Development of virtual cyber‐tour in the virtual reality system

This study is to explain the importance and the necessity of virtual cyber‐tour in a virtual reality environment, and to present a way of its realization as a means to surmount the fundamental constraints in current tourism, arising mainly from the individual health, cost, leisure time, and the low perception on tourism culture. This virtual cyber‐tour using virtual reality technology will not only provide various indirect tour experiences to the existing tour resources, but also develop a new type of tour system, leading to new worlds which have not been accessible to the public because of various restrictions coming from the current technology, transportation means, and physical limits of human body. Thus, the cyber‐tour will be a new tour resource of totally different concept and also, its industrialization will result in the developments of new industries for virtual reality system, video production, and display media, creating lots of jobs and added value.     

An Explorative Study of Korean Consumer Participation in Virtual Brand Communities in Social Network Sites

ABSTRACT

The importance of virtual brand communities in social network sites has received increasing attention from both academia and industry. In surveying a sample of 333 virtual brand community members in Korean social network sites, the current study provides a baseline understanding of the antecedents and consequences of virtual brand communities. The findings here suggest that members of brand communities have six primary social and psychological motives for engaging in virtual community activities: interpersonal utility, brand loyalty, entertainment seeking, information seeking, incentive seeking, and convenience seeking. Our findings also indicate that members of consumer versus marketer-generated brand communities show both similarities and differences in terms of the extent of community participation and the levels of community commitment, satisfaction, and future intention. Our findings provide useful managerial implications for marketers who want to tap into the huge communication potential of this new marketing communication tool and medium, as they offer insight into the proactive role of consumers in today's marketplace.     

Self‐directed learning readiness as an antecedent of organizational commitment: a Korean study

This study was to test whether employees possessing a higher level of self‐directed learning (SDL) readiness have significantly stronger organizational commitment in Korean business settings. Job position and length of service in the workplace, which were previously found as related variables to influence organizational commitment, were included to see how strongly they are associated with organizational commitment. This study found that SDL readiness was a meaningful variable in terms of predicting both affective and continuance commitment. While SDL readiness is negatively related to continuance commitment, it is positively associated with affective commitment. The findings of this study supported the theoretical assumption drawn in a review of the literature.     

Economic design of a two-stage screening procedure with a prescribed outgoing quality

Summary An economic two-stage screening procedure based on screening and performance variables is proposed. A screening variable is used first to decide whether an item should be accepted, rejected, or undecided. The performance variable is then used to classify the undecided items. The two variables are assumed to have a bivariate normal distribution. A cost model is constructed which involves costs due to screening and performance inspections and misclassification errors. Optimal cutoff values on the screening variable minimizing the expected cost are obtained subject to the constraint that the outgoint quality exceeds a prespecified level. Methods of finding the optimal cutoff values are presented for both parameters-known and parameters-unknown cases.     

Consideration of an expected future deal in assessing the value of a present deal: Forward-looking bargain shopping

Hunting for bargains has long been an important aspect of shopping behavior. One of the distinctive characteristics of bargain shopping is forward-looking price expectation, where one discount offer is evaluated in relation to another deeper discount anticipated in the future. Two experimental studies examined potentially competing effects of the two discounts over different timing points. Transaction value and purchase intention for the present discount may be affected not only by its discount depth but also by the awareness of the future discount. The negative effect of the future discount could substantially offset the positive perception toward the present deal. On the other hand, the future discount expectation does not appear to lower the perception of acquisition for the present discount. Effects of the future discount were investigated in terms of discount depth, product availability, and discount timing.     

Further Long Memory Properties of Inflationary Shocks

Several previous studies have found fractionally integrated, or long memory behavior, in the conditional mean of inflation. This paper notes that extremely similar phenomena are also apparent in the squared and absolute values of residuals from fractionally filtered inflation series. Hence, the inflation process appears to have a dual long memory feature in both its first and its second conditional moments. We suggest a parametric model of long memory in both the conditional mean and the conditional variance. Some Monte Carlo evidence is presented that supports estimation of the model by approximate maximum likelihood methods. We then report estimated models for the inflation series for several different industrialized countries, including the United States. For nearly all of the countries in our study, there is strong evidence of statistically significant long memory parameters in both the conditional mean and the variance. We note some of the implications for modeling inflation.     

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Ethical Attitudes of Business Managers: India Korea and the United States

Culture has been identified as a significant determinant of ethical attitudes of business managers. This research studies the impact of culture on the ethical attitudes of business managers in India, Korea and the United States using multivariate statistical analysis. Employing Geert Hofstede's cultural typology, this study examines the relationship between his five cultural dimensions (individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and long-term orientation) and business managers' ethical attitudes. The study uses primary data collected from 345 business manager participants of Executive MBA programs in selected business schools in India, Korea and the United States using Hofstede's Value Survey Module (94) and an instrument designed by the researchers to measure respondents' ethical attitudes (attitudes toward business ethics in general and toward twelve common questionable practices in particular). Results indicate that national culture has a strong influence on business managers' ethical attitudes. In addition to national culture, respondents' general attitudes toward business ethics are related to their personal integrity; their attitudes toward questionable business practices are related to the external environment and gender, as well as to their personal integrity. A strong relationship exists between cultural dimensions of individualism and power distance and respondents' ethical attitudes toward certain questionable practices. The analysis of the relationship between cultural dimensions of masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation and respondents' ethical attitudes toward questionable practices produced mixed results, likely due to the lack of notable differences in cultural dimension scores among the countries surveyed.     

Estimating scale economies of the wireless telecommunications industry using EVA data

This paper proposes a new estimation method of total cost and average cost curves and applies it to the telecommunications industry. The method is more flexible and entails less hassle for data collection than traditional methods. The results show that the long-run average cost (LRAC) curve is downward sloping, revealing the presence of economies of scale in production. The two largest Korean mobile network operators are realizing full economies of scale, while the smallest operator is not. Finally, the paper recommends three policy alternatives that the Ministry of Information and Communication of Korea can draw on to increase efficiency in the Korean mobile telecommunications market.     

Retests on the Theory of Collective Action: The Olson and Zeckhauser Model and its Elaboration

The Olson-Zeckhauser model explaining contributions to international organizations, which used economic size as the dominant indicator, lost its predictive power by the 1970s. I suggest a broad explanatory factor: contribution incentives experienced by an organization's members. International relations theory enables us to identify systemic reasons why the large industrialized nations might feel less incentive to contribute to international governmental organizations regardless of their policy area. The reasons, changing characteristics of the international system including multipolarity and international economic competition, have intensified since the early 1970s in step with changing contribution patterns. I propose an empirical model, a specific incarnation of the collective-action framework. This proposed model argues that a state's burden-sharing reflects the nature of its international preferences, themselves a function of a country's domestic conditions and international incentives. A variety set of tests supports my hypothesis that the decreasing interest of large nations in bankrolling international institutions arises from the increasingly decentralized nature of international influence.