• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.22
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• pp.137-165
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• 2007

It seems high time to increase productivity by adopting e-business to overcome challenges posed by both external factors including the appreciation of Korean won, oil hikes and fierce global competition and domestic issues represented by disparities between large corporations and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Seoul metropolitan and local cities, and export and domestic demand all of which weaken future growth engines in the Korean economy. The demands of the globalization era are for innovative changes in businessprocess and industrial structure aiming for creating new values. To this end, e-business is expected to play a core role in the sophistication of the Korean economy through new values and innovation. In order to examine business performance in e-business-adopting industries, this study analyzed the home shopping industry by closely looking into the financial ratios including the ratio of net profit to sales, the ratio of operation income to sales, the ratio of gross cost to sales cost, the ratio of gross cost to selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expense, and return of investment (ROI). This study, for best outcome, referred to corporate financial statements as a main resource to calculate financial ratios by utilizing Data Analysis, Retrieval and Transfer System (DART) of the Financial Supervisory Service, one of the Korea's financial supervisory authorities. First of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of net profit to sales is as following. CJ Home Shopping has registered a remarkable increase in its ratio of net profit rate to sales since 2002 while its competitors find it hard to catch up with CJ's stunning performances. This is partly due to the efficient management compared to CJ's value of capital. Such significance, if the current trend continues, will make the front-runner assume the largest market share. On the other hand, GS Home Shopping, despite its best organized system and largest value of capital among others, lacks efficiency in management. Second of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of operation income to sales is as following. Both CJ Home Shopping and GS Home Shopping have, until 2004, recorded similar growth trend. However, while CJ Home Shopping's operating income continued to increase in 2005, GS Home Shopping observed its operating income declining which resulted in the increasing income gap with CJ Home Shopping. While CJ Home Shopping with the largest market share in home shopping industryis engaged in aggressive marketing, GS Home Shopping due to its stability-driven management strategies falls behind CJ again in the ratio of operation income to sales in spite of its favorable management environment including its large capital. Companies in the Group B were established in the same year of 2001. NS Home Shopping was the first in the Group B to shift its loss to profit. Woori Home Shopping has continued to post operating loss for three consecutive years and finally was sold to Lotte Group in 2007, but since then, has registered a continuing increase in net income on sales. Third of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of gross cost to sales cost is as following. Since home shopping falls into sales business, its cost of sales is much lower than that of other types of business such as manufacturing industry. Since 2002 in gross costs including cost of sales, SG&A expense, and non-operating expense, cost of sales turned out to have remarkably decreased. Group B has also posted a notable decline in the same sector since 2002. Fourth of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of gross cost to SG&A expense is as following. Due to its unique characteristics, the home shopping industry usually posts ahigh ratio of SG&A expense. However, more than 80% of SG&A expense means the result of lax management and at the same time, a sharp lower net income on sales than other industries. Last but not least, the result of the trend analysis on ROI is as following. As for CJ Home Shopping, the curve of ROI looks similar to that of its investment on fixed assets. As it turned out, the company's ratio of fixed assets to operating income skyrocketed in 2004 and 2005. As far as GS Home Shopping is concerned, its fixed assets are not as much as that of CJ Home Shopping. Consequently, competition in the home shopping industry, at the moment, is among CJ, GS, Hyundai, NS and Woori Home Shoppings, and all of them need to more thoroughly manage their costs. In order for the late-comers of Group B and other home shopping companies to advance further, the current lax management should be reformed particularly on their SG&A expense sector. Provided that the total sales volume in the Internet shopping sector is projected to grow over 20 trillion won by the year 2010, it is concluded that all the participants in the home shopping industry should put strategies on efficient management on costs and expenses as their top priority rather than increase revenues, if they hope to grow even further after 2007.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.42-49
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• 2011

We deposited $SiN_x$ thin films by using PECVD technique at $200^{\circ}C$ with various flow ratios of the $SiH_4/N_2$ gases. The photoluminescence measurements revealed that the maximum emission wavelength shifted to long wavelength as the ratio increased, however, positions of the several peak wavelengths, such as 1.9, 2.2, 2.4, and 3.1 eV, were independent on the ratio. Changes of the photoluminescence spectra were measured in the $N_{2}-$, $H_{2}-$, and $O_2$-annealed films. The luminescence intensities increased after the annealing process. In particular, the maximum emission wavelength shifted to short wavelength after $H_{2}-$ or $O_2$-annealing. But there were still several peaks on the spectra of all annealed films, several peak positions remained to be unchanged after the annealing. As for the light emission mechanism, we have considered the defect states of the Si- and N- dangling bonds in the $SiN_x$ energy gap, so that the energy transitions from/to the conduction/valence bands and the defect states in the gap were attributed to the light emission in the $SiN_x$ films. The experimental results point to the possibility of a Si-based light emission materials for flexible Si-based electro-optic devices.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.321-327
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• 2014

Polymer dispersed liquid crystal lenses of the cell gap of $11{\mu}m$ and $30{\mu}m$ were made from a uniformly dispersed mixture of 40 wt% NOA65 prepolymer - 60 wt% E7 liquid crystal with the variations of the additional photoinitiator. The photoinitiator, benzophenone of 5.0 wt% was originally in the commercial prepolymer NOA65. In this works, the influence of the benzophenone amount intentionally added in the commercial NOA65 on the electrical properties of polymer dispersed liquid crystal lens for smart electronic glasses. The additional quantities of the photoinitiator were 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16 wt% of the weight of NOA65 - E7 mixture. All the electro-optical properties of the sample with added benzophenone such as the driving voltage, the slope of the linear region, the response time and contrast ratio were more improved than that of commercial NOA65 only. These improvements were due to the increase of the average size of E7 liquid crystal droplets in the samples with the increase of the added benzophenon amount. The liquid crystal droplet size was increased from $5.3{\mu}m$ to $12.2{\mu}m$ when the photoinitiator was added from 0 wt% to 8 wt%. At the same concentration range of the photoinitiator, the driving voltage was ranged from 11.1 V to 17.3 V. The slopes of the linear region were in the range of 10.35~13.96 %T/V, which were more enhanced than that of NOA65 without the additional benzophenone. In particular, though the deteriorations by cell gap of $11{\mu}m$ were so effective to offset the influence of the added benzophenone for both rising and falling response time, it is confirmed that there were still somewhat improvement by the additional benzophenone. Response time and contrast ratios of all the samples with excess benzophenone were slightly enhanced.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.83-90
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• 2023

The β-Ga₂O₃ has the most thermodynamically stable phase, a wide band gap of 4.8~4.9 eV and a high dielectric breakdown voltage of 8MV/cm. Due to such excellent electrical characteristics, this material as a power device material has been attracted much attention. Furthermore, the β-Ga₂O₃ has easy liquid phase growth method unlike materials such as SiC and GaN. However, since the grown pure β-Ga₂O₃ single crystal requires the intentionally controlled doping due to a low conductivity to be applied to a power device, the research on doping in β-Ga₂O₃ single crystal is definitely important. In this study, various source powders of un-doped, Sn 0.05 mol%, Sn 0.1 mol%, Sn 1.5 mol%, Sn 2 mol%, Sn 3 mol%-doped Ga₂O₃ were prepared by adding different mole ratios of SnO₂ powder to Ga₂O₃ powder, and β-Ga₂O₃ single crystals were grown by using an edge-defined Film-fed Growth (EFG) method. The crystal direction, crystal quality, optical, and electrical properties of the grown β-Ga₂O₃ single crystal were analyzed according to the Sn dopant content, and the property variation of β-Ga₂O₃ single crystal according to the Sn doping were extensively investigated.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.57-70
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• 2009

Considerable advance has been made on research on effect of steel pipe Umbrella Arch Method (UAM) and mechanical reinforcement mechanism through numerical analyses and experiments. Due to long analysis time of three-dimensional analysis and its complexity, un-quantitative two-dimensional analysis is dominantly used in the design and application, where equivalent material properties of UAM reinforced area and ground are used, For this reason, development of reasonable, theoretical, quantitative and easy to use design and analysis method is required. In this study, both field UAM tests and laboratory tests were performed in the residual soil to highly weathered rock; field tests to observe the range of reinforcement, and laboratory tests to investigate the change of material properties between prior to and after UAM reinforcement. It has been observed that the increase in material property of neighboring ground is negligible, and that only stiffness of steel pipe and cement column formed inside the steel pipe and the gap between steel pipe and borehole contributes to ground reinforcement. Based on these results and concept of Convergence Confinement Method (CCM), two dimensional axisymmetric analyses have been performed to obtain the longitudinal displacement profile (LDP) corresponding to arching effect of tunnel face, UAM effect and effect of supports. In addition, modified load distribution method in two dimensional plane-strain analysis has been suggested, in which effect of UAM is transformed to internal pressure and modified load distribution ratios are suggested. Comparison between the modified method and conventional method shows that larger displacement occur in the conventional method than that in the modified method although it may be different depending on ground condition, depth and size of tunnel, types of steel pipe and initial stress state. Consequently, it can be concluded that the effect of UAM as a beam in a longitudinal direction is not considered properly in the conventional method.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.38-47
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• 2024

Background: Korea's population of children and adolescents has decreased by 2.88 million over the past decade and is expected to decline further due to the unprecedented low birth rate. In the fee-for-service compensation system, the decline in the pediatric population relates directly to the profit decrease in the pediatric clinics. This study analyzed whether the worsening profits of pediatric clinics impacted their closure. Methods: We built annual data for pediatric and other department clinics (internal medicine, otolaryngology, and family medicine) using the status of medical institute and health insurance claims data from 2012 to 2022. Then, we analyzed whether institutional variables such as annual profit and regional variables (Herfindahl-Hirschman index, the number of clinics per 100,000, etc.) affected the closure of clinics. The methods used in this study are descriptive statistics and chi-square analysis. Odds ratios for each variable were estimated by generalized estimating equations (GEE). Results: The closure rate of pediatric clinics was 2.66%-7.04% in 2012-2022, which was consistently higher than those of internal medicine, otolaryngology, and family medicine clinics. The profit gap per institution between the pediatric and the other clinics grew from 126 million won in 2012 to 245 million won in 2019. In the GEE analysis, profit decrease compared to the previous year with lower profit was the main factor that increased the closure of pediatric and other department clinics. After adjusting profit-related variables, the decrease in the pediatric population itself did not relate to the closure of pediatric clinics. The number of pediatric clinics or monopolies also did not affect the closure of pediatric clinics. Conclusion: The worsening profit is the crucial factor for the closure of pediatric clinics, while the pediatric population is decreasing. For this reason, it is necessary to actively seek ways to maintain a stable treatment system for children and adolescents.