• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.37-63
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• 2012

In franchise business, exclusive sales territory (sometimes EST in table) protection is a very important issue from an economic, social and political point of view. It affects the growth and survival of both franchisor and franchisee and often raises issues of social and political conflicts. When franchisee is not familiar with related laws and regulations, franchisor has high chance to utilize it. Exclusive sales territory protection by the manufacturer and distributors (wholesalers or retailers) means sales area restriction by which only certain distributors have right to sell products or services. The distributor, who has been granted exclusive sales territories, can protect its own territory, whereas he may be prohibited from entering in other regions. Even though exclusive sales territory is a quite critical problem in franchise business, there is not much rigorous research about the reason, results, evaluation, and future direction based on empirical data. This paper tries to address this problem not only from logical and nomological validity, but from empirical validation. While we purse an empirical analysis, we take into account the difficulties of real data collection and statistical analysis techniques. We use a set of disclosure document data collected by Korea Fair Trade Commission, instead of conventional survey method which is usually criticized for its measurement error. Existing theories about exclusive sales territory can be summarized into two groups as shown in the table below. The first one is about the effectiveness of exclusive sales territory from both franchisor and franchisee point of view. In fact, output of exclusive sales territory can be positive for franchisors but negative for franchisees. Also, it can be positive in terms of sales but negative in terms of profit. Therefore, variables and viewpoints should be set properly. The other one is about the motive or reason why exclusive sales territory is protected. The reasons can be classified into four groups - industry characteristics, franchise systems characteristics, capability to maintain exclusive sales territory, and strategic decision. Within four groups of reasons, there are more specific variables and theories as below. Based on these theories, we develop nine hypotheses which are briefly shown in the last table below with the results. In order to validate the hypothesis, data is collected from government (FTC) homepage which is open source. The sample consists of 1,896 franchisors and it contains about three year operation data, from 2006 to 2008. Within the samples, 627 have exclusive sales territory protection policy and the one with exclusive sales territory policy is not evenly distributed over 19 representative industries. Additional data are also collected from another government agency homepage, like Statistics Korea. Also, we combine data from various secondary sources to create meaningful variables as shown in the table below. All variables are dichotomized by mean or median split if they are not inherently dichotomized by its definition, since each hypothesis is composed by multiple variables and there is no solid statistical technique to incorporate all these conditions to test the hypotheses. This paper uses a simple chi-square test because hypotheses and theories are built upon quite specific conditions such as industry type, economic condition, company history and various strategic purposes. It is almost impossible to find all those samples to satisfy them and it can't be manipulated in experimental settings. However, more advanced statistical techniques are very good on clean data without exogenous variables, but not good with real complex data. The chi-square test is applied in a way that samples are grouped into four with two criteria, whether they use exclusive sales territory protection or not, and whether they satisfy conditions of each hypothesis. So the proportion of sample franchisors which satisfy conditions and protect exclusive sales territory, does significantly exceed the proportion of samples that satisfy condition and do not protect. In fact, chi-square test is equivalent with the Poisson regression which allows more flexible application. As results, only three hypotheses are accepted. When attitude toward the risk is high so loyalty fee is determined according to sales performance, EST protection makes poor results as expected. And when franchisor protects EST in order to recruit franchisee easily, EST protection makes better results. Also, when EST protection is to improve the efficiency of franchise system as a whole, it shows better performances. High efficiency is achieved as EST prohibits the free riding of franchisee who exploits other's marketing efforts, and it encourages proper investments and distributes franchisee into multiple regions evenly. Other hypotheses are not supported in the results of significance testing. Exclusive sales territory should be protected from proper motives and administered for mutual benefits. Legal restrictions driven by the government agency like FTC could be misused and cause mis-understandings. So there need more careful monitoring on real practices and more rigorous studies by both academicians and practitioners.

• Korean small business review
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.25-50
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• 2019

Although Korean government has implemented size-dependent policy, so called "the designation of SMEs-suitable industry", promoting SMEs growth, our understanding in the effectiveness of the policy is limited. We investigate the effect of the policy on SMEs performance in food product and beverages industry, which accounts for the majority in the SMEs-suitable industry. From the perspective of sales, profitability, and R&D intensity, which is regarded as indigenous effort for growth, we find the heterogeneity in the effectiveness of the policy across the sub-sectors in the industry. However, overall the policy does not significantly contribute to the growth of sales, profitability, and facilitation of R&D activity for indigenous innovative efforts of SMEs. Our study advances the theoretical discussion on the effect of the policy with the disaggregated level of analysis, i.e, sub-sector level. Our findings also contribute to the resolution of social and political conflicts between pros and cons of the policy. Our study suggests that policy makers should develop more sophisticated policy that incorporate the specific characteristics of individual sub-sectors. They also need to invest more resources in enhancing the effectiveness of the policy and accelerating SMEs innovative efforts.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.109-120
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• 2017

In the textile industry located in Gyeonggi-do, 85% of small-sized firms have less than 10 employees; in addition, the most of them are characterized by a vendor relying specialization system that conducts foundry from the vendor that managed marketing, textile design development, and quality checks according to unit stream. The breakaway of these vendors accelerated over the last 7 years; however, industry survival is at stake because the specialization system and orders have collapsed. The following four main policies must be implemented to overcome industry hardship. Policies have been derived from survey and analysis (present condition and trends) from industrial statistics and related policies in advanced and developing countries. First, a policy to promote cooperation between small-sized foundry unit-streams. Second, unification of the marketing support function with a textile design and development support system. Third, the introduction of policy support-management system customized according to developmental stages (tall process${\rightarrow}$fabric production${\rightarrow}$sales${\rightarrow}$clothing production sales). Fourth, foundation of a control tower that puts these tasks in a vehicle and runs them and the division of roles with the central government. We must propel main tasks to manifest the developmental potential (develop eco-friend dyeing and processing technologies, change to the young next CEO in business environment, and grow the of knit market) of the Gyeonggi Textile Industry in a short period to present a condition where these four main policies are running.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.17 no.11
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• pp.163-170
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• 2019

A new revenue recognition standard was adopted in 2018. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how K-IFRS 1115 'Revenue from Contracts with Customers' affects the revenue recognition of the telecommunication firms and to suggest a regulatory policy for the telecommunications industry. It shows identifying performance obligations for bundles, determining the transaction price and allocating the transaction price to the performance obligation and how to account for it using case study. The most important change in the telecommunication companies's revenue is to allocate the transaction price to two performance obligations: telecom services and mobile handset sales. As a result, sales revenue are expected to drop en masse. This study provides important implications for the regulatory accounting policy of the telecommunications industry.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.105-114
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• 2017

Purpose - Recently, domestic pharmaceutical market is growing steadily, but top-tier companies are concentrating on sales growth. In this market, SMEs, which account for more than 80% of the entire market, suffer from the problem of lower margins and increasing inventory costs. According to the government's policy changes related to pharmaceuticals, it is pointed out that the management of existing customers and the control of salespeople are important issues for pharmaceutical companies. This study investigates the effect of the control system on the salesperson in domestic pharmaceutical distribution channel on customer-oriented selling behaviors and sales performance. Research design, data, and methodology - To verify the proposed research model and test hypotheses, the authors selected 244 MR(medical representatives)'s responses which have currently relationship with doctors or pharmacists. This study carefully investigated the reliability, content validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of the proposed model. Results - The authors find out the following results: capacity control, activity control, and self control have positive effects on customer-oriented selling behaviors and customer-oriented selling behaviors have a positive effect on sales performance. In addition, we present alternative model to check the direct effect between the control systems and the sales performance, but control system factors except self control have no direct influence. Conclusions - First of all, competency control and activity control increases the customer-oriented selling behavior of the salesperson. This means that the salesperson's sales skill, negotiation skill, customer access skill, presentation ability, monitoring, direction and evaluation are important and it is also important to control activities to check the number of visits to customers, report preparation, and customer service etiquette. Second, the fact that self-control of salesperson affects the customer-oriented selling behavior suggests that self-control is not controlled by external factors but rather establishes short/long-term goals. Therefore, it is important for sales organization to create an environment in which members can induce persistent incentives for self-control. Finally, output control did not affect customer-oriented sales behavior, which is less likely to form confidence or motivation to MRs when output control is perceived as a means of monitoring, supervising, or controlling rather than providing information to salespeople.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.458-468
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• 2019

This research attempted to estimate monthly sales of food and beverage at the passenger terminal of Incheon int'l airport from June of 2015 to December 2020. This paper used ARIMA-Intervention model which can estimate the change of the sales amount suggesting the predicted monthly food and beverage sales revenue. The intervention variable was travel-ban policy against south Korea from P.R. China since July 2016 to December 2017 due to THAAD in south Korea. According to ARIMA, it was found normal predicted sales amount showed the slow growth increase rate until 2020 due to the effect of intervened variable. However, the monthly food sales in July and August 2019 was 20.3 and 21.2 billion KRW respectively. Each amount would increase even more in 2020 and the amount would increase to 21.4 and 22.1 billion KRW. The sales amount in 2019 would be 7.7 and 8.1 billion KRW and climb up 7.9 and 8.2 billion KRW in 2020. It was expected LCC passengers tend to spend more money for F&B at airport due to no meal or drink service of LCC or the paid-in meal and beverage service of LCC. The growth of sales of food and beverate will be accompanied with the growth of LCC according to estimated data.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.7-16
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• 2013

As workplace incidents has been being declining in Korea, there is criticism of the effectiveness of occupational safety policy implementation. It is unknown that which policy target group needs to be targeted to yield effective injuries prevention. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and reveal the policy intervention group with a high priority in terms of industrial incident prevention and the related investment cost. A Policy Priority Model(PPM) is composed of 6 indicators regarding influences of both the incident reduction and the cost reduction. Z-score analyses are used to confirm the high policy priority area or policy target group. Overall, workplace with worker below 50 persons, construction site with the sales of more than a hundred million won, workplace with relatively small percentage of female employees and relatively higher percentage of older worker should be prioritized to reduce workplace injuries. This paper provides an analytic way that can be used to decide the policy priority workplace in order not only to reduce work-related injuries&illnesses and the related investment cost but to further lessen the related societal costs.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.18 no.9
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• pp.67-75
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• 2020

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to enhance sales promotion efficiency for using solid refuse fuel facilities. Renewable energy technology using Solid Refuse Fuel (SRF) is an economic efficiency technology that recovers waste by burning various wastes. A survey on the pollutants discharged from the solid fuels facilities was investigated so that the SRF facilities could be expanded, distributed and reflected in the policy. Research design, data, and methodology: In this study, 9 business sites using SRF and Bio-SRF as main raw materials were investigated for 2 years. The characteristics of target business sites such as the type of fuel used, combustion method, combustion temperature, daily fuel consumption and environmental prevention facilities were studied. Results: The average pollution & ammonia concentration of Bio-SRF facilities was found to be 88.15% higher than that of SRF facilities. But the average acetaldehyde concentration of SRF facilities was found to be 88.15% higher than that of Bio-SRF facilities. Conclusions: The main issue is how much electric power generation using combustible materials affects air pollution. The waste recycling law provides the standard value according to the fuel property, but there is a considerable gap with the mixed fuel. Therefore, for efficient utilization of facilities using solid fuel products, additional research is needed to improve the distribution structure of exhaust pollutants is needed.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.97-106
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• 2015

Background & Methods: The purpose of this research is to estimate the efficiency of the pharmaceutical firms and the determinants of their efficiency. Stochastic frontier analysis(SFA) and panel study are applied to the data of 60 domestic pharmaceutical firms from 2006 to 2012. Results & Conclusion: First, the result of the stochastic frontier analysis shows that overall efficiency of the pharmaceutical firms is increasing as time goes by. However, if firms are classified by the scale, the larger firms show more efficiency and if classified by the degree of innovativeness, the innovative firms show more efficiency compared to the non-innovative firms. This evidences show that the scale and R&D investment have significant relationships with the efficiency of the pharmaceutical firms. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the national level of investment for the fundamental researches to vitalize R&D of the new drugs. Second, the result of estimation of the determinants of efficiency shows that the firms with larger sales promotion expenses and entertainment expenses have less efficiency compared to the other firms. This can be explained by the structural characteristics of the small generic pharmaceutical firms. Therefore, the government had better make the pharmaceutical firms to reduce sales promotion and entertainment expenses and increase R&D expenses by introducing systems such as global budgeting system on medicine or reference pricing system.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.23-31
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• 2000

Many studies in marketing and economics have attempted to model price and sales path under the dynamic diffusion process. Most of these models have been based on a fixed product lifetime. The current business climate requiring intensive development of new products however affects the diffusion of new products and their lifetime. Many products have not enjoyed the expected life cycle at the launching stage due to intense technical development competitive reactions, and financial problems. Most diffusion models however have not taken account of the lifetime uncertainty of new product. If the products do not last over the planning horizon set by those models. the optimal price derived from them could be futile. Therefore we had better take such lifetime uncertainty into consideration when developing diffusion models, In this paper we study the impact of uncertain product lifetime on its optimal pricing path in non-competitive market. We develop an optimal pricing model under uncertain product lifetimes and conduct a simulation study to investigate their effects on the optimal pricing and corresponding sales paths. The simulation study provides some interesting findings on optimal pricing policy under uncertain product lifetime. This study could be a stepping stone for the further extended study of optimal pricing strategy with uncertain product lifetime.