• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.65-96
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• 2012

Brand has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume product or services, they are exposed to a lot of brand related stimuli. These contain brand personality, brand experience, brand identity, brand communications and so on. A special kind of new crisis occasionally confronting companies' brand management today is the brand related rumor. An important influence on consumers' purchase decision making is the word-of-mouth spread by other consumers and most decisions are influenced by other's recommendations. In light of this influence, firms have reasonable reason to study and understand consumer-to-consumer communication such as brand rumor. The importance of brand rumor to marketers is increasing as the number of internet user and SNS(social network service) site grows. Due to the development of internet technology, people can spread rumors without the limitation of time, space and place. However relatively few studies have been published in marketing journals and little is known about brand rumors in the marketplace. The study of rumor has a long history in all major social science. But very few studies have dealt with the antecedents and consequences of any kind of brand rumor. Rumor has been generally described as a story or statement in general circulation without proper confirmation or certainty as to fact. And it also can be defined as an unconfirmed proposition, passed along from people to people. Rosnow(1991) claimed that rumors were transmitted because people needed to explain ambiguous and uncertain events and talking about them reduced associated anxiety. Especially negative rumors are believed to have the potential to devastate a company's reputation and relations with customers. From the perspective of marketer, negative rumors are considered harmful and extremely difficult to control in general. It is becoming a threat to a company's sustainability and sometimes leads to negative brand image and loss of customers. Thus there is a growing concern that these negative rumors can damage brands' reputations and lead them to financial disaster too. In this study we aimed to distinguish antecedents of brand rumor transmission and investigate the effects of brand rumor characteristics on rumor spread intention. We also found key components in personal acceptance of brand rumor. In contextualist perspective, we tried to unify the traditional psychological and sociological views. In this unified research approach we defined brand rumor's characteristics based on five major variables that had been found to influence the process of rumor spread intention. The five factors of usefulness, source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness, encompass multi level elements of brand rumor. We also selected product involvement as a control variable. To perform the empirical research, imaginary Korean 'Kimch' brand and related contamination rumor was created and proposed. Questionnaires were collected from 178 Korean samples. Data were collected from college students who have been experienced the focal product. College students were regarded as good subjects because they have a tendency to express their opinions in detail. PLS(partial least square) method was adopted to analyze the relations between variables in the equation model. The most widely adopted causal modeling method is LISREL. However it is poorly suited to deal with relatively small data samples and can yield not proper solutions in some cases. PLS has been developed to avoid some of these limitations and provide more reliable results. To test the reliability using SPSS 16 s/w, Cronbach alpha was examined and all the values were appropriate showing alpha values between .802 and .953. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted successfully. And structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the research model using smartPLS(ver. 2.0) s/w. Overall, R² of adoption of rumor is .476 and R² of intention of rumor transmission is .218. The overall model showed a satisfactory fit. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. According to the results, the variables of brand rumor characteristic such as source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness affect argument strength of rumor. And argument strength of rumor also affects rumor intention. On the other hand, the relationship between perceived usefulness and argument strength of rumor is not significant. The moderating effect of product involvement on the relations between argument strength of rumor and rumor W.O.M intention is not supported neither. Consequently this study suggests some managerial and academic implications. We consider some implications for corporate crisis management planning, PR and brand management. This results show marketers that rumor is a critical factor for managing strong brand assets. Also for researchers, brand rumor should become an important thesis of their interests to understand the relationship between consumer and brand. Recently many brand managers and marketers have focused on the short-term view. They just focused on strengthen the positive brand image. According to this study we suggested that effective brand management requires managing negative brand rumors with a long-term view of marketing decisions.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.143-163
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• 2016

The demographics of Internet users are the most basic and important sources for target marketing or personalized advertisements on the digital marketing channels which include email, mobile, and social media. However, it gradually has become difficult to collect the demographics of Internet users because their activities are anonymous in many cases. Although the marketing department is able to get the demographics using online or offline surveys, these approaches are very expensive, long processes, and likely to include false statements. Clickstream data is the recording an Internet user leaves behind while visiting websites. As the user clicks anywhere in the webpage, the activity is logged in semi-structured website log files. Such data allows us to see what pages users visited, how long they stayed there, how often they visited, when they usually visited, which site they prefer, what keywords they used to find the site, whether they purchased any, and so forth. For such a reason, some researchers tried to guess the demographics of Internet users by using their clickstream data. They derived various independent variables likely to be correlated to the demographics. The variables include search keyword, frequency and intensity for time, day and month, variety of websites visited, text information for web pages visited, etc. The demographic attributes to predict are also diverse according to the paper, and cover gender, age, job, location, income, education, marital status, presence of children. A variety of data mining methods, such as LSA, SVM, decision tree, neural network, logistic regression, and k-nearest neighbors, were used for prediction model building. However, this research has not yet identified which data mining method is appropriate to predict each demographic variable. Moreover, it is required to review independent variables studied so far and combine them as needed, and evaluate them for building the best prediction model. The objective of this study is to choose clickstream attributes mostly likely to be correlated to the demographics from the results of previous research, and then to identify which data mining method is fitting to predict each demographic attribute. Among the demographic attributes, this paper focus on predicting gender, age, marital status, residence, and job. And from the results of previous research, 64 clickstream attributes are applied to predict the demographic attributes. The overall process of predictive model building is compose of 4 steps. In the first step, we create user profiles which include 64 clickstream attributes and 5 demographic attributes. The second step performs the dimension reduction of clickstream variables to solve the curse of dimensionality and overfitting problem. We utilize three approaches which are based on decision tree, PCA, and cluster analysis. We build alternative predictive models for each demographic variable in the third step. SVM, neural network, and logistic regression are used for modeling. The last step evaluates the alternative models in view of model accuracy and selects the best model. For the experiments, we used clickstream data which represents 5 demographics and 16,962,705 online activities for 5,000 Internet users. IBM SPSS Modeler 17.0 was used for our prediction process, and the 5-fold cross validation was conducted to enhance the reliability of our experiments. As the experimental results, we can verify that there are a specific data mining method well-suited for each demographic variable. For example, age prediction is best performed when using the decision tree based dimension reduction and neural network whereas the prediction of gender and marital status is the most accurate by applying SVM without dimension reduction. We conclude that the online behaviors of the Internet users, captured from the clickstream data analysis, could be well used to predict their demographics, thereby being utilized to the digital marketing.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.90-97
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• 2018

Purpose The lung segment ratio which is obtained through quantitative analyses of lung perfusion scan images is calculated to evaluate the lung function pre and post surgery. In this Study, the planar image production methods by using Q-Metrix (GE Healthcare, USA) program capable of not only quantitative analysis but also computation of the segment ratio after having performed SPECT/CT are comparatively evaluated. Materials and Methods Lung perfusion scan and SPECT/CT were performed on 50 lung cancer patients prior to surgery who visited our hospital from May 1, 2015 to September 13, 2016 by using Discovery 670(GE Healthcare, USA) equipment. AP(Anterior Posterior)method that uses planar image divided the frontal and rear images into three rectangular portions by means of ROI tool while PO(Posterior Oblique)method computed the segment ratio by dividing the right lobe into three parts and the left lobe into two parts on the oblique image. Segment ratio was computed by setting the ROI and VOI in the CT image by using Q-Metrix program and statistically analysis was performed with SPSS Ver. 23. Results Regarding the correlation concordance rate of Q-Metrix and AP methods, RUL(Right upper lobe), RML(Right middle lobe) and RLL(Right lower lobe) were 0.224, 0.035 and 0.447. LUL(Left upper lobe) and LLL(Left lower lobe) were found to be 0.643 and 0.456, respectively. In the PO method, the right lobe were 0.663, 0.623 and 0.702, respectively, while the left lobe were 0.754 and 0.823. When comparison was made by using the Paired sample T-test, Right lobe were $11.6{\pm}4.5$, $26.9{\pm}6.2$ and $17.8{\pm}4.2$, respectively in the AP method. Left lobe were $28.4{\pm}4.8$ and $15.4{\pm}5.6$. The right lobe of PO had values of $17.4{\pm}5.0$, $10.5{\pm}3.6$ and $27.3{\pm}6.0$, while the left lobe had values of $21.6{\pm}4.8$ and $23.1{\pm}6.6$, thereby having statistically significant difference in comparison to the Q-Metrix method for each of the lobes (P<0.05). However, there was no statistically significant difference in Right middle lobe (P>0.05). Conclusion The AP method showed low concordance rate in correlation with the Q-Metrix method. However, PO method displayed high concordance rate overall. although AP method had significant differences in all lobes, there was no significant difference in Right middle lobe of PO method. Therefore, at the time of production of lung perfusion scan results, utilization of Q-Metrix method of SPECT/CT would be useful in computation of accurate resultant values. Moreover, it is deemed possible to expect obtain more practical sectional computation result values by using PO method at the time of planar image acquisition.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.269-289
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• 1999

This study was conducted to examine the relationship among health concern, health practice and ADL of elderly staying at home in a rural community and their affecting factors. Data were collected through direct interviews made with 480 old people aged more than sixty-five from November 15, 1998 to December 20, 1998. Out of 189 male and 291 female, the high-level group that showed high health concern accounted for 44.4%, the medium-level group for 13.1%, and the low-level group for 42.5%, in the health practice, the high-level group accounted for 3.8%, the medium-level group for 18.8%, and the low-level group for 77.5%. In the self-rated health status, the high-level group accounted for 29.0%, the medium-level group for 31.0%, and the low-level group for 40.0%, and in the ADL, the high ADL group accounted for 91.5%, and the low-level ADL group for 8.5%. The result of the chi-square test showed that for male, there was a significant relation between the health concern and the health practice index score. In the relation between the health practice index score and the self-rated health status, there was significant positive relationship between health practice index and self-rated health status, and in the relation between the health practice Index score and the ADL, old people with higher health practices showed good ADL(but not significant). Old people with good ADL also showed good self-rated health status. In the multiple regression analysis where the health practice was used as a dependent variable, the health concern was added to the sociodemographic variables as an independent variables, a formula was formed for male old people only and ones with high concern in health showed good health practice. In the multiple logistic regression analysis where the sociodemographic variables to which the health practices was added were used as an independent variable and the ADL as a dependent variable, the ADL appeared to be not good if for male old people the living costs were born by their sons and daughters and as for female old people their ages increased, but it was good if old people had sources of health information such as hospitals or health centers. The self-rated health status was worse, for male old people, if they had short living costs or diseases and for female old people, if they had spouses, living costs born by their sons and daughters or diseases, but it was better, for male old people, if they had periodical gatherings or carried out health practices a lot, and for female old people, if they had sources of health information such as hospitals or health centers or carried out health practices a lot. In view of the results stated above, the higher the old people had health concern, the more they carried out health practices, and the more they carried out health practices, the better they had ADL and self-rated health status that served as the level of health. Further, the better ADL, the better self-rated health status.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.1
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• pp.371-408
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• 1997

This article is the reserch on actual condition of crime of arson which occurs in Korea and its countermeasures. The the presented problem in this article are that (1) we have generally very low rate concern about the crime of arson contrary to realistic problems of rapid increase of crime of arson (2) as such criminal motives became so diverse as to the economic or criminal purpose unlike characteristic and mental deficiency of old days, and to countermeasure these problems effectively it presentation the necessity of systemantic research. Based on analysis of reality of arson, the tendency of this arson in Korea in the ratio of increase is said to be higher than those in violence crime or general fire rate. and further its rate is far more greater than those of the U.S.A. and Japan. Arson is considered to be a method of using fire as crime and in case of presently residence to be the abject, it is a public offense crime which aqccompany fatality in human life. This is the well It now fact to all of us. And further in order to presentation to the crime of arson, strictness of criminal law (criminal law No, 164 and 169, and fire protection law No. 110 and 111) and classification of arsonist as felony are institutionary reinforced to punish with certainty of possibility, Therefore, as tendency of arson has been increased compared to other nations, it is necessary to supplement strategical policy to bring out overall concerns of the seriousness of risk and damage of arson, which have been resulted from the lack of understanding. In characteristics analysis of crime of arson, (1) It is now reveald that, in the past such crime rate appeared far more within the boundary of town or city areas in the past, presently increased rate of arsons in rural areas are far more than in the town or small city areas, thereby showing characteristics of crime of arson extending nation wide. (2) general timetable of arson shows that night more than day time rate, and reveald that is trait behavior in secrecy.(3) arsonists are usually arrested at site or by victim or report of third person(82,9%).Investigation activities or self surrenders rate only 11.2%. The time span of arrest is normally the same day of arson and at times it takes more than one year to arrest. This reveals its necessity to prepare for long period of time for arrest, (4) age rate of arson is in their thirties mostly as compared to homicide, robbery and adultery, and considerable numbers of arsons are in old age of over fifties. It reveals age rate is increased (5) Over half of the arsonists are below the junior high school (6) the rate of convicts by thier records is based on first offenders primarily and secondly more than 4 time convicts. This apparently shows necessity of effective correctional education policy for their social assimilation together with re-investigation of human education at the primary and secondary education system in thier life. The examples of motivation for arosnits, such as personal animosity, fury, monetary swindle, luscious purpose and other aims of destroying of proof, and other social resistance, violence including ways of threatening, beside the motives of individual defects, are diverse and arsonic suicide and specifically suicidal accompany together keenly manifested. When we take this fact with the criminal theory, it really reveals arsons of crime are increasing and its casualities are serious and a point as a way of suicide is the anomie theory of Durkheim and comensurate with the theory of that of Merton, Specifically in the arson of industrial complex, it is revealed that one with revolutionary motive or revolting motive would do the arsonic act. For the policy of prevention of arsons, professional research work in organizational cooperation for preventive activities is conducted in municipal or city wise functions in the name of Parson Taskforces and beside a variety of research institutes in federal government have been operating effectively to countermeasure in many fields of research. Franch and Sweden beside the U.S. set up a overall operation of fire prevention research funtions and have obtained very successful result. Japan also put their research likewise for countermeasure. In this research as a way of preventive fire policy, first, it is necessary to accomodate the legal preventitive activities for fire prevention in judicial side and as an administrative side, (1) precise statistic management of crime of arson (2) establishment of professional research functions or a corporate (3) improvement of system for cooperative structural team for investigation of fires and menpower organization of professional members. Secondly, social mentality in individual prospect, recognition of fires by arson and youth education of such effect, educational program for development and practical promotion. Thirdly, in view of environmental side, the ways of actual performance by programming with the establishment of cooperative advancement in local social function elements with administrative office, habitants, school facilities and newspapers measures (2) establishment of personal protection where weak menpowers are displayed in special fire prevention measures. These measures are presented for prevention of crime of arson. The control of crime and prevention shall be prepared as a means of self defence by the principle of self responsibility Specifically arsonists usually aims at the comparatively weak control of fire prevention is prevalent and it is therefore necessary to prepare individual facilities with their spontaneous management of fire prevention instead of public municipal funtures of local geverment. As Clifford L. Karchmer asserted instead of concerns about who would commit arson, what portion of area would be the target of the arson. It is effective to minister spontaveously the fire prevention measure in his facility with the consideration of characteristics of arson. On the other hand, it is necessary for the concerned personnel of local goverment and groups to distribute to the local society in timely manner for new information about the fire prevention, thus contribute to effective result of fire prevention result. In consideration of these factors, it is inevitable to never let coincide with the phemonemon of arsons in similar or mimic features as recognized that these could prevail just an epedemic as a strong imitational attitude. In processing of policy to encounter these problems, it is necessary to place priority of city policy to enhancement of overall concerns toward the definitive essense of crime of arson.

• 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.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.27-55
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• 2008

Due to the increasing and intensifying competition in the Internet shopping market, it has been recognized as very important to develop an effective policy and strategy for acquiring loyal customers. For this reason, web site designers need to know if a new Internet shopping mall(ISM) will be accepted. Researchers have been working on identifying factors for explaining and predicting user acceptance of an ISM. Some studies, however, revealed inconsistent findings on the antecedents of user acceptance of a website. Lack of consideration for individual differences in user ability is believed to be one of the key reasons for the mixed findings. The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and several studies have suggested that individual differences in ability plays an moderating role on the relationship between the antecedents and user acceptance. Despite the critical role of user ability, little research has examined the role of user ability in the Internet shopping mall context. The purpose of this study is to develop a user acceptance model that consider the moderating role of user ability in the context of Internet shopping. This study was initiated to see the ability of the technology acceptance model(TAM) to explain the acceptance of a specific ISM. According to TAM. which is one of the most influential models for explaining user acceptance of IT, an intention to use IT is determined by usefulness and ease of use. Given that interaction between user and website takes place through web interface, the decisions to accept and continue using an ISM depend on these beliefs. However, TAM neglects to consider the fact that many users would not stick to an ISM until they trust it although they may think it useful and easy to use. The importance of trust for user acceptance of ISM has been raised by the relational views. The relational view emphasizes the trust-building process between the user and ISM, and user's trust on the website is a major determinant of user acceptance. The proposed model extends and integrates the TAM and relational views on user acceptance of ISM by incorporating usefulness, ease of use, and trust. User acceptance is defined as a user's intention to reuse a specific ISM. And user ability is introduced into the model as moderating variable. Here, the user ability is defined as a degree of experiences, knowledge and skills regarding Internet shopping sites. The research model proposes that the ease of use, usefulness and trust of ISM are key determinants of user acceptance. In addition, this paper hypothesizes that the effects of the antecedents(i.e., ease of use, usefulness, and trust) on user acceptance may differ among users. In particular, this paper proposes a moderating effect of a user's ability on the relationship between antecedents with user's intention to reuse. The research model with eleven hypotheses was derived and tested through a survey that involved 470 university students. For each research variable, this paper used measurement items recognized for reliability and widely used in previous research. We slightly modified some items proper to the research context. The reliability and validity of the research variables were tested using the Crobnach's alpha and internal consistency reliability (ICR) values, standard factor loadings of the confirmative factor analysis, and average variance extracted (AVE) values. A LISREL method was used to test the suitability of the research model and its relating six hypotheses. Key findings of the results are summarized in the following. First, TAM's two constructs, ease of use and usefulness directly affect user acceptance. In addition, ease of use indirectly influences user acceptance by affecting trust. This implies that users tend to trust a shopping site and visit repeatedly when they perceive a specific ISM easy to use. Accordingly, designing a shopping site that allows users to navigate with heuristic and minimal clicks for finding information and products within the site is important for improving the site's trust and acceptance. Usefulness, however, was not found to influence trust. Second, among the three belief constructs(ease of use, usefulness, and trust), trust was empirically supported as the most important determinants of user acceptance. This implies that users require trustworthiness from an Internet shopping site to be repeat visitors of an ISM. Providing a sense of safety and eliminating the anxiety of online shoppers in relation to privacy, security, delivery, and product returns are critically important conditions for acquiring repeat visitors. Hence, in addition to usefulness and ease of use as in TAM, trust should be a fundamental determinants of user acceptance in the context of internet shopping. Third, the user's ability on using an Internet shopping site played a moderating role. For users with low ability, ease of use was found to be a more important factors in deciding to reuse the shopping mall, whereas usefulness and trust had more effects on users with high ability. Applying the EML theory to these findings, we can suggest that experienced and knowledgeable ISM users tend to elaborate on such usefulness aspects as efficient and effective shopping performance and trust factors as ability, benevolence, integrity, and predictability of a shopping site before they become repeat visitors of the site. In contrast, novice users tend to rely on the low elaborating features, such as the perceived ease of use. The existence of moderating effects suggests the fact that different individuals evaluate an ISM from different perspectives. The expert users are more interested in the outcome of the visit(usefulness) and trustworthiness(trust) than those novice visitors. The latter evaluate the ISM in a more superficial manner focusing on the novelty of the site and on other instrumental beliefs(ease of use). This is consistent with the insights proposed by the Heuristic-Systematic model. According to the Heuristic-Systematic model. a users act on the principle of minimum effort. Thus, the user considers an ISM heuristically, focusing on those aspects that are easy to process and evaluate(ease of use). When the user has sufficient experience and skills, the user will change to systematic processing, where they will evaluate more complex aspects of the site(its usefulness and trustworthiness). This implies that an ISM has to provide a minimum level of ease of use to make it possible for a user to evaluate its usefulness and trustworthiness. Ease of use is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the acceptance and use of an ISM. Overall, the empirical results generally support the proposed model and identify the moderating effect of the effects of user ability. More detailed interpretations and implications of the findings are discussed. The limitations of this study are also discussed to provide directions for future research.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.71-103
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• 2009

Considering the expenditure size of public institutions centering on public enterprises, about 28% of Korea's GDP in 2007, public institutions have significant influence on the Korean economy. However, still in the new government, there are voices of criticism about the need of constant reform on public enterprises due to their irresponsible management impeding national competitiveness. Especially, political controversy over appointment of executives such as CEOs of public enterprises has caused the distrust of the people. As one of various reform measures for public enterprises, this study analyzes the effect of internal governance structure of public enterprises on their managerial performance, since, regardless of privatization of public enterprises, improving the governance structure of public enterprises is a matter of great importance. There are only a few prior researches focusing on the governance structure and managerial performance of public enterprises compared to those of private enterprises. Most of prior researches studied the relationship between parachuting employment of CEO and managerial performance, and concluded that parachuting produces negative effect on managerial performance. However, different from the results of such researches, recent studies suggest that there is no relationship between employment type of CEOs and managerial performance in public enterprises. This study is distinguished from prior researches in view of following. First, prior researches focused on the relationship between employment type of public enterprises' CEOs and managerial performance. However, in addition to this, this study analyzes the relationship of internal auditors and managerial performance. Second, unlike prior researches studying the relationship between employment type of public corporations' CEOs and managerial performance with an emphasis on parachuting employment, this study researches impact of employment type as well as expertise of CEOs and internal auditors on managerial performance. Third, prior researchers mainly used non-financial indicators from various samples. However, this study eliminated subjectivity of researchers by analyzing public enterprises designated by the government and their financial statements, which were externally audited and inspected. In this study, regression analysis is applied in analyzing the relationship of independence and expertise of public enterprises' CEOs and internal auditors and managerial performance in the same year. Financial information from 2003 to 2007 of 24 public enterprises, which are designated by the government, and their personnel information from the board of directors are used as samples. Independence of CEOs is identified by dividing CEOs into persons from the same public enterprise and persons from other organization, and independence of internal auditors is determined by classifying them into two groups, people from academic field, economic world, and civic groups, and people from political community, government ministries, and military. Also, expertise of CEOs and internal auditors is divided into business expertise and financial expertise. As control variables, this study applied foundation year, asset size, government subsidies as a proportion to corporate earnings, and dummy variables by year. Analysis showed that there is significantly positive relationship between independence and financial expertise of internal auditors and managerial performance. In addition, although business expertise and financial expertise of CEOs were not statistically significant, they have positive relationship with managerial performance. However, unlike a general idea, independence of CEOs is not statistically significant, but it is negatively related to managerial performance. Contrary to general concerns, it seems that the impact of independence of public enterprises' CEOs on managerial performance has slightly decreased. Instead, it explains that expertise of public enterprises' CEOs and internal auditors plays more important role in managerial performance rather than their independence. Meanwhile, there are limitations in this study as follows. First, in contrast to private enterprises, public enterprises simultaneously pursue publicness and entrepreneurship. However, this study focuses on entrepreneurship, excluding considerations on publicness of public enterprises. Second, public enterprises in this study are limited to those in the central government. Accordingly, it should be carefully considered when the result of this study is applied to public enterprises in local governments. Finally, this study excludes factors related to transparency and democracy issues which are raised in appointment process of executives of public enterprises, as it may cause the issue of subjectivity of researchers.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.19-43
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• 2014

The Pareto principle, also known as the 80-20 rule, states that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes for many events including natural phenomena. It has been recognized as a golden rule in business with a wide application of such discovery like 20 percent of customers resulting in 80 percent of total sales. On the other hand, the Long Tail theory, pointing out that "the trivial many" produces more value than "the vital few," has gained popularity in recent times with a tremendous reduction of distribution and inventory costs through the development of ICT(Information and Communication Technology). This study started with a view to illuminating how these two primary business paradigms-Pareto principle and Long Tail theory-relates to the success of virtual knowledge collaboration. The importance of virtual knowledge collaboration is soaring in this era of globalization and virtualization transcending geographical and temporal constraints. Many previous studies on knowledge sharing have focused on the factors to affect knowledge sharing, seeking to boost individual knowledge sharing and resolve the social dilemma caused from the fact that rational individuals are likely to rather consume than contribute knowledge. Knowledge collaboration can be defined as the creation of knowledge by not only sharing knowledge, but also by transforming and integrating such knowledge. In this perspective of knowledge collaboration, the relative distribution of knowledge sharing among participants can count as much as the absolute amounts of individual knowledge sharing. In particular, whether the more contribution of the upper 20 percent of participants in knowledge sharing will enhance the efficiency of overall knowledge collaboration is an issue of interest. This study deals with the effect of this sort of knowledge sharing distribution on the efficiency of knowledge collaboration and is extended to reflect the work characteristics. All analyses were conducted based on actual data instead of self-reported questionnaire surveys. More specifically, we analyzed the collaborative behaviors of editors of 2,978 English Wikipedia featured articles, which are the best quality grade of articles in English Wikipedia. We adopted Pareto ratio, the ratio of the number of knowledge contribution of the upper 20 percent of participants to the total number of knowledge contribution made by the total participants of an article group, to examine the effect of Pareto principle. In addition, Gini coefficient, which represents the inequality of income among a group of people, was applied to reveal the effect of inequality of knowledge contribution. Hypotheses were set up based on the assumption that the higher ratio of knowledge contribution by more highly motivated participants will lead to the higher collaboration efficiency, but if the ratio gets too high, the collaboration efficiency will be exacerbated because overall informational diversity is threatened and knowledge contribution of less motivated participants is intimidated. Cox regression models were formulated for each of the focal variables-Pareto ratio and Gini coefficient-with seven control variables such as the number of editors involved in an article, the average time length between successive edits of an article, the number of sections a featured article has, etc. The dependent variable of the Cox models is the time spent from article initiation to promotion to the featured article level, indicating the efficiency of knowledge collaboration. To examine whether the effects of the focal variables vary depending on the characteristics of a group task, we classified 2,978 featured articles into two categories: Academic and Non-academic. Academic articles refer to at least one paper published at an SCI, SSCI, A&HCI, or SCIE journal. We assumed that academic articles are more complex, entail more information processing and problem solving, and thus require more skill variety and expertise. The analysis results indicate the followings; First, Pareto ratio and inequality of knowledge sharing relates in a curvilinear fashion to the collaboration efficiency in an online community, promoting it to an optimal point and undermining it thereafter. Second, the curvilinear effect of Pareto ratio and inequality of knowledge sharing on the collaboration efficiency is more sensitive with a more academic task in an online community.