• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.10
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• pp.341-352
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• 2021

Research on SMEs highlights their limited resources and the influential role of SMEs' owners/managers. In this respect, scholars stressed the importance of different capabilities possessed by owners/managers of SMEs in developing a competitive position and enhancing firm performance. This study intended to examine the direct influence of two fundamental capabilities: financial literacy and networking competency possessed by owners/managers of SMEs in China and the United Arab Emirate (UAE) on SMEs' financial performance. In addition, this research tested the moderating impact of market orientation. The quantitative research method was employed by administering structured questionnaires. A total of 150 and 120 questionnaires were collected from owners/managers of SMEs in China and UAE. Structural equation modeling was used for data analysis using Smart-Pls. Findings revealed that SMEs' financial performance was positively related to maintaining financial literacy and networking competency in both samples. Further, market orientation was found to strengthen the positive impact of financial literacy and networking competency on SMEs' financial performance in China. However, market orientation had a significant moderating impact only on the relationship between networking and the financial performance of SMEs in the UAE. This paper ends with providing a set of concluding remarks, recommendations, and potential areas of further research.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.635-644
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• 2024

Although the business model(BM) patents act as a creative bridge between technology and the marketplace, limited scholarly attention has been paid to the content analysis of BM patents. This study aims to contextualize converging BM patents by employing topic modeling technique and clustering highly marketable topics, which are expressed through a topic-market impact matrix. We relied on BM patent data filed between 2010 and 2022 to derive empirical insights into the commercial potential of emerging business models. Subsequently, nine topics were identified, including but not limited to "Data Analytics and Predictive Modeling" and "Mobile-Based Digital Services and Advertising." The 2x2 matrix allows to position topics based on the variables of topic growth rate and market impact, which is useful for prioritizing areas that require attention or are promising. This study differentiates itself by going beyond simple topic classification based on topic modeling, reorganizing the findings into a matrix format. T he results of this study are expected to serve as a valuable reference for companies seeking to innovate their business models and enhance their competitive positioning.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.79-111
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• 2011

Digital economy has grown rapidly so that the new business area called 'Internet business' has been dramatically extended as time goes on. However, in the case of Internet business, market shares of individual companies seem to fluctuate very extremely. Thus marketing managers who operate the Internet sites have seriously observed the competition structure of the Internet business market and carefully analyzed the competitors' behavior in order to achieve their own business goals in the market. The newly created Internet business might differ from the offline ones in management styles, because it has totally different business circumstances when compared with the existing offline businesses. Thus, there should be a lot of researches for finding the solutions about what the features of Internet business are and how the management style of those Internet business companies should be changed. Most marketing literatures related to the Internet business have focused on individual business markets. Specifically, many researchers have studied the Internet portal sites and the Internet shopping mall sites, which are the most general forms of Internet business. On the other hand, this study focuses on the entire Internet business industry to understand the competitive circumstance of online market. This approach makes it possible not only to have a broader view to comprehend overall e-business industry, but also to understand the differences in competition structures among Internet business markets. We used time-series data of Internet connection rates by consumers as the basic data to figure out the competition patterns in the Internet business markets. Specifically, the data for this research was obtained from one of Internet ranking sites, 'Fian'. The Internet business ranking data is obtained based on web surfing record of some pre-selected sample group where the possibility of double-count for page-views is controlled by method of same IP check. The ranking site offers several data which are very useful for comparison and analysis of competitive sites. The Fian site divides the Internet business areas into 34 area and offers market shares of big 5 sites which are on high rank in each category daily. We collected the daily market share data about Internet sites on each area from April 22, 2008 to August 5, 2008, where some errors of data was found and 30 business area data were finally used for our research after the data purification. This study performed several empirical analyses in focusing on market shares of each site to understand the competition among sites in Internet business of Korea. We tried to perform more statistically precise analysis for looking into business fields with similar competitive structures by applying the cluster analysis to the data. The research results are as follows. First, the leading sites in each area were classified into three groups based on averages and standard deviations of daily market shares. The first group includes the sites with the lowest market shares, which give more increased convenience to consumers by offering the Internet sites as complimentary services for existing offline services. The second group includes sites with medium level of market shares, where the site users are limited to specific small group. The third group includes sites with the highest market shares, which usually require online registration in advance and have difficulty in switching to another site. Second, we analyzed the second place sites in each business area because it may help us understand the competitive power of the strongest competitor against the leading site. The second place sites in each business area were classified into four groups based on averages and standard deviations of daily market shares. The four groups are the sites showing consistent inferiority compared to the leading sites, the sites with relatively high volatility and medium level of shares, the sites with relatively low volatility and medium level of shares, the sites with relatively low volatility and high level of shares whose gaps are not big compared to the leading sites. Except 'web agency' area, these second place sites show relatively stable shares below 0.1 point of standard deviation. Third, we also classified the types of relative strength between leading sites and the second place sites by applying the cluster analysis to the gap values of market shares between two sites. They were also classified into four groups, the sites with the relatively lowest gaps even though the values of standard deviation are various, the sites with under the average level of gaps, the sites with over the average level of gaps, the sites with the relatively higher gaps and lower volatility. Then we also found that while the areas with relatively bigger gap values usually have smaller standard deviation values, the areas with very small differences between the first and the second sites have a wider range of standard deviation values. The practical and theoretical implications of this study are as follows. First, the result of this study might provide the current market participants with the useful information to understand the competitive circumstance of the market and build the effective new business strategy for the market success. Also it might be useful to help new potential companies find a new business area and set up successful competitive strategies. Second, it might help Internet marketing researchers take a macro view of the overall Internet market so that make possible to begin the new studies on overall Internet market beyond individual Internet market studies.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.175-190
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• 2014

This study analyzes the business strategy of fast fashion through Zara, a successful fashion brand from Inditex Spain. An in-depth case approach is adopted based on extensive secondary research that includes literature and press releases published in Korean as well as English. The findings of this research demonstrate a speedy and flexible process occurring in the supply chain of its fast fashion business and the cooperation between the company's headquarters and international subsidiaries. Zara's headquarters executes four representative strategies: competitive market research, an integrated organizational structure, small quantity batch production, and a specialized distribution system. Zara's international subsidiaries execute their own four representative strategies: differentiated international expansion, independent human resource management, small but fundamental IT, and maximization of store resources. These two core parts intimately work together to satisfy target customers all over the world by bringing competitive advantages to the fashion business and represent a key concept of Zara's business strategy. The main drawbacks of case studies are limited validity and representativeness restraining the potential for making generalizations. However this case is considered sufficient to provide valuable insight and improve the understanding of operation strategy in fast fashion.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.1-4
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• 2015

Qualification includes all activities to demonstrate that a product meets and exceeds the reliability goals. Manufacturers need to spend time and resources for the qualification processes under the pressure of reducing time to market, as well as offering a competitive price. Failure to qualify a product could result in economic loss such as warranty and recall claims and the manufacturer could lose the reputation in the market. In order to provide valid and reliable qualification results, manufacturers are required to make extra effort based on the operational and environmental characteristics of the product. This paper discusses optimal interval censoring design for reliability prediction of electronic packages under limited time and resources. This design should provide more accurate assessment of package capability and thus deliver better reliability prediction.

• Journal of KIBIM
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.40-48
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• 2017

It only takes one failed project to wipe out an entire year's profit, when the projects are not managed efficiently. Additionally, escalating costs of materials and a competitive local construction market make subcontractors a challenge. Subcontractors have finite resources that should be allocated simultaneously across many projects in a dynamic manner. Significant scheduling problems are posed by concurrent multi-projects with limited resources. The objective of this thesis is to identify the effect of productivity changes on the total cost resulting from shifting crews across projects using a descriptive model. To effectively achieve the objective, this study has developed a descriptive cost model for a subcontractor with multi-resources and multi-projects. The model was designed for a subcontractor to use as a decision-making tool for resources allocation and scheduling. The model identified several factors affecting productivity. Moreover, when the model was tested using hypothetical data, it produced some effective combinations of resource allocation with associated total costs. Furthermore, a subcontractor minimizes total costs by balancing overtime costs, tardiness penalties, and incentive bonus, while satisfying available processing time constraints.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.67-78
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• 2009

In this paper, I analyze the mobile broadband services market characterized by vertical and horizontal differentiation. Vertical differentiation as service quality differentiation is based on the transmission speed of mobile internet service and horizontal differentiation as spatial differentiation is based on the service coverage. Theoretical explanations for the competitive price policy have been developed in the game context of WiBro which represent the high quality within the limited service coverage and HSDPA which represent relatively low quality with nation-wide service. When the WiBro has a mobile broadband service quality advantage and the difference in quality is sufficiently low, the price of WiBro with limited service coverage is relatively lower than that of HSDPA. This occurs because the advantage of WiBro's vertical service differentiation is offset by the disadvantage of horizontal differentiation. The difference in the quality of mobile internet service, however, is not too high, the price of WiBro is relatively higher than that of HSDPA. Moreover, when the service quality of WiBro is sufficiently high, the low quality HSDPA service faces no demand.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.259-266
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• 2015

Among many energy resources, natural gas has recently received a remarkable amount of attention, particularly from the electrical generation industry. This is in part due to increasing shale gas production, providing an environment-friendly fossil fuel, and high risk of nuclear power. Because South Korea, the world's second largest LNG importing nation after Japan, has no international natural gas pipelines and relies on imports in the form of LNG, the natural gas has been traditionally procured by long term LNG contracts at relatively high price. Thus, there is a need of developing an Asian LNG trading hub, where LNG can be traded at more competitive spot prices. In a natural gas spot market, the amount of natural gas to be bought should be carefully determined considering a limited storage capacity and future pricing dynamics. In this work, the problem to find the optimal amount of natural gas in a spot market is formulated as a Markov decision process (MDP) in risk neutral environment and the optimal base stock policy which depends on a stage and price is established. Taking into account price and demand uncertainties, the basestock target levels are simply approximated from dynamic programming. The simulation results show that the basestock policy can be one of effective ways for procurement of LNG in a spot market.

• The Journal of Information Technology
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.69-83
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• 2007

As a hospital environment is reconstructed from supplier-centered values to consumer-centered ones for the existence in the rapidly changing medical market, it can be said that not only must old slogans such as unconditional restructuring, remodelling, etc. be reconsidered, but a new strategy for the development and renovation of a hospital must be urgently required. Accordingly, development of customer-oriented practical strategies is needed and it appears possible to develop marketing and manage contacts, as a practical management strategy, for raising satisfaction of internal and external customers. The ultimate goal of such strategy development may be to ensure consistent potential development by maintenance of existing customers and securing new customers through a strategy of satisfying both existing and new customers. It appears that the competition in the medial will be keener in the future by human resources, members of an organization, Under these circumstances, and in relation to appearance of a new type of occupation of a coordinator, if a hospital could offer appropriate service which can meet the demand of the customers by efficiently utilizing the limited resources through efficient management of contacts between the customers and personnel, the competitive power of a hospital would be much stronger. Therefore, it is necessary to seek customer-impressing management by utilizing a coordinator as a more specialized intermediary as well as many-sided contact management through positive introduction of an expert coordinator system for internal and external customer contact management. It is expected that a hospital can secure a competitive advantage in the market through strategy development supported by an expert coordinator and increasing competitive power by means of practice of a developed creative strategy.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Navigation
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.35-65
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• 1995

The development of Korean shipping industry is maybe defined into three development stages-industry fixing stage, industry coordinating stage, industry development stage-. The development of shipping industry has been depended on the geovernment/authority role such as shipping policy, system, law, rules and regulations. In 1983, Korean shipping industry reorganization and coordination by shipping authority have made our shipping industry on the stable condition together with each company's efforts. Today's world economic environment such WTO/UR negotiation results get this government role limited. According to the being reduced government role, each company's competitive advantage power becomes more important. Besides, korean shipping industry is exposed into the entire and bitter world competition. In order to win and prevent the world shipping competition, it is necessary to look out the competitive advantage power of Korean shipping industry. The first purpose of this study is the situation analysis for competitive advantage power of Korean shipping industry. The second is to compare with our shipping policies with foreign ones concerned with ship, cargo, crew, tax and others. But in order to compare with foreign shipping, this study need their shipping statistics data, this study has some limit of the foreign data. This study has been carried on the basis of the following items. 1. Shipping environment, 2. Ships and ship acquirement(shipbuilding/purchasing), 3. Oceangoing cargo and ship's stowage rate, 4. Human factor in shipping-crew, 5. The incomes and costs in finacial statements. We have some conclusions as following through the this study. First, Korean shipping industry environment-competitive disadvantage situation- has changed rapidly due to the shipping market opening, free market entering of foreign shipping. Second, Korean shipping is disadvantageous due to the high tax rate and financing conditions in connection with ship acquirement. In order to improve the competitive advantage power, the shipping tax system and ship financing conditions should be reviewed to profitable for owners. Third, but both world and Korean oceangoing cargoes quantity have been increased annualy, Korean ship's cargo stowage rate is being decreased. This is serious situation but Korean shipping take well use of foreign vessel with hire. It is recommended to take use of owner's vessel and hired ones in the long range view, considering the world shipping management. But the number of crew has been decreased by 2, 000~3, 000 annualy, it is desirable that the long sea-experienced crew have been increased. Almost of owners usauly complain the crew cost is the main obstacles to competitive advantage power. Human factor is the most important firm's asset. All owners should pay attention to this though, and invest the proper budget to training, education, welfare as much as possible. In the long run this effects could be feedback to owners. Fifth, We must improve the financial statements structure, that is, the first step is to increase income, the second is to decrease cost, the third is to increase income on the same cost, the fourth is to decrease cost on the same income. It is essential to find out what the urgent investment is and what unnecessary cost is. At last, in order to competite world shipping race, each shipping firm must try for himself to retain the power. The government/authority is no longer dependable. I believe that each firm's power will be the industry's power, the industry's power will be the nations's power.