• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.1-29
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• 2007

The flow theory becomes one of the most important frameworks in the internet research arena. Hoffman and Novak proposed a hierarchical flow model showing the antecedents and outcomes of flow and the relationship among these variables in the hyper-media computer circumstances (Hoffman and Novak 1996). This model was further tested after their initial research (Novak, Hoffman, and Yung 2000). At their paper, Hoffman and Novak explained that the balance of challenge and skill leads to flow which means the positive optimal state of mind (Hoffman and Novak 1996). An imbalance between challenge and skill, leads to negative states of mind like anxiety, boredom, apathy (Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi 1988). Almost all research on the flow 4-channel model have been focusingon flow, the positive state of mind (Ellis, Voelkl, and Morris 1994 Mathwick and Rigdon 2004). However, it also needs to examine the formation of the negative states of minds and their outcomes. Flow researchers explain play or playfulness as antecedents or the early state of flow. However, play has been regarded as a distinct concept from flow in the flow literatures (Hoffman and Novak 1996; Novak, Hoffman, and Yung 2000). Mathwick and Rigdon discovered the influences of challenge and skill on play; they also observed the influence of play on web-loyalty and brand loyalty (Mathwick and Rigdon 2004). Unfortunately, they did not go so far as to test the influences of play on state of mind. This study focuses on the relationships between state of mind in the flow 4-channel model and play. Early research has attempted to hypothetically explain state of mind in flow theory, but has not been tested except flow until now. Also the importance of play has been emphasized in the flow theory, but has not been tested in the flow 4-channel model context. This researcher attempts to analyze the relationships among state of mind, skill of play, challenge, state of mind and web loyalty. For this objective, I developed a measure for state of mind and defined the concept of play as a trait. Then, the influences of challenge and skill on the state of mind and play under on-line shopping conditions were tested. Also the influences of play on state of mind were tested and those of flow and play on web loyalty were highlighted. 294 undergraduate students participated in this research survey. They were asked to respond about their perceptions of challenge, skill, state of mind, play, and web-loyalty to on-line shopping mall. Respondents were restricted to students who bought products on-line in a month. In case of buying products at two or more on-line shopping malls, they asked to respond about the shopping mall where they bought the most important one. Construct validity, discriminant validity, and convergent validity were used to check the measurement validations. Also, Cronbach's alpha was used to check scale reliability. A series of exploratory factor analyses was conducted. This researcher conducted confirmatory factor analyses to assess the validity of measurements. All items loaded significantly on their respective constructs. Also, all reliabilities were greater than.70. Chi-square difference tests and goodness of fit tests supported discriminant and convergent validity. The results of clustering and ANOVA showed that high challenge and high skill leaded to flow, low challenge and high skill leaded to boredom, and low challenge and low skill leaded to apathy. But, it was different from my expectation that high challenge and low skill didnot lead to anxiety but leaded to apathy. The results also showed that high challenge and high skill, and high challenge and low skill leaded to the highest play. Low challenge leaded to low play. 4 Structural Equation Models were built by flow, anxiety, boredom, apathy for analyzing not only the impact of play on state of mind and web-loyalty, but also that of state of mind on web-loyalty. According the analyses results of these models, play impacted flow and web-loyalty positively, but impacted anxiety, boredom, and apathy negatively. Results also showed that flow impacted web-loyalty positively, but anxiety, boredom, and apathy impacted web-loyalty negatively. The interpretations and implications of the test results of the hypotheses are as follows. First, respondents belonging to different clusters based on challenge and skill level experienced different states of mind such as flow, anxiety, boredom, apathy. The low challenge and low skill group felt the highest anxiety and apathy. It could be interpreted that this group feeling high anxiety or fear, then avoided attempts to shop on-line. Second, it was found that higher challenge leads to higher levels of play. Test results show that the play level of the high challenge and low skill group (anxiety group) was higher than that of the high challenge and high skill group (flow group). However, this was not significant. Third, play positively impacted flow and negatively impacted boredom. The negative impacts on anxiety and apathy were not significant. This means that the combination of challenge and skill creates different results. Forth, play and flow positively impacted web-loyalty, but anxiety, boredom, apathy had negative impacts. The effect of play on web-loyalty was stronger in case of anxiety, boredom, apathy group than fl ow group. These results show that challenge and skill influences state of mind and play. Results also demonstrate how play and flow influence web-loyalty. It implies that state of mind and play should be the core marketing variables in internet marketing. The flow theory has been focusing on flow and on the positive outcomes of flow experiences. But, this research shows that lots of consumers experience the negative state of mind rather than flow state in the internet shopping circumstance. Results show that the negative state of mind leads to low or negative web-loyalty. Play can have an important role with the web-loyalty when consumers have the negative state of mind. Results of structural equation model analyses show that play influences web-loyalty positively, even though consumers may be in the negative state of mind. This research found the impacts of challenge and skill on state of mind in the flow 4-channel model, not only flow but also anxiety, boredom, apathy. Also, it highlighted the role of play in the flow 4-channel model context and impacts on web-loyalty. However, tests show a few different results from hypothetical expectations such as the highest anxiety level of apathy group and insignificant impacts of play on anxiety and apathy. Further research needs to replicate this research and/or to compare 3-channel model with 4-channel model.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.32-43
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• 2009

Trust has been studied extensively in psychology, economics, and sociology, and its importance has been emphasized not only in marketing, but also in business disciplines in general. Unlike past relationships between suppliers and buyers, which take considerable advantage of private networks and may involve unethical business practices, partnerships between suppliers and buyers are at the core of success for industrial marketing amid intense global competition in the 21st century. A high level of mutual cooperation occurs through an exchange relationship based on trust, which brings long-term benefits, competitive enhancements, and transaction cost reductions, among other benefits, for both buyers and suppliers. In spite of the important role of trust, existing studies in buy-supply situations overlook the role of trust and do not systematically analyze the effect of trust on relational performance. Consequently, an in-depth study that determines the relation of trust to the relational performance between buyers and suppliers of business services is absolutely needed. Business services in this study, which include those supporting the manufacturing industry, are drawing attention as the economic growth engine for the next generation. The Korean government has selected business services as a strategic area for the development of manufacturing sectors. Since the demands for opening business services markets are becoming fiercer, the competitiveness of the business service industry must be promoted now more than ever. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the mutual trust between buyers and suppliers on relational performance. Specifically, this study proposed a theoretical model of trust-relational performance in the transactions of business services and empirically tested the hypotheses delineated from the framework. The study suggests strategic implications based on research findings. Empirical data were collected via multiple methods, including via telephone, mail, and in-person interviews. Sample companies were knowledge-based companies supplying and purchasing business services in Korea. The present study collected data on a dyadic basis. Each pair of sample companies includes a buying company and its corresponding supplying company. Mutual trust was traced for each pair of companies. This study proposes a model of trust-relational performance of buying-supplying for business services. The model consists of trust and its antecedents and consequences. The trust of buyers is classified into trust toward the supplying company and trust toward salespersons. Viewing trust both at the individual level and the organizational level is based on the research of Doney and Cannon (1997). Normally, buyers are the subject of trust, but this study supposes that suppliers are the subjects. Hence, it uniquely focused on the bilateral perspective of perceived risk. In other words, suppliers, like buyers, are the subject of trust since transactions are normally bilateral. From this point of view, suppliers' trust in buyers is as important as buyers' trust in suppliers. The suppliers' trust is influenced by the extent to which it trusts the buying companies and the buyers. This classification of trust using an individual level and an organization level is based on the suggestion of Doney and Cannon (1997). Trust affects the process of supplier selection, which works in a bilateral manner. Suppliers are actively involved in the supplier selection process, working very closely with buyers. In addition, the process is affected by the extent to which each party trusts its partners. The selection process consists of certain steps: recognition, information search, supplier selection, and performance evaluation. As a result of the process, both buyers and suppliers evaluate the performance and take corrective actions on the basis of such outcomes as tangible, intangible, and/or side effects. The measurement of trust used for the present study was developed on the basis of the studies of Mayer, Davis and Schoorman (1995) and Mayer and Davis (1999). Based on their recommendations, the three dimensions of trust used for the study include ability, benevolence, and integrity. The original questions were adjusted to the context of the transactions of business services. For example, a question such as "He/she has professional capabilities" has been changed to "The salesperson showed professional capabilities while we talked about our products." The measurement used for this study differs from those used in previous studies (Rotter 1967; Sullivan and Peterson 1982; Dwyer and Oh 1987). The measurements of the antecedents and consequences of trust used for this study were developed on the basis of Doney and Cannon (1997). The original questions were adjusted to the context of transactions in business services. In particular, questions were developed for both buyers and suppliers to address the following factors: reputation (integrity, customer care, good-will), market standing (company size, market share, positioning in the industry), willingness to customize (product, process, delivery), information sharing (proprietary information, private information), willingness to maintain relationships, perceived professionalism, authority empowerment, buyer-seller similarity, and contact frequency. As a consequential variable of trust, relational performance was measured. Relational performance is classified into tangible effects, intangible effects, and side effects. Tangible effects include financial performance; intangible effects include improvements in relations, network developing, and internal employee satisfaction; side effects include those not included either in the tangible or intangible effects. Three hundred fifty pairs of companies were contacted, and one hundred five pairs of companies responded. After deleting five company pairs because of incomplete responses, one hundred five pairs of companies were used for data analysis. The response ratio of the companies used for data analysis is 30% (105/350), which is above the average response ratio in industrial marketing research. As for the characteristics of the respondent companies, the majority of the companies operate service businesses for both buyers (85.4%) and suppliers (81.8%). The majority of buyers (76%) deal with consumer goods, while the majority of suppliers (70%) deal with industrial goods. This may imply that buyers process the incoming material, parts, and components to produce the finished consumer goods. As indicated by their report of the length of acquaintance with their partners, suppliers appear to have longer business relationships than do buyers. Hypothesis 1 tested the effects of buyer-supplier characteristics on trust. The salesperson's professionalism (t=2.070, p<0.05) and authority empowerment (t=2.328, p<0.05) positively affected buyers' trust toward suppliers. On the other hand, authority empowerment (t=2.192, p<0.05) positively affected supplier trust toward buyers. For both buyers and suppliers, the degree of authority empowerment plays a crucial role in the maintenance of their trust in each other. Hypothesis 2 tested the effects of buyerseller relational characteristics on trust. Buyers tend to trust suppliers, as suppliers make every effort to contact buyers (t=2.212, p<0.05). This tendency has also been shown to be much stronger for suppliers (t=2.591, p<0.01). On the other hand suppliers trust buyers because suppliers perceive buyers as being similar to themselves (t=2.702, p<0.01). This finding confirmed the results of Crosby, Evans, and Cowles (1990), which reported that suppliers and buyers build relationships through regular meetings, either for business or personal matters. Hypothesis 3 tested the effects of trust on perceived risk. It has been found that for both suppliers and buyers the lower is the trust, the higher is the perceived risk (t=-6.621, p<0.01 for buyers; t=-2.437, p<0.05). Interestingly, this tendency has been shown to be much stronger for buyers than for suppliers. One possible explanation for this higher level of perceived risk is that buyers normally perceive higher risks than do suppliers in transactions involving business services. For this reason, it is necessary for suppliers to implement risk reduction strategies for buyers. Hypothesis 4 tested the effects of trust on information searching. It has been found that for both suppliers and buyers, contrary to expectation, trust depends on their partner's reputation (t=2.929, p<0.01 for buyers; t=2.711, p<0.05 for suppliers). This finding shows that suppliers with good reputations tend to be trusted. Prior experience did not show any significant relationship with trust for either buyers or suppliers. Hypothesis 5 tested the effects of trust on supplier/buyer selection. Unlike buyers, suppliers tend to trust buyers when they think that previous transactions with buyers were important (t=2.913 p<0.01). However, this study did not show any significant relationship between source loyalty and the trust of buyers in suppliers. Hypothesis 6 tested the effects of trust on relational performances. For buyers and suppliers, financial performance reportedly improved when they trusted their partners (t=2.301, p<0.05 for buyers; t=3.692, p<0.01 for suppliers). It is interesting that this tendency was much stronger for suppliers than it was for buyers. Similarly, competitiveness was reported to improve when buyers and suppliers trusted their partners (t=3.563, p<0.01 for buyers; t=3.042, p<0.01 for suppliers). For suppliers, efficiency and productivity were reportedly improved when they trusted buyers (t=2.673, p<0.01). Other performance indices showed insignificant relationships with trust. The findings of this study have some strategic implications. First and most importantly, trust-based transactions are beneficial for both suppliers and buyers. As verified in the study, financial performance can be improved through efforts to build and maintain mutual trust. Similarly, competitiveness can be increased through the same kinds of effort. Second, trust-based transactions can facilitate the reduction of perceived risks inherent in the purchasing situation. This finding has implications for both suppliers and buyers. It is generally believed that buyers perceive higher risks in a highly involved purchasing situation. To reduce risks, previous studies have recommended that suppliers devise risk-reducing tactics. Moving beyond these recommendations, the present study uniquely focused on the bilateral perspective of perceived risk. In other words, suppliers are also susceptible to perceived risks, especially when they supply services that require very technical and sophisticated manipulations and maintenance. Consequently, buyers and suppliers must solve problems together in close collaboration. Hence, mutual trust plays a crucial role in the problem-solving process. Third, as found in this study, the more authority a salesperson has, the more he or she can be trusted. This finding is very important with regard to tactics. Building trust is a long-term assignment; however, when mutual trust has not been developed, suppliers can overcome the problems they encounter by empowering a salesperson with the authority to make certain decisions. This finding applies to suppliers as well.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.533-542
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• 2010

The objective of this study is to provide basic information and policy implications needed to balance the supply and demand for dietitian by projecting supply and demand for dietitian. The data from the Ministry of Health Welfare and Family on the number of licensed nutritionist, resident registration data of the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, and health insurance qualification data of the National Health Insurance Corporation were used to examine the current status of supply. To project the supply of nutritionist workforce, the in-out moves method and demographic method were used. The ratios of nutritionist to population and GDP, and that of other countries were applied as the demand projection method. According to the study results, the projection on the imbalance of supply and demand for dietitian by year 2021 differs depending on the method used. First, according to the results based on age-adjusted population ratio, there is an oversupply of 1,643 dietitians in year 2010, and 2,076 dietitians in year 2020. Second, although the projection on the imbalance of the supply and demand for dietitian differs depending on whether the GDD is calculated in won(￦) or dollar($). it is expected that there will be an oversupply in general. Third, as to the scenario using the nutritionist ratio in foreign countries, the oversupply of dietitian is likely in Korea, under any scenario, when comparing the nutritionist supply projection with the demand projection based on the nutritionist ratio in the United States. However, the projection of the supply and demand varies in each scenario when the European nutritionist ratio is applied. Under European 'scenario 1', an oversupply is expected, whereas under 'scenario 2', a shortage of supply is expected. A careful approach is required in interpreting the supply and demand projection using criteria of other countries, because dietitian assumes different roles and functions in each country. Although a slight oversupply of nutritionist workforce is projected, it does not cause a major problem as the demand for diet therapy is expected to rise due to aging and the increase of chronic diseases, and as the demand for clinical dietitians in hospitals increases. Accordingly, the demand for dietitians will rise and, in this context, the oversupply of nutritionist will not incur much problem. However, the nutritionist qualification is much too open in Korea, and this has a negative effect on the quality of the nutritionist workforce. Therefore, it is important that the nutritionist qualifications and requirements are reinforced in the future, enhance the quality level of the nutritionist supply, and maintain the balance between the supply and demand.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.9
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• pp.127-142
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• 2005

Not only in Korea but throughout the entire world millions of people are in contact with images. Images have become a medium through which to transmit anything from simple visualizations of moving images to knowledge and information. The age of the internet has arisen thanks to scientific development, and the internet generation's acquisition of information is continuously becoming faster. The spectators, ufo must choose amongst the excessive amount of available information, are changing along with it just as quickly. The method of visual transmission has changed to match the demands of the fast-changing pace of the new generation. In order to receive an instantaneous selection amongst much information, the primary requisite is attracting one's attention, and then presenting a corresponding feeling of satisfaction. The early stages of film arose from the desire to capture one's actual situation as it realty is. Unsatisfied with the still picture, people developed the motion picture. Research has succeeded in reproducing 3-dimensional images more realistic than the actual image we perceive as a result of the difference in visual perspective of both eyes and their response to rays of light From color film to 3-dimensional pictures, people enjoy the magnificent results of this. All fields within the category of film are continuously studying the human desire to pursue their visual side, namely the pursuit of visual images with a maximum sense of reality. The images that millions of people around the world see now are flat. The screen's depth and optical illusions effectively give a sense of reality while conveying information. However, although the flat screen is able to create a sense of depth using the different visual perspective of each eye for the realization of a cubic effect, there are limitations. Entering the 21s1 century, there is a quickly-arising branch within the field of image media which seeks to overcome these limitations Although 3-dimensional images began in films, entering the latter half of the 20th century, due to development of 3-dimensional images using the mediums of the animation field, cellular phones, advertisement screens, television etc., without restriction is designated as 'image.'. With research having started around 1900 and continuing for over 100 years, we are now able to witness the popularization of 3-dimensional films happening before our very eyes. Within our own country, we can frequently see them at amusement parks and museums. In the future, through the popularization of HDTV etc., there is a good outlook for practical use of 3-dimensional images in televisions with advanced picture qualify as well as in other areas. Together with the international current, research on 3-dimensional films has been activated in Korea and is rising as a main current in the film industry. Within this context, the contents and understanding of 3-dimensional images must keep in step with the pace of technical advancements. In order to accelerate of development of film contents to keep in pace with technical developments, this dissertation presents the techniques and technical aspects of future developments, and shows the need to prepare in advance to make the field grow- and thereby avoid having a lack of experts and being conquered by other nations in the field - rather than only advancing the technical aspects and importing the contents. This dissertation aims to stimulate interest and continual research by progressive-thinking people related to the film industry. Part II looks into the definition and types of 3-dimensional motion pictures, the terminology, the fundamentals of image formation, current market fluctuations, and looks into 3-dimensional techniques which can be borrowed and introduced in 3-dimensional animations. Part III concerns 3-dimensional animated films. It analyzes 3-dimensional production techniques while using the introduction of specific animation techniques in the 2004 production Lee Sun Shin and Nelson - Naval Heroes 3-dimensional animation produced in 2004 by Clay & Puppet Stop-Motion Animation & Computer Graphic. Original Korean title: 해전영웅 이순신과 넬슨. as an example, and it also looks into how current film techniques used in animations can be applied in 3-dimensional films. Additionally, the actual stages of the various fields of 3-dimensional animations are presented. Given the current direction and advancement of 3-dimensional films making use of animations and the possible realization of this field, the author plans to weigh the development of this yet unexploited new market Not looking at the current progress of the field, but rather the direction of the hypothetical types of animation techniques, the author predicts the marketability and possibility of development of each area.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.65-88
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• 2008

Since the implementation of economic reforms in 1978, the Chinese economy grows rapidly at an average annul growth rate of 9% over the post two decades. Franchising has been widely recognized as an important source of entrepreneurial activity. Trust is important in that it facilitates relational exchanges by permits partners to transcend short-run inequities or risks to concentrate on long-term profits or gains. In the relationship between the franchisors and franchisees, trust has been described as an important source of competitive advantage. However, little research has been done on the factors affecting trust in Chinese franchisor-franchisee relationships. The purpose of this study is to investigate what factors affect the trust in the franchise system in China, and to provide guidelines and insights to franchisors which enter Chinese market. In this study, according to Morgan and Hunt (1994), trust is defined as the extending when one party has confidence in an exchange partner's reliability and integrity. We offered a conceptual model of the empirical study. The model shows that the factors affecting the trust include franchisor's supports, communication, satisfaction with previous outcome and conflict. We also suggested the franchisor's supports and communication like to enhance the franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome, and the franchisor's supports, communication and he franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome tend to decrease conflict. Before the formal study, a pretest involving exploratory interviews with owners from three franchisees was conducted to make sure the questionnaire was relevant and clear to the respondents. The data were collected using trained interviewers to carry out personal interviews with the aid of an unidentified, muti-page, structured questionnaire. The respondents comprised of owners, managers, and owner managers of franchisee-owned food service franchises located in Beijing, China. Even though a total of 256 potential franchises were initially contacted, the finally usable sample consisted of 125 respondents. As expected, the sampling method was successful in soliciting respondents with waried personal and firm characteristics. Self-administrated questionnaires were used for all measures. And established scales were used to measure the latent constructs in this study. The measures tapped the franchisees' perceptions of the relationship with the referent franchisor. Five-point Likert-type scales ranging from "strongly disagree" (=1) to "strongly agree" (=7) were used throughout the constructs (trust, eight items; support, five items; communication, four items; satisfaction, six items; conflict, three items). The reliability measurements traditionally employed, such as the Cronbach's alpha, were used. All the reliabilities were greater than.80. The proposed measurement model was estimated using SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 5.0 analysis package. We conducted A series of exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses to assess the convergent validity, discriminant validity, and reliability. The results indicate reasonable overall fits between the model and the observed data. The overall fit of measurement model were $X^2$= 159.699, p=0.004, d.f. = 116, GFI =.879, NFI =.898, CFI =.969, IFI =.970, TLI =.959, RMR =.058. The results demonstrated that the data reasonably fitted the model. We also examined construct reliability and reliability and average variance extracted (AVE). The construct reliability of each construct was greater than.80 and the AVE of each construct was greater than.50. According to the analysis of Structure Equation Modeling (SEM), the results of path model indicated an adequate fit of the model: $X^2$= 142.126, p = 0.044, d.f. = 115, GFI =.892, NFI =.909, CFI =.981, IFI =.981, TLI =.974, RMR =.057. As hypothesized, the results showed that it is strategically important to establish trust in a franchise system, and the franchisor's supports, communication and satisfaction with previous outcome tend to reinforce franchisee's trust. The results also showed trust seems to decrease as the experience of conflict episodes increases. And we also noticed that franchisor's supports and communication tend to enhance the franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome, and communication tend to decrease conflict. If the trust between the franchisor and franchisee can be established in a franchise system, franchising offers many benefits and reduces many costs. To manage a mutual trust of relationship with their franchisees, franchisor's should provide support effectively to their franchisees. Effective assistant services have direct effect on franchisees' satisfaction with previous outcome and trust in franchisor. Especially, franchise sales process, orientation, and training in the start-up period are key elements for success of the franchise system. Franchisor's support is an accumulated separate satisfaction evaluation with different kind of service provided by the franchisor. And providing support definitely can improve the trustworthy image of the franchisor. In the franchise system, conflicts of interests and exertions of different power sources are very common. The experience of conflict episodes seems to negatively relate to trust. Therefore, it is important to reduce the negative side of the relationship conflicts. Communication actually plays a broader role in reducing conflict and establish mutual trust in franchisor-franchisee relationship. And effective communication between franchisors and franchisees can improve franchisees' satisfaction toward the franchise system. As the diversification of Chinese markets, both franchisors and franchisees must keep the relevant, timely, and reliable communication. And it is very important to improve the quality of communication. Satisfaction with precious outcomes seems to positively relate to trust. Franchisors and franchisees that are highly satisfied with the previous outcomes that flow from their relationship will perceive their partner as advancing their goal achievement. Therefore, it is necessary for both franchisor and their franchisees to make the welfare of partner with effort. Little literature has focused on what factors affect the trust between franchisors and their franchisees in China. This study developed the hypotheses regarding the factors affecting trust in the transaction relationship. The results of data analysis supported the hypotheses strongly. There are certain limitations in this study. First, we may point out that some other factors missed in this study could be significantly important. Second, the context of this study, food service industry, limits its potential generalizability for all franchise systems. More studies in different categories of franchise system are needed to broaden its generalizability. Third, the model was tested empirically in a sample in Beijing, more empirical tests of the proposed model in other Chinese areas are needed. Finally, the analysis in this study was solely based on the perception of franchisees and the opinions of franchisors were not included.

• Strategy21
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• s.46
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• pp.239-276
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• 2020

The failure of early economic sanctions aimed at hurting the overall economies of targeted states called for a more sophisticated design of economic sanctions. This paved way for the advent of 'smart sanctions,' which target the supporters of the regime instead of the public mass. Despite controversies over the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a coercive tool to change the behavior of a targeted state, the transformation from 'comprehensive sanctions' to 'smart sanctions' is gaining the status of a legitimate method to impose punishment on states that do not conform to international norms, the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction in this particular context of the paper. The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council proved that it can come to an accord on imposing economic sanctions over adopting resolutions on waging military war with targeted states. The North Korean nuclear issue has been the biggest security threat to countries in the region, even for China out of fear that further developments of nuclear weapons in North Korea might lead to a 'domino-effect,' leading to nuclear proliferation in the Northeast Asia region. Economic sanctions had been adopted by the UNSC as early as 2006 after the first North Korean nuclear test and has continually strengthened sanctions measures at each stage of North Korean weapons development. While dubious of the effectiveness of early sanctions on North Korea, recent sanctions that limit North Korea's exports of coal and imports of oil seem to have an impact on the regime, inducing Kim Jong-un to commit to peaceful talks since 2018. The purpose of this paper is to add a variable to the factors determining the success of economic sanctions on North Korea: preventing North Korea's evasion efforts by conducting illegal transshipments at sea. I first analyze the cause of recent success in the economic sanctions that led Kim Jong-un to engage in talks and add the maritime element to the argument. There are three conditions for the success of the sanctions regime, and they are: (1) smart sanctions, targeting commodities and support groups (elites) vital to regime survival., (2) China's faithful participation in the sanctions regime, and finally, (3) preventing North Korea's maritime evasion efforts.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.49-56
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• 2010

At the initial stage of Internet advertising, banner advertising came into fashion. As the Internet developed into a central part of daily lives and the competition in the on-line advertising market was getting fierce, there was not enough space for banner advertising, which rushed to portal sites only. All these factors was responsible for an upsurge in advertising prices. Consequently, the high-cost and low-efficiency problems with banner advertising were raised, which led to an emergence of keyword advertising as a new type of Internet advertising to replace its predecessor. In the beginning of 2000s, when Internet advertising came to be activated, display advertisement including banner advertising dominated the Net. However, display advertising showed signs of gradual decline, and registered minus growth in the year 2009, whereas keyword advertising showed rapid growth and started to outdo display advertising as of the year 2005. Keyword advertising refers to the advertising technique that exposes relevant advertisements on the top of research sites when one searches for a keyword. Instead of exposing advertisements to unspecified individuals like banner advertising, keyword advertising, or targeted advertising technique, shows advertisements only when customers search for a desired keyword so that only highly prospective customers are given a chance to see them. In this context, it is also referred to as search advertising. It is regarded as more aggressive advertising with a high hit rate than previous advertising in that, instead of the seller discovering customers and running an advertisement for them like TV, radios or banner advertising, it exposes advertisements to visiting customers. Keyword advertising makes it possible for a company to seek publicity on line simply by making use of a single word and to achieve a maximum of efficiency at a minimum cost. The strong point of keyword advertising is that customers are allowed to directly contact the products in question through its more efficient advertising when compared to the advertisements of mass media such as TV and radio, etc. The weak point of keyword advertising is that a company should have its advertisement registered on each and every portal site and finds it hard to exercise substantial supervision over its advertisement, there being a possibility of its advertising expenses exceeding its profits. Keyword advertising severs as the most appropriate methods of advertising for the sales and publicity of small and medium enterprises which are in need of a maximum of advertising effect at a low advertising cost. At present, keyword advertising is divided into CPC advertising and CPM advertising. The former is known as the most efficient technique, which is also referred to as advertising based on the meter rate system; A company is supposed to pay for the number of clicks on a searched keyword which users have searched. This is representatively adopted by Overture, Google's Adwords, Naver's Clickchoice, and Daum's Clicks, etc. CPM advertising is dependent upon the flat rate payment system, making a company pay for its advertisement on the basis of the number of exposure, not on the basis of the number of clicks. This method fixes a price for advertisement on the basis of 1,000-time exposure, and is mainly adopted by Naver's Timechoice, Daum's Speciallink, and Nate's Speedup, etc, At present, the CPC method is most frequently adopted. The weak point of the CPC method is that advertising cost can rise through constant clicks from the same IP. If a company makes good use of strategies for maximizing the strong points of keyword advertising and complementing its weak points, it is highly likely to turn its visitors into prospective customers. Accordingly, an advertiser should make an analysis of customers' behavior and approach them in a variety of ways, trying hard to find out what they want. With this in mind, her or she has to put multiple keywords into use when running for ads. When he or she first runs an ad, he or she should first give priority to which keyword to select. The advertiser should consider how many individuals using a search engine will click the keyword in question and how much money he or she has to pay for the advertisement. As the popular keywords that the users of search engines are frequently using are expensive in terms of a unit cost per click, the advertisers without much money for advertising at the initial phrase should pay attention to detailed keywords suitable to their budget. Detailed keywords are also referred to as peripheral keywords or extension keywords, which can be called a combination of major keywords. Most keywords are in the form of texts. The biggest strong point of text-based advertising is that it looks like search results, causing little antipathy to it. But it fails to attract much attention because of the fact that most keyword advertising is in the form of texts. Image-embedded advertising is easy to notice due to images, but it is exposed on the lower part of a web page and regarded as an advertisement, which leads to a low click through rate. However, its strong point is that its prices are lower than those of text-based advertising. If a company owns a logo or a product that is easy enough for people to recognize, the company is well advised to make good use of image-embedded advertising so as to attract Internet users' attention. Advertisers should make an analysis of their logos and examine customers' responses based on the events of sites in question and the composition of products as a vehicle for monitoring their behavior in detail. Besides, keyword advertising allows them to analyze the advertising effects of exposed keywords through the analysis of logos. The logo analysis refers to a close analysis of the current situation of a site by making an analysis of information about visitors on the basis of the analysis of the number of visitors and page view, and that of cookie values. It is in the log files generated through each Web server that a user's IP, used pages, the time when he or she uses it, and cookie values are stored. The log files contain a huge amount of data. As it is almost impossible to make a direct analysis of these log files, one is supposed to make an analysis of them by using solutions for a log analysis. The generic information that can be extracted from tools for each logo analysis includes the number of viewing the total pages, the number of average page view per day, the number of basic page view, the number of page view per visit, the total number of hits, the number of average hits per day, the number of hits per visit, the number of visits, the number of average visits per day, the net number of visitors, average visitors per day, one-time visitors, visitors who have come more than twice, and average using hours, etc. These sites are deemed to be useful for utilizing data for the analysis of the situation and current status of rival companies as well as benchmarking. As keyword advertising exposes advertisements exclusively on search-result pages, competition among advertisers attempting to preoccupy popular keywords is very fierce. Some portal sites keep on giving priority to the existing advertisers, whereas others provide chances to purchase keywords in question to all the advertisers after the advertising contract is over. If an advertiser tries to rely on keywords sensitive to seasons and timeliness in case of sites providing priority to the established advertisers, he or she may as well make a purchase of a vacant place for advertising lest he or she should miss appropriate timing for advertising. However, Naver doesn't provide priority to the existing advertisers as far as all the keyword advertisements are concerned. In this case, one can preoccupy keywords if he or she enters into a contract after confirming the contract period for advertising. This study is designed to take a look at marketing for keyword advertising and to present effective strategies for keyword advertising marketing. At present, the Korean CPC advertising market is virtually monopolized by Overture. Its strong points are that Overture is based on the CPC charging model and that advertisements are registered on the top of the most representative portal sites in Korea. These advantages serve as the most appropriate medium for small and medium enterprises to use. However, the CPC method of Overture has its weak points, too. That is, the CPC method is not the only perfect advertising model among the search advertisements in the on-line market. So it is absolutely necessary that small and medium enterprises including independent shopping malls should complement the weaknesses of the CPC method and make good use of strategies for maximizing its strengths so as to increase their sales and to create a point of contact with customers.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.111-137
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• 2010

The basic purpose of this study is to investigate perceived quality and service personal value affecting the result of long-term relationship between service buyers and suppliers. This research presented a constructive model(perceived quality affecting the service personal value and the moderate effect of NFC) in the on off line and then propose the research model base on prior researches and studies about relationships among components of service. Data were gathered from respondents who visit at the education service market. For this study, Data were analyzed by AMOS 7.0. We integrate the literature on services marketing with researches on personal values and perceived quality. The SERPVAL scale presented here allows for the creation of a common ground for assessing service personal values, giving a clear understanding of the key value dimensions behind service choice and usage. It will lead to a focus of future research in services marketing, extending knowledge in the field and stimulating further empirical research on service personal values. At the managerial level, as a tool the SERPVAL scale should allow practitioners to evaluate and improve the value of a service, and consequently, to define strategies and actions to address services for customers based on their fundamental personal values. Through qualitative and empirical research, we find that the service quality construct conforms to the structure of a second-order factor model that ties service quality perceptions to distinct and actionable dimensions: outcome, interaction, and environmental quality. In turn, each has two subdimensions that define the basis of service quality perceptions. The authors further suggest that for each of these subdimensions to contribute to improved service quality perceptions, the quality received by consumers must be perceived to be reliable, responsive, and empathetic. Although the service personal value may be found in researches that explore individual values and their consequences for consumer behavior, there is no established operationalization of a SERPVAL scale. The inexistence of an established scale, duly adapted in order to understand and analyze personal values behind services usage, exposes the need of a measurement scale with such a purpose. This need has to be rooted, however, in a conceptualization of the construct being scaled. Service personal values can be defined as a customer's overall assessment of the use of a service based on the perception of what is achieved in terms of his own personal values. As consumer behaviors serve to show an individual's values, the use of a service can also be a way to fulfill and demonstrate consumers'personal values. In this sense, a service can provide more to the customer than its concrete and abstract attributes at both the attribute and the quality levels, and more than its functional consequences at the value level. Both values and services literatures agree, that personal value is the highest-level concept, followed by instrumental values, attitudes and finally by product attributes. Purchasing behaviors are agreed to be the end result of these concepts' interaction, with personal values taking a major role in the final decision process. From both consumers' and practitioners' perspectives, values are extremely relevant, as they are desirable goals that serve as guiding principles in people's lives. While building on previous research, we propose to assess service personal values through three broad groups of individual dimensions; at the self-oriented level, we use (1) service value to peaceful life (SVPL) and, at the social-oriented level, we use (2) service value to social recognition (SVSR), and (3) service value to social integration (SVSI). Service value to peaceful life is our first dimension. This dimension emerged as a combination of values coming from the RVS scale, a scale built specifically to assess general individual values. If a service promotes a pleasurable life, brings or improves tranquility, safety and harmony, then its user recognizes the value of this service. Generally, this service can improve the user's pleasure of life, since it protects or defends the consumer from threats to life or pressures on it. While building upon both the LOV scale, a scale built specifically to assess consumer values, and the RVS scale for individual values, we develop the other two dimensions: SVSR and SVSI. The roles of social recognition and social integration to improve service personal value have been seriously neglected. Social recognition derives its outcome utility from its predictive utility. When applying this underlying belief to our second dimension, SVSR, we assume that people use a service while taking into consideration the content of what is delivered. Individuals consider whether the service aids in gaining respect from others, social recognition and status, as well as whether it allows achieving a more fulfilled and stimulating life, which might then be revealed to others. People also tend to engage in behavior that receives social recognition and to avoid behavior that leads to social disapproval, and this contributes to an individual's social integration. This leads us to the third dimension, SVSI, which is based on the fact that if the consumer perceives that a service strengthens friendships, provides the possibility of becoming more integrated in the group, or promotes better relationships at the social, professional or family levels, then the service will contribute to social integration, and naturally the individual will recognize personal value in the service. Most of the research in business values deals with individual values. However, to our knowledge, no study has dealt with assessing overall personal values as well as their dimensions in a service context. Our final results show that the scales adapted from the Schwartz list were excluded. A possible explanation is that although Schwartz builds on Rokeach work in order to explore individual values, its dimensions might be especially focused on analyzing societal values. As we are looking for individual dimensions, this might explain why the values inspired by the Schwartz list were excluded from the model. The hierarchical structure of the final scale presented in this paper also presents theoretical implications. Although we cannot claim to definitively capture the dimensions of service personal values, we believe that we come close to capturing these overall evaluations because the second-order factor extracts the underlying commonality among dimensions. In addition to obtaining respondents' evaluations of the dimensions, the second-order factor model captures the common variance among these dimensions, reflecting the respondents' overall assessment of service personal values. Towards this fact, we expect that the service personal values conceptualization and measurement scale presented here contributes to both business values literature and the service marketing field, allowing for the delineation of strategies for adding value to services. This new scale also presents managerial implications. The SERPVAL dimensions give some guidance on how to better pursue a highly service-oriented business strategy. Indeed, the SERPVAL scale can be used for benchmarking purposes, as this scale can be used to identify whether or not a firms' marketing strategies are consistent with consumers' expectations. Managerial assessment of the personal values of a service might be extremely important because it allows managers to better understand what customers want or value. Thus, this scale allows us to identify what services are really valuable to the final consumer; providing knowledge for making choices regarding which services to include. Traditional approaches have focused their attention on service attributes (as quality) and service consequences(as service value), but personal values may be an important set of variables to be considered in understanding what attracts consumers to a certain service. By using the SERPVAL scale to assess the personal values associated with a services usage, managers may better understand the reasons behind services' usage, so that they may handle them more efficiently. While testing nomological validity, our empirical findings demonstrate that the three SERPVAL dimensions are positively and significantly associated with satisfaction. Additionally, while service value to social integration is related only with loyalty, service value to peaceful life is associated with both loyalty and repurchase intent. It is also interesting and surprising that service value to social recognition appears not to be significantly linked with loyalty and repurchase intent. A possible explanation is that no mobile service provider has yet emerged in the market as a luxury provider. All of the Portuguese providers are still trying to capture market share by means of low-end pricing. This research has implications for consumers as well. As more companies seek to build relationships with their customers, consumers are easily able to examine whether these relationships provide real value or not to their own lives. The selection of a strategy for a particular service depends on its customers' personal values. Being highly customer-oriented means having a strong commitment to customers, trying to create customer value and understanding customer needs. Enhancing service distinctiveness in order to provide a peaceful life, increase social recognition and gain a better social integration are all possible strategies that companies may pursue, but the one to pursue depends on the outstanding personal values held by the service customers. Data were gathered from 284 respondents in the korean discount store and online shopping mall market. This research proposed 3 hypotheses on 6 latent variables and tested through structural equation modeling. 6 alternative measurements were compared through statistical significance test of the 6 paths of research model and the overall fitting level of structural equation model. and the result was successful. and Perceived quality more positively influences service personal value when NFC is high than when no NFC is low in the off-line market. The results of the study indicate that service quality is properly modeled as an antecedent of service personal value. We consider the research and managerial implications of the study and its limitations. In sum, by knowing the dimensions a consumer takes into account when choosing a service, a better understanding of purchasing behaviors may be realized, guiding managers toward customers expectations. By defining strategies and actions that address potential problems with the service personal values, managers might ultimately influence their firm's performance. we expect to contribute to both business values and service marketing literatures through the development of the service personal value. At a time when marketing researchers are challenged to provide research with practical implications, it is also believed that this framework may be used by managers to pursue service-oriented business strategies while taking into consideration what customers value.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.175-191
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• 2011

With the MICE(Meeting, Incentive travel, Convention, Exhibition) industry coming into the spotlight, there has been a growing interest in the domestic exhibition industry. Accordingly, in Korea, various studies of the industry are being conducted to enhance exhibition performance as in the United States or Europe. Some studies are focusing particularly on analyzing visiting patterns of exhibition visitors using intelligent information technology in consideration of the variations in effects of watching exhibitions according to the exhibitory environment or technique, thereby understanding visitors and, furthermore, drawing the correlations between exhibiting businesses and improving exhibition performance. However, previous studies related to booth recommendation systems only discussed the accuracy of recommendation in the aspect of a system rather than determining changes in visitors' behavior or perception by recommendation. A booth recommendation system enables visitors to visit unplanned exhibition booths by recommending visitors suitable ones based on information about visitors' visits. Meanwhile, some visitors may be satisfied with their unplanned visits, while others may consider the recommending process to be cumbersome or obstructive to their free observation. In the latter case, the exhibition is likely to produce worse results compared to when visitors are allowed to freely observe the exhibition. Thus, in order to apply a booth recommendation system to exhibition halls, the factors affecting the performance of the system should be generally examined, and the effects of the system on visitors' unplanned visiting behavior should be carefully studied. As such, this study aims to determine the factors that affect the performance of a booth recommendation system by reviewing theories and literature and to examine the effects of visitors' perceived performance of the system on their satisfaction of unplanned behavior and intention to reuse the system. Toward this end, the unplanned behavior theory was adopted as the theoretical framework. Unplanned behavior can be defined as "behavior that is done by consumers without any prearranged plan". Thus far, consumers' unplanned behavior has been studied in various fields. The field of marketing, in particular, has focused on unplanned purchasing among various types of unplanned behavior, which has been often confused with impulsive purchasing. Nevertheless, the two are different from each other; while impulsive purchasing means strong, continuous urges to purchase things, unplanned purchasing is behavior with purchasing decisions that are made inside a store, not before going into one. In other words, all impulsive purchases are unplanned, but not all unplanned purchases are impulsive. Then why do consumers engage in unplanned behavior? Regarding this question, many scholars have made many suggestions, but there has been a consensus that it is because consumers have enough flexibility to change their plans in the middle instead of developing plans thoroughly. In other words, if unplanned behavior costs much, it will be difficult for consumers to change their prearranged plans. In the case of the exhibition hall examined in this study, visitors learn the programs of the hall and plan which booth to visit in advance. This is because it is practically impossible for visitors to visit all of the various booths that an exhibition operates due to their limited time. Therefore, if the booth recommendation system proposed in this study recommends visitors booths that they may like, they can change their plans and visit the recommended booths. Such visiting behavior can be regarded similarly to consumers' visit to a store or tourists' unplanned behavior in a tourist spot and can be understand in the same context as the recent increase in tourism consumers' unplanned behavior influenced by information devices. Thus, the following research model was established. This research model uses visitors' perceived performance of a booth recommendation system as the parameter, and the factors affecting the performance include trust in the system, exhibition visitors' knowledge levels, expected personalization of the system, and the system's threat to freedom. In addition, the causal relation between visitors' satisfaction of their perceived performance of the system and unplanned behavior and their intention to reuse the system was determined. While doing so, trust in the booth recommendation system consisted of 2nd order factors such as competence, benevolence, and integrity, while the other factors consisted of 1st order factors. In order to verify this model, a booth recommendation system was developed to be tested in 2011 DMC Culture Open, and 101 visitors were empirically studied and analyzed. The results are as follows. First, visitors' trust was the most important factor in the booth recommendation system, and the visitors who used the system perceived its performance as a success based on their trust. Second, visitors' knowledge levels also had significant effects on the performance of the system, which indicates that the performance of a recommendation system requires an advance understanding. In other words, visitors with higher levels of understanding of the exhibition hall learned better the usefulness of the booth recommendation system. Third, expected personalization did not have significant effects, which is a different result from previous studies' results. This is presumably because the booth recommendation system used in this study did not provide enough personalized services. Fourth, the recommendation information provided by the booth recommendation system was not considered to threaten or restrict one's freedom, which means it is valuable in terms of usefulness. Lastly, high performance of the booth recommendation system led to visitors' high satisfaction levels of unplanned behavior and intention to reuse the system. To sum up, in order to analyze the effects of a booth recommendation system on visitors' unplanned visits to a booth, empirical data were examined based on the unplanned behavior theory and, accordingly, useful suggestions for the establishment and design of future booth recommendation systems were made. In the future, further examination should be conducted through elaborate survey questions and survey objects.