Designated as a national treasure of Korea and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the Tripitaka Koreana at Haeinsa Temple is the world's oldest and most comprehensive extant version of the Tripitaka in Hanja script (i.e., Chinese characters). The set consists of 81,352 carved woodblocks, some of which have two or more copies, which are known as "duplicate woodblocks." These duplicates are supplementary woodblocks (bogakpan) that were carved some time after the original production, likely to replace blocks that had been eroded or damaged by repeated printings. According to the most recent survey, the number of supplementary woodblocks is 118, or approximately 0.14% of the total set, which attests to the outstanding preservation of the original woodblocks. Research on the supplementary woodblocks can reveal important details about the preservation and management of the Tripitaka Koreana woodblocks. Most of the supplementary woodblocks were carved during the Joseon period (1392-1910) or Japanese colonial period (1910-1945). Although the details of the woodblocks from the Japanese colonial period have been recorded and organized to a certain extent, no such efforts have been made with regards to the woodblocks from the Joseon period. This paper analyzes the characteristics and production date of the supplementary woodblocks of the Tripitaka Koreana. The sutra with the most supplementary woodblocks is the Maha Prajnaparamita Sutra (Perfection of Transcendental Wisdom), often known as the Heart Sutra. In fact, 76 of the total 118 supplementary woodblocks (64.4%) are for this sutra. Hence, analyses of printed versions of the Maha Prajnaparamita Sutra should illuminate trends in the carving of supplementary woodblocks for the Tripitaka Koreana, including the representative characteristics of different periods. According to analysis of the 76 supplementary woodblocks of the Maha Prajnaparamita Sutra, 23 were carved during the Japanese colonial period: 12 in 1915 and 11 in 1937. The remaining 53 were carved during the Joseon period at three separate times. First, 14 of the woodblocks bear the inscription "carved in the mujin year by Haeji" ("戊辰年更刻海志"). Here, the "mujin year" is estimated to correspond to 1448, or the thirtieth year of the reign of King Sejong. On many of these 14 woodblocks, the name of the person who did the carving is engraved outside the border. One of these names is Seonggyeong, an artisan who is known to have been active in 1446, thus supporting the conclusion that the mujin year corresponds to 1448. The vertical length of these woodblocks (inside the border) is 21 cm, which is about 1 cm shorter than the original woodblocks. Some of these blocks were carved in the Zhao Mengfu script. Distinguishing features include the appearance of faint lines on some plates, and the rough finish of the bottoms. The second group of supplementary woodblocks was carved shortly after 1865, when the monks Namho Yeonggi and Haemyeong Jangung had two copies of the Tripitaka Koreana printed. At the time, some of the pages could not be printed because the original woodblocks were damaged. This is confirmed by the missing pages of the extant copy that is now preserved at Woljeongsa Temple. As a result, the supplementary woodblocks are estimated to have been produced immediately after the printing. Evidently, however, not all of the damaged woodblocks could be replaced at this time, as only six woodblocks (comprising eight pages) were carved. On the 1865 woodblocks, lines can be seen between the columns, no red paint was applied, and the prayers of patrons were also carved into the plates. The third carving of supplementary woodblocks occurred just before 1899, when the imperial court of the Korean Empire sponsored a new printing of the Tripitaka Koreana. Government officials who were dispatched to supervise the printing likely inspected the existing blocks and ordered supplementary woodblocks to be carved to replace those that were damaged. A total of 33 supplementary woodblocks (comprising 56 pages) were carved at this time, accounting for the largest number of supplementary woodblocks for the Maha Prajnaparamita Sutra. On the 1899 supplementary woodblocks, red paint was applied to each plate and one line was left blank at both ends.
In recent years, one of the major reasons for the fierce competition amongst firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares and customer acquisition rate in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Because of this change in recent marketing environment, the differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important to gain competitive advantage. Price promotion is the favorite strategy that most retailers use to achieve short-term sales increase, induce consumer's brand switch, in troduce new product into market, and so forth. However, if marketers apply or copy an identical price promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in product and consumer preference, it will cause serious problems because discounted price itself could make people skeptical about product quality, and the changes of perceived value might appear differently depending on other factors such as consumer involvement or brand attitude. Previous studies showed that price promotion would certainly increase sales, and the discounted price compared to regular price would enhance the consumer's perceived values. On the other hand, discounted price itself could make people depreciate or skeptical about product quality, and reduce the consumers' positivity bias because consumers might be unsure whether the current price promotion is the retailer's best price offer. Moreover, we cannot say that discounted price absolutely enhances the consumer's perceived values regardless of product category and purchase situations. That is, the factors that affect consumers' value perceptions and buying behavior are so diverse in reality that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what variable was used or how experiment conditions were designed. Majority of previous researches on the effect of price-comparison advertising have used consumers' buying behavior as dependent variable. In order to figure out consumers' buying behavior theoretically, analysis of value perceptions which influence buying intentions is needed. In addition, they did not combined the independent variables such as brand loyalty and price discount rate together. For this reason, this paper tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception. And we provided with theoretical and managerial implications that marketers need to consider such variables as product attributes, brand loyalty, and consumer involvement at the same time, and then establish a differentiated pricing strategy case by case in order to enhance consumer's perceived values properl. Three research concepts were used in our study and each concept based on past researches was defined. The perceived acquisition value in this study was defined as the perceived net gains associated with the products or services acquired. That is, the perceived acquisition value of the product will be positively influenced by the benefits buyers believe they are getting by acquiring and using the product, and negatively influenced by the money given up to acquire the product. And the perceived transaction value was defined as the perception of psychological satisfaction or pleasure obtained from taking advantage of the financial terms of the price deal. Lastly, the brand loyalty was defined as favorable attitude towards a purchased product. Thus, a consumer loyal to a brand has an emotional attachment to the brand or firm. Repeat purchasers continue to buy the same brand even though they do not have an emotional attachment to it. We assumed that if the degree of brand loyalty is high, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value will increase when higher discount rate is provided. But we found that there are no significant differences in values between two different discount rates as a result of empirical analysis. It means that price reduction did not affect consumer's brand choice significantly because the perceived sacrifice decreased only a little, and customers are satisfied with product's benefits when brand loyalty is high. From the result, we confirmed that consumers with high degree of brand loyalty to a specific product are less sensitive to price change. Thus, using price promotion strategy to merely expect sale increase is not recommendable. Instead of discounting price, marketers need to strengthen consumers' brand loyalty and maintain the skimming strategy. On the contrary, when the degree of brand loyalty is low, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value decreased significantly when higher discount rate is provided. Generally brands that are considered inferior might be able to draw attention away from the quality of the product by making consumers focus more on the sacrifice component of price. But considering the fact that consumers with low degree of brand loyalty are known to be unsatisfied with product's benefits and have relatively negative brand attitude, bigger price reduction offered in experiment condition of this paper made consumers depreciate product's quality and benefit more and more, and consumer's psychological perceived sacrifice increased while perceived values decreased accordingly. We infer that, in the case of inferior brand, a drastic price-cut or frequent price promotion may increase consumers' uncertainty about overall components of product. Therefore, it appears that reinforcing the augmented product such as after-sale service, delivery and giving credit which is one of the levels consisting of product would be more effective in reality. This will be better rather than competing with product that holds high brand loyalty by reducing sale price. Although this study tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception, there are several limitations. This study was conducted in controlled conditions where the high involvement product and two different levels of discount rate were applied. Given the presence of low involvement product, when both pieces of information are available, it is likely that the results we have reported here may have been different. Thus, this research results explain only the specific situation. Second, the sample selected in this study was university students in their twenties, so we cannot say that the results are firmly effective to all generations. Future research that manipulates the level of discount along with the consumer involvement might lead to a more robust understanding of the effects various discount rate. And, we used a cellular phone as a product stimulus, so it would be very interesting to analyze the result when the product stimulus is an intangible product such as service. It could be also valuable to analyze whether the change of perceived value affects consumers' final buying behavior positively or negatively.