Since the Industrial Revolution, which made the mass production and mass distribution of standardized goods possible, machine-made (manufactured) products have accounted for the majority of the market. However, in recent years, the phenomenon of purchasing even more expensive handmade products has become a noticeable trend as consumers have started to acknowledge the value of handmade products, such as the craftsman's commitment, belief in their quality and scarcity, and the sense of self-esteem from having them,. Consumer interest in these handmade products has shown explosive growth and has been coupled with the recent development of three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies. Etsy.com is the world's largest online handmade platform. It is no different from any other online platform; it provides an online market where buyers and sellers virtually meet to share information and transact business. However, Etsy.com is different in that shops within this platform only deal with handmade products in a variety of categories, ranging from jewelry to toys. Since its establishment in 2005, despite being limited to handmade products, Etsy.com has enjoyed rapid growth in membership, transaction volume, and revenue. Most recently in April 2015, it raised funds through an initial public offering (IPO) of more than 1.8 billion USD, which demonstrates the huge potential of online handmade platforms. After the success of Etsy.com, various types of online handmade platforms such as Handmade at Amazon, ArtFire, DaWanda, and Craft is ART have emerged and are now competing with each other, at the same time, which has increased the size of the market. According to Deloitte's 2015 holiday survey on which types of gifts the respondents plan to buy during the holiday season, about 16% of U.S. consumers chose "homemade or craft items (e.g., Etsy purchase)," which was the same rate as those for the computer game and shoes categories. This indicates that consumer interests in online handmade platforms will continue to rise in the future. However, this high interest in the market for handmade products and their platforms has not yet led to academic research. Most extant studies have only focused on machine-made products and intelligent services for them. This indicates a lack of studies on handmade products and their intelligent services on virtual platforms. Therefore, this study used signaling theory and prior research on the effects of sellers' characteristics on their performance (e.g., total sales and price premiums) in the buyer-seller relationship to identify the key influencing e-Image factors (e.g., reputation, size, information sharing, and length of relationship). Then, their impacts on the performance of shops within the online handmade platform were empirically examined; the dataset was collected from Etsy.com through the application of web harvesting technology. The results from the structural equation modeling revealed that the reputation, size, and information sharing have significant effects on the total sales, while the reputation and length of relationship influence price premiums. This study extended the online platform research into online handmade platform research by identifying key influencing e-Image factors on within-platform shop's total sales and price premiums based on signaling theory and then performed a statistical investigation. These findings are expected to be a stepping stone for future studies on intelligent online handmade services as well as handmade products themselves. Furthermore, the findings of the study provide online handmade platform operators with practical guidelines on how to implement intelligent online handmade services. They should also help shop managers build their marketing strategies in a more specific and effective manner by suggesting key influencing e-Image factors. The results of this study should contribute to the vitalization of intelligent online handmade services by providing clues on how to maximize within-platform shops' total sales and price premiums.
Lee, Dae-Young;Kim, Sa Ryang;Kim, Hyun-Jung;Kim, Dong-Seon;Park, Jun-Seok;Ihm, Pyeong Chan
Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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v.29
no.6
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pp.327-340
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2017
This article reviews the papers published in the Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering during 2016. It is intended to understand the status of current research in the areas of heating, cooling, ventilation, sanitation, and indoor environments of buildings and plant facilities. Conclusions are as follows. (1) The research works on the thermal and fluid engineering have been reviewed as groups of flow, heat and mass transfer, the reduction of pollutant exhaust gas, cooling and heating, the renewable energy system and the flow around buildings. CFD schemes were used more for all research areas. (2) Research works on heat transfer area have been reviewed in the categories of heat transfer characteristics, pool boiling and condensing heat transfer and industrial heat exchangers. Researches on heat transfer characteristics included the results of the long-term performance variation of the plate-type enthalpy exchange element made of paper, design optimization of an extruded-type cooling structure for reducing the weight of LED street lights, and hot plate welding of thermoplastic elastomer packing. In the area of pool boiling and condensing, the heat transfer characteristics of a finned-tube heat exchanger in a PCM (phase change material) thermal energy storage system, influence of flow boiling heat transfer on fouling phenomenon in nanofluids, and PCM at the simultaneous charging and discharging condition were studied. In the area of industrial heat exchangers, one-dimensional flow network model and porous-media model, and R245fa in a plate-shell heat exchanger were studied. (3) Various studies were published in the categories of refrigeration cycle, alternative refrigeration/energy system, system control. In the refrigeration cycle category, subjects include mobile cold storage heat exchanger, compressor reliability, indirect refrigeration system with $CO_2$ as secondary fluid, heat pump for fuel-cell vehicle, heat recovery from hybrid drier and heat exchangers with two-port and flat tubes. In the alternative refrigeration/energy system category, subjects include membrane module for dehumidification refrigeration, desiccant-assisted low-temperature drying, regenerative evaporative cooler and ejector-assisted multi-stage evaporation. In the system control category, subjects include multi-refrigeration system control, emergency cooling of data center and variable-speed compressor control. (4) In building mechanical system research fields, fifteenth studies were reported for achieving effective design of the mechanical systems, and also for maximizing the energy efficiency of buildings. The topics of the studies included energy performance, HVAC system, ventilation, renewable energies, etc. Proposed designs, performance tests using numerical methods and experiments provide useful information and key data which could be help for improving the energy efficiency of the buildings. (5) The field of architectural environment was mostly focused on indoor environment and building energy. The main researches of indoor environment were related to the analyses of indoor thermal environments controlled by portable cooler, the effects of outdoor wind pressure in airflow at high-rise buildings, window air tightness related to the filling piece shapes, stack effect in core type's office building and the development of a movable drawer-type light shelf with adjustable depth of the reflector. The subjects of building energy were worked on the energy consumption analysis in office building, the prediction of exit air temperature of horizontal geothermal heat exchanger, LS-SVM based modeling of hot water supply load for district heating system, the energy saving effect of ERV system using night purge control method and the effect of strengthened insulation level to the building heating and cooling load.
Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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v.47
no.5
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pp.50-60
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2010
For the last half a century, the personal computer and software industries have been prosperous due to the incessant evolution of computer systems. In the 21st century, the embedded system market has greatly increased as the market shifted to the mobile gadget field. While a lot of multimedia gadgets such as mobile phone, navigation system, PMP, etc. are pouring into the market, most industrial control systems still rely on 8-bit micro-controllers and simple application software techniques. Unfortunately, the technological barrier which requires additional investment and higher quality manpower to overcome, and the business risks which come from the uncertainty of the market growth and the competitiveness of the resulting products have prevented the companies in the industry from taking advantage of such fancy technologies. However, high performance, low-power and low-cost hardware and software platforms will enable their high-technology products to be developed and recognized by potential clients in the future. This paper presents such a platform for industrial embedded systems. The platform was designed based on Telechips TCC8300 multimedia processor which embedded a variety of parallel hardware for the implementation of multimedia functions. And open-source Embedded Linux, TinyX and GTK+ are used for implementation of GUI to minimize technology costs. In order to estimate the expected performance and power consumption, the performance improvement and the power consumption due to each of enabled hardware sub-systems including YUV2RGB frame converter are measured. An analytic model was devised to check the feasibility of a new application and trade off its performance and power consumption. The validity of the model has been confirmed by implementing a real target system. The cost can be further mitigated by using the hardware parts which are being used for mass production products mostly in the cell-phone market.
Journal of Korean Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology
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v.23
no.2
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pp.229-250
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1993
This study was performed to investigate the morphological and structural changes of bone tissues and the effects of irradiation on the mandibular bodies of rats which were fed low calcium diets. In order to carry out this experiment, 160 seven-week old Sprague-Dawley strain rats weighing about 150 gm were selected and equally divided into one normal diet group of 80 rats and one low calcium diet group with the remainder. These groups were then subdivided into two groups, 40 were assigned rats for each subdivided group, exposed to radiation. The Group 1 was composed of forty non-irradiated rats with normal diet, Group 2 of forty irradiated rats with normal diet, Group 3 forty non-irradiated rats with low calcium diet, and Group 4 forty irradiated rats with low calcium diet. The two irradiation groups received a single dose of 20 Gy on the jaw area only and irradiated with a cobalt-50 teletherapy unit. The rats with normal and low calcium diet groups were serially terminated by ten on the 3rd, the 7th, the 14th, and the 21st day after irradiation. After termination, both sides of the dead rats mandible were removed and fixed with 10% neutral formalin. The bone density of mandibular body was measured by use of bone mineral densitometer(Model DPX -alpha, Lunar Corp., U.SA). Triga Mark ill nuclear reactor in Korea Atomic Research Institute was used for neutron activation and then calcium contents of mandibular body were measured by using a 4096 multichannel analyzer (EG and G ORTEC 919 MCA, U.SA). Also the mandibular body was radiographed with a soft X-ray apparatus(Hitex Co., Ltd., Japan). Thereafter, the obtained microradiograms were observed by a light microscope and were used for the morphometric analysis using a image analyzer(Leco 2001 System, Leco Co., Canada). The morphometric analysis was performed for parameters such as the total area, the bone area, the inner and outer perimeters of the bone. The obtained results were as follows: 1. In the morphometric analysis, total area and outer perimeter of the mandibular bodies of Group 3 were a little smaller than that of Group 1. The mean bone width and bone area were much smaller than that of Group 1 and the inner perimeter of Group 3 was much longer than that of Group 1. The total area and outer perimeter of Group 2 and Group 4 showed little difference. The mean bone width and bone area of Group 4 were smaller than that of Group 2 and the inner perimeter of Group 4 was longer than that of Group 2. 2. The remarkable decreases of the number and thickness of trabeculae and also the resorption of endosteal surface of cortical bone could be seen in the microradiogram of Group 3, Group 4 since the 3rd day of experiment. On the 21st day of experiment, the above findings could be more clearly seen in Group 4 than in Group 3. 3. The bone mineral density of Group 3 was lesser than that of Group 1 and the bone mineral density of Group 4 was lesser than that of Group 2 on the 7th, 14th, 21st days. The irradiation caused the bone mineral density to be decreased regardless of diet. In the case of Groups with low calcium diet, the bone mineral density was much decreased on the 21st day than on the 3rd day of experiment. 4. The calcium content in mandible of Group 3 was smaller than that of Group 1 throughout the experiment. roup 4 showed the least amount of calcium content. The irradiation caused the calcium content to be decreased regardless of diet. In the case of Groups with low calcium diet, the calcium content was much decreased on the 21st day than on the 3rd day of experiment. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that morphological changs and decrease of bone mass due to resorption of bone by low calcium diet, and that the resorption of bone could be found in the spongeous bone and endosteal surface of cortical bone. So the problem of resorption of bone must be considered when the old and the postmenopausal women are taken radiotherapy because the irradiation seems to be accelerated the resorption of osteoporotic bone.
Internet commerce has been growing at a rapid pace for the last decade. Many firms try to reach wider consumer markets by adding the Internet channel to the existing traditional channels. Despite the various benefits of the Internet channel, a significant number of firms failed in managing the new type of channel. Previous studies could not cleary explain these conflicting results associated with the Internet channel. One of the major reasons is most of the previous studies conducted analyses under a specific market condition and claimed that as the impact of Internet channel introduction. Therefore, their results are strongly influenced by the specific market settings. However, firms face various market conditions in the real worlddensity and disutility of using the Internet. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of various market environments on a firm's optimal channel strategy by employing a flexible game theory model. We capture various market conditions with consumer density and disutility of using the Internet.
shows the channel structures analyzed in this study. Before the Internet channel is introduced, a monopoly manufacturer sells its products through an independent physical store. From this structure, the manufacturer could introduce its own Internet channel (MI). The independent physical store could also introduce its own Internet channel and coordinate it with the existing physical store (RI). An independent Internet retailer such as Amazon could enter this market (II). In this case, two types of independent retailers compete with each other. In this model, consumers are uniformly distributed on the two dimensional space. Consumer heterogeneity is captured by a consumer's geographical location (ci) and his disutility of using the Internet channel (${\delta}_{N_i}$).
shows various market conditions captured by the two consumer heterogeneities.
(a) illustrates a market with symmetric consumer distributions. The model captures explicitly the asymmetric distributions of consumer disutility in a market as well. In a market like that is represented in
(c), the average consumer disutility of using an Internet store is relatively smaller than that of using a physical store. For example, this case represents the market in which 1) the product is suitable for Internet transactions (e.g., books) or 2) the level of E-Commerce readiness is high such as in Denmark or Finland. On the other hand, the average consumer disutility when using an Internet store is relatively greater than that of using a physical store in a market like (b). Countries like Ukraine and Bulgaria, or the market for "experience goods" such as shoes, could be examples of this market condition.
summarizes the various scenarios of consumer distributions analyzed in this study. The range for disutility of using the Internet (${\delta}_{N_i}$) is held constant, while the range of consumer distribution (${\chi}_i$) varies from -25 to 25, from -50 to 50, from -100 to 100, from -150 to 150, and from -200 to 200.
summarizes the analysis results. As the average travel cost in a market decreases while the average disutility of Internet use remains the same, average retail price, total quantity sold, physical store profit, monopoly manufacturer profit, and thus, total channel profit increase. On the other hand, the quantity sold through the Internet and the profit of the Internet store decrease with a decreasing average travel cost relative to the average disutility of Internet use. We find that a channel that has an advantage over the other kind of channel serves a larger portion of the market. In a market with a high average travel cost, in which the Internet store has a relative advantage over the physical store, for example, the Internet store becomes a mass-retailer serving a larger portion of the market. This result implies that the Internet becomes a more significant distribution channel in those markets characterized by greater geographical dispersion of buyers, or as consumers become more proficient in Internet usage. The results indicate that the degree of price discrimination also varies depending on the distribution of consumer disutility in a market. The manufacturer in a market in which the average travel cost is higher than the average disutility of using the Internet has a stronger incentive for price discrimination than the manufacturer in a market where the average travel cost is relatively lower. We also find that the manufacturer has a stronger incentive to maintain a high price level when the average travel cost in a market is relatively low. Additionally, the retail competition effect due to Internet channel introduction strengthens as average travel cost in a market decreases. This result indicates that a manufacturer's channel power relative to that of the independent physical retailer becomes stronger with a decreasing average travel cost. This implication is counter-intuitive, because it is widely believed that the negative impact of Internet channel introduction on a competing physical retailer is more significant in a market like Russia, where consumers are more geographically dispersed, than in a market like Hong Kong, that has a condensed geographic distribution of consumers.