• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.1-26
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• 2011

Measuring the quality of city life (QCL) is important for city marketing given that QCL influences the city brand image and resident city relationship. Despite its importance, most previous measures of community well being were developed in the context of small towns, and limited attention has been given to a subjective measure of QCL in the context of a large city. This study develops and tests a subjective measure of quality of city life (QCL) in the context of a large metropolitan city. Quality of city life (QCL) refers to the degree of need satisfaction and feelings of happiness one experiences during the course of city life. The results from a survey of 507 residents from 25 major districts in Seoul indicate that the QCL measure has convergent and discriminate validity. The results also indicate that QCL has predictive validity in relation to satisfaction with city services, trust in the city government, word of mouth communication, and a sense of citizen pride. The managerial and policy implications of this study are discussed.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.69-81
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• 2024

The The purpose of this study is to have a positive impact on the evaluation of the traditional market revitalization project by discussing the business details and implementation process of the commercial district revitalization project in depth. The research method uses practical methods for traditional market revitalization projects. First, the activation method of the place was examined through the concepts of Oldenburg's 'Third Place' and Carr et al.'s 'Five Demands for Public Space' and the theories related to non-face-to-face transactions were examined. The first study case was the commercial district revitalization project of the Cheongju Global Market Development Project(Seongan-gil Street Shopping Mall and Yukgeori traditional Market), which discussed revitalization of open space, revitalization through reproduction, and revitalization through festivals. The revitalization project through representation is a project to install a symbolic sculpture at the estimated location of the 'Namseokgyo' buried in Yukgeori traditional Market. The revitalization through the festival is the Korea Sale Festa, which is a vibrant business due to increased sales at traditional markets and shopping malls and floating population in open spaces. The second study case was the Cultural Tourism Promotion Project(Hanmin traditional Market), which discussed revitalization through the development of local brands and SNS content. In the conclusion, the relationship between the six projects and commercial district revitalization methods was discussed, and policy recommendations were made, mentioning the importance of reflecting regional characteristics in design planning. We hope that this study will be used to positively evaluate the traditional market revitalization project, showing that stakeholders are working hard to produce positive results within institutional limitations.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.27-43
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• 2024

Recently, the importance of trademarks as a core resource of corporate competitiveness to protect and differentiate products and services is increasing. Global companies are focusing hard to secure trademark rights to manage brands that reflect their core values and to respond to increasingly frequent trademark disputes, while start-ups and individuals are working hard to secure trademark to run stable businesses and attract investment funds. Meanwhile, this study conducts an empirical analysis to identify the relationship between the brand and business strategy of domestic venture startups. The analysis data used was the response data of 2,230 corporate companies from the 2021 Venture Business Precision Survey, and the propensity score matching method, structural equation model analysis, and binomial logit analysis were used as analysis methods. As a result of the analysis, it was confirmed that domestic venture startups' trademark ownership does not make a significant difference in terms of the level of business strategy. This was confirmed to be because the brands of domestic venture start-ups mainly advance their business strategies only through the internal competency process, while the advancement of business strategies through the external competency process is very minimal. Meanwhile, it was confirmed that the level of cost advantage strategy among the business strategy levels of venture start-ups strengthens the tendency to hold trademarks, indicating that the higher the completeness of the cost advantage level, the more likely it is to expand trademark ownership for stable sales and supply of products and services through trademark ownership and to convert to high value-added in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.44 no.9
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• pp.1388-1398
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• 2015

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is the most complete and comprehensive method for translating what customers need from a product. This study utilized QFD to develop sauces made from Gochujang and to determine how to fulfill international customers' requirements. A customer survey and expert opinion survey were conducted from May 13 to August 22, 2014 and targeted 220 consumers and 20 experts in the U.S. and China. Finally, a total of 208 (190 consumers and 18 experts) useable data were selected. The top three customer requirements for Gochujang sauces were identified as fresh flavor (4.40), making better flavor (3.99), and cooking availability (3.90). Thirty-three engineering characteristics were developed. The results from the calculation of relative importance of engineering characteristics identified that 'cooking availability', 'free sample and food testing', 'unique concept', and 'development of brand' were the highest. The relative importance of engineering characteristics, correlation, and technical difficulties are ranked, and this result could contribute to the development Korean sauces based on customer needs and engineering characteristics.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.77-90
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• 2016

This study is to examine the importance of site selection and service quality in franchise business as food service franchise became one of the fastest-growing service industries today. The chief finding of this study is as follows: First, a survey in locational and service quality factors affecting food service franchise shows that responders are more concerned with hygiene and visibility of the store than proximity and transportation advantages which reflects low statistical significance, thus the distance did not seem to be a big problem for the responders in the context that they mostly visit nearby food franchise. Second, the examination of the influence by the service quality factors and customer satisfaction shows significant positive relation with customer response, speed and accuracy, and accuracy factors which reveals that the responders prefer prompt response and swift judgment toward the customer's needs and expectations, professional knowledge services to the credibility factors in which little correlation with the customer satisfaction were found. Third, the examination of the influence by the service quality factors, locational factors, and re-visit reveals that customer response and specialty showed statistically significant correlation with intention of WOM (Word of Mouth) and revisit, which suggests that swift judgment and response toward the customer's needs and expectations, professional knowledge services is of great importance to both customer satisfaction and revisit. The study on the aspects of locational and service quality factors affecting franchise industry's customer satisfaction was conducted as above, an investigation in both factors' influence on the customer satisfaction was made, and based on the results of the analysis, this research seeks an optimal operation strategy of a franchise business. Food service franchise are relatively very competent to business adminstration and reaction capability to consumption changes due to the already established market, and there are stores springing up everywhere inspired by the founders who are too confident of their success in the franchise business. However, it is necessary for the franchise beginners to figure out a zone oriented, regular customer oriented business strategy than just complying with the head office manual. Owing to an increasing trend of opening medium to large sized stores and investments in the wake of converting to multiple business type Korean food franchise, there is growing need to set up new concept of store development and operational management strategy in order to overcome the excessive competition and limited sales volume of the old-fashioned small sized, small capital franchise stores. Furthermore, as most business category of food service franchise serve very similar menus, from a product differentiation point of view, it is required to map out flexible sales concept including the adoption of competitive and low-price strategy. In conclusion, as is shown in the analytical research, the customers' optimal choice fluctuate over their preferences like customer convenience and circumstances rather than insisting on specific brand, thus it will be necessary for the franchise stores to draw up aggressive strategy and planning in running food service franchise to maximize their profits.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.456-463
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• 2006

The purposes of this study were to extract choice attributes of bakery cafe customers and to conduct important- performance analysis (IPA) of choice attributes perceived by bakery cafe customers. The questionnaire was developed through literature review and focus group interview, and modified after pilot test. The questionnaires for main survey were distributed to 320 males and females aged 20 and over in Seoul. A total of 275 questionnaires were used for analysis (85.9%) and the statistical analyses were conducted using SPSS Win (12.0) for descriptive analyses, exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis, and correlation analyses. The main results were as follows. 'Products', 'convenience to use', 'services and price', 'interior environments' 'brand' and 'location' dimensions were extracted as choice attributes dimensions of bakery cafe customers and customers of bakery cafe regarded 'sanitation and cleanness', 'kindness of employees', 'quality of products', 'comfortable and pleasant facilities' and 'taste of bakery products' as more important than other attributes. In addition, the results of IPA showed that marketing managers of bakery cafes should focused on the dimension of 'services and price' in the reason that this dimension was low at performance although customers regarded it very important. Overall, researchers and managers of bakery cafes should understand unique choice attributes of bakery cafe customers, and make efforts to establish marketing strategies that meet bakery cafe customers' needs.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.233-243
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• 2008

Recognition for the importance and roles of public transportation is increasing because of traffic problems in many cities. In spite of this paradigm change, previous researches related with public transportation trip assignment have limits in some aspects. Especially, in case of multimodal public transportation networks, many characters should be considered such as transfers. operational time schedules, waiting time and travel cost. After metropolitan integrated transfer discount system was carried out, transfer trips are increasing among traffic modes and this takes the variation of users' route choices. Moreover, the advent of high-technology public transportation card called smart card, public transportation users' travel information can be recorded automatically and this gives many researchers new analytical methodology for multimodal public transportation networks. In this paper, it is suggested that the methodology for establishment of brand new multimodal public transportation networks based on computer programming methods using transportation card data. First, we propose the building method of integrated transportation networks based on bus and urban railroad stations in order to make full use of travel information from transportation card data. Second, it is offered how to connect the broken transfer links by computer-based programming techniques. This is very helpful to solve the transfer problems that existing transportation networks have. Lastly, we give the methodology for users' paths finding and network establishment among multi-modes in multimodal public transportation networks. By using proposed methodology in this research, it becomes easy to build multimodal public transportation networks with existing bus and urban railroad station coordinates. Also, without extra works including transfer links connection, it is possible to make large-scaled multimodal public transportation networks. In the end, this study can contribute to solve users' paths finding problem among multi-modes which is regarded as an unsolved issue in existing transportation networks.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.24
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• pp.223-246
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• 2011

Today, cultural content industry could be defined to service business rather than manufacturing business because of its own trait. Also, it has the realistic restriction that it can't hold the dominant position in the market competition when it can't provide consumers satisfaction regardless of its quality or degree of completion. In other word, it can only expect great success when the business plan and the activities get the perfect balance with its best quality and perfect of completion. As the result, it emphasizes the importance of business competition in the global market. In briefly, there is no doubt that the creativeness of content is very important in the cultural content industry but in the future, making system to maintain the distribution process and share the profits fairly will be taken more important role. Especially, animation genre has the feature, which compares to other genres, such as film or TV drama, would be free from cultural barriers, and it is a great advantage. So to speak, animation can get little influence from cultural discount. However, Korean animation can't use the advantage properly for the foreign distribution because of its poor infrastructure and short of professional human resources. For those reasons, it has been needed to set up the realistic and specific action plan to overcome the situation. Therefore, considering those needs and the situations of Korean animation facing, making B2B online marketplace could be a great solution. The online marketplace stands for taking more efficient and broad distribution channel instead of the passive way, which we have now. If we have the B2B online marketplace, we can share all the information about the Korean animation with the potential customers whom live outside of Korea at real time. It also could be use to the windows of multiple distribution, which can make additional profits and activate the optional markets for the Korean animation. Through the method, Korean animation would be expected to get the higher international competitiveness, and it would be developed in quality and quantity of the business. Finally, it would be a great chance to Korean animation, which can get the unique brand power by improving the backward distribution circumstances.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.131-154
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• 2013

New internet technologies have created a revolutionary new platform which allows consumers to make decision about product price and quality quickly and provides information about themselves through the transcript of online reviews. By expressing their feelings toward products or services on virtual opinion platforms, users extend their influence into cyberspace as electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM). Existing research indicates that an impact of eWOM on the consumer decision process is influential. For both academic researchers and practitioners, investigating this phenomenon of information sharing in online website is essential given the increasing number of consumers using them as sources of purchase decisions. It is worthwhile to examine the extent to which opinion seekers are willing to accept and adopt online reviews and which factors encourage adoption. Discerning the most motivating aspects of information adoption in particular, could help electronic marketers better promote their brand and presence on the internet. The objectives of this study are to investigate how online WOM influences a persons' purchase decision by discovering which factors encourage information adoption. Especially focused on the self-efficacy, this research investigates how self-efficacy affects on information usefulness and adoption of online information. Although people are exposed to same review or comment about product or service, some accept the reviews while others do not. We notice that accepting online reviews mainly depends on the person's preference or personal characteristics. This study empirically examines this issue by using cognitive dissonance theory. Specifically, in the movie industry, we address few questions-is always positive WOM generating positive effect? What if the movie isn't the person's favorite genre? What if the person who is very self-assertive so doesn't take other's opinion easily? In these cases of cognitive dissonance, is always WOM generating same result? While many studies have focused on one direct of WOM which indicates positive (or negative) informative reviews or comments generate positive (or negative) results and more (or less) profits, this study investigates not only directional properties of WOM but also how people change their opinion towards product or service positive to negative, negative to positive through the online WOM. An experiment was conducted quantitatively by using a sample of 168 users who have experience within the online movie review site, 'Naver Movie'. Users were required to complete a survey regarding reviews and comments taken from the real movie page. The data reflected user's perceptions of online WOM information that determined users' adoption level. Analysis results provide empirical support for the proposed theoretical perspective. When user can't agree with the opinion of online WOM information, in other words, when cognitive dissonance between online WOM information and users' preference occurs, perceived self-efficacy significantly decreases customers' perception of usefulness. And this perception of usefulness plays an important role in determining users' intention to adopt online WOM information. Most of researches have been concentrated on characteristics of online WOM itself such as quality or vividness of information, credibility of source and direction of online WOM, etc. for describing effect of online WOM, but our results suggest that users' personal character (e.g., self-efficacy) plays decisive role for acceptance of online WOM information. Higher self-efficacy means lower possibility to accept the information that represents counter opinion because of cognitive dissonance, whereas the people that have lower self-efficacy are willing to accept the online WOM information as true and refer to purchase decision. This study suggests a model for understanding role of direction of online WOM information. Also, our result implicates the importance of online review supervision and personalized information service by confirming switching opinion negative to positive is more difficult than positive to negative through the online WOM information. This implication would help marketers to manage online reviews of their products or services.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.8-34
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• 2014

We reviewed foreign evaluation systems based on the macrobenthic and macroalgal communities and developed a system, composed of a set of ecological indices able to evaluate the functionality (FI, Functional Index; estimation of stability and productivity) and maturity (MI, Maturity Index; comparisons with biological parameters of natural reefs) of artificial reefs by comparing the status in the adjacent natural reefs in Korean coastal waters. The evaluation system was applied to natural and artificial reefs/reef-planned areas (natural reefs), established in the 5 marine ranching areas (Bangnyeong-Daechung, Yeonpyung, Taean, Seocheon and Buan) in the west coast of Korea. The FI ranged between 31.6 (Bangnyeong-Daechung) and 72.5% (Buan) and MI did between 53.1 (Seocheon) and 76.9% (Taean) in average. The evaluation of artificial reefs by the two indices, showed the most appropriate status in Taean. The FI between the adjacent artificial and natural reefs were in significant linear relationship ($r^2=0.83$, p=0.01). This indicated the local status of biological community may be critical in determining the functionality of the artificial reefs. We have suggested an integrative but preliminary evaluation system of artificial reefs in this study. The output from the evaluation system may be utilized as a tool for environment/resource managers or policy makers, responsible for effective use of funds and decision making. Given the importance, we need to use the options to enhance and improve the accuracy as follows: (1) continuous validation of the evaluation system and rescaling the criteria of indicators, (2) vigorous utilization of observation and experience through the application and data accumulation and (3) development and testing of brand-new indicators.