Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential benefits or detriments of team management on fund performance in the mutual fund market. An additional purpose of this study is to examine the optimal number of managers in a fund industry for superior performance. Research design, data, and methodology - This paper investigates the effect of managerial structure on fund performance in the Korean active mutual fund market between 2001 and 2008. For this, we analyze two risk-adjusted performances measures- the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the three-factor model of Fama & French (1993). Results - First, we found that single-managed funds exhibited superior performance. Second major finding was that as the number of managers in a fund increases, the fund performance deteriorates. Finally, the results reveal that the sharpest performance drop occurs when team size increases from a 5-person team to a 6-person team. Conclusions – The results suggest that the management structure can be a source of competitive advantage for fund performance. As considering fund performance is the outcome of managers’ decision-making, this study contributes to not only the financial literature but also the literature in other areas, such as management and general business.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the impact of donor’s fiscal status on aid decisions before and after the 2008 global financial crisis. The effects on aid can change depending on the donor country’s fiscal status and the period of financial crisis. Research design, data, and methodology – A fixed effect regression and dynamic panel GMM is conducted using a comprehensive dataset combining 31 donor and 167 recipient countries during 1996-2015. The key explanatory variable is central government debt-to-GDP ratio of donor country. Recipient countries' GNI per capita, population, governance indicators, and bilateral trade-to-GDP ratio between donor and recipient countries are included as control variables. Results – We can confirm the relationship between donor country’s fiscal status and aid flow. The cyclical component of government debt is found to have a negative impact on grant decisions particularly after the 2008 global financial crisis. This effect becomes larger in the countries with high government debt-to-GDP ratio. ODA decisions from the countries with low financial constraint do not significantly affected by the recipient countries’ factors such as GNI, population, and governance indicator. Conclusions – Based on the empirical results of this study, the source of aid should be diversified by incorporating private sector and innovative financing sources

Purpose - This present aims to analyze the effect of export modes on initial export amount and time to export by selecting export modes among various success strategies and factors. Research design, data, and methodology - It surveyed 980 small and mid-sized venture enterprises across Korea. The export modes and its impact on exports through frequency analysis and cross analysis, and validated through a PPML(regression analysis applied the enterprise growth model) analysis. Results - Five export modes were investigated : direct export, indirect export, transfer from direct export to indirect export, transfer from direct export to indirect export, and parallel export to indirect export. It was found that SMVEs that exported directly from establishment to initial export had the shortest period, and also had the highest export price Conclusions - From a marketing point of view, it took an average of 1.6 years to switch from export directly to indirect export or directly export, and the reason for the export modes conversion was to supplement export specialists and improve export competitiveness. And the export amount and time period that SMVEs establishes and export is a significant factor in export success strategy and there has been few prior study in export modes.

Purpose - This paper aims to identify factors that influence the users' word-of-mouth intention (WOMI) regarding mobile apps, focussing on the impacts of technology acceptance model (TAM) and social network theory. Research design, data and methodology - Based on TAM, this study integrates social network theory into the research model. The 317 sets of data collected in a survey were tested against the model using SmartPLS. Results - Our findings suggest the following: 1) Personal innovativeness positively influences perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEU) and perceived enjoyment (PE); 2) PEU affects PU and PE; 3) Both PU and Satisfaction are directly correlated with WOMI. Although PEU and PE has no direct impact on WOMI, they may indirectly affect WOMI via Satisfaction, as PU, PEU and PE all positively influence satisfaction; 4) Network density and network centrality both play a mediating role in the relation between PEU and WOMI. Referral Reward Program have a positive moderating effect on the relation between PU and WOMI. Conclusions - The findings of this study illustrate the traits of Apps that can promote users’ WOMI, as well as the characteristics of people who are more likely to participate in the word-of-mouth process. The findings provide a theoretical basis for app developers to make word-of-mouth a marketing strategy.

Purpose - With the worldwide aging problem and the development of globalization, customers prefer to seek affordable medical services with the higher quality overseas. This new trend has urged some destination countries to improve their services for the more competitive advantages over other countries. Literature research indicate that medical quality and cost may be the key factors influencing global patients’ decisions. In the international environment, however, medical tourism destinations are selected due to cultural similarity between the hosting country and the customers’ own country. The more similarity perceived between the two countries leads foreign patients to choose the considering country as the destination for medical tourism. However, little research has been conducted on this topic. Thus, we empirically investigate how cultural similarity influences Chinese medical customers’ choice of the destinations. We also consider the factors related to medical competency and travel attribute which might affect customers’ decisions along with some moderating roles of disease types. Research design, data, and methodology – We proposed a research model in order to confirm the relations among different variables of cultural similarity, medical competency, travel attractiveness, disease types, and destination choice. The questionnaire survey is processed in the more economically developed regions of China such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Jiangsu. Conditional logit regression is applied to analyze the data of 881. Results - Results indicate that cultural similarity is the important predictor of Chinese customers’ decision to select a medical country. However, the effects of cultural similarity vary according to the disease types. We also find that medical competency and travel attractiveness influence their decisions with the moderating role of disease types. Conclusions – Cultural similarity is the important factor that influences Chinese potential medical tourists’ decisions to select a destination. Marketing managers should consider the effects of cultural similarity when developing strategies for attracting Chinese medical tourists. Since medical competency and travel attractiveness are still the critical key elements for them to evaluate the destination countries, it is necessary to continuously improve medical service quality and facilities. The results also recommend that medical managers should sharpen their marketing strategies by segmenting Chinese potential customers in terms of disease types.

Purpose – Past research has not given much attention to the roles of consumers’ social relationship type in the effects of justice type of service failure recovery alternatives on their satisfaction to the alternative exposed to them. Current research aimed at exploring the moderation role of consumers’ social relationship central versus peripheral in the effects of justice types of service failure recovery alternatives on the recovery satisfaction, and this research also explored whether the level of satisfaction to interaction justice-focused alternative are significantly different between the two, their social relationship central and peripheral relationship. Research design, data, and methodology – 2(social relationship central versus peripheral) between-subjects design was employed. 50 participants for each experimental group there were. Participants of each group took forceful steps in choosing one between the procedural justice-focused alternative and the distribution justice-focused alternative. χ2-analysis was used to verify that the number of choosing each alternative becomes different between the two experimental groups, and a one way ANOVA was used to verify that the extent to which participants are satisfied to the alternative chosen by them becomes different between the two groups. Results – The number of participants choosing procedural justice-focused alternative at the group of social relationship central was larger than that at the group of social relationship peripheral, whereas the number of participants choosing distribution justice-focused alternative at the group of social relationship peripheral was larger than that at the group of social relationship central. And the level of satisfaction to procedural justice-focused alternative at the group of social relationship central was higher than that at the group of social relationship peripheral, whereas the level of satisfaction to distribution justice-focused alternative at the group of social relationship peripheral was higher than that at the group of social relationship central. In addition, the level of satisfaction to interaction justice-focused alternative was not significantly different between the two groups. Conclusions – Marketers should give attention to the type of justice when developing alternatives by which consumers’ service failure can be recovered. They should suggest procedural justice-focused alternative to consumers under social relationship central, whereas they should develop distribution justice-focused alternative for consumers under social relationship peripheral. And in the process of recovering service failure they also should focus on interaction justice.

Purpose - The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) among 16 countries including South Korea, the largest free trade agreement in the Asia-Pacific region, will be concluded next year. The participating countries decided to pursue a comprehensive and high –quality agreement, while ensuring flexibility considering development level of each country. In this study, trade structures between nations from 2005 through 2016 were examined to see the impact that this agreement will have on Korea and to come up with effective countermeasures. Research design, data, and methodology - The method of analysis includes the analysis of the trade matrix, which is useful for identifying the dependency of the individual countries on the market in the region and the reciprocal dependency of the member countries on the market, and the index of intensity of trade, which is useful for figuring out the share of trade between the parties in total trade. Results - The results showed that first, the international trade coefficients of Vietnam and Philippines are higher than those of China and Japan. Secondly, the international inducement coefficients between China and Japan were high, and that between Indonesia and Burma were low, indicating that Korea's exports did not have much effect on export increase of these countries. Third, as a result of analyzing Korea's trade intensity, it was found that export intensity and import intensity were greater than 1 in Vietnam and Philippines, which shows that there is a high degree of relational bond with these countries. India and Laos countries still have a low level of relational bond, which indicates that there is room for improvement in economic relations when the agreement is concluded. After the signing of the agreement in the future, more diverse industrial structures should be continuously studied. Conclusions - The analysis of trade matrix, trade structure, trade inducement coefficient and trade intensity between Korea and RCEP participating countries shows that the majority of the countries have the high level of economic relationship with Korea. Korea should drive a harder bargain when negotiating the terms of the RCEP, in comparison with the level of the existing FTA agreement excluding Japan.

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship among narcissism, usage motives, usage behaviors, satisfaction with and continuance intention to use fashion social media. Research design, data, methodology – A questionnaire survey was used to collect data after conducting a pilot test. Based on the reliability test of the preliminary questionnaire used for the pilot test, the questionnaire was revised. The final questionnaires were administered to 238 fashion social media users and 216 were used for the data analysis. To assess the validity of these measures, exploratory factor analysis and the confirmatory factor analysis were performed. Structural equation modeling analysis were employed for data analysis. Results - Five factors of the usage motivation of fashion social media were extracted: information-seeking, relationshipseeking, practicality-seeking, enjoyment-seeking and self-expression motives. The statistical analysis confirmed the influence of the narcissism tendency on all of the usage motives of fashion social media, three of the fashion social media usage motives influencing information diffusion behavior, and the influence of the information diffusion behavior on users' satisfaction and continuance intention to use fashion social media. Narcissism exerted the highest influences on self-expression motive followed by information-seeking, enjoyment-seeking, relationship-seeking and practicality-seeking motives in order. Factors affecting fashion information diffusion behaviors are practicality-seeking motive, self-expression motive, and relationship-seeking motive. The greater the diffusion of information, the higher the satisfaction with using fashion social media. The consumers with higher satisfaction intended to use fashion social media and share information more frequently. Conclusions - The results indicate that narcissism is an important factor in fashion social media usage motivation. The main motives for narcissistic people to spread information is for the practical purpose at the most, and then to express their personality and style, and to build relationship with others. The satisfaction through active information sharing behaviors seems to play a key role to lead high continuance intention of fashion social media. These implies that marketing strategies to satisfy consumers’ narcissism and motives to use social media, and to stimulate the information diffusion behaviors can be used to meet their needs for higher satisfaction with fashion social media.