• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.305-316
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• 2011

Recommender system is the system which, by using automated information filtering technology, recommends products or services to the customers who are likely to be interested in. Those systems are widely used in many different Web retailers such as Amazon.com, Netfix.com, and CDNow.com. Various recommender systems have been developed. Among them, Collaborative Filtering (CF) has been known as the most successful and commonly used approach. CF identifies customers whose tastes are similar to those of a given customer, and recommends items those customers have liked in the past. Numerous CF algorithms have been developed to increase the performance of recommender systems. However, the relative performances of CF algorithms are known to be domain and data dependent. It is very time-consuming and expensive to implement and launce a CF recommender system, and also the system unsuited for the given domain provides customers with poor quality recommendations that make them easily annoyed. Therefore, predicting in advance whether the performance of CF recommender system is acceptable or not is practically important and needed. In this study, we propose a decision making guideline which helps decide whether CF is adoptable for a given application with certain transaction data characteristics. Several previous studies reported that sparsity, gray sheep, cold-start, coverage, and serendipity could affect the performance of CF, but the theoretical and empirical justification of such factors is lacking. Recently there are many studies paying attention to Social Network Analysis (SNA) as a method to analyze social relationships among people. SNA is a method to measure and visualize the linkage structure and status focusing on interaction among objects within communication group. CF analyzes the similarity among previous ratings or purchases of each customer, finds the relationships among the customers who have similarities, and then uses the relationships for recommendations. Thus CF can be modeled as a social network in which customers are nodes and purchase relationships between customers are links. Under the assumption that SNA could facilitate an exploration of the topological properties of the network structure that are implicit in transaction data for CF recommendations, we focus on density, clustering coefficient, and centralization which are ones of the most commonly used measures to capture topological properties of the social network structure. While network density, expressed as a proportion of the maximum possible number of links, captures the density of the whole network, the clustering coefficient captures the degree to which the overall network contains localized pockets of dense connectivity. Centralization reflects the extent to which connections are concentrated in a small number of nodes rather than distributed equally among all nodes. We explore how these SNA measures affect the performance of CF performance and how they interact to each other. Our experiments used sales transaction data from H department store, one of the well?known department stores in Korea. Total 396 data set were sampled to construct various types of social networks. The dependant variable measuring process consists of three steps; analysis of customer similarities, construction of a social network, and analysis of social network patterns. We used UCINET 6.0 for SNA. The experiments conducted the 3-way ANOVA which employs three SNA measures as dependant variables, and the recommendation accuracy measured by F1-measure as an independent variable. The experiments report that 1) each of three SNA measures affects the recommendation accuracy, 2) the density's effect to the performance overrides those of clustering coefficient and centralization (i.e., CF adoption is not a good decision if the density is low), and 3) however though the density is low, the performance of CF is comparatively good when the clustering coefficient is low. We expect that these experiment results help firms decide whether CF recommender system is adoptable for their business domain with certain transaction data characteristics.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.147-165
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• 2009

Virtual community(VC) will increasingly be organized as commercial enterprises, with the objective of earning an attractive financial return by providing members with valuable resources and environment. For example, Cyworld.com in Korea uses several community services to enable customers of Cyworld to take control of their own value as potential purchasers of products and services. Although initial adoption is important for online network service success, it does not necessarily result in the desired managerial performance unless the initial usage is continuously related to the continuous usage and purchase. Particularly, the customer who receives relevant online services and is well equipped with online network services, will trust the online service provider and perceive less risk and experience more activities such as continuous usage and purchase. Thus, how to promote continued online service usage or, alternatively, how to prevent discontinuance is a critical issue for VC service providers to consider. By aggregating a wide range of information and online environments for customers and providing trust to its members, the service providers of virtual communities help to reduce the perceived risk of continuous usage and purchase. Drill down, online service managers realize that achieving strong and sustained customers who continuously use online service and purchase on it is crucial. Therefore, the research into this online service continuance will identify the relationship between the initial usage and the continuous usage and purchase. The research of continuous usage or post adoption has recently emerged as an important issue in the IS literature. Individuals' information systems(IS) continuous usage decisions are congruent with consumers' repeat purchase decisions. The TAM(Technology Acceptance Model) paradigm has been strongly confirmed across a wide range from product purchase on EC to online service usage contexts. The analysis of IS usage based on TAM has proven to be successful across almost online service contexts. However, most of previous studies have focused on only an area (i.e., VC or EC). Just little research has tried to analyze the relationship between VC and EC. The effect of some factors on user intention, captured through several theories such as TAM, has been demonstrated. Yet, few studies have explored the salient relationships of VC users' EC acceptance. To fill this gap between VC and EC research, this paper attempts to develop a research model that extends the TAM perspective in view of the additional contributions of trust in the service provider and trust in members on some factors that affect EC and VC adoption. In this extension, we applied the TAM-to-TAM(T2T) model, and analyzed the transfer effect of trust between these two TAMs. The research model was empirically tested on the context of a social network service. The model was to extend TAM with the trust concept for the virtual community environment from the perspective of tasks. By building an extended model of TAM and examining the relationships between trust and the existing variables of TAM, it is aimed to explain a user's continuous intention to use VC and purchase on EC. The unit of analysis in this paper is an individual user of a virtual community. The population of interest is the individual with the experiences in virtual community. The data for this paper was made available via a Web survey of VC users. In total, 281 cases were gathered for about one week, but there were some missing values in the sample and there were some inappropriate cases. Thus, only 248 cases were finally analyzed. We chose the structural equation analysis to test the hypotheses and it is better suited for explaining complex relationships than the other methods. In this test, AMOS was used to test the Structural Equation Model (SEM). Noticeable results have been found in the T2T model regarding the factors affecting the intention to use of virtual community and loyalty. Our result showed that trust transfer plays a key role in forming the two adoption beliefs. Overall, this study preliminarily confirms the salience of trust transfer in online service.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.221-238
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• 2019

Recently, companies and public institutions have been actively introducing chatbot services in the field of customer counseling and response. The introduction of the chatbot service not only brings labor cost savings to companies and organizations, but also enables rapid communication with customers. Advances in data analytics and artificial intelligence are driving the growth of these chatbot services. The current chatbot can understand users' questions and offer the most appropriate answers to questions through machine learning and deep learning. The advancement of chatbot core technologies such as NLP, NLU, and NLG has made it possible to understand words, understand paragraphs, understand meanings, and understand emotions. For this reason, the value of chatbots continues to rise. However, technology-oriented chatbots can be inconsistent with what users want inherently, so chatbots need to be addressed in the area of the user experience, not just in the area of technology. The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents the importance of the User Experience as well as the advancement of artificial intelligence, big data, cloud, and IoT technologies. The development of IT technology and the importance of user experience have provided people with a variety of environments and changed lifestyles. This means that experiences in interactions with people, services(products) and the environment become very important. Therefore, it is time to develop a user needs-based services(products) that can provide new experiences and values to people. This study proposes a chatbot development process based on user needs by applying the design thinking approach, a representative methodology in the field of user experience, to chatbot development. The process proposed in this study consists of four steps. The first step is 'setting up knowledge domain' to set up the chatbot's expertise. Accumulating the information corresponding to the configured domain and deriving the insight is the second step, 'Knowledge accumulation and Insight identification'. The third step is 'Opportunity Development and Prototyping'. It is going to start full-scale development at this stage. Finally, the 'User Feedback' step is to receive feedback from users on the developed prototype. This creates a "user needs-based service (product)" that meets the process's objectives. Beginning with the fact gathering through user observation, Perform the process of abstraction to derive insights and explore opportunities. Next, it is expected to develop a chatbot that meets the user's needs through the process of materializing to structure the desired information and providing the function that fits the user's mental model. In this study, we present the actual construction examples for the domestic cosmetics market to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed process. The reason why it chose the domestic cosmetics market as its case is because it shows strong characteristics of users' experiences, so it can quickly understand responses from users. This study has a theoretical implication in that it proposed a new chatbot development process by incorporating the design thinking methodology into the chatbot development process. This research is different from the existing chatbot development research in that it focuses on user experience, not technology. It also has practical implications in that companies or institutions propose realistic methods that can be applied immediately. In particular, the process proposed in this study can be accessed and utilized by anyone, since 'user needs-based chatbots' can be developed even if they are not experts. This study suggests that further studies are needed because only one field of study was conducted. In addition to the cosmetics market, additional research should be conducted in various fields in which the user experience appears, such as the smart phone and the automotive market. Through this, it will be able to be reborn as a general process necessary for 'development of chatbots centered on user experience, not technology centered'.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.1-29
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• 2019

The knowledge resources take a role in promoting the sustainable growth of organization. Therefore, it is important for the members of organization to acquire knowledge consistently so that the company can continue to grow. Knowledge service is the field that provides information and infrastructure which enable the members of organization to acquire new knowledge. As we recognized the importance of knowledge services, we analyzed the level of knowledge service management and development through the impact of knowledge quality on user capabilities. First, the matrix of knowledge patterns was presented based on the type of information and the level of customer interaction. According to patterns, the knowledge service was classified into three types of information providing, information analysis, and infrastructure, and then the results of structural model analysis were presented for each type. It found that the impact of knowledge service quality on user competence was different according to the type of service. The results suggested new indicators for measuring the performance of knowledge services, and provided information for reconstructing services based on the user considering the integrated operation of knowledge service and organizational designing knowledge service.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.327-353
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• 2017

The issue submitted to the Court of Justice on the merits of case C---573/13 originated from a claim brought in the context of a dispute between Air Berlin and the German Federal Union of Consumer Organisations and Associations. The challenge concerned the way in which air fares were displayed in Air Berlin's computerised booking system. The system was organised in such a way that, after selecting a date and a departure airport, one would find all possible flight connections in a summary table. However, the final price of the ticket was displayed only for the clicked connection, and not for all connections, thus preventing customers from being able to compare such price with the prices of other connections. The German Federal Union took the view that this practice did not meet the requirements laid down by Article 23 of Regulation (EC) No. 1008/2008, which requires transparency in the prices set for air services. This led the German State to bring an injunctive action to cause Air Berlin to discontinue said practice. The claim was upheld at both the application and appeal stage of the relevant proceedings. Subsequently, Air Berlin submitted the matter to the German Federal High Court, which decided to stay the proceedings and ask for a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice as to 1. whether Article 23 of Regulation (EC) No. 1008/2008 must be interpreted as meaning that, during the computerised booking process, the final price to be paid must be indicated at all times when prices of air services are shown, including when they are shown for the first time; and 2. whether, during the computerised booking process, the final price must be indicated only for the air service specifically selected by the customer or for each air service shown. In a nutshell, the Court, by the here---discussed judgment determined that Article 23 of Regulation (EC) No. 1008/2008 must be interpreted as meaning that, in the context of a computerised air ticket booking system, the final price to be paid must be indicated not only for the air service specifically selected by the customer, but also for each air service in respect of which the fare is shown. Clearly the above judgment will place air companies under an obligation to update and adjust (when needed) their computerised ticket booking and payment systems, in consideration of the primary need for consumers to be aware at all times of the actual price payable for a ticket and be able to compare the price of the service selected with the prices for other air services in respect of which the fare is shown.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.65-82
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• 2008

Statement of problem : Today's market economy has been changed more and more to consumer concerned. It is owing to not only consumers ' rising standard of living and education, but also purchasers' easy accessibilities to products through various mass media. The consumer centered market system, where customer can choose items with diverse alternatives to satisfy their self esteem, is also applied to the field of medical business, and accelerated by an increasing income level of shoppers and introducing the whole nations' medical insurance system. Today, the medical industry has become competitive due to increasing number of medical institutions and medical personnel, and this offers wide choices to consumers in the medical market place. At this point of time, it is essential to survey on the primary factor of gratification for the patient in the Dental clinic, as well as on the problems and suggestions in medical service. Purpose : The analysis in this study shows essential factors and expected influential elements in satisfaction of the patient in the Dental Hopsital, and strategic suggestions for the provider of dental service, which can be of benefit to the prospective customer as well as can make improvement in the quality of dental treatment service. Material and method : This study had been researched by collecting and analyzing the organized questionnaires, which were filled in directly from 784 patients, who visit Dental Hospital, Yonsei University in Seoul, from January 23rd to April 15th. Result : It can be summarized like the followings. 1. The social and demographical peculiarities of respondents are as follows. Samples of gender and marital status are adequately extracted, but data on occupation and treatment are are under a bias toward students, undergraduates and graduate students, and orthodontics. 2. 74% of patients who answer the questionnaire were highly satisfied with the service of dental clinic in the section of overall satisfaction. 3. The survey result about specific service of dental treatment, within sections of independent variables, is like the followings; Patients are highly gratified with service system, kindness, explanation, explanation on expected waiting hours, reservation system, emergency measures, expert treatment, existence of knowledge of dentistry, size of hospital, disinfection, equipment and parking, but lowly satisfied with expense of treatment, preparatory hours for treatment, waiting hours, treatment hours and the period of subscription. 4. The correlation analysis showed that there is no significant linear relationship between the independent variables. 5. The probit regression analysis showed that 8 out of 34 independent variables explained the dependent variables at the level of 0.01. 6. It shows that 8 independent variables, which can affect customers 'satisfaction, are clearing up of inconvenience, service system, kindness, explanation, treatment hours per attendance, reservation system, existence of knowledge of dentistry, and contentment of equipment in the hospital. Conclusion : The consumer's satisfaction totally relies on subjective evaluations of customers. Providing appropriate service, which can meet the criteria for the customer who demands various wares, pursues luxury goods, and expects high quality of medical service, is essential to fulfill patients' satisfaction. Many medical institutions do their best to satisfy their customer, touch their consumer, and offer patience centered services, and it is also applied to the field of dentistry. Establishing brand new strategic managements and elevating the quality of dental service based on this survey are required to improve the satisfaction of patience in the Dental Hospital.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.143-167
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• 2010

Diverse research topics relating to Social Network Services (SNS) such as, social affective factors in relationships among internet users, social capital value of SNS, comparing attributes why users are intending to participate in SNS, user's lifestyle and their preferences, and the exploratory seeking potential of SNS as a social capital need to be focused on. However, these researches that have been undertaken only consider facts at a particular period of the changing computing environment. In accordance with this indispensability, the integrated view on what technical, social and business characteristics and attributes need to be acknowledged. The purpose of this study is to analyze the evolving attributes and characteristics of SNS from Web 1.0 to Mobile web 2.0 through the Web 2.0 and Mobile 1.0 period. Based on the relevant literature, the attributes that drive the changing technological, social and business aspects of SNS have been developed and analyzed. This exploratory study analyzed major attributes and relationships between SNS and users by changing the paradigms which represented each period. It classified and chronicled each period by representing paradigms and deducted the attributes by considering three aspects such as technological, social and business administration. The major findings of this study are, firstly, the web based computing environment has been changed into the platform attribute for users in the aspect of technology. Users can only read, listen and view information through the web site in the early stages, but now it is possible that users can create, modify and distribute all kinds of information. Secondly, the few knowledge producers of web services have been changed into a collective intelligence by groups of people in the aspect of society. Information authority has been distributed and there is no limit to its spread. Many businesses recognized the potential of the SNS and they are considering how to utilize these advantages toward channel of promotion and marketing. Thirdly, the conventional marketing channel has been changed into oral transmission by using SNS. The market of innovative mobile technology such as smart phones, which provide convenience and access-ability toward customers, has been enlarged. New opportunities to build friendly relationship between business and customers as a new marketing chance have been created. Finally, the role of the consumer has been changed into the leading role of a prosumer. Users can create, modify and distribute information, and are performing the dual role of customer and producer.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.167-184
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• 2017

In this study, we investigated the effect of offline banking trust on smart banking trust. As influencing factors of smart banking trust, this study compared offline banking trust, smart banking's system quality, and information quality. For the empirical study, 186 questionnaire data were collected from smart banking users and the data were analyzed using Smart-PLS 2.0. As results, it was verified that there is trust transfer in FinTech service, by the significant effect of offline banking trust on smart banking trust. And it was proved that the effect of offline banking trust on smart banking trust is lower than that of smart banking itself. The contribution of this study can be seen in both academic and industrial aspects. First, it is the contribution of the academic aspect. Previous studies on banking were focused on either offline banking or smart banking. But this study, focus on the relationship between offline banking and online banking, proved that offline banking trust affects smart banking trust. Next, it is the industrial contribution. This study showed that offline banking characteristics of traditional commercial banks affect the trust of emerging smart banking service. This means that the emerging FinTech companies are not advantageous in the competition of trust building compared to traditional commercial banks. Unlike traditional commercial banks, the emerging FinTech is innovating the convenience of customers by arming them with new technologies such as mobile Internet, social network, cloud technology, and big data. However, these FinTech strengths alone can not guarantee sufficient trust needed for financial transactions, because banking customers do not change a habit or an inertia that they already have during using traditional banks. Therefore, emerging FinTech companies should strive to create destructive value that reflects the connection with various Internet services and the strength of online interaction such as social services, which have an advantage over customer contacts. And emerging FinTech companies should strive to build service trust, focused on young people with low resistance to new services.

• 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.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.53-84
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• 2013

With rapid development of ICT (Information and Communications Technology), new services by the convergence of mobile network and application technology began to appear. Today, smart phone with new ICT convergence network capabilities is exceedingly popular and very useful as a new tool for the development of business opportunities. Previous studies based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) suggested critical factors, which should be considered for acquiring new customers and maintaining existing users in smart phone market. However, they had a limitation to focus on technology acceptance, not value based approach. Prior studies on customer's adoption of electronic utilities like smart phone product showed that the antecedents such as the perceived benefit and the perceived sacrifice could explain the causality between what is perceived and what is acquired over diverse contexts. So, this research conceptualizes perceived value as a trade-off between perceived benefit and perceived sacrifice, and we need to research the perceived value to grasp user's continuous intention to use of smart phone. The purpose of this study is to investigate the structured relationship between benefit (quality, usefulness, playfulness) and sacrifice (technicality, cost, security risk) of smart phone users, perceived value, and continuous intention to use. In addition, this study intends to analyze the differences between two subgroups of smart phone users by the degree of personal innovativeness. Personal innovativeness could help us to understand the moderating effect between how perceptions are formed and continuous intention to use smart phone. This study conducted survey through e-mail, direct mail, and interview with smart phone users. Empirical analysis based on 330 respondents was conducted in order to test the hypotheses. First, the result of hypotheses testing showed that perceived usefulness among three factors of perceived benefit has the highest positive impact on perceived value, and then followed by perceived playfulness and perceived quality. Second, the result of hypotheses testing showed that perceived cost among three factors of perceived sacrifice has significantly negative impact on perceived value, however, technicality and security risk have no significant impact on perceived value. Also, the result of hypotheses testing showed that perceived value has significant direct impact on continuous intention to use of smart phone. In this regard, marketing managers of smart phone company should pay more attention to improve task efficiency and performance of smart phone, including rate systems of smart phone. Additionally, to test the moderating effect of personal innovativeness, this research conducted multi-group analysis by the degree of personal innovativeness of smart phone users. In a group with high level of innovativeness, perceived usefulness has the highest positive influence on perceived value than other factors. Instead, the analysis for a group with low level of innovativeness showed that perceived playfulness was the highest positive factor to influence perceived value than others. This result of the group with high level of innovativeness explains that innovators and early adopters are able to cope with higher level of cost and risk, and they expect to develop more positive intentions toward higher performance through the use of an innovation. Also, hedonic behavior in the case of the group with low level of innovativeness aims to provide self-fulfilling value to the users, in contrast to utilitarian perspective, which aims to provide instrumental value to the users. However, with regard to perceived sacrifice, both groups in general showed negative impact on perceived value. Also, the group with high level of innovativeness had less overall negative impact on perceived value compared to the group with low level of innovativeness across all factors. In both group with high level of innovativeness and with low level of innovativeness, perceived cost has the highest negative influence on perceived value than other factors. Instead, the analysis for a group with high level of innovativeness showed that perceived technicality was the positive factor to influence perceived value than others. However, the analysis for a group with low level of innovativeness showed that perceived security risk was the second high negative factor to influence perceived value than others. Unlike previous studies, this study focuses on influencing factors on continuous intention to use of smart phone, rather than considering initial purchase and adoption of smart phone. First, perceived value, which was used to identify user's adoption behavior, has a mediating effect among perceived benefit, perceived sacrifice, and continuous intention to use smart phone. Second, perceived usefulness has the highest positive influence on perceived value, while perceived cost has significant negative influence on perceived value. Third, perceived value, like prior studies, has high level of positive influence on continuous intention to use smart phone. Fourth, in multi-group analysis by the degree of personal innovativeness of smart phone users, perceived usefulness, in a group with high level of innovativeness, has the highest positive influence on perceived value than other factors. Instead, perceived playfulness, in a group with low level of innovativeness, has the highest positive factor to influence perceived value than others. This result shows that early adopters intend to adopt smart phone as a tool to make their job useful, instead market followers intend to adopt smart phone as a tool to make their time enjoyable. In terms of marketing strategy for smart phone company, marketing managers should pay more attention to identify their customers' lifetime value by the phase of smart phone adoption, as well as to understand their behavior intention to accept the risk and uncertainty positively. The academic contribution of this study primarily is to employ the VAM (Value-based Adoption Model) as a conceptual foundation, compared to TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) used widely by previous studies. VAM is useful for understanding continuous intention to use smart phone in comparison with TAM as a new IT utility by individual adoption. Perceived value dominantly influences continuous intention to use smart phone. The results of this study justify our research model adoption on each antecedent of perceived value as a benefit and a sacrifice component. While TAM could be widely used in user acceptance of new technology, it has a limitation to explain the new IT adoption like smart phone, because of customer behavior intention to choose the value of the object. In terms of theoretical approach, this study provides theoretical contribution to the development, design, and marketing of smart phone. The practical contribution of this study is to suggest useful decision alternatives concerned to marketing strategy formulation for acquiring and retaining long-term customers related to smart phone business. Since potential customers are interested in both benefit and sacrifice when evaluating the value of smart phone, marketing managers in smart phone company has to put more effort into creating customer's value of low sacrifice and high benefit so that customers will continuously have higher adoption on smart phone. Especially, this study shows that innovators and early adopters with high level of innovativeness have higher adoption than market followers with low level of innovativeness, in terms of perceived usefulness and perceived cost. To formulate marketing strategy for smart phone diffusion, marketing managers have to pay more attention to identify not only their customers' benefit and sacrifice components but also their customers' lifetime value to adopt smart phone.