• Title/Summary/Keyword: Case Management Performance

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A Study of Health Condion and Shift Service of the Nurse in (종합병원 간호사의 교대근무와 건강상태에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Soon-Ok
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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    • v.3 no.1
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    • pp.119-133
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    • 1997
  • Continuing shift service of clinical nurses can be not only the cause of occupational dissatisfaction by being connected with the change of circadian rhythm and the burden of duties to be applicable to such changes. But also of inviting the lowering of nursing quality by being affected to the resignation of the nurses as the threat to the health of the nurses. This study has selected 500 nurses at random under non-probability sampling who have been serving by shift in 7 general hospitals which have over 400 sickbeds for the purpose of cross-sectional survey design from Sep. 7 through 20, 1996. Standardized modification of the CMI has been used which was designed for Koreans with Cornell Medical Index developed by Broadman and his fellow workers as the study device. The structure of the device was composed of 35 questions on physical appeal(Chronbach's ${\alpha}=8507$) and 22 questions of mental appeal(Cronbach's ${\alpha}=.8166$ totalling 57 questions. The collected data has been computerrized by using SPSS. General character, present symptom, perceived symptom and others are sought by practical number and percentage, and the health condition comparison followed by general characters was conducted by t-test and ANOVA. The post test was by Duncan's test by the level of p<.05. 1) The items of the answer that they have the physical symptom presently by 50% or over of the nurses were as "Do you often have spells of severe dizziness", "Are your eyes often red or inflamed", "Does press or pain in the head often make like miserable", "Are your ankles often badly swollen", "Do pains in the back make it hard for you to keep up with your work". 2) The items of the answer by over 50% of the nurses as the mental symptom at present were "do you fell bad when criticized?", "Do you get angry when everything is against your will?", "do you get angry when ordered to do this and that?", "do you feel uneasy by such a trifle thing?", "do you tremble or are you freightened by sudden sound?". The mental and physical symptoms which have appeared presently in connection with the shift service have been agreed with each other. But the physical condition has been worse than the mental one. 3) In the physical health conditions followed by demosociological character, there were the significant differences by sex, religion and place of residence(p<.05), and in the mental health conditions, there were the significant differences by age, marital status, residence place and the required time for attending hospital(p<.05). 4) There was significant difference by the degree of satisfaction about the duty in both the physical and mental health conditions. In short, the higher the degree of duty satisfaction, the better the health conditions. 5) There were the significant difference according to the times of night duty and whether they take the drug or not or the kinds of the drugs in the physical health conditions related with the characters of night shift. Mental health conditions in the night shift case showed significant differences according to their taking drug or not or the kinds of the drugs(p<.05). I can confirm that the nurses have been affected continuously by the shift service mentally and physically. The maintenance of the physical and mental health of the nurses and its promotion are very important problem to guarantee the quality nursing in the performance of the nursing service continuously and effectively, so the hospital should make every effort to improve the duty conditions by finding out the causes affecting to their health. In the nursing management viewpoint, I think that elevating the satisfaction degree about the duty would be a great help to the promotion of physical and mental health conditions. But what is most important is that the nurses themselves should take care of themselves in maintaining the good conditions in their service in the hospital.

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Effects of Dietary Probiotics on Feed Intakes, Nutrient Digestibility and Nitrogen Retention in Korean Black Goats Fed Two Diets Differing in Forage to Concentrate Ratios (사료 내 조농비율에 따른 생균제의 첨가가 흑염소의 사료섭취량, 영양소 소화율 및 질소축적에 미치는 영향)

  • HwangBo, Soon;Jo, Ik-Hwan;Song, Ki-Jun;Lee, Sung-Hoon
    • Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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    • v.15 no.2
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    • pp.195-205
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    • 2007
  • This study was conducted to determine effects of probiotics on performance, nutrient digestibility and nitrogen retention in Korean black goats fed two diets differing in forage to concentrate (F:C) ratio (30:70 and 70:30), for the establishment of their more efficient feeding management system. The probiotics employed in this trial were mixtures of different microbial species, which consisted of Lactobacillus casei, Bacillus subtilis, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Aspergillus oryzae and Streptomyces griseus. Additional levels of probiotics to each F:C ratio (70:30 or 30:70) were 0 and 0.2%, respectively. Thus, twelve Korean black male goats were allotted to treatments in four groups of three goats per treatment and then they were housed in individual metabolism cages with a randomized complete block design for 21 days. Dry matter (DM) intakes were not affected by dietary F:C ratio and probiotics. Digestible DM amounts were significantly (p<0.05) decreased with increasing levels of dietary forage, but they were not affected by probiotics addition. Dry matter intakes per metabolic body weight and their ratio per body weight had a similar trend to DM intakes with no significant difference by F:C ratio and probiotics addition. The nutrient digestibility was significantly (p<0.05) increased with decreasing levels of forage in the diet, but it was not affected by probiotics addition. Urinary nitrogen loss was significantly (p<0.05) decreased with decreasing levels of dietary forage, but there was no significant difference between probiotics-supplemented and unsupplemented groups within the same F:C ratio. On the contrary, nitrogen retention was decreased with increasing levels of dietary forage, and probiotics supplementation to two diets differing in F:C ratio showed slightly increasing trends in the nitrogen retention. From the above results, probiotics supplementation to two diets differing in F:C ratio did not have the significant influence on feed intakes, nutrient digestibility and nitrogen retention. Consequently, these parameters of Korean black goats were dominated rather by F:C ratio than by dietary probiotics.

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Investigation of Microbial Contamination Levels of Leafy Greens and Its Distributing Conditions at Different Time - Focused on Perilla leaf and Lettuce - (시기별 엽채류의 미생물 오염도와 유통 조건 조사 - 들깻잎과 상추를 중심으로 -)

  • Kim, Won-Il;Jung, Hyang-Mi;Kim, Se-Ri;Park, Kyeong-Hun;Kim, Byung-Seok;Yun, Jong-Chul;Ryu, Kyoung-Yul
    • Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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    • v.27 no.3
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    • pp.277-284
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    • 2012
  • The objective of this study was to investigate and evaluate microbial contamination levels of leafy greens (perilla leaf and lettuce) and its distributing conditions at different seasons (Feb, May, Aug, and Nov of the year 2011) in order to provide insight into any potential health hazards associated with consumption of these commodities. Leafy greens were collected from a farm located in Geumsan, Chungnam and wholesale markets (WM) and traditional markets (TM) located in Suwon. At the same time, temperature and relative humidity fluctuations experienced by the leafy greens during distribution from the farm to the distribution center were measured by a data logger. The contamination levels of perilla leaf and lettuce were determined by analyzing total plate count. Coliform groups, Bacillus cereus, Escherichia coli, Escherichia coli O157:H7, Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus were determined. The contamination levels of total aerobic bacteria, coliform groups and B. cereus in both vegetables sampled during May and August found to be higher than those sampled during February and November. E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella spp., L. monocytogenes were not detected in the vegetables analyzed in this study. There were no significant trends between samples at WM and TM in the contamination levels. Relative humidity of vegetables distributed from the farm to the distribution center showed over 90% during distribution regardless of measured seasons. In the case of background microflora on leafy greens, the density was significantly increased at 20, 30 and $37^{\circ}C$ during storage of 24h. E. coli O157:H7 and B. cereus inoculated on the leaves also showed similar increases in the storage tests. The microbial contamination levels determined in this study may be used as the fundamental data for microbial risk assessment.

Studies on the Physico-Chemical Characteristics of Different Casing Materials Affecting Mycelial Growth and Yield of Cultivated Mushroom, Agaricus bisporus (Lange) Sing. (양송이의 균사생장(菌絲生長) 및 자실체(子寶體) 수량(收量)에 미치는 복토재료(覆土材料)의 이화학적(理化學的) 성질(性質)에 관(關)한 연구(硏究))

  • Kim, Dong-Soo
    • The Korean Journal of Mycology
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    • v.3 no.1
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    • pp.1-19
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    • 1975
  • Since the importance of casing in fruit body formation of Agaricus bisporus has been emphasized, physico-chemical characteristics of casing materials were discussed by many workers and a mixture of peat and mineral soil as proper casing material has been adopted in many of mushroom growing countries. Because of limited resources of peat in Korea, it is necessary to find practical performance and substitutional materials for casing. The effect of casing on mycelial growth and mushroom yield of A. bisporus varied with materials, its combination and practices etc. The experiments to be discussed in this paper are concerned with pH and Ca of casing material which influence A bisporus, and changes of physico-chemical characteristics with mixing ratio of casing materials and its effect on A. bisporus. The optimum range of moisture content of each material, management of watering and application of physico-chemical characteristics casing materials was also investigated and re-use of weathered spent compost for casing material was described. 1. The effect of calcium on mycelial growth of A. bisporus at various pH in Halbschalentest showed different results with calcium sources. Best results were obtained around neutrality and fresh weight of fruit bodies grown in the range of pH 7 to 8 was highest among the tested levels. 2. Available moisture, pore space, organic matter, cation exchangeable capacity and exchangeable cation was increased by an increase of mixing ratio of peat in casing materials, while an adverse effect was obtained by addition of sand. 3. Mycelial growth on clay loam was more rapid at a lower bulk density of 0.75g/cc and at 20% moisture content on a dry weight basis at the same bulk density. 4. Mixing ratio of casing materials, 60 to 80 per cent by volume of peat mixed with 20 to 40 per cent of clay loam produced the highest yield of fresh fruit bodies and sand the lowest. However, per cent of open cap was highest in peat and lowest in sand. 5. Days required for fruit body initiation was shortened in mixtures of peat and clay loam by one to three days compared with other materials and the formation of flushes was clear. 6. The effect of some physico-chemical characteristics of casing materials on the fresh weight of fruit bodies were estimated by a multiple regression equation; Y=-923.86+$8.18X_1+8.04X_2+7.90X_3+0.12X_4+2.03X_5-0.82X_6-0.54X_7$ where $X_1,X_2,X_3,X_4,X_5,X_6,X_7$ are sand, silt, clay, available moistuer, porosity, organic matter and exchangeable cation respectively. The productivity of certain casing material could be predicted from this equation. 7. Fresh weight of fruit bodies was positively correlated with porosity exchangeable cation, organic matter, available moisture, silt and clay of materials; while sand was negatively correlated. On the contrary, sand was the unique factor reducing per cent of open cap. 8. Distribution of three phases of high productive casing material was concentrated in the range of 10 to 30 per cent solids, 15 to 30 per cent liquids, and 50 to 60 per cent in air volume. 9. Fresh weight of fruit bodies from peat was not affected with heavy watering but in clay loam and sandy loam severe crop losses occurred. Fresh weight of individual fruit was increased and open caps were decreased with heavy watering but light watering resulted in adverse effects: its effect was especially great in peat. 10. Optimum range of moisture content by weight on a dry basis was different with each casing material. To maintain optimum moisture content concerned with yield of fruit bodies and open cap, sandy loam and peat mixtures required daily watering of 0.6, 0.6 to 1. 2 and 1.2 to 2.4 liters per $3.3m^2$ of bed area, respectively. 11. Maximum yield of fruit body was recorded in the range of pF 2. 0 to 2. 5 of casing materials if organic matter content was below 4.2 per cent and in pF 1. 3 to 1.8 if above 7.1%. 12. pF curve of a certain casing material could be draws from moisture content at various pF values by multiple regression equations provided texture, organic matter and calcium of the casing material are given. Optimum moisture range of the casing materials also could be estimated by the equation. 13. It was possible to improve the phyico-chemical characteristics of clay loam and sandy loam by addition of weathered spent compost although the effect was less than in the case of peat. Fresh weight of fruit bodies wsa increased by addition of weathered spent compost but its effect was not as remarkable as peat. Accordingly, further studies will be required.

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Exploring A Research Trend on Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in the 40 Years of the Asia Pacific Journal of Small Business for the Development of Ecosystem Measurement Framework (「중소기업연구」 40년 동안의 창업생태계 연구 동향 고찰 및 측정모형 개발을 위한 탐색적 연구)

  • Seo, Ribin;Choi, Kyung Cheol;Byun, Youngjo
    • Korean small business review
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    • v.42 no.4
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    • pp.69-102
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    • 2020
  • Shedding new light on the research trend on entrepreneurial ecosystems in the 40-year history of the Asia Pacific Journal of Small Business, this study aims at exploring a potential measurement framework of ecological inputs and outputs in an entrepreneurial ecosystem that promotes entrepreneurship at geographical and spatial levels. As a result of the analysis of research on the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the journal, we found that prior studies emphasized the managerial importance of various ecological factors on the premise of possible causalities between the factors and entrepreneurship. However, empirical research to verify the premised causality has been underexplored yet. This literature gap may lead to unbalanced development of conceptual and case studies that identify requirements for successful entrepreneurial ecosystems based on experiential facts, thereby hindering the generalization of the research results for practical implications. In that there is a growing interest in creating and operating productive entrepreneurial ecosystems as an innovation engine that drives national and regional economic growth, it is necessary to explore and develop the measurement framework for ecological factors that can be used in future empirical research. Hereupon, we apply a conceptual model of 'input-output-outcome-impact' to categorize individual environmental factors identified in prior studies. Based on the model. We operationalize ecological input factors as the financial, intellectual, institutional, and social capitals, and ecological output factors as the establishment-based, innovation-based, and performance-based entrepreneurship. Also, we propose several longitudinal databases that future empirical research can use in analyzing the potential causality between the ecological input and output factors. The proposed framework of entrepreneurial ecosystems, which focuses on measuring ecological input and output factors, has a high application value for future research that analyzes the causality.

The Private-Initiated Park Development Project in Terms of Securing Publicity Operation Characteristics Analysis - Busan Metropolitan City as a Case - (공공성 확보측면에서 민간공원특례사업 운영특성분석 - "부산광역시를 사례로" -)

  • Gweon, Young-Dal;Park, Hyun-Bin;Kim, Dong-Pil
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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    • v.51 no.1
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    • pp.13-28
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    • 2023
  • This study examines the process of project promotion in Busan, which introduced the private participation-type consultative body for the first time in the country in the promotion stage of the private-initiated park development project, and introduced flexible application of the system and differentiated policy elements in the implementation process, and examines the operational characteristics and we tried to analyze performance, etc. As a result of the analysis, first, the preferred bidder was selected by introducing a mixed method in the project method, which is an independent project method that cannot be seen in other local governments. Second, by specifying guidelines considering the characteristics of each park and detailed guidelines such as the location, area, and maximum height of non-park facilities, criteria for establishing a rational development plan utilizing regional identity and the basis of evaluation standards were laid. Third, in the project process, transparency was secured through the delegation-type roundtable, in which the private sector performs the functions and roles of key actors, thereby preventing disputes such as suspicion of preferential treatment. Fourth, in order to improve the quality of park facilities to be donated and to secure design adequacy, after approval of the implementation plan, a general planner was introduced and construction project management (design stage) services were performed to promote efficient implementation and specialization of luxury parks in the region. As a result, the city of Busan carried out the project efficiently by conserving 5 parks from sunset, a park area of 2.25km2, and reducing land compensation and park construction costs by KRW 740 billion. Reinforcement of the public nature of the private-initiated park development project was suggested. However, due to the application of these systems and verification procedures, the project period is prolonged, and park services are delayed along with the financial burden on private operators.

Relationship between job satisfaction of dental hygienists and patient safety cultural activities (치과위생사의 직무만족도와 환자안전문화 활동의 관련성)

  • Bo Young Park;Chae-Rin Kang;Yu-gyeong Byun;Eun-Seo Seong;Soo-Young Lee;Ji-Eun Lee;Yu-Jin Ham;Mi Sook Yoon
    • Journal of Korean Dental Hygiene Science
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    • v.6 no.2
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    • pp.115-127
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    • 2023
  • Background: This study was conducted to determine the level of job satisfaction and patient safety cultural activities for dental hygienists and to determine the relationship between job satisfaction and patient safety cultural activities. Methods: A survey was conducted on 214 dental hygienists, and data from the final 180 were analyzed. Job satisfaction consisted of a total of 20 questions, and patient safety cultural activities included a total of 25 questions. The survey was conducted on a 5-point scale. Results: The average job satisfaction score of the study subjects was 3.44 points. Among patient safety cultural activities, infection control had the highest average score (4.12 points) and radiation safety management had the lowest average score (3.10 points). Patients with less than 3 years of clinical experience (4.01 points) had higher patient safety culture activity scores than those with 3 to 10 years of clinical experience (3.72 points) and those with more than 10 years of clinical experience (3.69 points). The level of patient safety cultural activities was statistically significantly higher as age, less clinical experience, and job satisfaction increased (p<0.05). Conclusion: In the case of dental hygienists, patient safety cultural activities must be carried out throughout the entire work, so an active will to practice patient safety cultural activities is necessary. In order to improve the performance of patient safety cultural activities, it is necessary to adjust the workload of dental hygienists to improve job satisfaction and create a work environment in which they can focus on patient safety cultural activities.

Development of Predictive Models for Rights Issues Using Financial Analysis Indices and Decision Tree Technique (경영분석지표와 의사결정나무기법을 이용한 유상증자 예측모형 개발)

  • Kim, Myeong-Kyun;Cho, Yoonho
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.18 no.4
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    • pp.59-77
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    • 2012
  • This study focuses on predicting which firms will increase capital by issuing new stocks in the near future. Many stakeholders, including banks, credit rating agencies and investors, performs a variety of analyses for firms' growth, profitability, stability, activity, productivity, etc., and regularly report the firms' financial analysis indices. In the paper, we develop predictive models for rights issues using these financial analysis indices and data mining techniques. This study approaches to building the predictive models from the perspective of two different analyses. The first is the analysis period. We divide the analysis period into before and after the IMF financial crisis, and examine whether there is the difference between the two periods. The second is the prediction time. In order to predict when firms increase capital by issuing new stocks, the prediction time is categorized as one year, two years and three years later. Therefore Total six prediction models are developed and analyzed. In this paper, we employ the decision tree technique to build the prediction models for rights issues. The decision tree is the most widely used prediction method which builds decision trees to label or categorize cases into a set of known classes. In contrast to neural networks, logistic regression and SVM, decision tree techniques are well suited for high-dimensional applications and have strong explanation capabilities. There are well-known decision tree induction algorithms such as CHAID, CART, QUEST, C5.0, etc. Among them, we use C5.0 algorithm which is the most recently developed algorithm and yields performance better than other algorithms. We obtained data for the rights issue and financial analysis from TS2000 of Korea Listed Companies Association. A record of financial analysis data is consisted of 89 variables which include 9 growth indices, 30 profitability indices, 23 stability indices, 6 activity indices and 8 productivity indices. For the model building and test, we used 10,925 financial analysis data of total 658 listed firms. PASW Modeler 13 was used to build C5.0 decision trees for the six prediction models. Total 84 variables among financial analysis data are selected as the input variables of each model, and the rights issue status (issued or not issued) is defined as the output variable. To develop prediction models using C5.0 node (Node Options: Output type = Rule set, Use boosting = false, Cross-validate = false, Mode = Simple, Favor = Generality), we used 60% of data for model building and 40% of data for model test. The results of experimental analysis show that the prediction accuracies of data after the IMF financial crisis (59.04% to 60.43%) are about 10 percent higher than ones before IMF financial crisis (68.78% to 71.41%). These results indicate that since the IMF financial crisis, the reliability of financial analysis indices has increased and the firm intention of rights issue has been more obvious. The experiment results also show that the stability-related indices have a major impact on conducting rights issue in the case of short-term prediction. On the other hand, the long-term prediction of conducting rights issue is affected by financial analysis indices on profitability, stability, activity and productivity. All the prediction models include the industry code as one of significant variables. This means that companies in different types of industries show their different types of patterns for rights issue. We conclude that it is desirable for stakeholders to take into account stability-related indices and more various financial analysis indices for short-term prediction and long-term prediction, respectively. The current study has several limitations. First, we need to compare the differences in accuracy by using different data mining techniques such as neural networks, logistic regression and SVM. Second, we are required to develop and to evaluate new prediction models including variables which research in the theory of capital structure has mentioned about the relevance to rights issue.

The Roles of Service Failure and Recovery Satisfaction in Customer-Firm Relationship Restoration : Focusing on Carry-over effect and Dynamics among Customer Affection, Customer Trust and Loyalty Intention Before and After the Events (서비스실패의 심각성과 복구만족이 고객-기업 관계회복에 미치는 영향 : 실패이전과 복구이후 고객애정, 고객신뢰, 충성의도의 이월효과 및 역학관계 비교를 중심으로)

  • La, Sun-A
    • Journal of Distribution Research
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    • v.17 no.1
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    • pp.1-36
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    • 2012
  • Service failure is one of the major reasons for customer defection. As the business environment gets tougher and more competitive, a single service failure might bring about fatal consequences to a service provider or a firm. Sometimes a failure won't end up with an unsatisfied customer's simple complaining but with a wide-spread animosity against the service provider or the firm, leading to a threat to the firm's survival itself in the society. Therefore, we are in need of comprehensive understandings of complainants' attitudes and behaviors toward service failures and firm's recovery efforts. Even though a failure itself couldn't be fixed completely, marketers should repair the mind and heart of unsatisfied customers, which can be regarded as an successful recovery strategy in the end. As the outcome of recovery efforts exerted by service providers or firms, recovery of the relationship between customer and service provider need to put on the top in the recovery goal list. With these motivations, the study investigates how service failure and recovery makes the changes in dynamics of fundamental elements of customer-firm relationship, such as customer affection, customer trust and loyalty intention by comparing two time points, before the service failure and after the recovery, focusing on the effects of recovery satisfaction and the failure severity. We adopted La & Choi (2012)'s framework for development of the research model that was based on the previous research stream like Yim et al. (2008) and Thomson et al. (2005). The pivotal background theories of the model are mainly from relationship marketing and social relationships of social psychology. For example, Love, Emotional attachment, Intimacy, and Equity theories regarding human relationships were reviewed. As the results, when recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust that were established before the service failure are carried over to the future after the recovery. However, when recovery satisfaction is low, customer-firm relationship that had already established in the past are not carried over but broken up. Regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, once a failure occurs loyalty intention is not carried over to the future and the impact of customer trust on loyalty intention becomes stronger. Such changes imply that customers become more prudent and more risk-aversive than the time prior to service failure. The impact of severity of failure on customer affection and customer trust matters only when recovery satisfaction is low. When recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust become severity-proof. Interestingly, regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, failure severity has a significant negative influence on loyalty intention. Loyalty intention is the most fragile target when a service failure occurs no matter how severe the failure criticality is. Consequently, the ultimate goal of service recovery should be the restoration of customer-firm relationship and recovery of customer trust should be the primary objective to accomplish for a successful recovery performance. Especially when failure severity is high, service recovery should be perceived highly satisfied by the complainants because failure severity matters more when recovery satisfaction is low. Marketers can implement recovery strategies to enhance emotional appeals as well as fair treatments since the both impacts of affection and trust on loyalty intention are significant. In the case of high severity of failure, recovery efforts should be exerted to overreach customer expectation, designed to directly repair customer trust and elaborately designed in the focus of customer-firm communications during the interactional recovery process to affect customer trust rebuilding indirectly. Because it is a longer and harder way to rebuild customer-firm relationship for high severity cases, low recovery satisfaction cannot guarantee customer retention. To prevent customer defection due to service failure of high severity, unexpected rewards as a recovery will be likely to be useful since those will lead to customer delight or customer gratitude toward the service firm. Based on the results of analyses, theoretical and managerial implications are presented. Limitations and future research ideas are also discussed.

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Intelligent Brand Positioning Visualization System Based on Web Search Traffic Information : Focusing on Tablet PC (웹검색 트래픽 정보를 활용한 지능형 브랜드 포지셔닝 시스템 : 태블릿 PC 사례를 중심으로)

  • Jun, Seung-Pyo;Park, Do-Hyung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.19 no.3
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    • pp.93-111
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    • 2013
  • As Internet and information technology (IT) continues to develop and evolve, the issue of big data has emerged at the foreground of scholarly and industrial attention. Big data is generally defined as data that exceed the range that can be collected, stored, managed and analyzed by existing conventional information systems and it also refers to the new technologies designed to effectively extract values from such data. With the widespread dissemination of IT systems, continual efforts have been made in various fields of industry such as R&D, manufacturing, and finance to collect and analyze immense quantities of data in order to extract meaningful information and to use this information to solve various problems. Since IT has converged with various industries in many aspects, digital data are now being generated at a remarkably accelerating rate while developments in state-of-the-art technology have led to continual enhancements in system performance. The types of big data that are currently receiving the most attention include information available within companies, such as information on consumer characteristics, information on purchase records, logistics information and log information indicating the usage of products and services by consumers, as well as information accumulated outside companies, such as information on the web search traffic of online users, social network information, and patent information. Among these various types of big data, web searches performed by online users constitute one of the most effective and important sources of information for marketing purposes because consumers search for information on the internet in order to make efficient and rational choices. Recently, Google has provided public access to its information on the web search traffic of online users through a service named Google Trends. Research that uses this web search traffic information to analyze the information search behavior of online users is now receiving much attention in academia and in fields of industry. Studies using web search traffic information can be broadly classified into two fields. The first field consists of empirical demonstrations that show how web search information can be used to forecast social phenomena, the purchasing power of consumers, the outcomes of political elections, etc. The other field focuses on using web search traffic information to observe consumer behavior, identifying the attributes of a product that consumers regard as important or tracking changes on consumers' expectations, for example, but relatively less research has been completed in this field. In particular, to the extent of our knowledge, hardly any studies related to brands have yet attempted to use web search traffic information to analyze the factors that influence consumers' purchasing activities. This study aims to demonstrate that consumers' web search traffic information can be used to derive the relations among brands and the relations between an individual brand and product attributes. When consumers input their search words on the web, they may use a single keyword for the search, but they also often input multiple keywords to seek related information (this is referred to as simultaneous searching). A consumer performs a simultaneous search either to simultaneously compare two product brands to obtain information on their similarities and differences, or to acquire more in-depth information about a specific attribute in a specific brand. Web search traffic information shows that the quantity of simultaneous searches using certain keywords increases when the relation is closer in the consumer's mind and it will be possible to derive the relations between each of the keywords by collecting this relational data and subjecting it to network analysis. Accordingly, this study proposes a method of analyzing how brands are positioned by consumers and what relationships exist between product attributes and an individual brand, using simultaneous search traffic information. It also presents case studies demonstrating the actual application of this method, with a focus on tablets, belonging to innovative product groups.