• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.101-123
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• 2012

Currently, Social Media, it has widely a renown keyword and its related social trends and businesses have been fastly applied into various contexts. Social media has become an important research area for scholars interested in online technologies and cyber space and their social impacts. Social media is not only including web-based services but also mobile-based application services that allow people to share various style information and knowledge through online connection. Social media users have tendency to common identity- and bond-attachment through interactions such as 'thumbs up', 'reply note', 'forwarding', which may have driven from various factors and may result in delivering information, sharing knowledge, and specific experiences et al. Even further, almost of all social media sites provide and connect unknown strangers depending on shared interests, political views, or enjoyable activities, and other stuffs incorporating the creation of contents, which provides benefits to users. As fast developing digital devices including smartphone, tablet PC, internet based blogging, and photo and video clips, scholars desperately have began to study regarding diverse issues connecting human beings' motivations and the behavioral results which may be articulated by the format of antecedents as well as consequences related to contents that people create via social media. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, or Cyworld users are more and more getting close each other and build up their relationships by a different style. In this sense, people use social media as tools for maintain pre-existing network, creating new people socially, and at the same time, explicitly find some business opportunities using personal and unlimited public networks. In terms of theory in explaining this phenomenon, social capital is a concept that describes the benefits one receives from one's relationship with others. Thereby, social media use is closely related to the form and connected of people, which is a bridge that can be able to achieve informational benefits of a heterogeneous network of people and common identity- and bonding-attachment which emphasizes emotional benefits from community members or friend group. Social capital would be resources accumulated through the relationships among people, which can be considered as an investment in social relations with expected returns and may achieve benefits from the greater access to and use of resources embedded in social networks. Social media using for their social capital has vastly been adopted in a cyber world, however, there has been little explaining the phenomenon theoretically how people may take advantages or opportunities through interaction among people, why people may interactively give willingness to help or their answers. The individual consciously express themselves in an online space, so called, common identity- or bonding-attachments. Common-identity attachment is the focus of the weak ties, which are loose connections between individuals who may provide useful information or new perspectives for one another but typically not emotional support, whereas common-bonding attachment is explained that between individuals in tightly-knit, emotionally close relationship such as family and close friends. The common identify- and bonding-attachment are mainly studying on-offline setting, which individual convey an impression to others that are expressed to own interest to others. Thus, individuals expect to meet other people and are trying to behave self-presentation engaging in opposite partners accordingly. As developing social media, individuals are motivated to disclose self-disclosures of open and honest using diverse cues such as verbal and nonverbal and pictorial and video files to their friends as well as passing strangers. Social media context, common identity- and bond-attachment for self-presentation seems different compared with face-to-face context. In the realm of social media, social users look for self-impression by posting text messages, pictures, video files. Under the digital environments, people interact to work, shop, learn, entertain, and be played. Social media provides increasingly the kinds of intention and behavior in online. Typically, identity and bond social capital through self-presentation is the intentional and tangible component of identity. At social media, people try to engage in others via a desired impression, which can maintain through performing coherent and complementary communications including displaying signs, symbols, brands made of digital stuffs(information, interest, pictures, etc,). In marketing area, consumers traditionally show common-identity as they select clothes, hairstyles, automobiles, logos, and so on, to impress others in any given context in a shopping mall or opera. To examine these social capital and attachment, we combined a social capital theory with an attachment theory into our research model. Our research model focuses on the common identity- and bond-attachment how they are formulated through social capitals: cognitive capital, structural capital, relational capital, and individual characteristics. Thus, we examined that individual online kindness, self-rated expertise, and social relation influence to build common identity- and bond-attachment, and the attachment effects make an impact on both the willingness to help, however, common bond seems not to show directly impact on information sharing. As a result, we discover that the social capital and attachment theories are mainly applicable to the context of social media and usage in the individual networks. We collected sample data of 256 who are using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Cyworld and analyzed the suggested hypotheses through the Structural Equation Model by AMOS. This study analyzes the direct and indirect relationship between the social network service usage and outcomes. Antecedents of kindness, confidence of knowledge, social relations are significantly affected to the mediators common identity-and bond attachments, however, interestingly, network externality does not impact, which we assumed that a size of network was a negative because group members would not significantly contribute if the members do not intend to actively interact with each other. The mediating variables had a positive effect on toward willingness to help. Further, common identity attachment has stronger significant on shared information.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.37-63
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• 2012

In franchise business, exclusive sales territory (sometimes EST in table) protection is a very important issue from an economic, social and political point of view. It affects the growth and survival of both franchisor and franchisee and often raises issues of social and political conflicts. When franchisee is not familiar with related laws and regulations, franchisor has high chance to utilize it. Exclusive sales territory protection by the manufacturer and distributors (wholesalers or retailers) means sales area restriction by which only certain distributors have right to sell products or services. The distributor, who has been granted exclusive sales territories, can protect its own territory, whereas he may be prohibited from entering in other regions. Even though exclusive sales territory is a quite critical problem in franchise business, there is not much rigorous research about the reason, results, evaluation, and future direction based on empirical data. This paper tries to address this problem not only from logical and nomological validity, but from empirical validation. While we purse an empirical analysis, we take into account the difficulties of real data collection and statistical analysis techniques. We use a set of disclosure document data collected by Korea Fair Trade Commission, instead of conventional survey method which is usually criticized for its measurement error. Existing theories about exclusive sales territory can be summarized into two groups as shown in the table below. The first one is about the effectiveness of exclusive sales territory from both franchisor and franchisee point of view. In fact, output of exclusive sales territory can be positive for franchisors but negative for franchisees. Also, it can be positive in terms of sales but negative in terms of profit. Therefore, variables and viewpoints should be set properly. The other one is about the motive or reason why exclusive sales territory is protected. The reasons can be classified into four groups - industry characteristics, franchise systems characteristics, capability to maintain exclusive sales territory, and strategic decision. Within four groups of reasons, there are more specific variables and theories as below. Based on these theories, we develop nine hypotheses which are briefly shown in the last table below with the results. In order to validate the hypothesis, data is collected from government (FTC) homepage which is open source. The sample consists of 1,896 franchisors and it contains about three year operation data, from 2006 to 2008. Within the samples, 627 have exclusive sales territory protection policy and the one with exclusive sales territory policy is not evenly distributed over 19 representative industries. Additional data are also collected from another government agency homepage, like Statistics Korea. Also, we combine data from various secondary sources to create meaningful variables as shown in the table below. All variables are dichotomized by mean or median split if they are not inherently dichotomized by its definition, since each hypothesis is composed by multiple variables and there is no solid statistical technique to incorporate all these conditions to test the hypotheses. This paper uses a simple chi-square test because hypotheses and theories are built upon quite specific conditions such as industry type, economic condition, company history and various strategic purposes. It is almost impossible to find all those samples to satisfy them and it can't be manipulated in experimental settings. However, more advanced statistical techniques are very good on clean data without exogenous variables, but not good with real complex data. The chi-square test is applied in a way that samples are grouped into four with two criteria, whether they use exclusive sales territory protection or not, and whether they satisfy conditions of each hypothesis. So the proportion of sample franchisors which satisfy conditions and protect exclusive sales territory, does significantly exceed the proportion of samples that satisfy condition and do not protect. In fact, chi-square test is equivalent with the Poisson regression which allows more flexible application. As results, only three hypotheses are accepted. When attitude toward the risk is high so loyalty fee is determined according to sales performance, EST protection makes poor results as expected. And when franchisor protects EST in order to recruit franchisee easily, EST protection makes better results. Also, when EST protection is to improve the efficiency of franchise system as a whole, it shows better performances. High efficiency is achieved as EST prohibits the free riding of franchisee who exploits other's marketing efforts, and it encourages proper investments and distributes franchisee into multiple regions evenly. Other hypotheses are not supported in the results of significance testing. Exclusive sales territory should be protected from proper motives and administered for mutual benefits. Legal restrictions driven by the government agency like FTC could be misused and cause mis-understandings. So there need more careful monitoring on real practices and more rigorous studies by both academicians and practitioners.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.17-27
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• 2011

As the world becomes more globalized, business competition becomes fiercer, while consumers' needs for less expensive quality products are on the increase. Business operations make an effort to secure a competitive edge in costs and services, and the logistics industry, that is, the industry operating the storing and transporting of goods, once thought to be an expense, begins to be considered as the third cash cow, a source of new income. Logistics centers are central to storage, loading and unloading of deliveries, packaging operations, and dispensing goods' information. As hubs for various deliveries, they also serve as a core infrastructure to smoothly coordinate manufacturing and selling, using varied information and operation systems. Logistics centers are increasingly on the rise as centers of business supply activities, growing beyond their previous role of primarily storing goods. They are no longer just facilities; they have become logistics strongholds that encompass various features from demand forecast to the regulation of supply, manufacturing, and sales by realizing SCM, taking into account marketability and the operation of service and products. However, despite these changes in logistics operations, some centers have been unable to shed their past roles as warehouses. For the continuous development of logistics centers, various measures would be needed, including a revision of current supporting policies, formulating effective management plans, and establishing systematic standards for founding, managing, and controlling logistics centers. To this end, the research explored previous studies on the use and effectiveness of logistics centers. From a theoretical perspective, an evaluation of the overall introduction, purposes, and transitions in the use of logistics centers found issues to ponder and suggested measures to promote and further advance logistics centers. First, a fact-finding survey to establish demand forecast and standardization is needed. As logistics newspapers predicted that after 2012 supply would exceed demand, causing rents to fall, the business environment for logistics centers has faltered. However, since there is a shortage of fact-finding surveys regarding actual demand for domestic logistic centers, it is hard to predict what the future holds for this industry. Accordingly, the first priority should be to get to the essence of the current market situation by conducting accurate domestic and international fact-finding surveys. Based on those, management and evaluation indicators should be developed to build the foundation for the consistent advancement of logistics centers. Second, many policies for logistics centers should be revised or developed. Above all, a guideline for fair trade between a shipper and a commercial logistics center should be enacted. Since there are no standards for fair trade between them, rampant unfair trades according to market practices have brought chaos to market orders, and now the logistics industry is confronting its own difficulties. Therefore, unfair trade cases that currently plague logistics centers should be gathered by the industry and fair trade guidelines should be established and implemented. In addition, restrictive employment regulations for foreign workers should be eased, and logistics centers should be charged industry rates for the use of electricity. Third, various measures should be taken to improve the management environment. First, we need to find out how to activate value-added logistics. Because the traditional purpose of logistics centers was storage and loading/unloading of goods, their profitability had a limit, and the need arose to find a new angle to create a value added service. Logistic centers have been perceived as support for a company's storage, manufacturing, and sales needs, not as creators of profits. The center's role in the company's economics has been lowering costs. However, as the logistics' management environment spiraled, along with its storage purpose, developing a new feature of profit creation should be a desirable goal, and to achieve that, value added logistics should be promoted. Logistics centers can also be improved through cost estimation. In the meantime, they have achieved some strides in facility development but have still fallen behind in others, particularly in management functioning. Lax management has been rampant because the industry has not developed a concept of cost estimation. The centers have since made an effort toward unification, standardization, and informatization while realizing cost reductions by establishing systems for effective management, but it has been hard to produce profits. Thus, there is an urgent need to estimate costs by determining a basic cost range for each division of work at logistics centers. This undertaking can be the first step to improving the ineffective aspects of how they operate. Ongoing research and constant efforts have been made to improve the level of effectiveness in the manufacturing industry, but studies on resource management in logistics centers are hardly enough. Thus, a plan to calculate the optimal level of resources necessary to operate a logistics center should be developed and implemented in management behavior, for example, by standardizing the hours of operation. If logistics centers, shippers, related trade groups, academic figures, and other experts could launch a committee to work with the government and maintain an ongoing relationship, the constraint and cooperation among members would help lead to coherent development plans for logistics centers. If the government continues its efforts to provide financial support, nurture professional workers, and maintain safety management, we can anticipate the continuous advancement of logistics centers.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.13
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• pp.869-895
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• 2000

The US supports the Information and Communication (IC) industry as a strategic one to wield a complete power over the World Market. However, several other countries are also eager to have the support for the IC industry because the industry produces a high added value and has a significant effect on other industries. Korea is not an exception. Korea recently succeeded in the commercialization of CDMA for the first time in the world, after the successful development of TDX. Hence, it is highly likely to get tracked by the US. Although the IC industry is a specific sector of IT, there is a concern that there might be a trade friction between the US and Korea due to a possible competition. It will be very important to prepare a solution in advance so that Korea could prevent the friction and at the same time increase its share domestically and globally. It will be our important task to solve the problem with the minimum cost if the conflict arises unfortunately in the IT area. The parties that have a strong influence on the US trade policy are the think tank group and the IT-related interest group. Therefore, it would be important to have a close relationship with them. We found some implications by analyzing the case of Japan, which has experienced trade frictions with the US over the long period of time in the high tech industry. In order to get rid of those conflicts with the US, the Japanese did the following things : (1) The Japanese government developed supporting theories and also resorted to international support so that the world could support the Japanese theories. (2) Through continual dialogue with the US business people, the Japanese business people sought after solutions to share profits among the Japanese and the US both in the domestic and in the worldwide markets. They focused on lobbying activities to influence the US public opinion to support the Japanese. The specific implementation plan was first to open culture lobby toward opinion leaders who were leaders about the US opinion. The institution, Japan Society, were formed to deliver a high quality lobbying activities. The second plan is economic lobby. They have established Japanese Economic Institute at Washington. They provide information about Japan regularly or irregularly to the US government, research institution, universities, etc., that are interested in Japan. The main objective behind these activities though is to advertise the validity of Japanese policy. Japanese top executives, practical interest groups on international trade, are trying to justify their position by direct contact with the US policy makers. The third one is political lobby. Japan is very careful about this political lobby. It is doing its best not to give impression that Japan is trying to shape the US policy making. It is collecting a vast amount of information to make a correct judgment on situation. It is not tilted toward one political party or the other, and is rather developing a long-term network of people who understand and support the Japanese policy. The following implications were drawn from the experience of Japan. First, the Korean government should develop a long-term plan and execute it to improve the Korean image perceived by American people. Second, the Korean government should begin public relation activities toward the US elite group. It is inevitable to make an effort to advertise Korea to this elite group because this group leads public opinion in the USA. Third, the Korean government needs the development of a relevant policy to elevate the positive atmosphere for advertising toward the US. For example, we need information about to whom and how to about lobbying activities, personnel network who immediately respond to wrong articles about Korea in the US press, and lastly the most recent data bank of Korean support group inside the USA. Fourth, the Korean government should create an atmosphere to facilitate the advertising toward the US. Examples include provision of incentives in tax on the expenses for the advertising toward the US and provision of rewards to those who significantly contribute to the advertising activities. Fifth, the Korean government should perform the role of a bridge between Korean and the US business people. Sixth, the government should promptly analyze the policy of IT industry, a strategic area, and timely distribute information to industries in Korea. Since the Korean government is the only institution that has formal contact with the US government, it is highly likely to provide information of a high quality. The followings are some implications for business institutions. First, Korean business organization should carefully analyze and observe the business policy and managerial conditions of US companies. It is very important to do so because all the trade frictions arise at the business level. Second, it is also very important that the top management of Korean firms contact the opinion leaders of the US. Third, it is critically needed that Korean business people sent to the USA do their part for PR activities. Fourth, it is very important to advertise to American employees in Korean companies. If we cannot convince our American employees, it would be a lot harder to convince regular American. Therefore, it is very important to make the American employees the support group for Korean ways. Fifth, it should try to get much information as early as possible about the US firms policy in the IT area. It should give an enormous effort on early collection of information because by doing so it has more time to respond. Sixth, it should research on the PR cases of foreign enterprise or non-American companies inside the USA. The research needs to identify the success factors and the failure factors. Finally, the business firm will get more valuable information if it analyzes and responds to, according to each medium.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.89-111
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• 2008

Due to the development of digital technology, studies regarding smart wear integrating daily life have rapidly increased. However, consumer research about perception and attitude toward smart clothing hardly could find. The purpose of this study was to identify innovative characteristics and perceived risk of smart clothing and to analyze the influences of theses factors on product attitudes and intention to adopt. Specifically, five hypotheses were established. H1: Perceived attributes of smart clothing except for complexity would have positive relations to product attitude or purchase intention, while complexity would be opposite. H2: Product attitude would have positive relation to purchase intention. H3: Product attitude would have a mediating effect between perceived attributes and purchase intention. H4: Perceived risks of smart clothing would have negative relations to perceived attributes except for complexity, and positive relations to complexity. H5: Product attitude would have a mediating effect between perceived risks and purchase intention. A self-administered questionnaire was developed based on previous studies. After pretest, the data were collected during September, 2006, from university students in Korea who were relatively sensitive to innovative products. A total of 300 final useful questionnaire were analyzed by SPSS 13.0 program. About 60.3% were male with the mean age of 21.3 years old. About 59.3% reported that they were aware of smart clothing, but only 9 respondents purchased it. The mean of attitudes toward smart clothing and purchase intention was 2.96 (SD=.56) and 2.63 (SD=.65) respectively. Factor analysis using principal components with varimax rotation was conducted to identify perceived attribute and perceived risk dimensions. Perceived attributes of smart wear were categorized into relative advantage (including compatibility), observability (including triability), and complexity. Perceived risks were identified into physical/performance risk, social psychological risk, time loss risk, and economic risk. Regression analysis was conducted to test five hypotheses. Relative advantage and observability were significant predictors of product attitude (adj $R^2$=.223) and purchase intention (adj $R^2$=.221). Complexity showed negative influence on product attitude. Product attitude presented significant relation to purchase intention (adj $R^2$=.692) and partial mediating effect between perceived attributes and purchase intention (adj $R^2$=.698). Therefore hypothesis one to three were accepted. In order to test hypothesis four, four dimensions of perceived risk and demographic variables (age, gender, monthly household income, awareness of smart clothing, and purchase experience) were entered as independent variables in the regression models. Social psychological risk, economic risk, and gender (female) were significant to predict relative advantage (adj $R^2$=.276). When perceived observability was a dependent variable, social psychological risk, time loss risk, physical/performance risk, and age (younger) were significant in order (adj $R^2$=.144). However, physical/performance risk was positively related to observability. The more Koreans seemed to be observable of smart clothing, the more increased the probability of physical harm or performance problems received. Complexity was predicted by product awareness, social psychological risk, economic risk, and purchase experience in order (adj $R^2$=.114). Product awareness was negatively related to complexity, meaning high level of product awareness would reduce complexity of smart clothing. However, purchase experience presented positive relation with complexity. It appears that consumers can perceive high level of complexity when they are actually consuming smart clothing in real life. Risk variables were positively related with complexity. That is, in order to decrease complexity, it is also necessary to consider minimizing anxiety factors about social psychological wound or loss of money. Thus, hypothesis 4 was partially accepted. Finally, in testing hypothesis 5, social psychological risk and economic risk were significant predictors for product attitude (adj $R^2$=.122) and purchase intention (adj $R^2$=.099) respectively. When attitude variable was included with risk variables as independent variables in the regression model to predict purchase intention, only attitude variable was significant (adj $R^2$=.691). Thus attitude variable presented full mediating effect between perceived risks and purchase intention, and hypothesis 5 was accepted. Findings would provide guidelines for fashion and electronic businesses who aim to create and strengthen positive attitude toward smart clothing. Marketers need to consider not only functional feature of smart clothing, but also practical and aesthetic attributes, since appropriateness for social norm or self image would reduce uncertainty of psychological or social risk, which increase relative advantage of smart clothing. Actually social psychological risk was significantly associated to relative advantage. Economic risk is negatively associated with product attitudes as well as purchase intention, suggesting that smart-wear developers have to reflect on price ranges of potential adopters. It will be effective to utilize the findings associated with complexity when marketers in US plan communication strategy.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.245-276
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• 2008

Brand equity is one of the most important concepts in business practice as well as in academic research. Successful brands can allow marketers to gain competitive advantage (Lassar et al.,1995), including the opportunity for successful extensions, resilience against competitors' promotional pressures, and the ability to create barriers to competitive entry (Farquhar, 1989). Branding plays a special role in service firms because strong brands increase trust in intangible products (Berry, 2000), enabling customers to better visualize and understand them. They reduce customers' perceived monetary, social, and safety risks in buying services, which are obstacles to evaluating a service correctly before purchase. Also, a high level of brand equity increases consumer satisfaction, repurchasing intent, and degree of loyalty. Brand equity can be considered as a mixture that includes both financial assets and relationships. Actually, brand equity can be viewed as the value added to the product (Keller, 1993), or the perceived value of the product in consumers' minds. Mahajan et al. (1990) claim that customer-based brand equity can be measured by the level of consumers' perceptions. Several researchers discuss brand equity based on two dimensions: consumer perception and consumer behavior. Aaker (1991) suggests measuring brand equity through price premium, loyalty, perceived quality, and brand associations. Viewing brand equity as the consumer's behavior toward a brand, Keller (1993) proposes similar dimensions: brand awareness and brand knowledge. Thus, past studies tend to identify brand equity as a multidimensional construct consisted of brand loyalty, brand awareness, brand knowledge, customer satisfaction, perceived equity, brand associations, and other proprietary assets (Aaker, 1991, 1996; Blackston, 1995; Cobb-Walgren et al., 1995; Na, 1995). Other studies tend to regard brand equity and other brand assets, such as brand knowledge, brand awareness, brand image, brand loyalty, perceived quality, and so on, as independent but related constructs (Keller, 1993; Kirmani and Zeithaml, 1993). Walters(1978) defined information search as, "A psychological or physical action a consumer takes in order to acquire information about a product or store." But, each consumer has different methods for informationsearch. There are two methods of information search, internal and external search. Internal search is, "Search of information already saved in the memory of the individual consumer"(Engel, Blackwell, 1982) which is, "memory of a previous purchase experience or information from a previous search."(Beales, Mazis, Salop, and Staelin, 1981). External search is "A completely voluntary decision made in order to obtain new information"(Engel & Blackwell, 1982) which is, "Actions of a consumer to acquire necessary information by such methods as intentionally exposing oneself to advertisements, taking to friends or family or visiting a store."(Beales, Mazis, Salop, and Staelin, 1981). There are many sources for consumers' information search including advertisement sources such as the internet, radio, television, newspapers and magazines, information supplied by businesses such as sales people, packaging and in-store information, consumer sources such as family, friends and colleagues, and mass media sources such as consumer protection agencies, government agencies and mass media sources. Understanding consumers' purchasing behavior is a key factor of a firm to attract and retain customers and improving the firm's prospects for survival and growth, and enhancing shareholder's value. Therefore, marketers should understand consumer as individual and market segment. One theory of consumer behavior supports the belief that individuals are rational. Individuals think and move through stages when making a purchase decision. This means that rational thinkers have led to the identification of a consumer buying decision process. This decision process with its different levels of involvement and influencing factors has been widely accepted and is fundamental to the understanding purchase intention represent to what consumers think they will buy. Brand equity is not only companies but also very important asset more than product itself. This paper studies brand equity model and influencing factors including information process such as information searching and information resources in the fashion market in Asia and Europe. Information searching and information resources are influencing brand knowledge that influences consumers purchase decision. Nine research hypotheses are drawn to test the relationships among antecedents of brand equity and purchase intention and relationships among brand knowledge, brand value, brand attitude, and brand loyalty. H1. Information searching influences brand knowledge positively. H2. Information sources influence brand knowledge positively. H3. Brand knowledge influences brand attitude. H4. Brand knowledge influences brand value. H5. Brand attitude influences brand loyalty. H6. Brand attitude influences brand value. H7. Brand loyalty influences purchase intention. H8. Brand value influence purchase intention. H9. There will be the same research model in Asia and Europe. We performed structural equation model analysis in order to test hypotheses suggested in this study. The model fitting index of the research model in Asia was $X^2$=195.19(p=0.0), NFI=0.90, NNFI=0.87, CFI=0.90, GFI=0.90, RMR=0.083, AGFI=0.85, which means the model fitting of the model is good enough. In Europe, it was $X^2$=133.25(p=0.0), NFI=0.81, NNFI=0.85, CFI=0.89, GFI=0.90, RMR=0.073, AGFI=0.85, which means the model fitting of the model is good enough. From the test results, hypotheses were accepted. All of these hypotheses except one are supported. In Europe, information search is not an antecedent of brand knowledge. This means that sales of global fashion brands like jeans in Europe are not expanding as rapidly as in Asian markets such as China, Japan, and South Korea. Young consumers in European countries are not more brand and fashion conscious than their counter partners in Asia. The results have theoretical, practical meaning and contributions. In the fashion jeans industry, relatively few studies examining the viability of cross-national brand equity has been studied. This study provides insight on building global brand equity and suggests information process elements like information search and information resources are working differently in Asia and Europe for fashion jean market.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1-24
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• 2012

Franchises have recently emerged as the most rapidly expanding industry positioned to create a large impact in the domestic economic. The Chinese franchise industry developed rapidly in the period prior and subsequent to WTO accession with more than 50% of new franchises brands emerging since 2000. M&A transactions in the Chinese franchise industry have progressed actively. In the period from 2005-2007, due to the wholesale and retail market opening in accordance with the guidelines laid forth within the MOU by the WTO the Chinese franchise market is now the largest market in the world all despite a short history of only 20 years. The amount of franchise market research on China is disproportional to its current size and development potential. Beginning in the 1990s, market research conducted by the International Franchise Association focused on emerging markets in Eastern Europe and China. While the research dealt with the Chinese investment environment, it insufficiently explained the market region and cultural environment. The purpose of this research is (i) to investigate the determinants of the performance of franchise systems in China and (ii) new contract renewals based on performance factors. This study will complement existing research in terms of the franchisee perspective. This study may also prove of the benefit to the franchise companies entering the Chinese franchise market enabling them to develop an effective strategy. This study shows that support, incentives, and system standardization by franchisor yielded a positive effect on management performance. This is consistent with previous studies by Shin (2000) and Kim (2008) targeting Korean franchises. Therefore, in the Chinese market, the franchisor must focus on support, incentives, and system standardization rather than concentrate only on the recruitment of franchisees in order to improve revenue. Hypotheses regarding franchisor control have been dismissed in existing research, in the opinion of this study, due to their complexity and inability to control the merchant as a one-kind-assessment-standard. Our findings show that the franchisees' financial condition, management ability and entrepreneurial spirit, among franchisee's characteristics, have a positive effect on franchisor's business performance and satisfaction for the franchisee. This is consistent with previous studies on headquarters' management performance of Lussier (1996), Heo and Jang (2008), and franchisees' financial condition, management ability and entrepreneurial spirit effect on franchisor's satisfaction of Weaven and Franzer (2007), Kim (2009), Han (2009), and Yoon etc. (2008). Therefore, when permitting a franchisee, financial condition, management ability, entrepreneurship of the franchisee should be carefully considered. Among relational factors between franchisor and franchisee, trust has the positive influence on the management performance of the franchisor while conflict has a negative effect. However, trust, commitment and conflict factors have been shown not to have any impact on the satisfaction of the franchise headquarters. This result is consistent with the previous studies of Pavlou and Ba (2000), Morrison (1999), Weaven and Frazer (2007), Kim and Park (1994), Sohn (2007) which show that trust between franchisor and the franchisees have a positive effect and that conflict has a negative impact on franchisor's management performance. Other factors causing a negative effective on the franchisor's management performance are a rapid environmental changes and uncertainty in the business. This is consistent with Campbell et al (2007), Kim and Kim (2009), Han and Baek (2008). Finally, the high management performance and satisfaction of the franchise headquarters has a positive effect on the intention of franchise renewal. In the case of large markets such as China, the franchisor's strategy and the role is very important. In this study, we also investigated the characteristics of franchisor and franchisee, relationship, and environmental uncertainty affecting on the management performance and satisfaction of franchisor. Recently, Korean franchises are attempting to enter foreign markets through the rise in popularity of Korean culture and entertainment commonly referred to as the Korean wave. This study provides recommendations for Korean franchises intending on entering the Chinese market. First, in order to achieve stable profits, the franchise corporation needs to support the operation of the individual franchisee through incentives and standardization of services. Second, because trust between the franchisor and franchisee has a positive effect on management performance, on-going discussion and cooperation is necessary to reduce the level of conflict.

• Development and Reproduction
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.257-264
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• 2009

A neurotoxin, 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) has been widely used to create animal model for Parkinson's disease (PD) due to its specific toxicity against dopaminergic (DA) neurons. Since DA signals modulate a broad spectrum of CNS physiology, one can expect profound alterations in neuroendocrine activities of both PD patients and 6-OHDA treated animals. Limited applications of 6-OHDA injection model, however, have been made on the studies of hypothalamuspituitary neuroendocrine circuits. The present study was performed to examine whether blockade of brain catecholamine (CA) biosynthesis with 6-OHDA can make any alteration in the transcriptional activities of hypothalamus-pituitary hormone genes in adult male rats. Three-month-old male rats (SD strain) were received 6-OHDA ($200{\mu}g$ in $10{\mu}\ell$ of saline/animal) by intracerebroventricular (icv) injection, and sacrificed after two weeks. To determine the mRNA levels of hypothalamuspituitary hormone genes, total RNAs were extracted and applied to the semi-quantitative RT-PCRs. The mRNA levels of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), the rate-limiting enzyme for the catecholamine biosynthesis, were significantly lower than those from the control group (control:6-OHDA=1:0.72${\pm}$0.02AU, p<0.001), confirming the efficacy of 6-OHDA injection. The mRNA levels of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) and corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH) in the hypothalami from 6-OHDA group were significantly lower than those from the control group (GnRH, control:6-OHDA=1:0.39${\pm}$0.03AU, p<0.001; CRH, control:6-OHDA=1:0.76${\pm}$0.07AU, p<0.01). There were significant decreases in the mRNA levels of common alpha subunit of glycoprotein homones (Cg$\alpha$), LH beta subunit (LH-$\beta$), and FSH beta subunit (FSH-$\beta$) in pituitaries from 6-OHDA group compared to control values (Cg$\alpha$, control:6-OHDA=1:0.81${\pm}$0.02AU, p<0.001; LH-$\beta$, control:6-OHDA=1:0.68${\pm}$0.04AU, p<0.001; FSH-$\beta$, control:6-OHDA=1:0.84${\pm}$0.05AU, p<0.001). Similarly, the level of adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) transcripts from 6-OHDA group was significantly lower than that from the control group (control: 6-OHDA=1:0.86${\pm}$0.04AU, p<0.01). The present study demonstrated that centrally injected DA neurotoxin could downregulate the transcriptional activities of the two hypothalamus-pituitary neuroendocrine circuits, i.e., GnRH-gonadotropins and CRH-ACTH systems. These results suggested that hypothalamic CA input might affect on the activities of gonad and adrenal through modulation of hypothalamus-pituitary function, providing plausible explanation for frequent occurrence of sexual dysfunction and poor stress-response in PD patients.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.46 no.7
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• pp.876-885
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• 2017

This study aimed to identify the characteristics of Home Meal Replacement (HMR) product purchases and the need for HMR product development for Hong Kong consumers in order to suggest market segmentation strategies according to consumers' dietary lifestyle. For this, an online survey was conducted on a panel of 521 Hong Kong consumers with HMR purchase experience registered at a specialized organization. Data analysis was performed using SPSS (ver. 23.0). HMR purchase characteristics of Hong Kong consumers according to dietary lifestyle showed significant differences in all items, including 'number of purchases', 'purchase location', 'cost of single purchase', and 'reason for purchase'. According to dietary lifestyle, participants were divided into three clusters: 'High interest', 'normal interest', and 'low interest'. In the case of 'high interest in dietary life group', 'low-sodium food' was the most common, followed by 'heating food', 'low sugar food', and 'low calorie food'. In the case of 'moderate interest in dietary life group', 'low-sodium food' was the most common, followed by 'low sugar food', 'low calorie food', and 'nutritious meal'. In the case of 'low interest in dietary life group', 'low sugar food' was the most common, followed by 'low-sodium food', 'various new menu', and 'easy-to-carry dehydrated food'. For the 'high interest' group, the highest proportion of consumers were male in between the ages of 20 to 29, married, and worked in an office job. The 'high interest' consumers also showed a tendency to pay '15,000 to 20,000 KRW' per single purchase. The 'normal interest' group consisted of an even proportion of male and female consumers, with the most common age range being from 30 to 39 years, and most were married. These consumers preferred to spend 'less than 10,000 KRW' or '10,000 KRW to 15,000 KRW' per single purchase, which is in the lower price range for HMR purchases. The 'low interest in dietary life group' had more females gender-wise, were unmarried, and worked in an office job, For a single purchase, the 'low interest' group chose to pay less than 10,000 KRW, which is relatively lower than the other two clusters. The results of this study can be used as baseline data for building marketing strategies for HMR product development. It can also provide basic data and directions for new HMR export products that reflect consumer needs in order to create a market segmentation strategy for industrial applications.

• Journal of the East Asian Society of Dietary Life
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.856-868
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• 2009

This study was conducted to investigate causes for health problems among college women by analyzing factors related to their dietary habits, physical development, health habits, and blood parameters. The subjects were ages 20 to 24 years, lived in the Seoul area and were randomly selected during March, 2008 to August, 2009. The average height and weight of the overall subjects were $162.02{\pm}4.89\;cm$ and $53.96{\pm}7.00\;kg$, respectively. According to a 3-point assessment scale for the subjects' dietary habits, the average point value was 21.2. The percentage of subjects that ate breakfast daily was only 30.5%, and they omitted regular meals at least once a week. Approximately 83.5% of the subjects reported eating out often or frequently, and preferred Korean foods when they ate out. The subjects had interim meals (snacks) one or two times daily, and 40.4% of them preferred unbalanced meals. As their interim meals, among the 'good' group, ate breaded potatoes (39.3%), carbonated beverages, and ice cream (36.8%), whereas the 'poor' group, drank milk and ate dairy products (38.0%) as well as fast food and fried food (22.8%). Intakes of energy, fat, vitamins $B_2$ and $B_6$, niacin, folic acid, calcium, iron, zinc, and phosphorus were higher in the 'poor' group. The average hemoglobin level ($13.77{\pm}1.00\;g/dL$) among the subjects was within normal range; while 2.7% of subjects had hemoglobin levels under 11.1 g/dL (standard value) and were examined as anemic. The degree of interest in health was 24.5% higher among the subjects who had poor dietary habits. In contrast, among those who had good dietary habits, 49.6% reported they had no interest in regular exercise. The subjects reported that regular meals, nutrient intake, sufficient rest, and sleep as necessary to maintain health. The average amount of sleep obtained by the subjects was 6~8 hours. Among the 'poor' group, 36.2% reported that they exercised regularly, whereas 18.5% of the subjects in the 'good' group reported regular exercise (p<0.05). In conclusion, it appears necessary to provide nutrition education through teaching and to promote nutrition and health to college women so they can control their individual health status and create practicable dietary plans.