The purpose of this study is to illuminate the meaning of the soundscapes of two bells, Daeheung-dong Cathedral and Sungsimdang in Eunghang-dong, which are landmarks and attractions in the historic downtown of Daejeon. The study was conducted through field research and recordings, as well as literature studies of related documents and soundscape theory. Daejeon city was developed along with Daejeon Railway Station during the Japanese colonial period in the early 20th century. As the Chungnam Provincial Office moved to Daejeon, Daeheung-dong and Eunhang-dong in Jung-gu, located near Daejeon Station, developed significantly and formed the city centre. As major administrative agencies moved to Seo-gu in the 1990s, the downtown area of Daejeon was on a path of decline, and the decline accelerated with the development of Sejong city. Meanwhile, Daeheung-dong Cathedral and Sungsimdang, founded by refugees during the Korean War, firmly protected the historic downtown area of Daejeon, where the natives left. Daeheung-dong Cathedral, established during the Japanese colonial period, is a local landmark with a history of 100 years in 2019. Sungsimdang, which was created with the backdrop of the Korean War, is also a historical and cultural asset with a history of 60 years and a local landmark selected as the No. 1 tourist attraction in Daejeon. This research, which started from the sound of the bells of Daeheung-dong Cathedral, heard even in the neighboring residential areas, led to the discovery of the bells of Sungsimdang in Eunhang-dong, located across the street. In this paper, the bells of Daeheung-dong Cathedral and Eunhang-dong Sungsimdang have characteristics of soundmarks according to R. Murray Schafer's soundscape sound category. Furthermore, this paper attempted to analyze the meaning of the two bells according to the relatively recent EU soundscape definition. These two bells are signal sounds at the surface level, but are the sound marks of the historic downtown area of Daejeon at the deep level. Although there are outward differences in size, scale, frequency, and famousness, these two bells share a meaning in terms of locality and good influence with the historicity and spatiality of a special relationship. The implication of this study is that the two places should be preserved as local historical and cultural assets not only as visual landmarks but also as sound marks in the urban regeneration or urban development of Jung-gu, Daejeon.
The marathon has long been established as a representative lifestyle for all ages. With the recent expansion of the Work and Life Balance trend across the society, marathon with a relatively low barrier to entry is gaining popularity among young people in their 20s and 30s. By analyzing the issues and related words of the marathon event, we will analyze the spottainment elements of the marathon event that is popular among young people through keywords, and suggest a development plan for the differentiated event. In order to analyze keywords and related words, blogs, cafes and news provided by Naver and Daum were selected as analysis channels, and 'JTBC Marathon' and 'Culture' were extracted as key words for data search. The data analysis period was limited to a three-month period from August 13, 2019 to November 13, 2019, when the application for participation in the 2019 JTBC Marathon was started. For data collection and analysis, frequency and matrix data were extracted through social matrix program Textom. In addition, the degree of the relationship was quantified by analyzing the connection structure and the centrality of the degree of connection between the words. Although the marathon is a personal movement, young people share a common denominator of "running" and form a new cultural group called "running crew" with other young people. Through this, it was found that a marathon competition culture was formed as a festival venue where people could train together, participate together, and escape from the image of a marathon run alone and fight with themselves.
This study was designed to be link in the chain of the investigation on daily life and consciousness of longevous people in Korea, and to investigate the social life and daily life habit in the past of longevous people. The social life and daily life habit were surveyed on 379 subjects (male 121, female 258) of the aged who were above 80 years of age, from June to November in 1985. 1. 'Generally regular' in the rising time and bedtime between 40 and 60 years of longevous people had the highest figures of 81.8% and 63.1%, respectively. The longevous peoples of 59.4% got up by before 6 a.m., and 61.3% of these aged went to bed from 9 to 11 p.m. But there was no significant difference between male and female. 2. Of the occupation engaged in the longest term of longevous people, the self-management (86.3%) included farming, fishing and household affairs was the highest, whereas administrative position, small-scale management and white-collar worker were only 0.8%, 0.8% and 1.8%, respectively. Therefore, their work involved mainly physical labor (heavy 48.5%, light 47.2%), and mental work was only 2.8% of longevous people. It is believed that this fact was deeply related to the educational degree of them. 3. The longevous people of 58.3% retired from the occupation and household affairs abover 70 years of age, and especially 24.3% of them is including the aged above 80 years of age. 4. The longevous people of 57.2% were shared the role in the home after retirement from the occupation and household affairs, whereas 35.9% of them didn't share. Of the way in killing time in case having no role in the home, 'at home'(50.0%) was the highest, and decreased in the order of 'old people's home' (30.9%), 'ill in bed' (10.3%) and 'asylum for the aged' (8.8%). 5. The acquaintance frequency before retirement from the occupation and household affairs of longevous people showed in the order of 'wide' (38.5%), 'common' (38.0%) and 'narrow' (19.0%), and 56.5% of them had the acquaintance after retirement. 6. Only the longevous people of 38.5% had the hobby and recreation activities of 'more than once' after retirement from the occupation and household affairs, but 53.0% of them was none. Of the kinds of hobby and/or recreation, 'TV-watching' (79.2%) was the highest, and decreased in the order of 'talking with grandchild' (54.2 %), 'working at home' (35.4%), 'religion' (25.0%) and 'chess etc.' (18.1%).
Recently, as the advent of the knowledge-based society, there are more people getting interested in the intellectual property. Especially, the ICT companies leading the high-tech industry are working hard to strive for systematic management of intellectual property. As we know, the patent information represents the intellectual capital of the company. Also now the quantitative analysis on the continuously accumulated patent information becomes possible. The analysis at various levels becomes also possible by utilizing the patent information, ranging from the patent level to the enterprise level, industrial level and country level. Through the patent information, we can identify the technology status and analyze the impact of the performance. We are also able to find out the flow of the knowledge through the network analysis. By that, we can not only identify the changes in technology, but also predict the direction of the future research. In the field using the network analysis there are two important analyses which utilize the patent citation information; citation indicator analysis utilizing the frequency of the citation and network analysis based on the citation relationships. Furthermore, this study analyzes whether there are any impacts between the size of the company and patent citation relationships. 74 S&P 500 registered companies that provide IT and communication services are selected for this study. In order to determine the relationship of patent citation between the companies, the patent citation in 2009 and 2010 is collected and sociomatrices which show the patent citation relationship between the companies are created. In addition, the companies' total assets are collected as an index of company size. The distance between companies is defined as the absolute value of the difference between the total assets. And simple differences are considered to be described as the hierarchy of the company. The QAP Correlation analysis and MR-QAP analysis is carried out by using the distance and hierarchy between companies, and also the sociomatrices that shows the patent citation in 2009 and 2010. Through the result of QAP Correlation analysis, the patent citation relationship between companies in the 2009's company's patent citation network and the 2010's company's patent citation network shows the highest correlation. In addition, positive correlation is shown in the patent citation relationships between companies and the distance between companies. This is because the patent citation relationship is increased when there is a difference of size between companies. Not only that, negative correlation is found through the analysis using the patent citation relationship between companies and the hierarchy between companies. Relatively it is indicated that there is a high evaluation about the patent of the higher tier companies influenced toward the lower tier companies. MR-QAP analysis is carried out as follow. The sociomatrix that is generated by using the year 2010 patent citation relationship is used as the dependent variable. Additionally the 2009's company's patent citation network and the distance and hierarchy networks between the companies are used as the independent variables. This study performed MR-QAP analysis to find the main factors influencing the patent citation relationship between the companies in 2010. The analysis results show that all independent variables have positively influenced the 2010's patent citation relationship between the companies. In particular, the 2009's patent citation relationship between the companies has the most significant impact on the 2010's, which means that there is consecutiveness regarding the patent citation relationships. Through the result of QAP correlation analysis and MR-QAP analysis, the patent citation relationship between companies is affected by the size of the companies. But the most significant impact is the patent citation relationships that had been done in the past. The reason why we need to maintain the patent citation relationship between companies is it might be important in the use of strategic aspect of the companies to look into relationships to share intellectual property between each other, also seen as an important auxiliary of the partner companies to cooperate with.
UGC(User Generated Contents) is emerging as the center of e-business in the web 2.0 era. The trend reflects changing roles of users in production and consumption of contents on websites and helps us to understand new strategies of websites such as web portals and social network websites. Nowadays, we consume contents created by other non-professional users for both utilitarian (e.g., knowledge) and hedonic values (e.g., fun). Also, contents produced by ourselves (e.g., photo, video) are posted on websites so that our friends, family, and even the public can consume those contents. This means that non-professionals, who used to be passive audience in the past, are now creating contents and share their UGCs with others in the Web. Accessible media, tools, and applications have also reduced difficulty and complexity in the process of creating contents. Realizing that users create plenty of materials which are very interesting to other people, media companies (i.e., web portals and social networking websites) are adjusting their strategies and business models accordingly. Increased demand of UGC may lead to website visits which are the source of benefits from advertising. Therefore, they put more efforts into making their websites open platforms where UGCs can be created and shared among users without technical and methodological difficulties. Many websites have increasingly adopted new technologies such as RSS and openAPI. Some have even changed the structure of web pages so that UGC can be seen several times to more visitors. This mainstream of UGCs on websites indicates that acquiring more UGCs and supporting participating users have become important things to media companies. Although those companies need to understand why general users have shown increasing interest in creating and posting contents and what is important to them in the process of productions, few research results exist in this area to address these issues. Also, behavioral process in creating video UGCs has not been explored enough for the public to fully understand it. With a solid theoretical background (i.e., theory of implementation intentions), parts of our proposed research model mirror the process of user behaviors in creating video contents, which consist of intention to upload, intention to edit, edit, and upload. In addition, in order to explain how those behavioral intentions are developed, we investigated influences of antecedents from three motivational perspectives (i.e., intrinsic, editing software-oriented, and website's network effect-oriented). First, from the intrinsic motivation perspective, we studied the roles of self-expression, enjoyment, and social attention in forming intention to edit with preferred editing software or in forming intention to upload video contents to preferred websites. Second, we explored the roles of editing software for non-professionals to edit video contents, in terms of how it makes production process easier and how it is useful in the process. Finally, from the website characteristic-oriented perspective, we investigated the role of a website's network externality as an antecedent of users' intention to upload to preferred websites. The rationale is that posting UGCs on websites are basically social-oriented behaviors; thus, users prefer a website with the high level of network externality for contents uploading. This study adopted a longitudinal research design; we emailed recipients twice with different questionnaires. Guided by invitation email including a link to web survey page, respondents answered most of questions except edit and upload at the first survey. They were asked to provide information about UGC editing software they mainly used and preferred website to upload edited contents, and then asked to answer related questions. For example, before answering questions regarding network externality, they individually had to declare the name of the website to which they would be willing to upload. At the end of the first survey, we asked if they agreed to participate in the corresponding survey in a month. During twenty days, 333 complete responses were gathered in the first survey. One month later, we emailed those recipients to ask for participation in the second survey. 185 of the 333 recipients (about 56 percentages) answered in the second survey. Personalized questionnaires were provided for them to remind the names of editing software and website that they reported in the first survey. They answered the degree of editing with the software and the degree of uploading video contents to the website for the past one month. To all recipients of the two surveys, exchange tickets for books (about 5,000~10,000 Korean Won) were provided according to the frequency of participations. PLS analysis shows that user behaviors in creating video contents are well explained by the theory of implementation intentions. In fact, intention to upload significantly influences intention to edit in the process of accomplishing the goal behavior, upload. These relationships show the behavioral process that has been unclear in users' creating video contents for uploading and also highlight important roles of editing in the process. Regarding the intrinsic motivations, the results illustrated that users are likely to edit their own video contents in order to express their own intrinsic traits such as thoughts and feelings. Also, their intention to upload contents in preferred website is formed because they want to attract much attention from others through contents reflecting themselves. This result well corresponds to the roles of the website characteristic, namely, network externality. Based on the PLS results, the network effect of a website has significant influence on users' intention to upload to the preferred website. This indicates that users with social attention motivations are likely to upload their video UGCs to a website whose network size is big enough to realize their motivations easily. Finally, regarding editing software characteristic-oriented motivations, making exclusively-provided editing software more user-friendly (i.e., easy of use, usefulness) plays an important role in leading to users' intention to edit. Our research contributes to both academic scholars and professionals. For researchers, our results show that the theory of implementation intentions is well applied to the video UGC context and very useful to explain the relationship between implementation intentions and goal behaviors. With the theory, this study theoretically and empirically confirmed that editing is a different and important behavior from uploading behavior, and we tested the behavioral process of ordinary users in creating video UGCs, focusing on significant motivational factors in each step. In addition, parts of our research model are also rooted in the solid theoretical background such as the technology acceptance model and the theory of network externality to explain the effects of UGC-related motivations. For practitioners, our results suggest that media companies need to restructure their websites so that users' needs for social interaction through UGC (e.g., self-expression, social attention) are well met. Also, we emphasize strategic importance of the network size of websites in leading non-professionals to upload video contents to the websites. Those websites need to find a way to utilize the network effects for acquiring more UGCs. Finally, we suggest that some ways to improve editing software be considered as a way to increase edit behavior which is a very important process leading to UGC uploading.
Recently strategic alliance between business firms has become prevalent to overcome increasing competitive threats and to supplement resource limitation of individual firms. As one of allianced sales promotion activities, a new type of discount program, so called "Alliance Card Discount", is introduced with the partnership of credit cards and loyalty cards. The program mainly pursues short-term sales growth by larger discount scheme while spends less through cost share among alliance partners. Thus this program can be regarded as cost efficient discount promotion. But because there is no solid evidence that it can really deliver profitable sales growth, an empirical study for its effects on sales and profit should be conducted. This study has two basic research questions concerning the effects of allianced discount program ; 1)the possibility of sales increase 2) the profitability of the discount driven sales. In F&B industry, sales increase mainly comes from increased guest count. Especially in family restaurants, to increase the number of guests we need to enlarge the size of visitor group (number of visitors for one group) because customers visit by group in a special occasion. And because they pay the bill by group(table), the increase of sales per table is a key measure for sales improvement. The past researches for price & discount sensitivity and reference discount rate explain that price sensitive consumers have narrow reference discount zone and make rational purchase decision. Differently from all time discount scheme of regular sales promotions, the alliance card discount program only provides the right to get discount like discount coupon. And because it is usually once a month opportunity given by the past month usage level, customers tend to perceive alliance card discount as a rare chance to get. So that we can expect customers try to maximize the discount effect when they use the limited discount opportunity. Considering group visiting practice and low visit frequency of family restaurants, the way to maximize discount effect should be the increase the size of visit group. And their sensitivity to discount and rational consumption behavior defer the additional spending for ordering high price menu, even though they get considerable amount of savings from the discount. From the analysis of sales data paid by alliance discount cards for four months, we found the below. 1) The relation between discount rate and number of guest per table is positive : 25% discount results one additional guest 2) The relation between discount rate and the spending per guest is negative. 3) However, total profit amount per table is increased when discount rate is increased. 4) Reward point accumulation & redemption did not show any significant relationship with the increase of number of guests. These results suggest that the allianced discount program substantially contributes to sales increase and profit improvement by increasing the number of guests per table. Though the spending per guest is decreased by discount rate increase, the total amount of profit per table is improved. It seems the incremental profit by increased guest count offsets the profit decrease. Additional intriguing finding is the point reward system does not have any significant impact on the increase of number of guest, even if the point accumulation & redemption of loyalty program are usually regarded as another saving offers by customers. In sum, because it is proved that allianced discount program with credit cards and loyalty cards is effective to both sales drive and profit increase, the alliance card program could be recommended as strategically buyable program.
Price promotion typically reduces the price for a given quantity or increases the quantity available at the same price, thereby enhancing value and creating an economic incentive to purchase. It often is used to encourage product or service trial among nonusers of products or services. Thus, it is important to understand the effects of price promotions on quality perception made by consumer who do not have prior experience with the promoted brand. However, if consumers associate a price promotion itself with inferior brand quality, the promotion may not achieve the sales increase the economic incentives otherwise might have produced. More specifically, low qualitative perception through price promotion will undercut the economic and psychological incentives and reduce the likelihood of purchase. Thus, it is important for marketers to understand how price promotional informations about a brand have impact on consumer's unfavorable quality perception of the brand. Previous literatures on the effects of price promotions on quality perception reveal inconsistent explanations. Some focused on the unfavorable effect of price promotion on consumer's perception. But others showed that price promotions didn't raise unfavorable perception on the brand. Prior researches found these inconsistent results related to the timing of the price promotion's exposure and quality evaluation relative to trial. And, whether the consumer has been experienced with the product promotions in the past or not may moderate the effects. A few studies considered differences among product categories as fundamental factors. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of price promotional informations on consumer's unfavorable quality perception under the different conditions. The author controlled the timing of the promotional exposure and varied past promotional patterns and information presenting patterns. Unlike previous researches, the author examined the effects of price promotions setting limit to pretrial situation by controlling potentially moderating effects of prior personal experience with the brand. This manipulations enable to resolve possible controversies in relation to this issue. And this manipulation is meaningful for the work sector. Price promotion is not only used to target existing consumers but also to encourage product or service trial among nonusers of products or services. Thus, it is important for marketers to understand how price promotional informations about a brand have impact on consumer's unfavorable quality perception of the brand. If consumers associate a price promotion itself with inferior quality about unused brand, the promotion may not achieve the sales increase the economic incentives otherwise might have produced. In addition, if the price promotion ends, the consumer that have purchased that certain brand will likely to display sharply decreased repurchasing behavior. Through a literature review, hypothesis 1 was set as follows to investigate the adjustive effect of past price promotion on quality perception made by consumers; The influence that price promotion of unused brand have on quality perception made by consumers will be adjusted by past price promotion activity of the brand. In other words, a price promotion of an unused brand that have not done a price promotion in the past will have a unfavorable effect on quality perception made by consumer. Hypothesis 2-1 was set as follows : When an unused brand undertakes price promotion for the first time, the information presenting pattern of price promotion will have an effect on the consumer's attribution for the cause of the price promotion. Hypothesis 2-2 was set as follows : The more consumer dispositionally attribute the cause of price promotion, the more unfavorable the quality perception made by consumer will be. Through test 1, the subjects were given a brief explanation of the product and the brand before they were provided with a
The study attempts to interpret original location and landscape composition of Yowol-pavilion Garden under the premise that tablet and poetry are important criteria for inference of unique location and landscape composition of a pavilion garden. The study raises the meaning, status, and value of Yowol Pavilion Garden as a cultural asset. The results of the study are as follows. First, Yowol-pavilion Garden was a place where famous Confucius scholars in Joseon Dynasty in 16th Century, including Kim, Kyung-Woo, the owner of the garden, used to share the taste for the arts and poetries with their colleagues. Along with a main characteristic of Yowol Pavilion Garden as a hideout for the Confucius scholars who stayed away from a political turmoil, the new place characteristic of the garden, a bridgehead for the formation of regional identity, was discovered in the record of "Joseon-Hwanyeo-Seungram Honam-Eupji JangSeong-Eupji", As described in "The first creative poetry of Yowol-pavilion", the intention for the creation of Yowol-pavilion Garden and the motive for its landscape composition is interpreted as a space of rivalry where the world, reality and ideals are mixed up. Second, related to outstanding scenic factors and natural phenomena when taking a view from the pavilion, the name of the house 'Yowol', which means 'Greeting the moon rising on the Mt. Wolbong' is the provision of nature and taste for the arts, and is directly connected to the image of leaving the worldly. In other words, the name was identified to be the one that reflected the intention for landscape composition to follow the provision of nature separating from joy and sorrow of the mundane world. Third, as for the location, it was confirmed through "YeongGwang-Soksu-Yeoji-Seungram" that Yowol-pavilion Garden was a place where the person who made the pavilion prepared for relaxation after stepping down from a government post, and literature and various poetry show that it was also a place of outstanding scenic where Yellow-dragon River meandered facing Mt. Wolbong. Especially, according to an interview with a keeper, the visual perception frequency of the nightscape of Yowol-pavilion Garden is the highest when viewing by considering the east, the direction of Yellow-dragon River, as Suksigak[normal angle's view], towards Yowel-pavilion from the keeper's house. In addition, he said that the most beautiful landscape with high perception strength is when the moon came up from the left side of Yowol-pavilion, cuts across the Lagerstroemia india heal in front of Yowol-pavilion, and crosses the meridian between Mt. Wolbong peaks facing Yowol-pavilion. Currently, the exposure of Yowol-pavilion Garden is
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.