• Journal of Distribution Research
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• 제16권4호
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• pp.1-27
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• 2011

Introduction: Sales of private labels(PU have been growing m recent years. Globally, PLs have already achieved 20% share, although between 25 and 50% share in most of the European markets(AC. Nielson, 2005). These products are aimed to have comparable quality and prices as national brand(NB) products and have been continuously eroding manufacturer's national brand market share. Stores have also started introducing premium PLs that are of higher-quality and more reasonably priced compared to NBs. Worldwide, many retailers already have a multiple-tier private label architecture. Consumers as a consequence are now able to have a more diverse brand choice in store than ever before. Since premium PLs are priced higher than regular PLs and even, in some cases, above NBs, stores can expect to generate higher profits. Brand extensions and private label have been extensively studied in the marketing field. However, less attention has been paid to the private label extension. Therefore, this research focuses on private label extension using the Multi-Attribute Attitude Model(Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). Especially there are few studies that consider the hierarchical effect of the PL's two parent brands: store brand and the original PL. We assume that the attitude toward each of the two parent brands affects the attitude towards the extended PL. The influence from each parent brand toward extended PL will vary according to the perceived fit between each parent brand and the extended PL. This research focuses on how these two parent brands act as reference points to one another in the consumers' choice consideration. Specifically we seek to understand how store image and attitude towards original PL affect consumer perceptions of extended premium PL. How consumers perceive extended premium PLs could provide strategic suggestions for retailer managers with specific suggestions on whether it is more effective: to position extended premium PL similarly or dissimilarly to original PL especially on the quality dimension and congruency with store image. There is an extensive body of research on branding and brand extensions (e.g. Aaker and Keller, 1990) and more recently on PLs(e.g. Kumar and Steenkamp, 2007). However there are no studies to date that look at the upgrading and influence of original PLs and attitude towards store on the premium PL extension. This research wishes to make a contribution to this gap using the perceived fit difference between parent brands and extended premium PL as the context. In order to meet the above objectives, we investigate which factors heighten consumers' positive attitude toward premium PL extension. Research Model and Hypotheses: When considering the attitude towards the premium PL extension, we expect four factors to have an influence: attitude towards store; attitude towards original PL; perceived congruity between the store image and the premium PL; perceived similarity between the original PL and the premium PL. We expect that all these factors have an influence on consumer attitude towards premium PL extension. Figure 1 gives the research model and hypotheses. Method: Data were collected by an intercept survey conducted on consumers at discount stores. 403 survey responses were attained (total 59.8% female, across all age ranges). Respondents were asked to respond to a series of Questions measured on 7 point likert-type scales. The survey consisted of Questions that measured: the trust towards store and the original PL; the satisfaction towards store and the original PL; the attitudes towards store, the original PL, and the extended premium PL; the perceived similarity of the original PL and the extended premium PL; the perceived congruity between the store image and the extended premium PL. Product images with specific explanations of the features of premium PL, regular PL and NB we reused as the stimuli for the Question response. We developed scales to measure the research constructs. Cronbach's alphaw as measured each construct with the reliability for all constructs exceeding the .70 standard(Nunnally, 1978). Results: To test the hypotheses, path analysis was conducted using LISREL 8.30. The path analysis for verification of the model produced satisfactory results. The validity index shows acceptable results(${\chi}^2=427.00$(P=0.00), GFI= .90, AGFI= .87, NFI= .91, RMSEA= .062, RMR= .047). With the increasing retailer use of premium PLBs, the intention of this research was to examine how consumers use original PL and store image as reference points as to the attitude towards premium PL extension. Results(see table 1 & 2) show that the attitude of each parent brand (attitudes toward store and original pL) influences the attitude towards extended PL and their perceived fit moderates these influences. Attitude toward the extended PL was influenced by the relative level of perceived fit. Discussion of results and future direction: These results suggest that the future strategy for the PL extension needs to consider that positive parent brand attitude is more strongly associated with the attitude toward PL extensions. Specifically, to improve attitude towards PL extension, building and maintaining positive attitude towards original PL is necessary. Positioning premium PL congruently to store image is also important for positive attitude. In order to improve this research, the following alternatives should also be considered. To improve the research model's predictive power, more diverse products should be included in study. Other attributes of product should also be included such as design, brand name since we only considered trust and satisfaction as factors to build consumer attitudes.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• 제20권1호
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• pp.49-58
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• 2010

Corporate social responsibility has become a very important issue for researchers (Greenfield, 2004; Maignan & Ralston, 2002; McWilliams et al., 2006; Pearce & Doh 2005), and many consider it necessary for businesses to define their role in society and apply social and ethical standards to their businesses (Lichtenstein et al., 2004). As a result, a significant number of retailers have adopted CSR as a strategic tool to promote their businesses. To this end, this study sought to discover U.S. consumers' attitudes and behavior in ethical purchasing and consumption based on their subjective perception and evaluation of a retailer. The objectives of this study include: 1) determine the participants awareness of retailers corporate social responsibility; 2) assess how participants evaluate retailers corporate social responsibility; 3) examine whether participants evaluation process of retailers CSR influence their attitude toward the retailer; and 4) assess if participants attitude toward the retailers CSR influence their purchase behavior. This study does not focus on actual retailers' CSR performance because a consumer's decision making process is based on an individual assessment not an actual fact. This study examines US college students' awareness and evaluations of retailers' corporate social responsibility (CSR). Fifty six college students at a major Southeastern university participated in the study. The age of the participants ranged from 18 to 26 years old. Content analysis was conducted with open coding and focused coding. Over 100 single-spaced pages of written responses were collected and analyzed. Two steps of coding (i.e., open coding and focused coding) were conducted (Esterberg, 2002). Coding results and analytic memos were used to understand participants' awareness of CSR and their ethical purchasing behavior supported through the selection and inclusion of direct quotes that were extracted from the written responses. Names used here are pseudonyms to protect confidentiality of participants. Participants were asked to write about retailers, their aware-ness of CSR issues, and to evaluate a retailer's CSR performance. A majority (n = 28) of respondents indicated their awareness of CSR but have not felt the need to act on this issue. Few (n=8) indicated that they are aware of this issue but not greatly concerned. Findings suggest that when college students evaluate retailers' CSR performance, they use three dimensions of CSR: employee support, community support, and environmental support. Employee treatment and support were found as an important criterion in evaluation of retailers' CSR. Respondents indicated that their good experience with a retailer as an employee made them have a positive perception and attitude toward the retailer. Regarding employee support four themes emerged: employee rewards and incentives based on performance, working environment, employee education and training program, and employee and family discounts. Well organized rewards and incentives were mentioned as an important attribute. The factors related to the working environment included: how well retailers follow the rules related to working hours, lunch time and breaks was also one of the most mentioned attributes. Regarding community support, three themes emerged: contributing a percentage of sales to the local community, financial contribution to charity organizations, and events for community support. Regarding environments, two themes emerged: recycling and selling organic or green products. It was mentioned in the responses that retailers are trying to do what they can to be environmentally friendly. One respondent mentioned that the company is creating stores that have an environmentally friendly design. Information about what the company does to help the environment can easily be found on the company’s website as well. Respondents have also noticed that the stores are starting to offer products that are organic and environmentally friendly. A retailer was also mentioned by a respondent in this category in reference to how the company uses eco-friendly cups and how they are helping to rebuild homes in New Orleans. The respondents noticed that a retailer offers reusable bags for their consumers to purchase. One respondent stated that a retailer uses its products to help the environment, through offering organic cotton. After thorough analysis of responses, we found that a participant's evaluation of a retailers' CSR influenced their attitudes towards retailers. However, there was a significant gap between attitudes and purchasing behavior. Although the participants had positive attitudes toward retailers CSR, the lack of funds and time influenced their purchase behavior. Overall, half (n=28) of the respondents mentioned that CSR performance affects their purchasing decisions making when shopping. Findings from this study provide support for retailers to consider their corporate social responsibility when developing their image with the consumer. This study implied that consumers evaluate retailers based on employee, community and environmental support. The evaluation, attitude and purchase behavior of consumers seem to be intertwined. That is, evaluation is based on the knowledge the consumer has of the retailers CSR. That knowledge may influence their attitude toward the retailer and thus influence their purchase behavior. Participants also indicated that having CSR makes them think highly of the retailer, but it does not influence their purchase behavior. Price and convenience seem to surpass the importance of CSR among the participants. Implications, recommendations for future research, and limitations of the study are also discussed.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• 제27권2호
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• pp.55-78
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• 2021

Tosolve complex and diverse social problems and ensure the quality of life of individuals, social robots that can interact with humans are attracting attention. In the past, robots were recognized as beings that provide labor force as they put into industrial sites on behalf of humans. However, the concept of today's robot has been extended to social robots that coexist with humans and enable social interaction with the advent of Smart technology, which is considered an important driver in most industries. Specifically, there are service robots that respond to customers, the robots that have the purpose of edutainment, and the emotionalrobots that can interact with humans intimately. However, popularization of robots is not felt despite the current information environment in the modern ICT service environment and the 4th industrial revolution. Considering social interaction with users which is an important function of social robots, not only the technology of the robots but also other factors should be considered. The design elements of the robot are more important than other factors tomake consumers purchase essentially a social robot. In fact, existing studies on social robots are at the level of proposing "robot development methodology" or testing the effects provided by social robots to users in pieces. On the other hand, consumer emotions felt from the robot's appearance has an important influence in the process of forming user's perception, reasoning, evaluation and expectation. Furthermore, it can affect attitude toward robots and good feeling and performance reasoning, etc. Therefore, this study aims to verify the effect of appearance of social robot and consumer emotions on consumer's attitude toward social robot. At this time, a social robot design evaluation model is constructed by combining heterogeneous data from different sources. Specifically, the three quantitative indicator data for the appearance of social robots from the ABOT Database is included in the model. The consumer emotions of social robot design has been collected through (1) the existing design evaluation literature and (2) online buzzsuch as product reviews and blogs, (3) qualitative interviews for social robot design. Later, we collected the score of consumer emotions and attitudes toward various social robots through a large-scale consumer survey. First, we have derived the six major dimensions of consumer emotions for 23 pieces of detailed emotions through dimension reduction methodology. Then, statistical analysis was performed to verify the effect of derived consumer emotionson attitude toward social robots. Finally, the moderated regression analysis was performed to verify the effect of quantitatively collected indicators of social robot appearance on the relationship between consumer emotions and attitudes toward social robots. Interestingly, several significant moderation effects were identified, these effects are visualized with two-way interaction effect to interpret them from multidisciplinary perspectives. This study has theoretical contributions from the perspective of empirically verifying all stages from technical properties to consumer's emotion and attitudes toward social robots by linking the data from heterogeneous sources. It has practical significance that the result helps to develop the design guidelines based on consumer emotions in the design stage of social robot development.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• 제55권4호
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• pp.212-240
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• 2022

This study is a multi-layered exploration of 「The Thirty-Six Scenery of Seongdeok Summer Mountain Resort(承德避暑山莊三十六景)」 (The 36th view of Kangxi) recited by Emperor Kangxi of China through literature study, ancient calligraphy diagrams, and field studies. The conclusion of tracing the landscape characteristics and implications contained in 「The 36th view of Kangxi」 through the analysis of the headword(標題語) and the interpretation of the Jeyeong poem(題詠詩) is as follows. 「The 36th view of Kangxi」 is an extension of the outer edge of the Eight Sceneries, and when compared to the existing Eight Sceneries peom and Eight Sceneries painting, it is found that the landscape is centered on the 'viewpoint' rather than the landscape object. In particular, it aimed to create a structured landscape centered on nine types of buildings represented by 'Jeon(殿)' and 'Jeong(亭)' was given. In particular, Yeouiju, located in Lake district, is a scenic country endowed with the character of a gardens in Garden, which is composed by collecting famous representative Chinese landscapes and landscapes of Sansu-si and Sanshu Painting. As a result of headword analysis to understand the characteristics of landscape components, 14 landscapes (38.9%) related to water elements and 13 landscapes(36.1%) related to mountain elements, the elements related to architecture and civil engineering were classified in the order of 3 cases(8.3%), and the elements related to the skylight were classified in the order of 2 cases(5.6%). However, in Jeyeong-si, the mention of landscape vocabulary for climate elements was overwhelming. In other words, in the poems of 「The 36th Scenery of Kangxi」, scenery vocabulary symbolizing 'coolness' such as 雲(cloud), 水(water), 泉(spring), 清(clear), 波(wave), 流(wave), 風(wind) and 無暑(without heat), etc. It is not a coincidence that it appears, and it is strongly attached to the sense of place of Summer Mountain Resort in Rehe(熱河). Among the 23 landscapes whose seasonal background was confirmed, the fact that the lower landscape is portrayed as the majority and the climate elements of the resort area are portrayed in three-dimensional and multi-dimensional ways are closely related to the period of enjoying the gardens of Kangxi, the main subject of the landscape. In addition, many animal and plant landscapes appearing in Jeyeong-si appear to be in the same context as the spatial attributes of not only recreation, but also contemplation and hunting. On the other hand, in Jeyeongsi, there are 33 wonders(91.7%) citing famous people and famous books through ancient poems, old stories, and ancient stories tends to be prominent. It is inferred that this was based on Kangxi's understanding and pride in traditional Chinese culture. In 「The 36th view of Kangxi」, not only a book-writing description of the feelings of being entrusted to the family sutras, but also the spirit of patriotism, love, self-discipline and respect for mother and filial piety are strongly implied. Ultimately, 「The 36th view of Kangxi」 shows the real scene of the resort, as well as the spiritual dimension, in a multi-faceted and three-dimensional way, and the spirit of an emperor based on the dignity of the royal family and the sentiments of a writer it deserves to be called a collection of imperial records that were intended to reveal.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• 제24권2호
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• pp.139-161
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• 2009

The idea of establishing an International Court of Air and Space Law (hereinafter referred to ICASL) is only my academic and practical opinion as first proposal in the global community. The establishment of the International Court of Air and Space Law can promote the speed and promote fairness of the trial in air and space law cases. The creation of an ICASL would lead to strengthening of the international cooperation deemed essential by the global community towards joint settlement in the transnational air and space cases, claims and would act as a catalyst for the efforts and solution on aircraft, satellite and space shuttle's accidents and cases and all manpower, information, trial and lawsuit to be centrally managed in an independent fashion to the benefit of global community. The aircraft, satellite and spacecraft's accidents attributes to the particular and different features between the road, railway and maritime's accidents. These aircraft, satellite and spacecraft's accidents have incurred many disputes between the victims and the air and space carriers in deciding on the limited or unlimited liability for compensation and the appraisal of damages caused by the aircraft's accidents, terror attack, satellite, space shuttle's accidents and space debris. This International Court of Air and Space Law could hear any claim growing out of both international air and space crash accidents and transnational accidents in which plaintiffs and defendants are from different nations. This alternative would eliminate the lack of uniformity of decisions under the air and space conventions, protocols and agreements. In addition, national courts would no longer have to apply their own choice of law analysis in choosing the applicable liability limits or un-limit for cases that do not fall under the air and space system. Thus, creation of an International Court of Air and Space Law would eliminate any disparity of damage awards among similarly situated passengers and shippers in nonmembers of air and space conventions, protocols, agreements and cases. Furthermore, I would like to explain the main items of the abovementioned Draft for the Convention or Statute of the International Court of Air and Space Law framed in comparison with the Statute of the International Court of Justice, the Statue of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Statute of the International Criminal Court. First of all, in order to create the International Court of Air and Space Law, it is necessary for us to legislate a Draft for the Convention on the Establishment of the International Court of Air and Space Law. This Draft for the Convention must include the elected method of judges, term, duty and competence of judge, chambers, jurisdiction, hearing and judgment of the ICASL. The members of the Court shall be elected by the General Assembly and Council of the ICAO and by the General Assembly and Legal Committee of the UNCOPUOS from a list of persons nominated by the national groups in the six continent (the North American, South American, African, Oceania and Asian Continent) and two international organization such as ICAO and UNCOPUOS. The members of the Court shall be elected for nine years and may be re-elected as one time. However, I would like to propose a creation an International Court of Air and Space Law in extending jurisdiction to the International Court of Justice at the Hague to in order to decide the air and space convention‘s cases. My personal opinion is that if an International Court on Air and Space Law will be created in future, it will be settled quickly and reasonably the difficulty and complicated disputes, cases or lawsuit between the wrongdoer and victims and the injured person caused by aircraft, satellite, spacecraft's accidents or hijacker and terrorists etc. on account of deciding the standard of judgment by judges of that’s court. It is indeed a great necessary and desirable for us to make a new Draft for the Convention on a creation of the International Court of Air and Space Law to handle international air and space crash litigation. I shall propose to make a new brief Draft for the Convention on the Creation of an International Court of Air and Space Law in the near future.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• 제19권4호
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• pp.1-10
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to categorize the gap between coffee shop 'importance' (as perceived by customers before patronizing the coffee shop) and 'satisfaction' (perception of customers after patronizing the coffee shop) as positive or negative and to analyze the effect of these gaps on purchasing behavior. To do this, I used the gap between importance and satisfaction regarding the choice of a coffee shop as the explanatory variable and performed an empirical analysis of the direction and size of the effect of the gap on purchasing behavior (overall satisfaction, willingness-to-revisit) by applying the Ordered Probit Model (OPM). A previous study that used IPA to evaluate the effects of gaps estimated the direction and size of a quadrant but failed to analyze the effect of gaps on customers. In this study, I evaluated the effects of positive and negative gaps on customer satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Using OPM, I quantified the effect of positive and negative gaps on overall customer satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Per-head expenditure, frequency of visits, and coffee-purchasing place had the most positive effects on overall customer satisfaction. Frequency of visits, followed by per-head expenditure and then coffee-purchasing place, had the most positive impact on willingness-to-visit. Thus per-head expenditure and frequency of visits had the greatest positive effects on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. This finding implies that the higher the actual satisfaction (gap) of customers who spend KRW5,000 or more once or more per week at coffee shops is, the higher their overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit are. Despite the fact that economical efficiency had a significant effect on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit, college and university students still use coffee shops and are willing to spend KRW5,000 because they do not only purchase coffee as a product itself, but use the coffee shop for other activities, such as working, meeting friends, or relaxing. College and university students also access the Internet in coffee shops via personal laptops, watch movies, and study; thus, coffee shops should provide their customers with the appropriate facilities and services. The fact that a positive gap for coffee shop brand had a positive effect on willingness-to-revisit implies that the higher the level of customer satisfaction, the greater the willingness-to-revisit. A negative gap for this factor, on the other hand, implies that the lower the level of customer satisfaction, the lower the willingness-to-revisit. Thus, the brand factor has a comparatively greater effect on satisfaction than the other factors evaluated in this study. Given that the domestic coffee culture is becoming more upscale and college/university students are sensitive to this trend, students are attentive to brands. In most upscale coffee shops in Korea, the outer wall is built out of glass that can be opened, the interiors are exotic with an open kitchen. These upscale coffee shops function as landmarks and match the taste of college/university students. Coffee shops in Korea have become a cultural brand. To make customers feel that coffee shops are upscale, good quality establishments and measures to provide better services in terms of brand factor should be instituted. The intensified competition among coffee shop brands in Korea as a result of the booming industry indicates that provision of additional services is needed to differentiate competitors. These customers can also use a scanner free of charge. Another strategy that can be used to boost brands could be to provide and operate a seminar room for seminars and group study. If coffee shops adopt these types of strategies, college/university students would be more likely to consider the expenses they incur worthwhile and, subsequently, they would be more likely to be satisfied with the brands of these coffee shops, with an associated increase in their willingness-to-revisit. Gender and study year had the most negative effects on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Female students were more likely to be satisfied and be willing to return than male students, and third and fourth-year students were more likely to be satisfied and willing-to-return than first or second-year students. Students who drink coffee, read books, and use laptops alone at coffee shops are easily noticeable. High-grade students tend to visit coffee shops alone in order to use their time efficiently for self-development and to find jobs. The economical efficiency factor had the greatest effect on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit in terms of a positive gap. The higher the actual satisfaction (gap) of students with the price of the coffee, the greater their overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Economical efficiency with a negative gap had a negative effect on willingness-to-revisit, which implies that a less negative gap will result in a greater willingness-to-revisit. Amid worsening market conditions, coffee shops located around colleges/universities are using strategies, such as a point or membership card, strategic alliances with credit-card companies, development of a set menu or seasonal menu, and free coffee-shot services to increase their competitive edge. Product power also had a negative effect in terms of a negative gap, which indicates that a higher negative gap will result in a lower willingness-to-revisit. Because there are many more customers that enjoy coffee in this decade, as compared to previous decades, the new generation of customers, namely college/university students, want various menu items in addition to coffee, and coffee shops should, therefore, add side menu items, such as waffles, rice cakes, cakes, sandwiches, and salads. For example, Starbucks Korea is making efforts to enhance product power by selling rice cakes flavored in strawberry, wormwood, and pumpkin, and providing coffee or cream free of charge. In summary, coffee shops should focus on increasing their economical efficiency, brand, and product power to enhance the satisfaction of college/university students. Because shops adjacent to colleges or universities enjoy a locational advantage, providing differentiated services in terms of economical efficiency, brand, and product power, is likely to increase customer satisfaction and return visits. Coffee shop brands should, therefore, be innovative and embrace change to meet their customers' desires. Because this study only targeted college/university students in Seoul, comparative studies targeting diverse regions and age groups are required to generalize the findings and recommendations of this study.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• 제42권1호
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• pp.102-113
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to examine parental perceptions on the importance, performance level, and satisfaction with foodservice quality at daycare centers in the Compensation and Welfare Service institute. The questionnaire was developed to measure thirty-two attributes of foodservice operations are administered to 598 parents and 23 foodservice supervisors from June 22, 2009 to July 10, 2009. The parents placed a high importance on the need for foodservices, earning 4.70 points out of 5 points. Their perceptions of foodservice quality menu, foodservice ingredients and effects, facilities, sanitation, and service scored even higher than performance. The overall satisfaction level for foodservice compared to performance was 4.33 and 4.03 points out of 5 points, respectively. Multiple regression analysis indicated that 98.6% of the variance in parents' overall satisfaction scores was explained by six dimensions.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제21권4호
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• pp.63-104
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• 2011

The study examines the relationships among employee's goal orientation, IT personnel competency, personal effectiveness. The goal orientation includes learning goal orientation, performance approach goal orientation, and performance avoid goal orientation. Personal effectiveness consists of personal work satisfaction and personal work performance. In general, IT personnel competency refers to IT expert's skills, expertise, and knowledge required to perform IT activities in organizations. However, due to the advent of the internet and the generalization of IT, IT personnel competency turns out to be an important competency of technological experts as well as employees in organizations. While the competency of IT itself is important, the appropriate harmony between IT personnel's business capability and technological capability enhances the value of human resources and thus provides organizations with sustainable competitive advantages. The rapid pace of organization change places increased pressure on employees to continually update their skills and adapt their behavior to new organizational realities. This challenge raises a number of important questions concerning organizational behavior? Why do some employees display remarkable flexibility in their behavioral responses to changes in the organization, whereas others firmly resist change or experience great stress when faced with the need to alter behavior? Why do some employees continually strive to improve themselves over their life span, whereas others are content to forge through life using the same basic knowledge and skills? Why do some employees throw themselves enthusiastically into challenging tasks, whereas others avoid challenging tasks? The goal orientation proposed by organizational psychology provides at least a partial answer to these questions. Goal orientations refer to stable personally characteristics fostered by "self-theories" about the nature and development of attributes (such as intelligence, personality, abilities, and skills) people have. Self-theories are one's beliefs and goal orientations are achievement motivation revealed in seeking goals in accordance with one's beliefs. The goal orientations include learning goal orientation, performance approach goal orientation, and performance avoid goal orientation. Specifically, a learning goal orientation refers to a preference to develop the self by acquiring new skills, mastering new situations, and improving one's competence. A performance approach goal orientation refers to a preference to demonstrate and validate the adequacy of one's competence by seeking favorable judgments and avoiding negative judgments. A performance avoid goal orientation refers to a preference to avoid the disproving of one's competence and to avoid negative judgements about it, while focusing on performance. And the study also examines the moderating role of work career of employees to investigate the difference in the relationship between IT personnel competency and personal effectiveness. The study analyzes the collected data using PASW 18.0 and and PLS(Partial Least Square). The study also uses PLS bootstrapping algorithm (sample size: 500) to test research hypotheses. The result shows that the influences of both a learning goal orientation (${\beta}$ = 0.301, t = 3.822, P < 0.000) and a performance approach goal orientation (${\beta}$ = 0.224, t = 2.710, P < 0.01) on IT personnel competency are positively significant, while the influence of a performance avoid goal orientation(${\beta}$ = -0.142, t = 2.398, p < 0.05) on IT personnel competency is negatively significant. The result indicates that employees differ in their psychological and behavioral responses according to the goal orientation of employees. The result also shows that the impact of a IT personnel competency on both personal work satisfaction(${\beta}$ = 0.395, t = 4.897, P < 0.000) and personal work performance(${\beta}$ = 0.575, t = 12.800, P < 0.000) is positively significant. And the impact of personal work satisfaction(${\beta}$ = 0.148, t = 2.432, p < 0.05) on personal work performance is positively significant. Finally, the impacts of control variables (gender, age, type of industry, position, work career) on the relationships between IT personnel competency and personal effectiveness(personal work satisfaction work performance) are partly significant. In addition, the study uses PLS algorithm to find out a GoF(global criterion of goodness of fit) of the exploratory research model which includes a mediating variable, IT personnel competency. The result of analysis shows that the value of GoF is 0.45 above GoFlarge(0.36). Therefore, the research model turns out be good. In addition, the study performs a Sobel Test to find out the statistical significance of the mediating variable, IT personnel competency, which is already turned out to have the mediating effect in the research model using PLS. The result of a Sobel Test shows that the values of Z are all significant statistically (above 1.96 and below -1.96) and indicates that IT personnel competency plays a mediating role in the research model. At the present day, most employees are universally afraid of organizational changes and resistant to them in organizations in which the acceptance and learning of a new information technology or information system is particularly required. The problem is due' to increasing a feeling of uneasiness and uncertainty in improving past practices in accordance with new organizational changes. It is not always possible for employees with positive attitudes to perform their works suitable to organizational goals. Therefore, organizations need to identify what kinds of goal-oriented minds employees have, motivate them to do self-directed learning, and provide them with organizational environment to enhance positive aspects in their works. Thus, the study provides researchers and practitioners with a matter of primary interest in goal orientation and IT personnel competency, of which they have been unaware until very recently. Some academic and practical implications and limitations arisen in the course of the research, and suggestions for future research directions are also discussed.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• 제19권3호
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• pp.25-44
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• 2013

Accessing movie contents has become easier and increased with the advent of smart TV, IPTV and web services that are able to be used to search and watch movies. In this situation, there are increasing search for preference movie contents of users. However, since the amount of provided movie contents is too large, the user needs more effort and time for searching the movie contents. Hence, there are a lot of researches for recommendations of personalized item through analysis and clustering of the user preferences and user profiles. In this study, we propose recommendation system which uses ontology based knowledge base. Our ontology can represent not only relations between metadata of movies but also relations between metadata and profile of user. The relation of each metadata can show similarity between movies. In order to build, the knowledge base our ontology model is considered two aspects which are the movie metadata model and the user model. On the part of build the movie metadata model based on ontology, we decide main metadata that are genre, actor/actress, keywords and synopsis. Those affect that users choose the interested movie. And there are demographic information of user and relation between user and movie metadata in user model. In our model, movie ontology model consists of seven concepts (Movie, Genre, Keywords, Synopsis Keywords, Character, and Person), eight attributes (title, rating, limit, description, character name, character description, person job, person name) and ten relations between concepts. For our knowledge base, we input individual data of 14,374 movies for each concept in contents ontology model. This movie metadata knowledge base is used to search the movie that is related to interesting metadata of user. And it can search the similar movie through relations between concepts. We also propose the architecture for movie recommendation. The proposed architecture consists of four components. The first component search candidate movies based the demographic information of the user. In this component, we decide the group of users according to demographic information to recommend the movie for each group and define the rule to decide the group of users. We generate the query that be used to search the candidate movie for recommendation in this component. The second component search candidate movies based user preference. When users choose the movie, users consider metadata such as genre, actor/actress, synopsis, keywords. Users input their preference and then in this component, system search the movie based on users preferences. The proposed system can search the similar movie through relation between concepts, unlike existing movie recommendation systems. Each metadata of recommended candidate movies have weight that will be used for deciding recommendation order. The third component the merges results of first component and second component. In this step, we calculate the weight of movies using the weight value of metadata for each movie. Then we sort movies order by the weight value. The fourth component analyzes result of third component, and then it decides level of the contribution of metadata. And we apply contribution weight to metadata. Finally, we use the result of this step as recommendation for users. We test the usability of the proposed scheme by using web application. We implement that web application for experimental process by using JSP, Java Script and prot$\acute{e}$g$\acute{e}$ API. In our experiment, we collect results of 20 men and woman, ranging in age from 20 to 29. And we use 7,418 movies with rating that is not fewer than 7.0. In order to experiment, we provide Top-5, Top-10 and Top-20 recommended movies to user, and then users choose interested movies. The result of experiment is that average number of to choose interested movie are 2.1 in Top-5, 3.35 in Top-10, 6.35 in Top-20. It is better than results that are yielded by for each metadata.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• 제17권4호
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• pp.247-269
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• 2007

In recent years, one of the major reasons for the fierce competition amongst firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares and customer acquisition rate in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Because of this change in recent marketing environment, the differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important to gain competitive advantage. Price promotion is the favorite strategy that most retailers use to achieve short-term sales increase, induce consumer's brand switch, in troduce new product into market, and so forth. However, if marketers apply or copy an identical price promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in product and consumer preference, it will cause serious problems because discounted price itself could make people skeptical about product quality, and the changes of perceived value might appear differently depending on other factors such as consumer involvement or brand attitude. Previous studies showed that price promotion would certainly increase sales, and the discounted price compared to regular price would enhance the consumer's perceived values. On the other hand, discounted price itself could make people depreciate or skeptical about product quality, and reduce the consumers' positivity bias because consumers might be unsure whether the current price promotion is the retailer's best price offer. Moreover, we cannot say that discounted price absolutely enhances the consumer's perceived values regardless of product category and purchase situations. That is, the factors that affect consumers' value perceptions and buying behavior are so diverse in reality that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what variable was used or how experiment conditions were designed. Majority of previous researches on the effect of price-comparison advertising have used consumers' buying behavior as dependent variable. In order to figure out consumers' buying behavior theoretically, analysis of value perceptions which influence buying intentions is needed. In addition, they did not combined the independent variables such as brand loyalty and price discount rate together. For this reason, this paper tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception. And we provided with theoretical and managerial implications that marketers need to consider such variables as product attributes, brand loyalty, and consumer involvement at the same time, and then establish a differentiated pricing strategy case by case in order to enhance consumer's perceived values properl. Three research concepts were used in our study and each concept based on past researches was defined. The perceived acquisition value in this study was defined as the perceived net gains associated with the products or services acquired. That is, the perceived acquisition value of the product will be positively influenced by the benefits buyers believe they are getting by acquiring and using the product, and negatively influenced by the money given up to acquire the product. And the perceived transaction value was defined as the perception of psychological satisfaction or pleasure obtained from taking advantage of the financial terms of the price deal. Lastly, the brand loyalty was defined as favorable attitude towards a purchased product. Thus, a consumer loyal to a brand has an emotional attachment to the brand or firm. Repeat purchasers continue to buy the same brand even though they do not have an emotional attachment to it. We assumed that if the degree of brand loyalty is high, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value will increase when higher discount rate is provided. But we found that there are no significant differences in values between two different discount rates as a result of empirical analysis. It means that price reduction did not affect consumer's brand choice significantly because the perceived sacrifice decreased only a little, and customers are satisfied with product's benefits when brand loyalty is high. From the result, we confirmed that consumers with high degree of brand loyalty to a specific product are less sensitive to price change. Thus, using price promotion strategy to merely expect sale increase is not recommendable. Instead of discounting price, marketers need to strengthen consumers' brand loyalty and maintain the skimming strategy. On the contrary, when the degree of brand loyalty is low, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value decreased significantly when higher discount rate is provided. Generally brands that are considered inferior might be able to draw attention away from the quality of the product by making consumers focus more on the sacrifice component of price. But considering the fact that consumers with low degree of brand loyalty are known to be unsatisfied with product's benefits and have relatively negative brand attitude, bigger price reduction offered in experiment condition of this paper made consumers depreciate product's quality and benefit more and more, and consumer's psychological perceived sacrifice increased while perceived values decreased accordingly. We infer that, in the case of inferior brand, a drastic price-cut or frequent price promotion may increase consumers' uncertainty about overall components of product. Therefore, it appears that reinforcing the augmented product such as after-sale service, delivery and giving credit which is one of the levels consisting of product would be more effective in reality. This will be better rather than competing with product that holds high brand loyalty by reducing sale price. Although this study tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception, there are several limitations. This study was conducted in controlled conditions where the high involvement product and two different levels of discount rate were applied. Given the presence of low involvement product, when both pieces of information are available, it is likely that the results we have reported here may have been different. Thus, this research results explain only the specific situation. Second, the sample selected in this study was university students in their twenties, so we cannot say that the results are firmly effective to all generations. Future research that manipulates the level of discount along with the consumer involvement might lead to a more robust understanding of the effects various discount rate. And, we used a cellular phone as a product stimulus, so it would be very interesting to analyze the result when the product stimulus is an intangible product such as service. It could be also valuable to analyze whether the change of perceived value affects consumers' final buying behavior positively or negatively.