• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.39-48
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• 2011

One of the major reasons for fierce competition among firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Due to such changes in the marketing environment, differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important in the race to gain a competitive advantage. Price discount is one of the popular promotion strategies that most retailers use, especially to increase sales, but offering a price discount does not always lead to the expected result. If marketers apply an identical price-promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in products and consumer preferences, the discounted price itself may make people skeptical about the quality of the product. Moreover, the changes in perceived value may appear differently depending on factors such as consumer involvement. This implies that variables such as the level of consumer involvement, brand loyalty, and external reference prices, in reality, would have different effects on how consumers perceive the value of price discounts. The variables that affect consumers' perceived values and buying decisions are diverse and complicated. Several studies have examined the effects of such variables as external reference price, selling price, and brand on consumers' perceived value of products. Results have not shown consistent patterns. Therefore, we must note that the factors affecting consumers' value perceptions and buying behaviors are diverse and that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what that variable is. This study focused on the level of consumer involvement as a salient variable that supposedly affects the perceived value of a product, willingness to buy, and search intentions. We tried to examine whether a price discount affects the perceived value-such as perceived acquisition value and perceived transaction value-in different ways depending on the level of consumer involvement. In addition, we proposed managerial implications that marketers need to consider as a whole, for instance, product attributes, brand loyalty, and involvement and then established a differentiated pricing strategy, case by case, in order to effectively enhance consumers' perceived values. As a result, we found that perceived transaction value positively affects perceived acquisition value and when discounting the price of a high-involvement product enhances the consumer's willingness to buy, but perceived acquisition value does not affect the search intentions significantly. In the case of discounting prices of low-involvement products, on the other hand, the perceived transaction value has a positive effect on the willingness to buy, but the negative effect of perceived acquisition value on the search intentions was not significant. We suppose that people doubt a product's quality because of a declined perceived quality derived from a price discount. Even though the price discount enhanced the transaction value, people eventually increased their level of searching for additional product information. From the results of this study, we suggest that marketers ought to establish an appropriate value-enhancing strategy based on the understanding of which perceived value consumers rely on more when they conduct purchasing behavior because consumers perceive the degree of importance of acquisition value or transaction value differently, depending on their level of involvement.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.219-230
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• 2010

Digital content makes big changes to our daily lives while bringing opportunities and challenges for companies. Creative firms integrate pictures, texts, videos, audios, and data by digitalization to develop new products or services and create digital experiences to promote their brands. Most articles on digital content contribute to the basic concept or development of marketing it in literature. Actually, compared with traditional value chains for common products or services, the digital content industry seems to have more potential value. Because quite a bit of digital content is free to the consumer, price is not necessarily perceived as an indicator of the quality or value of information (Rowley 2008). It becomes evident that a current theme in digital content is the issue of "value," and research on customers' perceived value of digital content is a necessity. This article argues that experiential value has an advantage in customers' evaluations of digital content. Two different but related contributions to the understanding of "value" of digital content are made here. First, based on the comparison of digital content with products and services, the article proposes two key characteristics that make experiential strategy available for digital content: intangibility and near-zero reproduction cost. On top of that, based on the discussion of the gap between company's idealized value and customer's perceived value, this article emphasizes that digital content prices and pricing of digital content is different from products and services. As a result of intangibility, prices may not reflect customer value. Moreover, the cost of digital content in the development stage may be very high while reproduction costs shrink dramatically. Moreover, because of the value gap mentioned before, the pricing polices vary for different digital contents. For example, flat price policy is generally used for movies and music (Magiera 2001; Netherby 2002), while for continuous demand, digital content such as online games and anti-virus programs involves a more complicated matter of utility and competitive price levels. Digital content companies have to explore various kinds of strategies to overcome this gap. Rethinking marketing solutions such as advertisements, images, and word-of-mouth and their effect on customers' perceived value becomes essential. China's digital content industry is becoming more and more globalized and drawing special attention from different countries and regions that have respective competitive advantages. The 2008-2009 Annual Report on the Development of China's Digital Content Industry (CCIDConsulting 2009) indicates that, with the driven power of domestic demand and governmental policy support, the country's digital content industry maintained a fast growth of some 30 percent in 2008, obviously indicating the initial stage of industry expansion. In China, anti-virus programs and other software programs which need to be updated use a quarter-based pricing policy. Customers can download a trial version for free and use it for six months or a year. If they want to use it longer, continuous payment is needed. They examine the excellence of the digital content during this trial period and decide whether to pay for continued usage. For China’s music and movie industries, as a result of initial development, experiential strategy has not been much applied, even though firms in other countries find the trial experience and explore important strategies(such as customers listening to music for several seconds for free before downloading it). For the above reasons, anti-virus program may be a representative for digital content industry in China and an exploratory study of the advantage of experiential value in customer's perceived value of digital content is done in the anti-virus market of China. In order to enhance the reliability of the survey data, this study focused on people who were experienced users of anti-virus programs. The empirical results revealed that experiential value has a positive effect on customers' perceived value of digital content. In other words, because digital content is intangible and the reproduction costs are nearly zero, customers' evaluations are based heavily on their experience. Moreover, image and word-of-mouth do not have a positive effect on perceived value, only on experiential value. That is to say, a digital content value chain is different from that of a general product or service. Experiential value has a notable advantage and mediates the effect of image and word-of-mouth on perceived value. The results of this study help provide an understanding of why free digital content downloads exist in developing countries. Customers can perceive the value of digital content only by using and experiencing it. This is also why such governments support the development of digital content. Other developing countries whose digital content business is also in the beginning stage can make use of the suggestions here. Moreover, based on the advantage of experiential strategy, companies should make more of an effort to invest in customers' experience. As a result of the characteristics and value gap of digital content, customers perceive more value in the intangible digital content only by experiencing what they really want. Moreover, because of the near-zero reproduction costs, companies can perhaps use experiential strategy to enhance customer understanding of digital content.

• East Asian Journal of Business Economics (EAJBE)
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.39-49
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• 2017

Purpose - This study is to propose a creative idea for constant business growth and development by examining characteristics of business outcomes by phase, which are "growth" and "erosion and stagnation," respectively. Research design, data, methodology - It is necessary to identify an occurrence of crisis and its diffusion with a dynamic model in order to identify a success and failure of businesses in an organic way, not on a binary structure. The static perspective is to understand a crisis as a simply one-time event or as a linear causation. Thus, it has a limited understanding of the overall situation and has limits to investigating a foundational cause and developing long-term countermeasures. On the contrary, the dynamic perspective is to understand the crisis as circulation process of the overall system. Thus, it divides elements of the crisis as external and internal ones to understand it as the causal relationship of each element. Results - During the growth period of Burger King, the company promoted its brand very successfully with aggressive and creative marketing activities. However, due to the founder's disposal of management rights and the following changes in the management, the company had no choice but to lose focus on its business philosophy and brand management, and eventually it had to face the big crisis (resonance) which was delisting from the stock market because of the external threat; well-being trend. However, Burger King resumed lifting on the stock exchange by making great efforts to clearly identify the current issues and seek solutions. Under the spirit of "perseverance" and its slogan "Have it your way" the company is now going head to head with McDonald's in the North American region and emerging countries. Conclusions - Then, what is the most crucial factor in the success and failure of businesses? Answers may vary, however, as learned from the case study of Burger King, corporations should inspect the present and focus on developing a long-term strategy for the future and actively fulfill the actions. McDonald's may not be able to innovate by itself in the future as it may become routinized to the growth. There will be chances of winning if we change conditions of individuals or organizations to an organic system in terms of being creative. There is a hopeful message here that an individual or small business may have more advantages in the era of the idea and innovation.

• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.29
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• pp.3-33
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• 2011

No one can deny the harsh reality that archival culture has not yet been permeated extensively into all the spheres of our society. Only fragmented records in fixed areas are in the custody of archives. Records to build a living memory for the history of our present are hard to find or remain minimal, if anywhere. Above all, there are few records in archives concerned with the everyday life of common people. No consideration has not been made about the reason for being of archives, not to mention of the strategy for establishing the archival culture. Accordingly, a paradigm shift is required for archives directly connected with the everyday life of common people. Archives of everyday life means one which interprets the behaviour and experiences of individuals(groups) within the context of society through categorizing everyday life of common people into the lesser fields. And archives of everyday life also means an organization or facility/place which documents the everyday life of individuals(groups), and collect, appraise, select and preserve the records from the view point of humanities for the reconstruction of history from the bottom. Archives of everyday life is an attempt to reconstruct memory and records on behaviour by and torment of the common people in the modern history of Korea, on the basis of which we can seek out the oppressive structure in the daily life of capitalism. Archival community should discuss about what is the meaning of records in the age of democracy unlike that of authoritarian era. We also need to have definite direction on the what kinds of records are to be created and appraised from the standpoint of common people. We are to make it possible to create Zeitgeist in the tackle of records and archives' content. on this kind of attempt archival community could make a practical contribution forward a more advanced democracy, resulted in having an opportunity to change the essence of archives.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.40
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• pp.175-207
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• 2014

This paper focuses on the study of a development direction of the industrial security Expert system. First of all, in order to manage Industrial security system, we need to have law, criminology, business and engineering professionals as well as IT experts, which are the multi-dimensional convergence professionals. Secondly, industrial organizations need to have workforce who can perform security strategy; security plan; security training; security services; or security system management and operations. Industrial security certification system can contribute to cultivate above mentioned professional workforce. Currently Industrial Security Expert(ISE) is a private qualification. However, the author argued that it have to be changed to national qualification. In addition, it is necessary that the system should be given credibility with verifying the personnel whether they are proper or not in the their field. In terms of quality innovation, it is also necessary that distinguish the levels of utilization of rating system of the industrial security coordinator through a long-term examination. With respect to grading criteria, we could consider the requirements as following: whether they must hold the degree of the industrial security-related areas of undergraduate or postgraduate (or to be); what or how many industrial security-related courses they should complete through a credit bank system. If the plan of completing certain industrial security-related credits simply through the credit bank system, without establishing a new industrial security-related department, has established, then industrial security study would be spreaded and advanced. For private certification holders, the problem of the qualification succeeding process is important matter. Additionally, it is necessary to introduce the certifying system of ISMS(Industrial Security Management System) which is a specialized system for protecting industrial technology. To sum up, when the industrial security management system links the industrial security management certification, industrial security would realize in the companies and research institutions dealing with national key technology. Then, a group synergy effect would occurs.

• School Mathematics
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.619-632
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• 2013

One area where research is especially needed is their elaboration process and how they elaborate their idea as a group in a mathematical board game re-creation project. In this research, this process was named 'Mathematical Elaboration Process'. The purpose of this research is to understand how the gifted children elaborate their idea in a small group, and which idea can be chosen for a new board game when they are exposed to a project for making new mathematical board games using the what-if-not strategy. One of the gifted children's classes was chosen in which there were twenty students, and the class was composed of four groups in an elementary school in Korea. The researcher presented a series of re-creation game projects to them during the course of five weeks. To interpret their process of elaborating, the communication of the gifted students was recorded and transcribed. Students' elaboration processes were constructed through the interaction of both the mathematical route and the non-mathematical route. In the mathematical route, there were three routes; favorable thoughts, unfavorable thoughts and a neutral route. Favorable thoughts was concluded as 'Accepting', unfavorable thoughts resulted in 'Rejecting', and finally, the neutral route lead to a 'non-mathematical route'. Mainly, in a mathematical route, the reason of accepting the rule was mathematical thinking and logical reasons. The gifted children also show four categorized non-mathematical reactions when they re-created a mathematical board game; Inconsistency, Liking, Social Proof and Authority.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.271-305
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• 2012

Due to the growing activity of online communities recently, its influence is gradually growing. Furthermore, it also has a huge effect on corporations in establishing their marketing strategy. One important aspect that occurs is that there is a high possibility that the interest of online community members, which was first organized because of a common interest, will be similar. Thus, there is a growing desire to share information and knowledge that would be mutually useful among them. Therefore, this study aims at revealing the motivation factors on why such knowledge sharing behavior occurs among online community members that are voluntarily organized. The detailed objectives of this survey is to first conduct qualitative research on online community members, and then to examine what are the motivation factors that cause knowledge sharing behavior among online community members. Second, by developing questionnaires according to the analyzed contents of the qualitative research results, the reliability and feasibility of such questions are to be verified. As a result, new motivation factor of knowledge sharing which was not suggested in the existing studies because of characteristics of online community was revealed. If the results of existing related studies and those of this study are compared, the six factors such as desire of showing off, awareness, perceived benefits, pleasure, challenge and sense of belonging except for motivator such as sense of achievement and compensation, trust are newly discovered motivators of knowledge sharing behavior.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.3-42
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• 2018

This paper aims to explore ways to develop the arbitration industry in Korea. The prospects for the promotion of the arbitration industry in Korea are never dim. International arbitration competitiveness is somewhat lower than its competitors at present, but the international economic base to support it is solid, and the domestic arbitration environment seems to be sufficient to support the development possibility of arbitration. Since geographical and economic factors have already been defined, Korea must at least improve the arbitration act with passion and vision for the best one. The arbitration act that is the most accessible to arbitration consumers is the best arbitration act. The important thing is to have an arbitration act that makes people want to use more than litigation or other dispute resolution procedures. There is no hope of remaining as a "second mover" in the field of arbitration law. One should have a will and ambition to become a "first mover" even if it is risky. Considering the situation of the current arbitration law, it is necessary to start an arbitration appeal system in order to become a consumer-friendly arbitration law, and it is necessary to examine ways of integrating the grant of execution clause and enforcement application procedures. The abolition of the condition of Article 35 of the Arbitration Act, which rules the validity of the arbitration award, will help promote international arbitration. Exclusion agreements of setting aside against arbitration awards must also be fully recognized. It is also important to publish a widely cited international arbitration journal. In order to respond to the fourth industrial revolution era, it is necessary to support the establishment of a dispute resolution system that utilizes IT technology. In order to actively engage the arbitrators in the market, it is necessary to abolish the regulations that exist in the Attorneys-at-Law Act. There is also a need to allocate more budget to educate arbitration consumers and to establish arbitration training centers to strengthen domestic arbitration education. It is also necessary to evaluate and verify the Arbitration Promotion Act so that it can achieve results. In the international arbitration market, competition is fierce and competitors are already taking the initiative, so in order not to miss the timing, Korea needs to activate international arbitration first. In order to activate international arbitration, the arbitration body needs to be managed with the same mobility and strategy as the agency in the marketplace. In Korea, unlike in Singapore and Hong Kong, it is necessary to recognize that the size of the domestic arbitration market is very likely to increase sharply due to the economic size of the country and the large market potential it can bring from litigation. In order to promote the arbitration industry, what is most important is to make arbitration activities in accordance with the principles of the market and to establish an institutional basis to enable competition. It is urgently required to change the perception of the relevant government departments and arbitration officials.

• Maritime Security
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.85-112
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• 2022

The maritime blockade has long been used as a means of war in that it serves as a bridge for economic warfare by paralyzing enemy maritime transport, although it is not a decisive battle, and in the Korean War, U.N. forces have achieved significant results in the war with limited maritime blockade through the Clark Line. However, with China emerging as a maritime powers based on its strong naval power, there is a lack of consideration on how to set up a blockade to block maritime activities and how to respond neutral ships or carrying wartime contraband products if war breaks out again on the Korean Peninsula, In addition, since maritime blockade should be used as a sensitive and flexible naval force projection in that it has interests with neutral countries, it should be carefully reviewed in that it can be used only through careful and reasonable judgment considering the principle of ensuring the legality of maritime blockade Therefore, in this study, Reexamine the process of change in the application of the International Law of Blockade, and through this, Derive the basic principle of ensuring the legitimacy of maritime blockade. In addition, by reviewing the application of these basic principles in the waters off the Korean Peninsula at wartime, we presented answers to research questions by reviewing what needs to be done to neutral ships and ships carrying wartime contraband products, and considered the implications for us

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.21-38
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• 2012

Until recently, successful implementation of ERP systems has been a popular topic among ERP researchers, who have attempted to identify its various contributing factors. None of these efforts, however, explicitly recognize the need to identify disparities that can exist between organizational information requirements and ERP systems. Since ERP systems are in fact "packages" -that is, software programs developed by independent software vendors for sale to organizations that use them-they are designed to meet the general needs of numerous organizations, rather than the unique needs of a particular organization, as is the case with custom-developed software. By adopting standard packages, organizations can substantially reduce many of the potential implementation risks commonly associated with custom-developed software. However, it is also true that the nature of the package itself could be a risk factor as the features and functions of the ERP systems may not completely comply with a particular organization's informational requirements. In this study, based on the organizational memory mismatch perspective that was derived from organizational memory theory and cognitive dissonance theory, we define the nature of disparities, which we call "mismatches," and propose that the mismatch between organizational information requirements and ERP systems is one of the primary determinants in the successful implementation of ERP systems. Furthermore, we suggest that customization efforts as a coping strategy for mismatches can play a significant role in increasing the possibilities of success. In order to examine the contention we propose in this study, we employed a survey-based field study of ERP project team members, resulting in a total of 77 responses. The results of this study show that, as anticipated from the organizational memory mismatch perspective, the mismatch between organizational information requirements and ERP systems makes a significantly negative impact on the implementation success of ERP systems. This finding confirms our hypothesis that the more mismatch there is, the more difficult successful ERP implementation is, and thus requires more attention to be drawn to mismatch as a major failure source in ERP implementation. This study also found that as a coping strategy on mismatch, the effects of customization are significant. In other words, utilizing the appropriate customization method could lead to the implementation success of ERP systems. This is somewhat interesting because it runs counter to the argument of some literature and ERP vendors that minimized customization (or even the lack thereof) is required for successful ERP implementation. In many ERP projects, there is a tendency among ERP developers to adopt default ERP functions without any customization, adhering to the slogan of "the introduction of best practices." However, this study asserts that we cannot expect successful implementation if we don't attempt to customize ERP systems when mismatches exist. For a more detailed analysis, we identified three types of mismatches-Non-ERP, Non-Procedure, and Hybrid. Among these, only Non-ERP mismatches (a situation in which ERP systems cannot support the existing information needs that are currently fulfilled) were found to have a direct influence on the implementation of ERP systems. Neither Non-Procedure nor Hybrid mismatches were found to have significant impact in the ERP context. These findings provide meaningful insights since they could serve as the basis for discussing how the ERP implementation process should be defined and what activities should be included in the implementation process. They show that ERP developers may not want to include organizational (or business processes) changes in the implementation process, suggesting that doing so could lead to failed implementation. And in fact, this suggestion eventually turned out to be true when we found that the application of process customization led to higher possibilities of failure. From these discussions, we are convinced that Non-ERP is the only type of mismatch we need to focus on during the implementation process, implying that organizational changes must be made before, rather than during, the implementation process. Finally, this study found that among the various customization approaches, bolt-on development methods in particular seemed to have significantly positive effects. Interestingly again, this finding is not in the same line of thought as that of the vendors in the ERP industry. The vendors' recommendations are to apply as many best practices as possible, thereby resulting in the minimization of customization and utilization of bolt-on development methods. They particularly advise against changing the source code and rather recommend employing, when necessary, the method of programming additional software code using the computer language of the vendor. As previously stated, however, our study found active customization, especially bolt-on development methods, to have positive effects on ERP, and found source code changes in particular to have the most significant effects. Moreover, our study found programming additional software to be ineffective, suggesting there is much difference between ERP developers and vendors in viewpoints and strategies toward ERP customization. In summary, mismatches are inherent in the ERP implementation context and play an important role in determining its success. Considering the significance of mismatches, this study proposes a new model for successful ERP implementation, developed from the organizational memory mismatch perspective, and provides many insights by empirically confirming the model's usefulness.