, and (d) leadership involves goal attainment. Based on these components, in this study leadership is defined as a process whereby franchisor's influences a group of franchisee' to achieve a common goal. Focusing on this definition, the path-goal theory is about how leaders motivate subordinates to accomplish designated goals. Drawing heavily from research on what motivates employees, path-goal theory first appeared in the leadership literature in the early 1970s in the works of Evans (1970), House (1971), House and Dessler (1974), and House and Mitchell (1974). The stated goal of this leadership theory is to enhance employee performance and employee satisfaction by focusing on employee motivation. In brief, path-goal theory is designed to explain how leaders can help subordinates along the path to their goals by selecting specific behaviors that are best suited to subordinates' needs and to the situation in which subordinates are working (Northouse, 2007). House & Mitchell(1974) predicted that although many different leadership behaviors could have been selected to be a part of path-goal theory, this approach has so far examined directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented leadership behaviors. And they suggested that leaders may exhibit any or all of these four styles with various subordinates and in different situations. However, due to restrictive government regulations, franchisors are not in a position to change their leadership style to suit their circumstances. In addition, quoted by Northouse(2007), ssubordinate characteristics determine how a leader's behavior is interpreted by subordinates in a given work context. Many researchers have focused on subordinates' needs for affiliation, preferences for structure, desires for control, and self-perceived level of task ability. In this study, we have focused on the self-perceived level of task ability, namely, the franchisee's self-efficacy. According to Bandura (1977), self-efficacy is chiefly defined as the personal attitude of one's ability to accomplish concrete tasks. Therefore, it is not an indicator of one's actual abilities, but an opinion of the extent of how one can use that ability. Thus, the judgment of maintain franchisee's commitment depends on the situation (e.g., government regulation and policy and leadership style of franchisor) and how it affects one's ability to mobilize resources to deal with the task, so even if people possess the same ability, there may be differences in self-efficacy. Figure 1 illustrates the model investigated in this study. In this model, it was hypothesized that leadership styles would affect the franchisee's commitment, and self-efficacy would moderate the relationship between leadership style and franchisee's commitment. Theoretically, quoted by Northouse(2007), the path-goal approach suggests that leaders need to choose a leadership style that best fits the needs of subordinates and the work they are doing. According to House & Mitchell (1974), the theory predicts that a directive style of leadership is best in situations in which subordinates are dogmatic and authoritarian, the task demands are ambiguous, and the organizational rule and procedures are unclear. In these situations, franchisor's directive leadership complements the work by providing guidance and psychological structure for franchisees. For work that is structured, unsatisfying, or frustrating, path-goal theory suggests that leaders should use a supportive style. Franchisor's Supportive leadership offers a sense of human touch for franchisees engaged in mundane, mechanized activity. Franchisor's participative leadership is considered best when a task is ambiguous because participation gives greater clarity to how certain paths lead to certain goals; it helps subordinates learn what actions leads to what outcome. Furthermore, House & Mitchell(1974) predicts that achievement-oriented leadership is most effective in settings in which subordinates are required to perform ambiguous tasks. Marsh and O'Neill (1984) tested the idea that organizational members' anger and decline in performance is caused by deficiencies in their level of effort and found that self-efficacy promotes accomplishment, decreases stress and negative consequences like depression and emotional instability. Based on the extant empirical findings and theoretical reasoning, we posit positive and strong relationships between the franchisor's leadership styles and the franchisee's commitment. Furthermore, the level of franchisee's self-efficacy was thought to maintain their commitment. The questionnaires sent to participants consisted of the following measures; leadership style was assessed using a 20 item 7-point likert scale developed by Indvik (1985), self-efficacy was assessed using a 24 item 6-point likert scale developed by Bandura (1977), and commitment was assessed using a 6 item 5-point likert scale developed by Morgan & Hunt (1994). Questionnaires were distributed to Korean optical franchisees in Seoul. It took about 20 days to complete the data collection. A total number of 140 questionnaires were returned and complete data were available from 137 respondents. Results of multiple regression analyses testing the relationships between the each of the four styles of leadership shown by the franchisor as independent variables and franchisee's commitment as the dependent variable showed that the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.13, p<.001),and the relationship between participative leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.07, p<.001)were significant. However, when participants divided into high and low self-efficacy groups, results of multiple regression analyses showed that only the relationship between achievement-oriented leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.14, p<.001) was significant in the high self-efficacy group. In the low self-efficacy group, the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.17, p<.001),and the relationship between participative leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.10, p<.001) were significant. The study focused on the franchisee's self-efficacy in order to explore the possibility that regulation, originally intended to protect the franchisee, may not be the most effective method to maintain the relationships in a franchise business. The key results of the data analysis regarding the moderating role of self-efficacy between leadership behavior style as proposed by path-goal and commitment theory were as follows. First, this study proposed that franchisor should apply the appropriate type of leadership behavior to strengthen the franchisees commitment because the results demonstrated that supportive and participative leadership styles by the franchisors have a positive influence on the franchisee's level of commitment. Second, it is desirable for franchisor to validate the franchisee's efforts, since the franchisee's characteristics such as self-efficacy had a substantial, positive effect on the franchisee's commitment as well as being a meaningful moderator between leadership and commitment. Third, the results as a whole imply that the government should provide institutional support, namely to put the franchisor in a position to clearly identify the characteristics of their franchisees and provide reasonable means to administer the franchisees to achieve the company's goal.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.153-173
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• 1990

One of the important tasks for new parents. especially mothers, is to establish warm, mutually affirming interpersonal relationships with the new baby in the family, with the purpose of promoting the healthy development of the child and the wellbeing of the whole family. Nurses assess the quality of the behavioral characteristics of the maternal-infant interaction. This study examined the relationships between primiparas pereptions of their delivery experience and their maternal infant interaction. It compared to delivery experience of mothers having a normal vaginal delivery with those having a casearean section. The purpose was to explore the relationships between the mother's perceptions of her delivery experience with her maternal infant interaction. The aim was to contribute to the development of theoretical understanding on which to base care toward promoting the quality of maternal-infant interaction. Data were collected directly by the investigator and a trained associate from Dec. 1, 1987 to March 8, 1988. Subjects were 3 random sample of 62 mothers, 32 who had a normal vaginal delivery and 30 who had a non-elective cesarean section (but without other perinatal complications) at three general hospitals in Seoul. Instruments used were the Stainton Parent -infant Interaction Scale(1981) and the Marut and Mercer Perception of Birth Scale(1979). The first observations were made in the delivery room (for vaginally delivered mothers only), followed by day 1, day 2, day 3, and 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks and 8 weeks after birth, for a total of 7-8 contacts(Cesarean section mothers were observed on days 4 and 5 but the data not used for analysis). Observations in the hospital were made during the hour prior to scheduled feedings. The infant was placed beside the mother. Later contacts were made at home. Data analysis was done by computer using as SPSS program and indulded X² test, paired t-test, t-test, and Pearson Correlation coefficient ; the results were as follows. 1. Mothers who had a normal vaginal delivery tended to perceive the delivery experience more positively than cesarean section mothers(p＝0.002). The finding supported the hypothesis I that perception of delivery would vary according to the method of delivery. Mothers' perceptions of birth were classified into three dimensions, labor, delivery and the bady. There was a significantly different and positive perception by the vaginally delivered mothers to the delivery experience(p＝0.000) but no differences for labor or the bady according to the delivery method(p＝0.096, p＝0.389), 2. Mothers who had a normal vaginal delivery had higher average maternal-infant interaction scores(p＝0.029) than mothers who had a cesarean section. There were similar higher scores for the 1st day(p＝0.042), 2nd day (p＝0.009), and the 3rd day(p＝0.006) after delivery but not for later times. The findings supported the hypothesis Ⅱ that there would be differences in maternal-infant interaction for mothers having vaginal and cesarean section deliveries. However these differences deccreased section deliveries. However these differences decreased over time . by eight weeks the scores for vaginal delivery mothers averaged 8.1 and for cesarean section mothers, 7.9. 3. The more highly positive the pereption of the delivery experience, the higher the maternal-infant interaction score for all subjects(F＝.3206, p＝.006). The findings supported the hypothesis Ⅲ that there would be correlations between perceptions of delivery and maternal-infant interaction. The maternal infant interaction was highest when the perception of the bady and deliery was positive(r＝.4363, p＝.000, r＝.2881, p＝.012). No correlations between perceptions of labor and maternal-infant interaction were found(p＝0.062). 4. The daily maternal-infant interaction score for the initial contact after birth to 8 weeks postpartum had the lowest average score 5.20 and the highest 7.98(in a range of 0-10). This subjects group of mothers needed nursing intervention to promote their maternal- infant interaction. The daily scores for the maternal-infant over the period of eight weeks. However, there were significantly different increases in maternal-infant interaction only from the first to second day(p＝0.000) and from the fourth to sixth weeks after birth(P＝0.000). 5. When the eight items of maternal-infant interaction were evaluated separately, “Expresses feelings about her role as mother” had the highest average score, 1.64(ina range of 0-3)and “Speaks to baby” the lowest, 0.9. All items, with the possible exception of “Expresses feelings about her role as mother”, suggested the subjects' need of nursing intervention to promote maternal-infant interaction. 6. There were positive correlations between certain general charateristis, namely, both a higher economic status(p＝0.002) and breast feeding(p＝0.202) and maternal - infant interaction. There were positive correlations between a mother's confidence in her role as a mother and the perception of the birth experience(p＝0.004). For mothers who had a cesarean section, a positive perception of the birth experience was related to the duration of her marriage(p＝0.010), a wanted pregnancy (P＝0.030) and her confidence in her role as a mother(p＝0.000). Pereptions of birth for mothers who had a normal vaginal delivery were positive than those for mothers who had a cesarean section. The level of maternalinfant interaction for mothers delivered vaginally was higher than for cesarean section mothers. The relationship between perception of birth and materanalinfant interaction was confirmed. Cesarean section has an impact on the mother's perceived experience of birth which, in turn, is positively related to maternal-infant in turn, is positively related to maternal-infant interaction. Nursing intervention to enhance maternal-infant interaction should begin in prenatal classes with an exploration of the potential impact of cesarean section on the perceptions of the birth experience and continue throughout the perinatal and post-natal periods to promote the mother's ability to control with this crisis experience and to mobilize social support. Nursing should help transform a relatively negatively perceived experience into an accepted, positively perceived and self affirming experience which enhances the maternal-infant relationship.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.33-56
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• 2017

As Internet usage is becoming more common worldwide and smartphone become necessity in daily life, technologies and applications related to mobile Internet are developing rapidly. The results of the Internet usage patterns of consumers around the world imply that there are many potential new business opportunities for mobile Internet technologies and applications. The location-based service (LBS) is a service based on the location information of the mobile device. LBS has recently gotten much attention among many mobile applications and various LBSs are rapidly developing in numerous categories. However, even with the development of LBS related technologies and services, there is still a lack of empirical research on the intention to use LBS. The application of previous researches is limited because they focused on the effect of one particular factor and had not shown the direct relationship on the intention to use LBS. Therefore, this study presents a research model of factors that affect the intention to use and actual use of LBS whose market is expected to grow rapidly, and tested it by conducting a questionnaire survey of 330 users. The results of data analysis showed that service customization, service quality, and personal innovativeness have a positive effect on the intention to use LBS and the intention to use LBS has a positive effect on the actual use of LBS. These results implies that LBS providers can enhance the user's intention to use LBS by offering service customization through the provision of various LBSs based on users' needs, improving information service qualities such as accuracy, timeliness, sensitivity, and reliability, and encouraging personal innovativeness. However, privacy concerns in the context of LBS are not significantly affected by service customization and personal innovativeness and privacy concerns do not significantly affect the intention to use LBS. In fact, the information related to users' location collected by LBS is less sensitive when compared with the information that is used to perform financial transactions. Therefore, such outcomes on privacy concern are revealed. In addition, the advantages of using LBS are more important than the sensitivity of privacy protection to the users who use LBS than to the users who use information systems such as electronic commerce that involves financial transactions. Therefore, LBS are recommended to be treated differently from other information systems. This study is significant in the theoretical point of contribution that it proposed factors affecting the intention to use LBS in a multi-faceted perspective, proved the proposed research model empirically, brought new insights on LBS, and broadens understanding of the intention to use and actual use of LBS. Also, the empirical results of the customization of LBS affecting the user's intention to use the LBS suggest that the provision of customized LBS services based on the usage data analysis through utilizing technologies such as artificial intelligence can enhance the user's intention to use. In a practical point of view, the results of this study are expected to help LBS providers to develop a competitive strategy for responding to LBS users effectively and lead to the LBS market grows. We expect that there will be differences in using LBSs depending on some factors such as types of LBS, whether it is free of charge or not, privacy policies related to LBS, the levels of reliability related application and technology, the frequency of use, etc. Therefore, if we can make comparative studies with those factors, it will contribute to the development of the research areas of LBS. We hope this study can inspire many researchers and initiate many great researches in LBS fields.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.65-86
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• 2012

The $20^{th}$ century was the era of manufacturer brands which built higher brand equity for consumers. Consumers moved from generic products of inconsistent quality produced by local factories in the $19^{th}$ century to branded products from global manufacturers and manufacturer brands reached consumers through distributors and retailers. Retailers were relatively small compared to their largest suppliers. However, sometime in the 1970s, things began to slowly change as retailers started to develop their own national chains and began international expansion, and consolidation of the retail industry from mom-and-pop stores to global players was well under way (Kumar and Steenkamp 2007, p.2) In South Korea, since the middle of the 1990s, the bulking up of retailers that started then has changed the balance of power between manufacturers and retailers. Retailer private labels, generally referred to as own labels, store brands, distributors own private-label, home brand or own label brand have also been performing strongly in every single local market (Bushman 1993; De Wulf et al. 2005). Private labels now account for one out of every five items sold every day in U.S. supermarkets, drug chains, and mass merchandisers (Kumar and Steenkamp 2007), and the market share in Western Europe is even larger (Euromonitor 2007). In the UK, grocery market share of private labels grew from 39% of sales in 2008 to 41% in 2010 (Marian 2010). Planet Retail (2007, p.1) recently concluded that "[PLs] are set for accelerated growth, with the majority of the world's leading grocers increasing their own label penetration." Private labels have gained wide attention both in the academic literature and popular business press and there is a glowing academic research to the perspective of manufacturers and retailers. Empirical research on private labels has mainly studies the factors explaining private labels market shares across product categories and/or retail chains (Dahr and Hoch 1997; Hoch and Banerji, 1993), factors influencing the private labels proneness of consumers (Baltas and Doyle 1998; Burton et al. 1998; Richardson et al. 1996) and factors how to react brand manufacturers towards PLs (Dunne and Narasimhan 1999; Hoch 1996; Quelch and Harding 1996; Verhoef et al. 2000). Nevertheless, empirical research on factors influencing the production in terms of a manufacturer-retailer is rather anecdotal than theory-based. The objective of this paper is to bridge the gap in these two types of research and explore the factors which influence on manufacturer's private label production based on two competing theories: S-C-P (Structure - Conduct - Performance) paradigm and resource-based theory. In order to do so, the authors used in-depth interview with marketing managers, reviewed retail press and research and presents the conceptual framework that integrates the major determinants of private labels production. From a manufacturer's perspective, supplying private labels often starts on a strategic basis. When a manufacturer engages in private labels, the manufacturer does not have to spend on advertising, retailer promotions or maintain a dedicated sales force. Moreover, if a manufacturer has weak marketing capabilities, the manufacturer can make use of retailer's marketing capability to produce private labels and lessen its marketing cost and increases its profit margin. Figure 1. is the theoretical framework based on a strategic market management perspective, integrated concept of both S-C-P paradigm and resource-based theory. The model includes one mediate variable, marketing capabilities, and the other moderate variable, competitive intensity. Manufacturer's national brand reputation, firm's marketing investment, and product portfolio, which are hypothesized to positively affected manufacturer's marketing capabilities. Then, marketing capabilities has negatively effected on private label production. Moderating effects of competitive intensity are hypothesized on the relationship between marketing capabilities and private label production. To verify the proposed research model and hypotheses, data were collected from 192 manufacturers (212 responses) who are producing private labels in South Korea. Cronbach's alpha test, explanatory / comfirmatory factor analysis, and correlation analysis were employed to validate hypotheses. The following results were drawing using structural equation modeling and all hypotheses are supported. Findings indicate that manufacturer's private label production is strongly related to its marketing capabilities. Consumer marketing capabilities, in turn, is directly connected with the 3 strategic factors (e.g., marketing investment, manufacturer's national brand reputation, and product portfolio). It is moderated by competitive intensity between marketing capabilities and private label production. In conclusion, this research may be the first study to investigate the reasons manufacturers engage in private labels based on two competing theoretic views, S-C-P paradigm and resource-based theory. The private label phenomenon has received growing attention by marketing scholars. In many industries, private labels represent formidable competition to manufacturer brands and manufacturers have a dilemma with selling to as well as competing with their retailers. The current study suggests key factors when manufacturers consider engaging in private label production.