• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.15-27
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• 2013

Because consumers tend to have negative opinion about a company that neglects social issues like poverty or pollution while it focuses on its own profit, a lot of companies have invested their resources in Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR). CSR has merits of image improving and profit gaining, on the other hand, it has also many shortcomings. First, the cost of CSR may become a heavy financial burden. Specifically, CSR tends to be implemented by a company's unilateral backup, and then this may impose a heavy burden on the company. Second, one cannot expect effects of CSR in a short-term. Because of these shortcomings, the unilateral CSR has gone into alteration of the type of CSR since 1980's. Instead of unilaterality, Cause-Related Marketing(CRM) began to be used for mutual profits among company, consumers, and society. That is, CRM has become to be spotlighted as a new type of CSR. It focuses on partnership between a company and consumers based on cause and mutual profit pursuing through this partnership. So, many contemporary companies prefer CRM activities that derive their positive corporate image, that increase their sales, and that reduce their financial cost. The IBM Matching Grants Program, which is the largest of the IBM-Employee partnership programs, is a typical CRM. This program enables employees and retirees to increase the value of their donations to educational institutions, hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, and cultural & environmental organizations with a matching gift from IBM. Hundreds of educational institutions and thousands of nonprofit organizations have benefited from the contributions by IBM. There might be various types of matching grants. For example, an employee might choose a lump-sum expense or partitioning a lump-sum into a series of small ongoing expenses for his (or her) donation, and a firm might match the employee's total contribution with a lump-sum expense or might match the employee's total contribution with a series of small ongoing expenses. However, it is not easy to find an academic research on which type of matching grant is preferred by employees. This paper shows that an employee prefers the type of matching grants that consists of a lump-sum expense for his (or her) contribution and a series of small ongoing expenses for a firm's contribution [or the type of matching grants that consists of a series of small ongoing expenses for an employee's contribution and a lump-sum expense for a firm's contribution] to the other types of matching grants.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.1-25
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• 2011

Available evidence suggests that the average marginal propensity to consume (MPC) from the 2001 tax rebate in the US was not nearly as large as that from previous tax cuts. We examine if this phenomenon can be explained by the fact that the widespread use of credit cards has made borrowing accessible for most US households by constructing a model that simulates the dynamic effect of relaxed borrowing constraints. Our model uses Kreps-Porteus preferences which account for independent measures of relative risk aversion and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution, both of which can theoretically affect the willingness to save or spend. Our model shows that the average MPC drops substantially immediately after borrowing constraints are relaxed because few consumers have binding borrowing constraints at that time. The model also shows that consumers gradually reduce their wealth after borrowing constraints are relaxed, causing more of them to have binding constraints over time, which in turn causes the average MPC to rise gradually to a new steady state value that is slightly lower than the original value. This dynamic pattern of the MPC suggests that a greater ability to borrow with credit cards could explain the lower effectiveness of the 2001 tax rebate. In addition, the model predicts that consumers choose to hold lower amounts of liquid assets for precautionary reasons when they have a greater ability to borrow unsecured debt.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.1-30
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• 2022

This study is to investigate consumers' acceptance and their willingness to pay for clothes made of materials with low microplastic emissions as an alternative to synthetic fibers made of plastics by applying the contingent valuation method. A nationwide web-based survey was conducted for 1,052 respondents proportional to region, age, and gender during February 2021. More than 75% of the sample expressed intentions to purchase microplastic emission-reducing clothing instead of synthetic fiber clothing, and more than 80% of them have stated their willingness to pay for additional prices. A variation of Heckman's sample selection model was adopted to estimate factors affecting respondents' intentions to pay for additional prices, in which the probit model of intentions to purchase the clothing with alternative materials was used as a sample selection equation. While respondents were sensitive to the amounts of price increases suggested in the CV scenario, they expressed high acceptance and preferences for eco-friendly materials regardless of the microplastic emission-reducing levels. Consumers in the circular economy were willing to pay for the range of 41,000 to 51,000 won for a pair of clothing made with microplastic emission-reducing materials. In addition, as the microplastic emission-reducing rate has increased from 50% to 80%, the willingness to pay estimates were also significantly increased, ranging from 41,000~50,500 to 42,000~51,700 won.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Floral Art and Design
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• no.40
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• pp.25-43
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• 2019

The purpose of flower decoration at the funeral altar is to create various flower decorations at altar according to the social status of the deceased, to console psychological shock and pains of mourners and the bereaved families, and to make them remember the life of the deceased beautifully. In this study, five top funeral service companies in Korea selected by the Fair Trade Commission in 2017 and five repr And this researcher identified problems in flower decorations at the funeral altar in Korea, by comparing and analyzing the styles of flower decorations at funeral altars in Korea and Japan. In addition, this researcher surveyed consumers' preferences by age group. According to the results of the survey, most of the entire age group responded positively to the flower decorations at the funeral altar which focused on the job of the deceased. This means that consumers are demanding changes to the flower decorations at the funeral altar which are made up of the products of funeral service companies. In addition, the results of the survey, it can be seen that most consumers prefer to decorate the altar flowers according to the occupation, hobby, and taste of the deceased and present the altar in three dimensions like a landscape of nature. esentative funeral service companies in Japan were surveyed on the status of flower decorations at the funeral altar.

• Asia-pacific Journal of Multimedia Services Convergent with Art, Humanities, and Sociology
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• v.7 no.12
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• pp.37-50
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• 2017

This study was performed to understand Malaysian Muslims' awareness, attitudes and purchasing behaviour on ginseng (G) and red ginseng (RG) products. A survey of 200 Muslims residing in Malaysia was conducted on awareness, eating experience, preferences, cognitive efficiency of G and RG products, purchase behaviors and satisfaction through a online-survey methodology. Results shows that 50 % and 40% of the participants aware the G and RG products. In particular, awareness amongst female or married consumers is relatively high. Health promotion is the major reasons to consume eat G and RG products in this group of participants. However, the most frequently consumed type of G products was ginseng coffee, candies and chocolates, in their 40s and 50s or married consumers. Participants are also aware of the efficacy claims of these products with regard to improvement of fatigue, immunity and hypertension. While Malaysian Muslim consumers are satisfied with the health claims, convenience to purchase and tastes and aroma, they are dissatisfied with packaging specifications, price. Participants would intend to recommend G and RG products to relatives (82.6%), and are willing to buy them in the future (83.5%). Conclusively, there must be a clear interest and demands of Halal-certified G and RG products among Malaysian Muslims and it is deemed to need of strategic product development and marketing to enhance awareness of G and RG products in the future.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.35-64
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• 2009

In an effort to increase our understanding of green buying behavior, the present study proposes and tests a comprehensive model of how values influence attitudes toward the environment and preferences for green products in a cross-cultural setting. Data were collected from a survey with consumers in two cultures, diametrically different on values salient to environmental consumerism, the U.S. and Korea. As a result of model testing both at the national and multi-group levels, a refined, final model is presented. While the core human values were found to relate to environmental attitudes and green buying behavior, the patterns of the relationships among the variables emerged to differ between the two cultures, highlighting the importance of cross-cultural investigations in this area. Results suggest that biospheric values significantly influence environmental attitudes and green consumption in both countries. However, the effects of egoism were significant among American respondents whereas altruism appeared to have a significant influence on attitude and behavior in the Korean sample. Findings of this study should aid international marketers in their understanding of what drives consumers' green buying behavior in different cultural settings.

• Food Science and Preservation
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.783-791
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• 2012

The purpose of the study was to provide baseline information that could encourage consumers and establish the direction of development for sprouts and leafy vegetables. A survey on the consumption and preference for sprouts and leafy vegetables of 823 people over 20 years of age in Seoul and Gyeonggi province was conducted. The preference for sprouts was higher in men ($3.75{\pm}0.96$) than in women ($3.64{\pm}0.84$), whereas the preference for leafy vegetables was higher in women ($4.06{\pm}0.74$) than in men ($3.88{\pm}0.90$). Based on age, the respondents in their 40s or above had high preferences for sprouts and leaf vegetables due to the importance that they accorded to health and nutrition (p<0.01). The sprouts and leafy vegetables were purchased mainly for their high nutritional value. The purchase frequency of once a month or more for leafy vegetables (82.7%) was higher than that for sprouts (57.1%). The consumers purchased sprouts and leafy vegetables mainly from a large discount store. The respondents in their 20s showed the highest percentage of purchasing from a local store whereas the older ones showed a high preference for traditional markets. The reason for the choice of the place of purchase was convenience. The freshness and price were important factors in the consumption of sprouts and leafy vegetables. In the case of leafy vegetables, the consumers preferred to buy them using the conventional weight measurement system rather than in small packages. On the other hand, mixed small packages were preferred for sprouts. The purchase frequency was correlated with the preferences, need for improvement and purchase intent for sprouts and leafy vegetables. The aspects that require improvement for producing high-quality sprouts and leafy vegetables were the nutritional and functional properties. To increase the consumption of sprouts and leafy vegetables, there is need for variations and improvement of the quality and safety of the products.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.81-99
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• 2010

Lately, in consumers' markets the number of new items is rapidly increasing at an overwhelming rate while consumers have limited access to information about those new products in making a sensible, well-informed purchase. Therefore, item providers and customers need a system which recommends right items to right customers. Also, whenever new items are released, for instance, the recommender system specializing in new items can help item providers locate and identify potential customers. Currently, new items are being added to an existing system without being specially noted to consumers, making it difficult for consumers to identify and evaluate new products introduced in the markets. Most of previous approaches for recommender systems have to rely on the usage history of customers. For new items, this content-based (CB) approach is simply not available for the system to recommend those new items to potential consumers. Although collaborative filtering (CF) approach is not directly applicable to solve the new item problem, it would be a good idea to use the basic principle of CF which identifies similar customers, i,e. neighbors, and recommend items to those customers who have liked the similar items in the past. This research aims to suggest a hybrid recommendation procedure based on the preference boundary of target customer. We suggest the hybrid recommendation procedure using the preference boundary in the feature space for recommending new items only. The basic principle is that if a new item belongs within the preference boundary of a target customer, then it is evaluated to be preferred by the customer. Customers' preferences and characteristics of items including new items are represented in a feature space, and the scope or boundary of the target customer's preference is extended to those of neighbors'. The new item recommendation procedure consists of three steps. The first step is analyzing the profile of items, which are represented as k-dimensional feature values. The second step is to determine the representative point of the target customer's preference boundary, the centroid, based on a personal information set. To determine the centroid of preference boundary of a target customer, three algorithms are developed in this research: one is using the centroid of a target customer only (TC), the other is using centroid of a (dummy) big target customer that is composed of a target customer and his/her neighbors (BC), and another is using centroids of a target customer and his/her neighbors (NC). The third step is to determine the range of the preference boundary, the radius. The suggested algorithm Is using the average distance (AD) between the centroid and all purchased items. We test whether the CF-based approach to determine the centroid of the preference boundary improves the recommendation quality or not. For this purpose, we develop two hybrid algorithms, BC and NC, which use neighbors when deciding centroid of the preference boundary. To test the validity of hybrid algorithms, BC and NC, we developed CB-algorithm, TC, which uses target customers only. We measured effectiveness scores of suggested algorithms and compared them through a series of experiments with a set of real mobile image transaction data. We spilt the period between 1st June 2004 and 31st July and the period between 1st August and 31st August 2004 as a training set and a test set, respectively. The training set Is used to make the preference boundary, and the test set is used to evaluate the performance of the suggested hybrid recommendation procedure. The main aim of this research Is to compare the hybrid recommendation algorithm with the CB algorithm. To evaluate the performance of each algorithm, we compare the purchased new item list in test period with the recommended item list which is recommended by suggested algorithms. So we employ the evaluation metric to hit the ratio for evaluating our algorithms. The hit ratio is defined as the ratio of the hit set size to the recommended set size. The hit set size means the number of success of recommendations in our experiment, and the test set size means the number of purchased items during the test period. Experimental test result shows the hit ratio of BC and NC is bigger than that of TC. This means using neighbors Is more effective to recommend new items. That is hybrid algorithm using CF is more effective when recommending to consumers new items than the algorithm using only CB. The reason of the smaller hit ratio of BC than that of NC is that BC is defined as a dummy or virtual customer who purchased all items of target customers' and neighbors'. That is centroid of BC often shifts from that of TC, so it tends to reflect skewed characters of target customer. So the recommendation algorithm using NC shows the best hit ratio, because NC has sufficient information about target customers and their neighbors without damaging the information about the target customers.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.301-312
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• 2008

Satisfaction of consumer preferences is a key factor for the success of the products. Therefore, design mangers try to develop the profitable products through the intensive survey on the consumer preferences. Although the studies on the preferable product design and the design factors have long been carried out, most of these studies dealt only with the design factors preferable for individual product category ignoring the relationship of the product categories which are related to each other. For designers and design managers, in this study, we propose the guidelines of successful product development by finding preferred common and distinct design factors through analysis of the relations between the consumer preferences and design factors in various portable electric devices. To this end, we analyzed the preferred common and distinct design factors from portable electric devices including the electronic dictionaries, notebook computers, cellular phones, and MP3 players. We used hierarchical regression analysis for the effects of the design factors on the preferences among the product categories and regression analysis for the effects among each product category. The analysis on the preferred common design factors among the four product categories revealed that consumers did not care about the whole body type but preferred white color, metallic and glassy texture in the body. Also, the preferred design factors in the each product category are as follows; oval body shape and black color in electronic dictionaries, white color, metallic and glassy texture in notebook computers, plastic texture in cellular phones, rectangular body shape and plastic texture in MP3 players. In the case of notebook computers, the preferred common and distinct design factors were the same. We expect these results will be helpful for designers and design managers to identify the preferred design factors to consider when developing the various portable electric devices.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.595-625
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• 2012

Recently environment-friendly pellet boilers have interests as emissions of greenhouse gases are regulated internationally and energy security becomes more important to oil addicted countries including Republic of Korea. But the Korean market for pellet boilers is on the initial stage due to the high production costs relative to other conventional boilers. Hence the Korean government has supported financially and promoted the pellet boiler business. In this sense, it would contribute market stratergy and effective promotion policy for both of the government and private companies if we can forecast market shares of pellet boilers appropriately. For this purpose, this study surveyed potential consumers' preferences on pellet boilers among various alternatives using a choice experiment reflecting intangible costs. As the market share of new technology increases, intangible costs decline. According to different intangible cost scenarios, we experimented people's preferences on oil, gas, electric, and pellet boilers. A multinomial logit model was employed to estimate coefficient parameters of common attributes for various alternative boilers. Based on the estimates, we forecasted market shares of individual boilers. We found that as intangible costs decline, the market share of pellet boiler increase substantically while market shares of electric and gas boilers decrease dramatically. The market share of oil boiler did not change significantly. Meanwhile, as people are more rich, more educated, and exposed to advertisement on pellet boilers, the likelihood of choosing the pellet boiler increases.