• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.167-175
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• 2024

Due to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, ICT(Information and Communication Technology) industry is becoming more important and sophisticated than ever. In B2B based ICT industry demand forecasting by analyzing the previous customer data is so important. RFM, one of customer relationship management models is a marketing technique that evaluates Recency, Frequency and Monetary value to predict customers behavior. RFM model has been studied focusing on the B2C based industry. On the other hand there is a lack of research on B2B based technology industry. Therefore this study applied it to B2B based high technology industry and considered T(technology collaboration) value, which are identified as important factors in the technology industry. To present an improved model for market performance in B2B technology industry, an empirical study was conducted on comparing the accuracy of the traditional RFM model and the improved RFM-T model. The objective of this study is to contribute to market performance by presenting an improved model in B2B based high technology industry.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.111-126
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• 2020

Most industries have recently become aware of the importance of customer lifetime value as they are exposed to a competitive environment. As a result, preventing customers from churn is becoming a more important business issue than securing new customers. This is because maintaining churn customers is far more economical than securing new customers, and in fact, the acquisition cost of new customers is known to be five to six times higher than the maintenance cost of churn customers. Also, Companies that effectively prevent customer churn and improve customer retention rates are known to have a positive effect on not only increasing the company's profitability but also improving its brand image by improving customer satisfaction. Predicting customer churn, which had been conducted as a sub-research area for CRM, has recently become more important as a big data-based performance marketing theme due to the development of business machine learning technology. Until now, research on customer churn prediction has been carried out actively in such sectors as the mobile telecommunication industry, the financial industry, the distribution industry, and the game industry, which are highly competitive and urgent to manage churn. In addition, These churn prediction studies were focused on improving the performance of the churn prediction model itself, such as simply comparing the performance of various models, exploring features that are effective in forecasting departures, or developing new ensemble techniques, and were limited in terms of practical utilization because most studies considered the entire customer group as a group and developed a predictive model. As such, the main purpose of the existing related research was to improve the performance of the predictive model itself, and there was a relatively lack of research to improve the overall customer churn prediction process. In fact, customers in the business have different behavior characteristics due to heterogeneous transaction patterns, and the resulting churn rate is different, so it is unreasonable to assume the entire customer as a single customer group. Therefore, it is desirable to segment customers according to customer classification criteria, such as loyalty, and to operate an appropriate churn prediction model individually, in order to carry out effective customer churn predictions in heterogeneous industries. Of course, in some studies, there are studies in which customers are subdivided using clustering techniques and applied a churn prediction model for individual customer groups. Although this process of predicting churn can produce better predictions than a single predict model for the entire customer population, there is still room for improvement in that clustering is a mechanical, exploratory grouping technique that calculates distances based on inputs and does not reflect the strategic intent of an entity such as loyalties. This study proposes a segment-based customer departure prediction process (CCP/2DL: Customer Churn Prediction based on Two-Dimensional Loyalty segmentation) based on two-dimensional customer loyalty, assuming that successful customer churn management can be better done through improvements in the overall process than through the performance of the model itself. CCP/2DL is a series of churn prediction processes that segment two-way, quantitative and qualitative loyalty-based customer, conduct secondary grouping of customer segments according to churn patterns, and then independently apply heterogeneous churn prediction models for each churn pattern group. Performance comparisons were performed with the most commonly applied the General churn prediction process and the Clustering-based churn prediction process to assess the relative excellence of the proposed churn prediction process. The General churn prediction process used in this study refers to the process of predicting a single group of customers simply intended to be predicted as a machine learning model, using the most commonly used churn predicting method. And the Clustering-based churn prediction process is a method of first using clustering techniques to segment customers and implement a churn prediction model for each individual group. In cooperation with a global NGO, the proposed CCP/2DL performance showed better performance than other methodologies for predicting churn. This churn prediction process is not only effective in predicting churn, but can also be a strategic basis for obtaining a variety of customer observations and carrying out other related performance marketing activities.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.61-75
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• 2011

A Geographic Information System(GIS) is a system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages and presents data with reference to geographic location data. In the later 1990s and earlier 2000s it was limitedly used in government sectors such as public utility management, urban planning, landscape architecture, and environmental contamination control. However, a growing number of open-source packages running on a range of operating systems enabled many private enterprises to explore the concept of viewing GIS-based sales and customer data over their own computer monitors. K telecommunication company has dominated the Korean telecommunication market by providing diverse services, such as high-speed internet, PSTN(Public Switched Telephone Network), VOLP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), and IPTV(Internet Protocol Television). Even though the telecommunication market in Korea is huge, the competition between major services providers is growing more fierce than ever before. Service providers struggled to acquire as many new customers as possible, attempted to cross sell more products to their regular customers, and made more efforts on retaining the best customers by offering unprecedented benefits. Most service providers including K telecommunication company tried to adopt the concept of customer relationship management(CRM), and analyze customer's demographic and transactional data statistically in order to understand their customer's behavior. However, managing customer information has still remained at the basic level, and the quality and the quantity of customer data were not enough not only to understand the customers but also to design a strategy for marketing and sales. For example, the currently used 3,074 legal regional divisions, which are originally defined by the government, were too broad to calculate sub-regional customer's service subscription and cancellation ratio. Additional external data such as house size, house price, and household demographics are also needed to measure sales potential. Furthermore, making tables and reports were time consuming and they were insufficient to make a clear judgment about the market situation. In 2009, this company needed a dramatic shift in the way marketing and sales activities, and finally developed a dedicated GIS_based market analysis and sales management system. This system made huge improvement in the efficiency with which the company was able to manage and organize all customer and sales related information, and access to those information easily and visually. After the GIS information system was developed, and applied to marketing and sales activities at the corporate level, the company was reported to increase sales and market share substantially. This was due to the fact that by analyzing past market and sales initiatives, creating sales potential, and targeting key markets, the system could make suggestions and enable the company to focus its resources on the demographics most likely to respond to the promotion. This paper reviews subjective and unclear marketing and sales activities that K telecommunication company operated, and introduces the whole process of developing the GIS information system. The process consists of the following 5 modules : (1) Customer profile cleansing and standardization, (2) Internal/External DB enrichment, (3) Segmentation of 3,074 legal regions into 46,590 sub_regions called blocks, (4) GIS data mart design, and (5) GIS system construction. The objective of this case study is to emphasize the need of GIS system and how it works in the private enterprises by reviewing the development process of the K company's market analysis and sales management system. We hope that this paper suggest valuable guideline to companies that consider introducing or constructing a GIS information system.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.139-161
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• 2019

The utilization of the e-commerce market has become a common life style in today. It has become important part to know where and how to make reasonable purchases of good quality products for customers. This change in purchase psychology tends to make it difficult for customers to make purchasing decisions in vast amounts of information. In this case, the recommendation system has the effect of reducing the cost of information retrieval and improving the satisfaction by analyzing the purchasing behavior of the customer. Amazon and Netflix are considered to be the well-known examples of sales marketing using the recommendation system. In the case of Amazon, 60% of the recommendation is made by purchasing goods, and 35% of the sales increase was achieved. Netflix, on the other hand, found that 75% of movie recommendations were made using services. This personalization technique is considered to be one of the key strategies for one-to-one marketing that can be useful in online markets where salespeople do not exist. Recommendation techniques that are mainly used in recommendation systems today include collaborative filtering and content-based filtering. Furthermore, hybrid techniques and association rules that use these techniques in combination are also being used in various fields. Of these, collaborative filtering recommendation techniques are the most popular today. Collaborative filtering is a method of recommending products preferred by neighbors who have similar preferences or purchasing behavior, based on the assumption that users who have exhibited similar tendencies in purchasing or evaluating products in the past will have a similar tendency to other products. However, most of the existed systems are recommended only within the same category of products such as books and movies. This is because the recommendation system estimates the purchase satisfaction about new item which have never been bought yet using customer's purchase rating points of a similar commodity based on the transaction data. In addition, there is a problem about the reliability of purchase ratings used in the recommendation system. Reliability of customer purchase ratings is causing serious problems. In particular, 'Compensatory Review' refers to the intentional manipulation of a customer purchase rating by a company intervention. In fact, Amazon has been hard-pressed for these "compassionate reviews" since 2016 and has worked hard to reduce false information and increase credibility. The survey showed that the average rating for products with 'Compensated Review' was higher than those without 'Compensation Review'. And it turns out that 'Compensatory Review' is about 12 times less likely to give the lowest rating, and about 4 times less likely to leave a critical opinion. As such, customer purchase ratings are full of various noises. This problem is directly related to the performance of recommendation systems aimed at maximizing profits by attracting highly satisfied customers in most e-commerce transactions. In this study, we propose the possibility of using new indicators that can objectively substitute existing customer 's purchase ratings by using RFM multi-dimensional analysis technique to solve a series of problems. RFM multi-dimensional analysis technique is the most widely used analytical method in customer relationship management marketing(CRM), and is a data analysis method for selecting customers who are likely to purchase goods. As a result of verifying the actual purchase history data using the relevant index, the accuracy was as high as about 55%. This is a result of recommending a total of 4,386 different types of products that have never been bought before, thus the verification result means relatively high accuracy and utilization value. And this study suggests the possibility of general recommendation system that can be applied to various offline product data. If additional data is acquired in the future, the accuracy of the proposed recommendation system can be improved.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.5-13
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• 2011

This study provides analysis of the effectiveness of domestic marketing strategies of the Korean coffee shop "Caffe Bene". It bases its evaluation on statistical outputs of 'choice attributes,' "market segmentation," demographic characteristics," and "satisfaction differences." The results are summarized in four points. First, five choice attributes were extracted from factor analysis: price, atmosphere, comfort, taste, and location; these are related to coffee shop selection behavior. Based on these five factors, cluster analysis was conducted, with statistical results classifying customers into three major groups: atmosphere oriented; comfort oriented; and taste oriented. Second, discriminant analysis tested cluster analysis and showed two discriminant functions: location and atmosphere. Third, cross-tabulation analysis based on demographic characteristics showed distinctive demographic characteristics within the three groups. Atmosphere oriented group, early-20s, as women of all ages was found to be 'walking down the street 'and 'through acquaintances' in many cases, as the cognitive path, and mostly found the store through 'outdoor advertising', and 'introduction'. Comfort oriented group was mainly women who are students in their early twenties or professionals, and appeared as a group to be very loyal because of high recommendation to other customers compared to other groups. Taste oriented group, unlike the other group, was mainly late-20s' college graduates, and was confirmed, as low loyalty, with lower recommendation activity. Fourth, to analyze satisfaction differences, one-way ANOVA was conducted. It shows that groups which show high satisfaction in the five main factors also show high menu satisfaction and high overall satisfaction. This results show that segmented marketing strategies are necessary because customers are considering price, atmosphere, comfort, taste, location when they choose coffee shop and demographics show different attributes based on segmented groups. For example, atmosphere oriented group is satisfied with shop interior and comfort while dissatisfied with price because most of the customers in this group are early 20s and do not have great financial capability. Thus, price discounting marketing strategies based on individual situations through CRM system is critical. Comfort oriented group shows high satisfaction level about location and shop comfort. Also, in this group, there are many early 20s female customers, students, and self-employed people. This group customers show high word of mouth tendency, hence providing positive brand image to the customers would be important. In case of taste oriented group, while the scores of taste and location are high, word of mouth score is low. This group is mainly composed of educated and professional many late 20s customers, therefore, menu differentiation, increasing quality of coffee taste and price discrimination is critical to increase customers' satisfaction. However, it is hard to generalize the results of study to other coffee shop brand, because this study have researched only one domestic coffee shop, Caffe Bene. Thus if future study expand the scope of locations, brands, and occupations, the results of the study would provide more generalizable results. Finally, research of customer satisfactions of menu, trust, loyalty, and switching cost would be critical in the future study.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.262-268
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• 2010

Virtual communities (VCs) have developed rapidly, with more and more people participating in them to exchange information and opinions. A virtual community is a group of people who may or may not meet one another face to face, and who exchange words and ideas through the mediation of computer bulletin boards and networks. A business-to-consumer virtual community (B2CVC) is a commercial group that creates a trustworthy environment intended to motivate consumers to be more willing to buy from an online store. B2CVCs create a social atmosphere through information contribution such as recommendations, reviews, and ratings of buyers and sellers. Although the importance of B2CVCs has been recognized, few studies have been conducted to examine members' word-of-mouth behavior within these communities. This study proposes a model of involvement, statistics, trust, "stickiness," and word-of-mouth in a B2CVC and explores the relationships among these elements based on empirical data. The objectives are threefold: (i) to empirically test a B2CVC model that integrates measures of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors; (ii) to better understand the nature of these relationships, specifically through word-of-mouth as a measure of revenue generation; and (iii) to better understand the role of stickiness of B2CVC in CRM marketing. The model incorporates three key elements concerning community members: (i) their beliefs, measured in terms of their involvement assessment; (ii) their attitudes, measured in terms of their satisfaction and trust; and, (iii) their behavior, measured in terms of site stickiness and their word-of-mouth. Involvement is considered the motivation for consumers to participate in a virtual community. For B2CVC members, information searching and posting have been proposed as the main purpose for their involvement. Satisfaction has been reviewed as an important indicator of a member's overall community evaluation, and conceptualized by different levels of member interactions with their VC. The formation and expansion of a VC depends on the willingness of members to share information and services. Researchers have found that trust is a core component facilitating the anonymous interaction in VCs and e-commerce, and therefore trust-building in VCs has been a common research topic. It is clear that the success of a B2CVC depends on the stickiness of its members to enhance purchasing potential. Opinions communicated and information exchanged between members may represent a type of written word-of-mouth. Therefore, word-of-mouth is one of the primary factors driving the diffusion of B2CVCs across the Internet. Figure 1 presents the research model and hypotheses. The model was tested through the implementation of an online survey of CTrip Travel VC members. A total of 243 collected questionnaires was reduced to 204 usable questionnaires through an empirical process of data cleaning. The study's hypotheses examined the extent to which involvement, satisfaction, and trust influence B2CVC stickiness and members' word-of-mouth. Structural Equation Modeling tested the hypotheses in the analysis, and the structural model fit indices were within accepted thresholds: ${\chi}^2^$/df was 2.76, NFI was .904, IFI was .931, CFI was .930, and RMSEA was .017. Results indicated that involvement has a significant influence on satisfaction (p<0.001, ${\beta}$=0.809). The proportion of variance in satisfaction explained by members' involvement was over half (adjusted $R^2$=0.654), reflecting a strong association. The effect of involvement on trust was also statistically significant (p<0.001, ${\beta}$=0.751), with 57 percent of the variance in trust explained by involvement (adjusted $R^2$=0.563). When the construct "stickiness" was treated as a dependent variable, the proportion of variance explained by the variables of trust and satisfaction was relatively low (adjusted $R^2$=0.331). Satisfaction did have a significant influence on stickiness, with ${\beta}$=0.514. However, unexpectedly, the influence of trust was not even significant (p=0.231, t=1.197), rejecting that proposed hypothesis. The importance of stickiness in the model was more significant because of its effect on e-WOM with ${\beta}$=0.920 (p<0.001). Here, the measures of Stickiness explain over eighty of the variance in e-WOM (Adjusted $R^2$=0.846). Overall, the results of the study supported the hypothesized relationships between members' involvement in a B2CVC and their satisfaction with and trust of it. However, trust, as a traditional measure in behavioral models, has no significant influence on stickiness in the B2CVC environment. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on B2CVCs, specifically addressing gaps in the academic research by integrating measures of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in one model. The results provide additional insights to behavioral factors in a B2CVC environment, helping to sort out relationships between traditional measures and relatively new measures. For practitioners, the identification of factors, such as member involvement, that strongly influence B2CVC member satisfaction can help focus technological resources in key areas. Global e-marketers can develop marketing strategies directly targeting B2CVC members. In the global tourism business, they can target Chinese members of a B2CVC by providing special discounts for active community members or developing early adopter programs to encourage stickiness in the community. Future studies are called for, and more sophisticated modeling, to expand the measurement of B2CVC member behavior and to conduct experiments across industries, communities, and cultures.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.153-177
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• 2001

Nowadays, product recommendation is one of the important issues regarding both CRM and Internet shopping mall. Generally, a recommendation system tracks past actions of a group of users to make a recommendation to individual members of the group. The computer-mediated marketing and commerce have grown rapidly and thereby automatic recommendation methodologies have got great attentions. But the researches and commercial tools for product recommendation so far, still have many aspects that merit further considerations. To supplement those aspects, we devise a recommendation methodology by which we can get further recommendation effectiveness when applied to Internet shopping mall. The suggested methodology is based on web log information, product taxonomy, association rule mining, and decision tree learning. To implement this we also design and intelligent Internet shopping mall support system based on agent technology and develop it as a prototype system. We applied this methodology and the prototype system to a leading Korean Internet shopping mall and provide some experimental results. Through the experiment, we found that the suggested methodology can perform recommendation tasks both effectively and efficiently in real world problems. Its systematic validity issues are also discussed.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.11 no.10
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• pp.5-15
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• 2013

Purpose - With the increase in fervor to purchase luxury brands, new social problems have arisen, such as excessive preoccupation with luxury brands and high preference for forged luxury goods. Therefore, the issues related to luxury brands, termed "Luxury Syndrome," have emerged as an area of great interest for researchers and practitioners. However, previous studies neglect to categorize this preference for luxury brands. Therefore, this study aims to identify the different purchasing behaviors of consumers using the types of luxury brands preferences as parameters. Research design, data, and methodology - This study arranges a causal relationship model assuming that purchase behaviors positively (+) affect typified preference for luxury brands and purchase intentions. We administered a questionnaire survey to the purchasers who bought luxury brands from department stores to secure additional data necessary to verify the hypotheses in this study. We then processed the data using SPSS 19.0. We further analyzed the basic data using frequency and descriptive statistical analysis, and verified the measurement tools through feasibility and reliability analyses. Moreover, this study uses multiple regression analysis to verify the hypotheses. Further, this study tests the path effect between luxury brand purchase attitude and purchase behavior, with non-intrinsic preference and intrinsic preference as the mediating variables. Results - Based on the results, the impact of tendencies of conspicuous consumption and self-monitoring on non-intrinsic preference was significantly positive (+), while the impact of tendencies of pursuit of a reference group, conspicuous consumption, and self-monitoring on intrinsic preference and purchase intentions was significantly positive (+). Further, non-intrinsic and intrinsic preferences positively (+) influence purchase intentions and the impact of non-intrinsic preference took an absolute portion. However, the tendency of dependence on brands negatively (-) impacts purchase intentions. The results showed that self-monitoring and conspicuous consumption tendencies have greater effect on purchase intention, which is mediated by non-intrinsic preference. In contrast, reference group following tendency has a greater effect on purchase intention, which is mediated by intrinsic preference. Conclusions - Based on the results, the study verifies that the consumption of luxury brands in Korea has not yet entered the settling period. The tendency for conspicuous consumption and the tendency for pursuit of the reference group were relatively important aspects for the consumers who prefer luxury brands non-intrinsically and intrinsically, respectively. Especially, it was found that the purchase intentions for forged brands originate from the tendency to depend on brands. Based on these findings, this study suggests the measures to develop and mature the luxury brands market, and reinforce marketing performance at the three levels, that is, government, distributors, and manufacturers. The luxury brands manufacturers should devote themselves to the production and design of products to catch the attention of mature consumers of luxury brands. The luxury brands distributors should then raise the level of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for opinion leaders. Finally, the Government should prepare effective policies for the development of luxury brands and provide a variety of economic support.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.25-53
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• 2011

This study probes the effect of loyalty program on the customer retention based on the real transaction data(n=2,892) acquired from education service industry. We try to figure out the outcomes of reward program through more than 1 year-long data gathered and analyzed according to quasi-experimental design(i.e., before and after design). We adopt this kinds of research scheme in regard that previous studies measured the effect of loyalty program by dividing the customers into two group(i.e., members vs. non-members) after the firms or stores had started the program. We believe that it might not avoid the self-selection bias. The research questions of this study could be explained such as: First, most research said that the loyalty programs could increase the customer loyalty and contribute to the sustainable growth of company. But there are little confirmation that this promotional tool could be justified in terms of financial perspective. Thus, we are interested in both the retention rate and financial outcomes caused by the introduction of loyalty programs. Second, reward programs target mainly current customer. Especially CRM(customer relationship management) said that it is more profitable for company to build positive relationship with current customer instead of pursuing new customer. And it claims that reward program is excellent means to achieve this goal. For this purpose, we check in this study whether there is a interaction effect between loyalty program and customer type in retaining customer. Third, it is said that dis-satisfied customers are more likely to leave the company than satisfied customers. While, Bolton, Kannan and Bramlett(2000) claimed that reward program could contribute to minimize the effect of negative service by building emotional link with customer, it is not empirically confirmed. This point of view explained that the loyalty programs might work as exit barrier to current customer. Thus, this study tries to identify whether there is a interaction effect between loyalty program and service experience in keeping customer. To achieve this purpose, this study adopt both Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox proportional hazard model. The research outcomes show that the average retention period is 179 days before introducing loyalty program but it is increased to 227 days after reward is given to the customers. Since this difference is statistically significant, it could be said that H1 is supported. In addition, the contribution margin coming from increased transaction period is bigger than the cost for administering loyalty programs. To address other research questions, we probe the interaction effect between loyalty program and other factors(i.e., customer type and service experience) affecting it. The analysis of Cox proportional hazard model said that the current customer is more likely to engage in building relationship with company compared to new customer. In addition, retention rate of satisfied customer is significantly increased in relation to dis-satisfied customer. Interestingly, the transaction period of dis-satisfied customer is notably increased after introducing loyalty programs. Thus, it could be said that H2, H3, and H4 are also supported. In summary, we found that the loyalty programs have values as a promotional tool in forming positive relationship with customer and building exit barrier.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Poultry Science Conference
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• 2003.07b
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• pp.67-88
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• 2003

The consumption of poultry meat (chicken and turkey) grew the most during the past few decades due to several contributing factors such as low price. product research and development. favorable meat characteristics, responsive to consumer needs, vertical integration and industry consolidation, new processing equipments and technology, and aggressive marketing. The major processing technologies developed and used in chicken processing include forming/restructuring, tumbling, curing, smoking, massaging, injection, marination, emulsifying, breading, battering, shredding, dicing, and individual quick freezing. These processing technologies were applied to various parts of chicken including whole carcass. Product developments using breast, thigh, and mechanically separated chicken meat greatly increased the utilization of poultry meat. Chicken breast became the symbol of healthy food, which made chicken meat as the most frequent menu items in restaurants. However, the use of and product development for dark meat, which includes thigh, drum, and chicken wings were rather limited due to comparatively high fat content in dark meat. Majority of chicken are currently sold as further processed ready-to-cook or ready-to-eat forms. Major quality issues in chicken meat include pink color problems in uncured cooked breast, lipid oxidation and off-flavor, tenderness PSE breast, and food safety. Research and development to ensure the safety and quality of raw and cooked chicken meat using new processing technologies will be the major issues in the future as they are now. Especially, the application of irradiation in raw and cooked chicken meat products will be increased dramatically within next 5 years. The market share of ready-to-eat cooked meat products will be increased. More portion controlled finished products, dark meat products, and organic and ethnic products with various packaging approaches will also be introduced.