• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.184-192
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• 2015

Korea has already entered into an aging society. In recent decades, the health problems for seniors has received considerable interest. We often see the elderly who have been struggled from discomfort or illness of the foot. Those foot related problems mainly cause from the use of improper shoes. Recently, shoe makers sell the shoes for seniors, so called comfort shoes, but the shoes are too expensive for seniors to buy easily. In this paper, we develop cheap insoles for seniors as an alternative of the comfort shoes and suggest the systematic process for the insoles development. This systematic process is as follows: 1) Survey the literature about the market of insole, 2) Investigate the standard size of body and foot for the seniors in Korea, 3) Analyze the customer needs by survey, 4) Study the walking pattern by experiments, and 5) Develop the novel insole for the seniors to relieve the inconveniences related with foot. From the newly developed insoles, the company B gains the sales increasing effect approximately 30% over through the increase in consumer satisfaction and company reputation and secures for intellectual property rights. Using the database from Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science, the reliability of developing technology of the functional insole has been obtained. The seniors are also enable to choose an alternative of comfort shoes for foot health. In the future, the insoles developed from this study have wide applications in the medical, cosmetic fields, and leisure sports fields. Accordingly, it seems to require more systematic studies utilizing Walk Analyzer and Foot Pressure Meter.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.8
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• pp.39-62
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• 2020

Purpose - Korean exports account for a vast proportion of Korean GDP, and large volumes of Korean products are sold in the United States. Identifying and characterizing actual and potential product hazards related to Korean products is critical to safeguard Korean export trade, as severe quality issues can impair Korea's reputation and reduce global consumer confidence in Korean products. In this study, we develop country-of-origin-based product risk analysis methods for social media with a specific focus on Korean-labeled products, for the purpose of safeguarding Korean export trade. Design/methodology - We employed two social media datasets containing consumer-generated product reviews. Sentiment analysis is a popular text mining technique used to quantify the type and amount of emotion that is expressed in the text. It is a useful tool for gathering customer opinions regarding products. Findings - We document and discuss the specific potential risks found in Korean-labeled products and explain their implications for safeguarding Korean export trade. Finally, we analyze the false positive matches that arise from the established dictionaries that were used for risk discovery and utilize these classification errors to suggest opportunities for the future refinement of the associated automated text analytic methods. Originality/value - Various studies have used online feedback from social media to analyze product defects. However, none of them links their findings to trade promotion and the protection of a specific country's exports. Therefore, it is important to fill this research gap, which could help to safeguard export trade in Korea.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.568-589
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• 2020

Recently, Social media has become a concern for businesses, including Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). SMEs began to adopt social media to support their performance. To benefit from the application of social media, SMEs must implement the right strategy. This study aims to analyze the factors that influence the use of social media in SMEs. Furthermore, alignment between social media functionalities and strategies and their effect on SME's performance are investigated. A case study is conducted in Gymi, a garment SMEs in East Java, Indonesia. The data collection includes interviews with the owner of SMEs, observations, and document analysis. Data analysis is performed by pattern matching, which matches the patterns from the literature with data from the case study. The results of this study show that cost-effectiveness, interactivity, and compatibility are factors that influence the use of social media in Gymi. The social media used by Gymi are Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, and LINE. However, the main social media used to support Gymi's functions is Instagram. Gymi has a relatively good social media strategy as it has defined a specific goal, target audience, and channel selection for social media (Instagram). It also has specific resources and policies to handle social media. Gymi monitors and evaluates their social media content activities. These strategies are aligned with the Instagram feature used to support Gymi's function, particularly marketing, sales, customer service, and to some extent, internal operation. The alignment contributes to Gymi's performance measured by the increase in reputation (number of Instagram followers) and sales.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.39-70
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• 2017

Data-drive analytics techniques have been recently applied to public surveys. Instead of simply gathering survey results or expert opinions to research the preference for a recently launched product, enterprises need a way to collect and analyze various types of online data and then accurately figure out customer preferences. In the main concept of existing data-based survey methods, the sentiment lexicon for a particular domain is first constructed by domain experts who usually judge the positive, neutral, or negative meanings of the frequently used words from the collected text documents. In order to research the preference for a particular product, the existing approach collects (1) review posts, which are related to the product, from several product review web sites; (2) extracts sentences (or phrases) in the collection after the pre-processing step such as stemming and removal of stop words is performed; (3) classifies the polarity (either positive or negative sense) of each sentence (or phrase) based on the sentiment lexicon; and (4) estimates the positive and negative ratios of the product by dividing the total numbers of the positive and negative sentences (or phrases) by the total number of the sentences (or phrases) in the collection. Furthermore, the existing approach automatically finds important sentences (or phrases) including the positive and negative meaning to/against the product. As a motivated example, given a product like Sonata made by Hyundai Motors, customers often want to see the summary note including what positive points are in the 'car design' aspect as well as what negative points are in thesame aspect. They also want to gain more useful information regarding other aspects such as 'car quality', 'car performance', and 'car service.' Such an information will enable customers to make good choice when they attempt to purchase brand-new vehicles. In addition, automobile makers will be able to figure out the preference and positive/negative points for new models on market. In the near future, the weak points of the models will be improved by the sentiment analysis. For this, the existing approach computes the sentiment score of each sentence (or phrase) and then selects top-k sentences (or phrases) with the highest positive and negative scores. However, the existing approach has several shortcomings and is limited to apply to real applications. The main disadvantages of the existing approach is as follows: (1) The main aspects (e.g., car design, quality, performance, and service) to a product (e.g., Hyundai Sonata) are not considered. Through the sentiment analysis without considering aspects, as a result, the summary note including the positive and negative ratios of the product and top-k sentences (or phrases) with the highest sentiment scores in the entire corpus is just reported to customers and car makers. This approach is not enough and main aspects of the target product need to be considered in the sentiment analysis. (2) In general, since the same word has different meanings across different domains, the sentiment lexicon which is proper to each domain needs to be constructed. The efficient way to construct the sentiment lexicon per domain is required because the sentiment lexicon construction is labor intensive and time consuming. To address the above problems, in this article, we propose a novel product reputation mining algorithm that (1) extracts topics hidden in review documents written by customers; (2) mines main aspects based on the extracted topics; (3) measures the positive and negative ratios of the product using the aspects; and (4) presents the digest in which a few important sentences with the positive and negative meanings are listed in each aspect. Unlike the existing approach, using hidden topics makes experts construct the sentimental lexicon easily and quickly. Furthermore, reinforcing topic semantics, we can improve the accuracy of the product reputation mining algorithms more largely than that of the existing approach. In the experiments, we collected large review documents to the domestic vehicles such as K5, SM5, and Avante; measured the positive and negative ratios of the three cars; showed top-k positive and negative summaries per aspect; and conducted statistical analysis. Our experimental results clearly show the effectiveness of the proposed method, compared with the existing method.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-31
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• 2008

Trust is central to human relationships, at all times and places. The importance of trust is fundamental in all areas of human life, not only in the area of business administration. 2,500 years ago in China, Confucius taught that the foundation of politics was the trust of the people, more important even than military strength or the supply of food. Shakespeare's play, "Much Ado about Nothing' is about trust and deception. These days, trust and transparency in a commercial organization's business culture form the basis of the 'social capital' by which that organization increases its productivity. A successful company raises productivity by the accumulation of social capital, derived from a trust relationship between business partners, and between the company and consumers. Trust is the crucial factor. At the national level, building trust determines a nation's competitiveness. For a company, long term trust relationships with customers are essential for its survival in a business environment of rapid change. Such relationships, based on trust, are important assets to ensure a company's competitive advantage, and need to be organic to that company's business culture. Because of this importance, trust relationships have been studied in diverse areas within business administration, and especially within marketing, where they form the basis of a successful relationship between producer and consumer. However, what has been lacking is a unified definition of trust. Research has been conducted on the basis of various definitions and models. The majority of researchers have not considered the multidimensional character of the concept of trust until now. Approaches based on a one dimensional model have undermined the value of research results. Furthermore, researchers have only considered trust and trustworthiness as a single component. The majority of research has explored the consequences of perceived trust for outcomes such as loyalty or cooperation, but has neglected the effects of trustworthiness upon the mechanisms of consumer trust. This study focuses on the dimension of trust from such a perspective. It seeks to verify the effect of trust on customer intentions by breaking it down into three separate components: 1) the salesperson, 2) the product/service, and 3) the company. The purposes of this paper are as follows: Firstly, we review the multidimensional nature of trust objects: the salesperson, the product/service, and the company. Secondly, we analyze the relationship between multidimensional trust and trustworthiness. Thirdly, we analyze the connection between trust and repeat purchase intentions for the maintenance of long term relationships. For these purposes the author has developed several hypotheses as follows: H1-1: The competence of a salesperson is positively associated with the trust given by the consumer to the salesperson. H1-2: The benevolence of a salesperson is positively associated with the trust given by the consumer to the salesperson. H2-1: The competence of product/service is positively associated with the trust given by the consumer to the product/service. H2-2: The benevolence of product/service is positively associated with the trust given by the consumer to the product/service. H3-1: The reputation of a company is positively associated with the trust given by the consumer to the company. H3-2: The physical environment of a company is positively associated with the trust given by the consumer to the company. H4-1: Trust in a salesperson is positively associated with repeat purchase intentions. H4-2: Trust in a product/service is positively associated with repeat purchase intentions. H4-3: Trust in a company is positively associated with repeat purchase intentions. The data was compiled from 366 questionnaires. 500 questionnaires were collected, but some of the data was considered unsuitable and inappropriate. The subjects of the survey were male and female customers purchasing products at department stores in Seoul, Daegu and Gyeongbuk. It was carried out between Oct. 25 and 29, 2007. The data was analyzed by frequency analysis using SPSS 12.0 and structural equation modeling using LISREL 8.7. The result of the overall model analysis is as follows: Chi-Square=445.497, d.f.=185, p-value=0.0, GFI=.901, RMSEA=.0617, NNFI=.986, NFI=.981, CFI=.989, AGFI=.864, RMR=.0872. The results of the overall model analysis were coherent. It was found that trust is a multi-dimensional construct, that each of the dimensions of trust are meaningful influences on customer's repurchase intention. Trust in a company may be the most relevant, while trust in a product/service and a salesperson may be less relevant to repurchase intentions. The effective factors in determining trust in a salesperson and a company's product/service were found to be competence and benevolence. Factors in determining trust in a company were its reputation and physical environment, and the relationship of each effective trust factor has been verified in this research. As a result, it was found that competence and benevolence have a meaningful influence on trust in a salesperson and in product/service. It was also found that a company's reputation influences the overall trust in the company significantly but a company's physical environment does not have much effect.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.4-14
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• 2010

Collaboration strategies entail information sharing and other varied forms of cooperation that are mutually beneficial to the company and stakeholder groups. This study addresses the specific types of collaboration used in the fashion industry while also examining strategies that have been most successful for fashion companies and perceived benefits of collaboration from the customer perspective. In the present study we define fashion companies and brands as collaborators and their partners or stakeholders as collaboratees. We define collaboration as a cooperative relationship where more than two companies, brands or individuals provide customers with beneficial outcomes utilizing their own competitive advantages on an equal basis. Collaboration strategies entail information sharing and other varied forms of cooperation that are mutually beneficial to the company and stakeholder groups. Through collaboration, fashion companies have pursued both tangible differentiation, such as design and technology applications, and intangible differentiation such as emotional and psychological benefits to customers. As a result, collaboration within the fashion industry has become an important, value creating concept. This qualitative study utilized case studies and in-depth interview methodologies to examine customers' attitudes concerning collaboration in the fashion industry. A total of 173 collaboration cases were identified in Korean and international markets from 1998 through December 2008, focusing on fashion companies. Cases were collected from documented data including websites and industry data bases and top ranked portal search sites such as: Rankey.com; Naver, Daum, and Nate; and representative fashion information websites, Samsungdesignnet and Firstviewkorea. Cases were collected between November 2008 and February 2009. Cases were selected for the analysis where one or more partners were associated with the production of fashion products (excluding textile production), retail fashion products, or designer services. Additional collaboration case information was obtained from news articles, periodicals, internet portal sites and fashion information sites as conducted in prior studies (Jeong and Kim 2008; Park and Park 2004; Yoon 2005). In total, 173 cases were selected for analysis that clearly exhibited the benefits and outcomes of collaboration efforts and strategies between fashion companies and stakeholders. Findings show that the overall results show that for both partners (collaborator and collaboratee) participating in collaboration, that the major benefits are reduction of costs and risks by sharing resource such as design power, image, costs, technology and targets, and creation of synergy. Regarding types of collaboration outcomes, product/design was most important (55%), followed by promotion (21%), price (20%), and place (4%). This result shows that collaboration plays an important role in giving life to products and designs, particularly in the fashion industry which seeks for creative and newness. To be successful in collaboration efforts, results of the depth interviews in this study confirm that fashion companies should have a clear objective on why they are doing the collaboration. After setting the objective, they should select collaboratees that match their brand image and target market, make quality co-products that have definite concepts and differentiating factors, and also pay attention to increasing brand awareness. Based on depth interviews with customers, customer benefits were categorized into six factors: pursuit for individual character; pursuit for brand; pursuit for scarcity; pursuit for fashion; pursuit for economic efficiency; and pursuit for sociality. Customers also placed more importance on image, reputation, and trust of brands regarding the cases shown in the interviews. They also commented that strong branding should come first before other marketing strategies. However, success factors recognized by experts and customers in this study showed different results by subcategories. Thus, target customers and target market should be studied from various dimensions to develop appropriate strategies for successful collaboration.

• Journal of the East Asian Society of Dietary Life
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.133-146
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• 2012

University dining services have received less attention than commercial food services or other institutional food services. Marketing practitioners and researchers recognize the major impact that perceived value has on consumer behavior. The mediating role of value has not been verified in relation to satisfaction in university dining establishments, including Korea. This study intends to investigate the relationships among value, satisfaction and revisit intention of university dining attributes. This study also examines whether university dining service attributes dimensions influence value. Further, this study verifies the role of value as a mediator in the formation of customer satisfaction and revisit intention. Structural Equation Modeling has been applied to the collected data from students of three universities in Korea. The study resulted in that university dining attributes, such as food, menu and convenience, positively affected value of the university dining services. Further analysis with examination of indirect effects confirmed the positive impact of value on satisfaction in university dining services. This study verified the mediating role of value on satisfaction as student's satisfaction is enhanced through the elevation of value of university food services. Enhanced satisfaction via value also led to improvement in revisit intention. This study contributes to the academia by verifying the mediating role of value in the formation of customer satisfaction in a university dining context. This study also offers practical implications to the industry, such as suggestions on developing strategies for value-added products and services to the university dining establishments. This value research for university dining services is also meaningful by triggering future research on market segmentation, product differentiation and positioning policies. In the long run, improving value and satisfaction with university dining services need to be realized to enhance overall college experiences and other competitive advantages, such as student recruitment and enrollment, student academic evaluations, and university reputation.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.161-168
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of restaurant selection factors on reliability and revisit intention. The results of empirical analysis were as follows: First, the factors influencing the intention to visit the restaurant were the physical environment, service, price, location, reputation, cleanliness, It is confirmed that consumers are willing to visit again if their satisfaction is high because they choose general consumers considering kindness and taste. Second, trust is found to affect re - visit intention and it can be judged that store faith is actively considering return visit through consumer 's belief. Third, it was found that the factor of selecting the restaurant business influenced the intention to visit again according to the trust. When the customer chooses according to the restaurant business standard and satisfies the trust, it intends to increase the intention to visit again. The results of this study are as follows. First, it is found that the factors of restaurant selection and trust affect the revisit intention of restaurants, and it is meaningful to provide theoretical and strategic implications.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.105-113
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• 2019

This study focuses on analyzing the key success factors of the traditional market by analyzing the impact on the business performance of merchants in the traditional market. Based on the existing research on entrepreneurship, psychological characteristics, capabilities, and physical characteristics of the market were considered as merchant characteristics. As a result, the risk characteristics and merchant pride, which are internal characteristics of merchants, have a significant effect on business performance. Among the competencies of merchants, product competency, customer management competency, and price competency were found to have a significant impact on business performance. Among the physical characteristics of the market, reputation and product diversity were found to have a significant effect on business performance. The results of this study are meaningful to empirically prove the relevance of the merchant's internal characteristics and capabilities, and the market's physical characteristics to the business performance of market merchants. Could be utilized. However, the limitation of this study is that there may be differences in each industry in the case of market merchant products. In future studies, empirical studies on the trader's relevance to business capability and business performance should be continued.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.143-163
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• 2023

This study aims to analyze the impact of ESG activities on the corporate performance of logistics companies in Korea. To achieve this, the study examines the factors influencing the adoption and implementation of ESG activities, assesses the extent to which ESG activities enhance corporate trust and image, and empirically analyzes the effect of ESG implementation on the corporate performance of logistics companies. An online survey was conducted using Google Forms for Korean logistics companies, and a total of 463 data sets were utilized for PLS structural equation analysis using the SmartPLS 4.0 software tools. The findings of the study are as follows: Firstly, external pressure, specifically government pressure, significantly influences environmental responsibility activities, while investor pressure significantly affects social responsibility activities and governance responsibility activities. Additionally, internal management pressures significantly impact environmental responsibility activities, and employees have a significant influence on all ESG responsibility activities. Secondly, environmental responsibility activities positively affect corporate image, whereas social and governance responsibility activities influence trust and corporate image. Thirdly, trust and corporate image demonstrate significant effects on both financial and non-financial performance. Fourthly, trust significantly mediates the relationship between social responsibility, governance responsibility, and non-financial performance, while image mediates the connection between ESG responsibility and both financial and non-financial performance. The contribution of this study lies in providing practical insights for logistics companies to actively promote ESG activities, thereby establishing a reputation for being environmentally, socially, and governance responsible and gaining customer trust. By doing so, this study aims to raise awareness of the importance of ESG activities in the logistics industry and help companies recognize their significance for sustainable management