• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.605-618
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• 2002

The purposes of this research were to; (a) identify useful information source; (b) assess the usefulness of the Internet as an information source; and (c) assess the degree of Internet utilization for purchasing process in food service industry. The results were as follows; 1. 'personal experience and colleague recommendation' was perceived as the most useful information source, whereas the most frequently used source was 'Internet web site' for real purchasing practice. 2. the most frequently used purchasing activity through Internet was 'online ordering', followed by 'gathering product/component information', however e-marketplace or Internet bidding were less performed by Internet. 3. acquisition of real time information, rapidity, accuracy, and increasing effectiveness of purchasing process were reported the advantages of Internet utilization. 4. respondents somewhat or strongly agreed with the importance of Internet in terms of present and future purchasing management. The results of the research suggest that Internet should be able to improve purchasing process and enhance buyer-supplier relationship directly or indirectly, therefore food service industry should consider making attempt to new purchasing systems through Internet for strategic sourcing and effective procurement management.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.205-224
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• 2015

Information System is a critical success factor for overcoming the limitations of asset and capacity of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME), and for acquiring competitiveness. Although, the rate of adopting information system by SME has grown, the rate of its utilization has been stagnant. The purpose of this study is to identify the influencing factors that increase SME's information system utilization. We identify perception of strategic value, supplier's support capacity, and organizational characteristic by examining previous researches on information system utilization by SMEs, and verify their the influencing relationship with the information system utilization. This study verifies the research model and hypothesis using structural model. A date-set of 1209 samples from a survey on employees in charge of information system of SME was applied in verifying the research hypothesis. The result of this study shows that the information system utilization influences perception of strategic value and support of supply company, and partly, the structural characteristics. This study presents directions to establish strategy and policy making, and theoretically presents core factors of SME's information system utilization.

• 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.

• The Journal of Small Business Innovation
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.37-52
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• 2016

Making efforts to break down the barriers between the intra-company departments as well as cooperating with external partners can become the driving force to create a successful innovation in the new product development (NPD) process. This study deals with how the key factors of collaborative innovation success are working in the process of NPD collaboration. Using case analysis of the NPD process, where a large retailer and small and medium-sized suppliers cooperate, we found that the small and medium-sized suppliers achieved greater 'short-term' performances in the collaboration than the large firm, although the long-term performance is not clear. Among the six antecedents of innovation success, relationship-specific investment played a critical role in motivating the supplier's participation in the NPD process. Adopting a 'closed' network in which the two suppliers interact directly with each other and create new knowledge for the NPD process played an important role in producing a quality product in a reduced development time. Unlike previous studies about the retailer-supplier cooperation for NPD in the food industry suggesting that position differences cause communication problems which is a major obstacle to the NPD success. This study suggests that large retailer's initiative role is a critical success factor in the NPD by the cooperation between small and medium-sized suppliers and large retailers.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.97-109
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• 2011

As a marketing vehicle to survive in intensified retailing competition, retailer brand development has been adopted by retailers in Korea. As evidence, the retailer brand share of a major retailer, Tesco Korea, has grown from 20% in 2007 to 22.8% in the first half of 2008. It means that retailers have provided more and more retailer brand foods for customers. With the growing accessibility to retailer brand foods, it would be expected that the number of retailer brand food claims will increase. Customers have increasingly exposed to a variety of marketing activities conducted by retailers. When buying the retailer brand foods, customers tend to be affected by marketing activities of retailers. Despite the fact that customers trust retailers and then, buy their brand foods, in case of food accidents caused by production process, customers have to seek compensation from a retailer brand supplier. Of course, a retailer tends to shift its responsibility to its suppliers. Accordingly, it is not easy for customers to solve food claims. The research, therefore, aims at exploring the relationship between the buying-decision processes of retailer brand customers and which side takes legal responsibility for food claims. To effectively achieve the research aim, the author adopted a quantitative and a qualitative research technique, in order to supplement the disadvantages of each method. Before field research, based on the developed research model, the author pre-tested questionnaire with 10 samples, amended, and handed out to 400 samples. Amongst them, 316 questionnaires are available. For a focus group interview, 9 participants were recruited, who are students, housewives, and full-time workers, aged from 20s to 40s. Through the focus group interview as well as the questionnaire results, it was found that most customers were influenced by a retailer or store image in a customer's mind, retailer reputation and promotional activities. Surprisingly, customers think that the name of a retailer is a more important factor than who produces retailer brand foods, even though many customers check a retailer brand supplier, when making a buying-decision. Rather than retailer brand suppliers, customers trust retailers. That is why they purchase retailer brands. Nevertheless, production-related food claims is not involved with retailers. In fact, it would be difficult for customers to distinguish whether a food claim is related to selling or manufacturing processes. Based on research results, from a customer perspective, the research suggests that the government should require retailers to take the whole responsibility for retailer brand food claims, preventing retailers from passing the buck to retailer brand suppliers. In case of food claims, in order for customers to easily get the compensation, it is necessary to reconsider the current system. If so, retailers have to fully get involved in retailer brand production stage, and further, the customer awareness of retailer brands will be improved than ever before. Retailers cannot help taking care of the whole processes of retailer brand development, because of responsibility. As a result, the process to seek compensation for food claims might become easier, and further, the protection of customer right might be improved.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.297-323
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• 2010

The distinguished feature of the economic relationship between China and Africa during the cold war is the one that there was economic point of view at all even though such a huge trade between the two countries. It was caused by purely ideological and political purpose of China. because of the giant stream of time which is called as 'the cold war', it has been replaced with other conceptions: 'aid' or 'support.' Since the end of the cold war, however, the relationship between China and Africa has been showing noticeable features; political and ideological purposes are getting less meaningful or excluded completely. In 1990, China was based on the pragmatism, which is a rigorous sense of economy, and Africa was getting popular as an emerging market, which is not only performing as a stable energy supplier but also making trade and direct investment is possible. Also, it has implications for Korea that seriously considers putting more efforts into expanding its influence on all over the trade relations which includes investment and import-export in the emerging market: Africa.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.558-566
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• 2020

New Product Development (NPD) is essential for companies' survival, and continuous growth in the rapidly changing, convergence and business environment, and companies need to collaborate with their internal and external partners to improve performance in NPD. This research examined the integrated relationship between NPD (Cross-functional collaboration, and supplier collaboration) and collaborative communication (formality and reciprocal feedback) on corporate performance. The employees who worked in manufacturing for more than one year with experience in NPD were tested. The reliability and feasibility were assessed using the sample 272 data. The results are summarized as follows. First, cross-functional collaboration and supplier collaboration, which are the factors of NPD collaboration, had a significant positive effect on formality. Second, formality and reciprocal feedback had a significant positive effect on reciprocal feedback and corporate performance. Therefore, for successful NPD, manufacturing companies need to establish efficient management strategies and communicate officially and reciprocally to maximize productivity and efficiency based on the reciprocal partnership between suppliers. To accomplish this, companies need to plan effective communication strategies to respond quickly to internal and external partners' needs.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.35-69
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• 2014

The impact of competition on pricing has been studied in the context of counterfactual merger analyses where expected optimal prices in a hypothetical monopoly are compared with observed prices in an oligopolistic market. Such analyses would typically assume static decision making by consumers and firms and thus have been applied mostly to data obtained from consumer packed goods such as cereal and soft drinks. However such static modeling approach is not suitable when decision makers are forward looking. When it comes to the markets for durable products with indirect network effects, consumer purchase decisions and firm pricing decisions are inherently dynamic as they take into account future states when making purchase and pricing decisions. Researchers need to take into account the dynamic aspects of decision making both in the consumer side and in the supplier side for such markets. Firms in a two-sided market typically subsidize one side of the market to exploit the indirect network effect. Such pricing behaviors would be more prevalent in competitive markets where firms would try to win over the battle for standard. While such qualitative expectation on the relationship between pricing behaviors and competitive structures could be easily formed, little empirical studies have measured the extent to which the distinct pricing structure in two-sided markets depends on the competitive structure of the market. This paper develops an empirical model to measure the impact of competition on optimal pricing of durable products under indirect network effects. In order to measure the impact of exogenously determined competition among firms on pricing, we compare the equilibrium prices in the observed oligopoly market to those in a hypothetical monopoly market. In computing the equilibrium prices, we account for the forward looking behaviors of consumers and supplier. We first estimate a demand function that accounts for consumers' forward-looking behaviors and indirect network effects. And then, for the supply side, the pricing equation is obtained as an outcome of the Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium in pricing. In doing so, we utilize numerical dynamic programming techniques. We apply our model to a data set obtained from the U.S. video game console market. The video game console market is considered a prototypical case of two-sided markets in which the platform typically subsidizes one side of market to expand the installed base anticipating larger revenues in the other side of market resulting from the expanded installed base. The data consist of monthly observations of price, hardware unit sales and the number of compatible software titles for Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 from September 1996 to August 2002. Sony PlayStation was released to the market a year before Nintendo 64 was launched. We compute the expected equilibrium price path for Nintendo 64 and Playstation for both oligopoly and for monopoly. Our analysis reveals that the price level differs significantly between two competition structures. The merged monopoly is expected to set prices higher by 14.8% for Sony PlayStation and 21.8% for Nintendo 64 on average than the independent firms in an oligopoly would do. And such removal of competition would result in a reduction in consumer value by 43.1%. Higher prices are expected for the hypothetical monopoly because the merged firm does not need to engage in the battle for industry standard. This result is attributed to the distinct property of a two-sided market that competing firms tend to set low prices particularly at the initial period to attract consumers at the introductory stage and to reinforce their own networks and eventually finally to dominate the market.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.277-314
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• 2006

This article aims at analysing the reality of banks' liability resulting from the breach of contract on its part to keep the business secrecy with the supplier in the transferable credit, focusing on a English decision, Jackson v. Royal Bank of Scotland [2005] UKHL 3. In this case, the applicant, 'Econ', had purchased various varieties of pre-packed dog chews in bulk through 'Sam'(lst beneficiary) from 'PPLtd'(2nd beneficiary) in Thailand, using a transferable letter of credit issued by 'RBank'. 'Sam' charged a tremendous amount of mark-up on each transaction and it had not been disclosed to 'Econ', although the identity of 'PPLtd' was revealed to 'Econ' by various documents. However, 'RBank' made an unfortunate error to send an completion statement and other documents including 'PPLtd.'s invoice to 'Econ' instead of to 'Sam'. The effect of the Bank's error was to reveal to 'Econ' the substantial profit that 'Sam' was making on these transactions. CEO of 'Econ' was furious and, as a result, decided to cut 'Sam' out of its importing system and terminated their relationship. 'Sam' sued 'RBank' for damages to recover the loss of profits which could have been possibly made, if the information on the mark-up would not have been exposed to 'Econ'. The House of Lord held that 'RBank' was in breach of its duty of confidence, so 'Sam' was entitled to recover damages on a decreasing scale over 4 years, since there was no specific undertaking from the letter of credit.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.32 no.11B
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• pp.709-717
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• 2007

Pricing a network service aims for congestion control of the network as well as economic efficiency. A monopolistic supplier providing users with a network service on a shared link needs a pricing schedule that maximizes revenue under the link's bandwidth constraint and guarantees the bandwidth purchased by the users. In that case, nonlinear pricing is an efficient scheme which meets both requirements. This study reviews how nonlinear pricing can be applied to the network service under the constraint and shows that the nonlinear pricing may result in a fixed unit price of bandwidth as linear pricing when demand characteristics of the users follow a power law. Also, the way how the provider with incomplete information on the demand distribution seeks for the optimal pricing from the degree of the network congestion is introduced and the relationship between the development direction of the Internet and internet pricing is considered based on the results of the study.