• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.597-615
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• 1994

This study is designed to facilitate the creation of home environment conducive to the family taking care of chronic bed-ridden patients with more effective method. The need for this study has emerged against the background of marked changes in the structure of ailments and causes of death, resulting in the number and plights of chronic bed-ridden patients as well as of a rapid increase in demand for medical care and resulting premature discharge. Keeping these in mind, this study focused on home-wards where the majority of chronic bed-ridden patients are being cared for. Despite. their overriding importance, home-words are less than efficient in caring (or chronic bed-ridden patients. These circumstances require the designing of home-wards that can offer greater comfort to patients and at the same time make things easier for caregivers, on the basis of an overall analysis of patients' life and home - ward situation. According1y this study adopted a Participant Observation Method derived cultural anthropology, Toward this end, 3 patients were chosen as subjects of this study for intensive interviewing and participant observation. In the process of this field re-search efforts were made to collect emprical data, that is, to faithfully record the words of the subjects and their caregivers for analysis and interpretation. The findings of these analyses are as follows. Firstly, the chronic bed-ridden patients are mostly being taken care by close family members. Secondly, a room for the exclusive use of the patient, floor, kitchen, bathroom and multipurpose space were found to be necessary for proper caring of the patient. These spaces were respectively used with a view to 1) accomodating the patient as well as caregivers' activities, 2) keeping general and medical supplies and other appliances for patient's care and drying the patient's washing, 3) preparing and keeping the patient's foods and beverages, 4) keeping the supplies necessary for cleaning the patient's body and treating the patient's eliminations, 5) washing the patient's clothes, underwears and bedclothes. The patient's room in turn is subdivided into six portions in terms of uses : specifically the places for accomodating 1) the patient, 2) medical supplies, 3) medicines, 4) linens St clothes, 5) bedclothes and, 6) diapers. Thirdly, the activities of the caregiver are subdivided into seven key areas : hygiene, exercise, diet, elimination, therapeutic nursing, prevention of sore, and other activities. Each area is further classified into several different activities of caring. These activities we mainly carried out in the patient's room. Fourthly, the supplies for caring the chronic bed-ridden patient is divided into two large domains : medical and general supplies. Finally, three main problems areas were found in this study on the part of caregivers, that is, sore prevention, hygiene problem related frequent urination / defecation, the caregiver's physical, psych ological and emotional burden. In consideration of the aforesaid problem areas, a model home-ward was developed in this study. The newly-developed model has been found to have the following six advantages. Firstly, the time and effort required for maintaining the patient's hygiene are reduced, thus relievins the caregiver's physical and psychological bur-den. Secondly, the patient's hygiene can be maintained in satisfactory conditions, because the patient's eliminations are more easily removed. Thirdly, skin irritations caused by the patient's eliminations were remarkably reduced and so were the patient's sores due to moisture and bacteria. Fourthly, the home-ward have a tilt-table ef-fect thanks to the inclining room floor. This improves the patient's cardiovascular function as well as constantly changes pressed skin areas and thus prevents sores. Fifthly, improved shelf arrangements help make the best use of patient's supplies. Sixthly, the trouble of continuously changing clothes, underwears, diapers & bedclothes is remarkably reduced simply by covering the patient with cotton sheets when laid in bed. This is espected to cut down expenses by reducing the comsumptions of diapers and other disposable supplies.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.11-23
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• 2009

HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) is a 3.5-generation asynchronous mobile communications service based on the third generation of W-CDMA. In Korea, it is mainly provided in through videophone service. Because of the diffusion of more powerful and diversified services, along with steep advances in mobile communications technology, consumers demand a wide range of choices. However, because of the variety of technologies, which tend to overflow the market regardless of consumer preferences, consumers feel increasingly confused. Therefore, we should not adopt strategies that focus only on developing new technology on the assumption that new technologies are next-generation projects. Instead, we should understand the process by which consumers accept new forms of technology and devise schemes to lower market entry barriers through strategies that enable developers to understand and provide what consumers really want. In the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are suggested as the most important factors affecting the attitudes of people adopting new technologies (Davis, 1989; Taylor and Todd, 1995; Venkatesh, 2000; Lee et al., 2004). Perceived usefulness is the degree to which a person believes that a particular technology will enhance his or her job performance. Perceived ease of use is the degree of subjective belief that using a particular technology will require little physical and mental effort (Davis, 1989; Morris and Dillon, 1997; Venkatesh, 2000). Perceived pleasure and perceived usefulness have been shown to clearly affect attitudes toward accepting technology (Davis et al., 1992). For example, pleasure in online shopping has been shown to positively impact consumers' attitudes toward online sellers (Eighmey and McCord, 1998; Mathwick, 2002; Jarvenpaa and Todd, 1997). The perceived risk of customers is a subjective risk, which is distinguished from an objective probabilistic risk. Perceived risk includes a psychological risk that consumers perceive when they choose brands, stores, and methods of purchase to obtain a particular item. The ability of an enterprise to revolutionize products depends on the effective acquisition of knowledge about new products (Bierly and Chakrabarti, 1996; Rothwell and Dodgson, 1991). Knowledge acquisition is the ability of a company to perceive the value of novelty and technology of the outside (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990), to evaluate the outside technology that has newly appeared (Arora and Gambaradella, 1994), and to predict the future evolution of technology accurately (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). Consumer innovativeness is the degree to which an individual adopts innovation earlier than others in the social system (Lee, Ahn, and Ha, 2001; Gatignon and Robertson, 1985). That is, it shows how fast and how easily consumers adopt new ideas. Innovativeness is regarded as important because it has a significant effect on whether consumers adopt new products and on how fast they accept new products (Midgley and Dowling, 1978; Foxall, 1988; Hirschman, 1980). We conducted cross-national comparative research using the TAM model, which empirically verified the relationship between the factors that affect attitudes - perceived usefulness, ease of use, perceived pleasure, perceived risk, innovativeness, and perceived level of knowledge management - and attitudes toward HSDPA service. We also verified the relationship between attitudes and usage intention for the purpose of developing more effective methods of management for HSDPA service providers. For this research, 346 questionnaires were distributed among 350 students in the Republic of Korea. Because 26 of the returned questionnaires were inconsistent or had missing data, 320 questionnaires were used in the hypothesis tests. In UK, 192 of the total 200 questionnaires were retrieved, and two incomplete ones were discarded, bringing the total to 190 questionnaires used for statistical analysis. The results of the overall model analysis are as follows: Republic of Korea x2=333.27(p=0.0), NFI=0.88, NNFI=0.88, CFI=0.91, IFI=0.91, RMR=0.054, GFI=0.90, AGFI=0.84, UK x2=176.57(p=0.0), NFI=0.88, NNFI=0.90, CFI=0.93, IFI=0.93, RMR=0.062, GFI=0.90, AGFI=0.84. From the results of the hypothesis tests of Korean consumers about the relationship between factors that affect intention to use HSDPA services and attitudes, we can conclude that perceived usefulness, ease of use, pleasure, a high level of knowledge management, and innovativeness promote positive attitudes toward HSDPA mobile phones. However, ease of use and perceived pleasure did not have a direct effect on intention to use HSDPA service. This may have resulted from the fact that the use of video phones is not necessary for everyday life yet. Moreover, it has been shown that attitudes toward HSDPA video phones are directly correlated with usage intention, which means that perceived usefulness, ease of use, pleasure, a high level of knowledge management, and innovativeness. These relationships form the basis of the intention to buy, contributing to a situation in which consumers decide to choose carefully. A summary of the results of the hypothesis tests of European consumers revealed that perceived usefulness, pleasure, risk, and the level of knowledge management are factors that affect the formation of attitudes, while ease of use and innovativeness do not have an effect on attitudes. In particular, with regard to the effect value, perceived usefulness has the largest effect on attitudes, followed by pleasure and knowledge management. On the contrary, perceived risk has a smaller effect on attitudes. In the Asian model, ease of use and perceived pleasure were found not to have a direct effect on intention to use. However, because attitudes generally affect the intention to use, perceived usefulness, pleasure, risk, and knowledge management may be considered key factors in attitude development from which usage intention arises. In conclusion, perceived usefulness, pleasure, and the level of knowledge management have an effect on attitude formation in both Asian and European consumers, and such attitudes shape these consumers' intention to use. Furthermore, the hypotheses that ease of use and perceived pleasure affect usage intention are rejected. However, ease of use, perceived risk, and innovativeness showed different results. Perceived risk had no effect on attitude formation among Asians, while ease of use and innovativeness had no effect on attitudes among Europeans.