• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.227-252
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• 2018

The evolution of instant communication has mirrored the development of the Internet and messenger applications are among the most representative manifestations of instant communication technologies. In messenger applications, senders use emoticons to supplement the emotions conveyed in the text of their messages. The fact that communication via messenger applications is not face-to-face makes it difficult for senders to communicate their emotions to message recipients. Emoticons have long been used as symbols that indicate the moods of speakers. However, at present, emoticon-use is evolving into a means of conveying the psychological states of consumers who want to express individual characteristics and personality quirks while communicating their emotions to others. The fact that companies like KakaoTalk, Line, Apple, etc. have begun conducting emoticon business and sales of related content are expected to gradually increase testifies to the significance of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, despite the development of emoticons themselves and the growth of the emoticon market, no suitable emoticon recommendation system has yet been developed. Even KakaoTalk, a messenger application that commands more than 90% of domestic market share in South Korea, just grouped in to popularity, most recent, or brief category. This means consumers face the inconvenience of constantly scrolling around to locate the emoticons they want. The creation of an emoticon recommendation system would improve consumer convenience and satisfaction and increase the sales revenue of companies the sell emoticons. To recommend appropriate emoticons, it is necessary to quantify the emotions that the consumer sees and emotions. Such quantification will enable us to analyze the characteristics and emotions felt by consumers who used similar emoticons, which, in turn, will facilitate our emoticon recommendations for consumers. One way to quantify emoticons use is metadata-ization. Metadata-ization is a means of structuring or organizing unstructured and semi-structured data to extract meaning. By structuring unstructured emoticon data through metadata-ization, we can easily classify emoticons based on the emotions consumers want to express. To determine emoticons' precise emotions, we had to consider sub-detail expressions-not only the seven common emotional adjectives but also the metaphorical expressions that appear only in South Korean proved by previous studies related to emotion focusing on the emoticon's characteristics. We therefore collected the sub-detail expressions of emotion based on the "Shape", "Color" and "Adumbration". Moreover, to design a highly accurate recommendation system, we considered both emotion-technical indexes and emoticon-emotional indexes. We then identified 14 features of emoticon-technical indexes and selected 36 emotional adjectives. The 36 emotional adjectives consisted of contrasting adjectives, which we reduced to 18, and we measured the 18 emotional adjectives using 40 emoticon sets randomly selected from the top-ranked emoticons in the KakaoTalk shop. We surveyed 277 consumers in their mid-twenties who had experience purchasing emoticons; we recruited them online and asked them to evaluate five different emoticon sets. After data acquisition, we conducted a factor analysis of emoticon-emotional factors. We extracted four factors that we named "Comic", Softness", "Modernity" and "Transparency". We analyzed both the relationship between indexes and consumer attitude and the relationship between emoticon-technical indexes and emoticon-emotional factors. Through this process, we confirmed that the emoticon-technical indexes did not directly affect consumer attitudes but had a mediating effect on consumer attitudes through emoticon-emotional factors. The results of the analysis revealed the mechanism consumers use to evaluate emoticons; the results also showed that consumers' emoticon-technical indexes affected emoticon-emotional factors and that the emoticon-emotional factors affected consumer satisfaction. We therefore designed the emoticon recommendation system using only four emoticon-emotional factors; we created a recommendation method to calculate the Euclidean distance from each factors' emotion. In an attempt to increase the accuracy of the emoticon recommendation system, we compared the emotional patterns of selected emoticons with the recommended emoticons. The emotional patterns corresponded in principle. We verified the emoticon recommendation system by testing prediction accuracy; the predictions were 81.02% accurate in the first result, 76.64% accurate in the second, and 81.63% accurate in the third. This study developed a methodology that can be used in various fields academically and practically. We expect that the novel emoticon recommendation system we designed will increase emoticon sales for companies who conduct business in this domain and make consumer experiences more convenient. In addition, this study served as an important first step in the development of an intelligent emoticon recommendation system. The emotional factors proposed in this study could be collected in an emotional library that could serve as an emotion index for evaluation when new emoticons are released. Moreover, by combining the accumulated emotional library with company sales data, sales information, and consumer data, companies could develop hybrid recommendation systems that would bolster convenience for consumers and serve as intellectual assets that companies could strategically deploy.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.49-56
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• 2013

KakaoTalk, a Korean mobile instant messenger service launched by KAKAO Inc., has grown remarkably popular in a short period of time, with its number of subscribers exceeding 100 million as of July 2013. Today, KakaoTalk is an everyday communication tool among most Korean mobile users. Although KAKAO has been the subject of many business and consumer studies, the KakaoTalk platform strategy has not been studied thoroughly. In this study, we analyze its platform strategy through the lens of several widely utilized frameworks such as Platform Leadership (Gawer & Cusumano 2002, 2008), Winner-take-all dynamics (Eisenmann et al. 2006), and Open Service Innovation (Chesbrough 2011). Our results show that Eisenmann et al (2006)'s "Winner-Take-All" platform best explains how KakaoTalk dominated its rivals, Mypeople by Daum Communications and Line by Naver Corporation. In surpassing its rivals, KAKAO delivered a solution to the 'essential problem' that mobile social communication should be upgraded from mobile companies' paid "Short Message Service" (SMS). By doing so, KakaoTalk fulfilled the first requirement of Gawer & Cusumano (2008)'s "Coring" strategy, which explains how a new platform is created. KakaoTalk also satisfied the second requirement of "Coring" by providing economic incentives for KakaoTalk members to interact through its Games and Items store. Actively accepting its customers' ideas and upgrading its services, KAKAO reinforced its platform leadership to its customers and put Chesbrough (2011)'s "Outside In - Open Service" innovation strategy into practice.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.85-94
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• 2016

Purpose - Recently, Mobile technologies and devices including smart phones and tablets have increased the possibility of communicating with other people and sharing personal information without time and space restriction. In order to realize the market potential related to mobile technologies, a large number of internet services have been incorporated into mobile platforms. Especially, The number of MIM(Mobile Instant Messenger) users has been increasing dramatically and services using MIM platform also have diversified. In spite of drastic growth in markets related to MIM, there is little empirical research on MIM and users' behaviors. This study designed to examine the structural relationships among belongingness, loneliness, self-disclosure intention, system quality, and self-disclosure behavior in context of MIM. Research design, data, and methodology - Three hypotheses were about the relationship among belongingness, loneliness and self-disclosure intention. The other two hypotheses were about the moderating effect of system quality in the causal relationship between self-disclosure intention and self-disclosure behavior. The data was analyzed by structural equation modeling. Research data were obtained from 330 undergraduate students who were KakaoTalk users and total 314 valid questionnaires were used in the final analysis. Results - The results from this study are as follow. First, the belongingness and the loneliness had a significant impact on self-disclosure intention in MIM. Second, the self-disclosure intention in MIM also had a positive impact on the self-disclosure behavior. Lastly, there is a moderating effect of the system quality in the relationship between the self-disclosure intention and self-disclosure behavior in MIM. Specifically, the higher system quality level was perceived, the positive effect of the self-disclosure intention in MIM on the self-disclosure behavior was greater. Conclusions - Based on the results from this study, academic and practical implications can be drawn. First, the study extends the scope of research about SNS through focusing on MIM to be classified by closed type SNS and identifies the relationship between emotion, behavioral intention and behaviors in MIM. Second, this study provides strategic guidelines to increase the efficiency for promotion activity. Limitations for the study also should be discussed.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.419-438
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• 2023

Purpose: This study examines the effectiveness of personalized goal setting and smartphone-based nutrition counseling among adults in their 20s and 30s. Methods: Nutrition counseling was conducted for a total of 30 adults through a 1:1 chat room of a mobile instant messenger, once a week for 8 weeks. The first week of counseling included a preliminary online questionnaire survey and a dietary intake survey. Based on the results of the preliminary survey, 2 dietary goals were set in the second week and the participants were asked to record their achievements on a daily checklist. From the third week onwards, counselors sent feedback messages based on the checklist and provided information on dietary guidelines in a card news format every week. Post-counseling questionnaires and dietary intake surveys were conducted in the seventh week. Changes in dietary habits during the counseling were reviewed in the eighth week, followed by a questionnaire survey on the evaluation of the counseling process. Results: The nutrition quotient (NQ) scores and self-efficacy scores were significantly higher after nutrition counseling. The NQ scores of consumption frequencies of fruits, milk and dairy products, nuts, fast food, Ramyeon, sweet and greasy baked products, sugarsweetened beverages, the number of vegetable dishes at meals, and breakfast frequency were significantly higher after nutrition counseling. The intake of protein, vitamin A, thiamin, riboflavin, folate, calcium, and iron, and the index of nutritional quality of vitamin A, riboflavin, folate, calcium, and iron were higher after nutrition education. The participants were satisfied with the nutrition counseling program and the provided nutrition information. Conclusion: Personalized goal setting and smartphone-based nutrition counseling were found to be effective in improving the quality of diet and self-efficacy in young adults. Similar results were obtained in both the underweight/normal weight and the overweight/obese groups.

• Hwankyungkyoyuk
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.82-96
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• 2008

The primary purpose of this research is to examine the career development of under-graduate environmental education program students. More specifically, it intends to understand how they perceive their career prospect, how they prepare for they career and what kind of career development assistance they receive from their school. For most of college students, a primary purpose for attending college is to prepare for a career, but often academic preparation in college is not enough to get the job they aspire. Career preparation becomes even more complex when their major does not dictate any specific career path or when the major does dictate a specific career path but it does not provide sufficient and quality job opportunities. Undergraduate environmental education programs are typical examples of the latter. To illuminate the understanding of the context surrounding undergraduate environmental education program students, semi-structured interviews were conducted through an instance message software program from August 17th, 2007 to August 20th, 2007. The subjects of this study consisted of 4 undergraduate students and 2 graduates of Hangu University (a tentative name). Each participant was interviewed once or twice for about 2 hours each interview. The findings of the study are as follow. First, they maintain a positive attitude regarding the career outlook and the career decision but it is not well founded. Second, career search and career preparation are conducted individually, and their school does not provide much systematic career assistance. Third, they did not see the relevance of the curriculum of their program to their future career. A few preliminary implications for practices related to career development may be drawn from the findings reported in this study. First, undergraduate students in environmental education programs appear to be in need of comprehensive career development assistance ranging from exploration of job opportunities related to majors, to development of job-seeking skills, to general issues of career preparation and choice. Experiential modes of career exploration seem to be helpful in clarifying their interest and aptitude in the area of environmental education. Second, career development assistance for these students should start at early college years. Third, these students may need help in exploring diverse opportunities related to their major as well as other academic areas. Finally, it is recommended to create more careers in the area of environmental education.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.21-39
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• 2018

Today, Mobile Instant Message (MIM) has become a communication means which is commonly used by many people as the technology on smart phones has been enhanced. Among the services, KakaoGame creates much profits continuously by using its representative Kakao platform. However, even though the number of users of KakaoGame increases and the characteristics of the users are more diversified, there are few researches on the relationship between the characteristics of the SNG users and the continuous use of the game. Since the social capital that is formed by the SNG users with the acquaintances create the sense of belonging, its role is being emphasized under the environment of social network. In addition, game user's concerns about the information privacy may decrease the trust on a game APP, and it also caused to threaten about the game system. Therefore, this study was designed to examine the structural relationships among SNG users' social capital, concerns about the information privacy, flow, SNG reuse intention and recommendation intention. The results from this study are as follow. First of all, the participants' bridging social capital had a positive effect on the flow of an SNG, but the bonding social capital had a negative effect on the flow of an SNG. In addition, awareness of information privacy concern had a negative effects on the flow of an SNG, but control of information privacy concern had a positive effect on the flow of an SNG. Lastly, the flow of an SNG had a positive effect on the reuse intention and recommendation intention of an SNG. Also, reuse intention of an SNG had a positive effect on the recommendation intention. Based on the results from this study, academic and practical implications can be drawn. First, This study focused on KakaoTalk which has both of the closed and open characteristics of an SNS and it was found that the SNG user's social capital might be a factor influencing each user's behaviors through the user's flow experiences in SNG. Second, this study extends the scope of prior researches by empirically analysing the relationship between the concerns about the SNG user's information privacy and flow of an SNG. Finally, the results of this research can provide practical guidelines to develop effective marketing strategies considering them for SNG companies.