The fourth industrial revolution represents a revolutionary change in the business environment and its ecosystem, which is a fusion of Information Technology (IT) and other industries. In line with these recent changes, the Ministry of Employment and Labor of South Korea announced 'the Fourth Industrial Revolution Leader Training Program,' which includes five key support areas such as (1) smart manufacturing, (2) Internet of Things (IoT), (3) big data including Artificial Intelligence (AI), (4) information security, and (5) bio innovation. Based on this program, we can get a glimpse of the South Korean government's efforts and willingness to emit leading human resource with advanced IT knowledge in various fusion technology-related and newly emerging industries. On the other hand, in order to nurture excellent IT manpower in preparation for the fourth industrial revolution, the role of educational institutions capable of providing high quality IT education services is most of importance. However, these days, most IT educational institutions have had difficulties in providing customized IT education services that meet the needs of consumers (i.e., learners), without breaking away from the traditional framework of providing supplier-oriented education services. From previous studies, it has been found that the provision of customized education services centered on learners leads to high satisfaction of learners, and that higher satisfaction increases not only task performance and the possibility of business application but also learners' recommendation intention. However, since research has not yet been conducted in a comprehensive way that consider both antecedent and consequent factors of the learner's satisfaction, more empirical research on this is highly desirable. With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, a rising interest in various convergence technologies utilizing information technology (IT) has brought with the growing realization of the important role played by IT-related education services. However, research on the role of IT education service quality in the context of IT education is relatively scarce in spite of the fact that research on general education service quality and satisfaction has been actively conducted in various contexts. In this study, therefore, the five dimensions of IT education service quality (i.e., tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy) are derived from the context of IT education, based on the SERVPERF model and related previous studies. In addition, the effects of these detailed IT education service quality factors on learners' educational satisfaction and their work application/recommendation intentions are examined. Furthermore, the moderating roles of learner position (i.e., practitioner group vs. manager group) and participation motivation (i.e., voluntary participation vs. involuntary participation) in relationships between IT education service quality factors and learners' educational satisfaction, work application intention, and recommendation intention are also investigated. In an analysis using the structural equation model (SEM) technique based on a questionnaire given to 203 participants of IT education programs in an 'M' IT educational institution in Seoul, South Korea, tangibles, reliability, and assurance were found to have a significant effect on educational satisfaction. This educational satisfaction was found to have a significant effect on both work application intention and recommendation intention. Moreover, it was discovered that learner position and participation motivation have a partial moderating impact on the relationship between IT education service quality factors and educational satisfaction. This study holds academic implications in that it is one of the first studies to apply the SERVPERF model (rather than the SERVQUAL model, which has been widely adopted by prior studies) is to demonstrate the influence of IT education service quality on learners' educational satisfaction, work application intention, and recommendation intention in an IT education environment. The results of this study are expected to provide practical guidance for IT education service providers who wish to enhance learners' educational satisfaction and service management efficiency.
Recently strategic alliance between business firms has become prevalent to overcome increasing competitive threats and to supplement resource limitation of individual firms. As one of allianced sales promotion activities, a new type of discount program, so called "Alliance Card Discount", is introduced with the partnership of credit cards and loyalty cards. The program mainly pursues short-term sales growth by larger discount scheme while spends less through cost share among alliance partners. Thus this program can be regarded as cost efficient discount promotion. But because there is no solid evidence that it can really deliver profitable sales growth, an empirical study for its effects on sales and profit should be conducted. This study has two basic research questions concerning the effects of allianced discount program ; 1)the possibility of sales increase 2) the profitability of the discount driven sales. In F&B industry, sales increase mainly comes from increased guest count. Especially in family restaurants, to increase the number of guests we need to enlarge the size of visitor group (number of visitors for one group) because customers visit by group in a special occasion. And because they pay the bill by group(table), the increase of sales per table is a key measure for sales improvement. The past researches for price & discount sensitivity and reference discount rate explain that price sensitive consumers have narrow reference discount zone and make rational purchase decision. Differently from all time discount scheme of regular sales promotions, the alliance card discount program only provides the right to get discount like discount coupon. And because it is usually once a month opportunity given by the past month usage level, customers tend to perceive alliance card discount as a rare chance to get. So that we can expect customers try to maximize the discount effect when they use the limited discount opportunity. Considering group visiting practice and low visit frequency of family restaurants, the way to maximize discount effect should be the increase the size of visit group. And their sensitivity to discount and rational consumption behavior defer the additional spending for ordering high price menu, even though they get considerable amount of savings from the discount. From the analysis of sales data paid by alliance discount cards for four months, we found the below. 1) The relation between discount rate and number of guest per table is positive : 25% discount results one additional guest 2) The relation between discount rate and the spending per guest is negative. 3) However, total profit amount per table is increased when discount rate is increased. 4) Reward point accumulation & redemption did not show any significant relationship with the increase of number of guests. These results suggest that the allianced discount program substantially contributes to sales increase and profit improvement by increasing the number of guests per table. Though the spending per guest is decreased by discount rate increase, the total amount of profit per table is improved. It seems the incremental profit by increased guest count offsets the profit decrease. Additional intriguing finding is the point reward system does not have any significant impact on the increase of number of guest, even if the point accumulation & redemption of loyalty program are usually regarded as another saving offers by customers. In sum, because it is proved that allianced discount program with credit cards and loyalty cards is effective to both sales drive and profit increase, the alliance card program could be recommended as strategically buyable program.
The purpose of this research is to fill the vacuum created by the tendency of bias towards China among the curators of Korean museums who plan exhibitions focusing on Balhae, and to share with researchers in the countries concerned various supplementary research materials that could deepen their understanding of the history of Balhae. These materials are based on analyses of the details of exhibitions about Balhae held in a particular Russian museum and the characteristics of and changes in the museum's operational policy. Thus, this research focuses mainly on the permanent and special exhibitions held by the Far East History Museum and Reserve, whose collection represents the archaeological achievements of Russia regarding the history of Balhae. The first part of the research focuses on the layout of the exhibitions presented by the museum and the museum's operational policy. It reveals that the museum's permanent exhibitions follow a diachronic arrangement of the local history, while the first and second special exhibitions featured exhibits that were selected from the collections of the Russian Academy of Sciences and arranged according to specific themes. It also examines the museum's policy for operating the exhibitions, focusing on the operational rules, the human resources deployed to run them, and the related educational and PR programs. The second part of the research examines such issues as local politics, economy, education and culture related to the exhibitions on Balhae's history, and connects them to the background and development of the exhibitions. This study reveals that the permanent exhibitions were intended to promote historical awareness of the local area by museum visitors, particularly those who visited the exhibitions while the city was hosting important events such as international summits. It also reveals that the museum's first special exhibition led to the promotion of Korea-Russia cooperation on exchanges in the fields of culture and tourism, whereas the second special exhibition involved no PR efforts or related events, which was probably due to the changes that have occurred in the relationship between Russia and its neighboring countries since then. The final part of the study focuses on the characteristic features of the exhibition narratives, and compares school textbooks on local history and history books for general readers with the contents of the exhibitions. The analysis of the narratives based on the development of time shows that the history of the Mohe (or Malgal) tribes has been combined with that of Balhae, while they are treated separately in school textbooks. As regards political history, the narrative was largely focused on officials in Balhae's central government rather than on Mohe warriors in the border areas. The maps of Balhae presented in the exhibitions highlight the importance of accumulating empirical data. As for the exhibition of material cultures, this study suggests that the museums should obtain more archaeological floral and faunal remains related with agriculture and hunting. It also points out that the narrative on the theme of foreign relations deals with the archaeological relics of Unified Silla together with those of the Turkic tribes. As for the theme of philosophy and culture, the narrative focused on the state ceremonies and rituals of Goguryeo, a theme that has attracted little attention among Korean academic circles and which consequently requires further study. In conclusion, this study is meaningful in that it suggests a number of research topics regarding the development of exhibitions and exhibition narratives about the history of Balhae by a prestigious Russian museum that specializes in this subject.
Today's consumers perceive consumption as a representation of themselves. It is not simply an act that fulfills a consumer's physical and practical needs. Even in terms of life quality, consumers increasingly want to achieve an emotional and sensible experience through consumption. Consumers now make decisions based on their need to express their position in relation to other people, pursue emotional satisfaction, and try to improve the quality of life. Culture-art products that meet such internal and external demands of consumers have made significant improvements in both quantity and quality, because of the social interest and policy support. The recognition of personal and social values of culture and arts has brought about interest in and need for culture-art products. Businesses have agilely embraced such change and actively implemented various marketing strategies utilizing culture and arts. For example, businesses began to sponsor artists who produce culture-art products while building facilities for cultural and art performances or exhibitions. Businesses have also provided performances and exhibitions free-of-charge or at affordable prices. As a result, the supply in the market has started to exceed its demand as is often the case in many of other markets. However, such imbalance has occurred not because of over-supply but because of a lack of demand. Given these circumstances, the government and culture and art related organizations, which had mainly concentrated on the supply side, started to recognize the importance of creating personal and social values in culture and arts. As a result, the government and various organizations are now creating various strategies that include policy measures to achieve their new found goal. Unfortunately however, such efforts are not meeting the expectations. Focusing on above-mentioned circumstances and problems, this study aims to find measures to create demand for culture-art products in the internal conditions of those who consume culture-art products. In other words, given that the demand for culture-art products has not increased despite all external conditions to encourage consumption, this study aims to find the reasons in consumers' value judgment on culture-art products. Though there were recent studies on culture-art products that applied consumer behavior on marketing theories, most of them focused on peripheral aspects such as people's motivation for or satisfaction from watching culture-art events. Hence, there is a need to understand what kind of value consumers perceive from culture-art products and how such value cognition leads to consumption in a comprehensive manner. This study acts as follow-up to a separate study entitled "Qualitative Study about Value Cognition and Benefits of Consumer on Culture-Art Products". The current study aims to extend practical implications that enhance the effectiveness of marketing strategies among the producing and policy agencies in the industry. The purpose of this study is to investigate dimensions of value cognition, benefits and attributes of culture-art products, and identify the effects of consumer value cognition on benefits and attributes. The questionnaire was developed based on the conceptual structure of qualitative research and previous researches. It was composed of value cognition, benefits, attributes of culture-art products and demographic variables. This survey was conducted on-line and off-line among a total of 662 persons ranging from their teens to their 50's who were living in Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, various metropolitan cities, and small and medium-sized cities. The data collected was analyzed by factor analysis and path analysis using SPSS WIN 18.0 and AMOS 16.0. This empirical study found that the dimensions of value cognition of culture-art products were categorized into personal goods, aesthetic goods and public property. This shows that the consumers perceive culture-art products as products that are worthy enough to pay the costs not just for personal benefits but also for their social values. Also the formation of value cognition for culture-art products requires special conditions unlike that for physical consumer goods and services, which simply require marketing stimuli. The dimensions of benefits pursued by consuming culture-art products were found to be composed of four types - pursuit of aesthetic benefits, pursuit of actual benefits, pursuit of emotional benefits, and pursuit of conspicuous character. This result implies that people consume culture-art products not just to pursue pleasure from emotional and intelligent satisfaction as well as social relations, but also to seek the needs and benefits embodied at a social level. The dimensions of attributes of culture-art products had seven different factors, - environmental, price, evaluation, people, artwork, composition, and personal relations - which is plentiful. This is because the attributes of culture-art products are very complicated compared to other consumer goods or services. Since culture-art products include not just cultural or artistic works but also all physical, human, environmental, and systemic elements of the products in a comprehensive manner, consumers perceive everything they experience in the process of consuming culture-art products as part of the products. The dimensions of value cognition was found to affect attributes of the products, mostly using pursued benefits as a mediating factors. This result is consistent with the result of qualitative research, and proves that applying the means-end chain theory in the reverse direction is reasonable. The result can be interpreted that consumers' value cognitions for culture-art products turns into actual benefits leading to consumers' decisions. Furthermore, this result reveals that when consumers choose culture-art products, they take into account the attributes of culture-art products depending on the benefits they pursue. These results confirm that despite their conceptual and abstract attributes, culture-art products have values that contribute to actual benefits for individual consumers and society. Hence, value cognition generates benefits to be pursued and this in turn affects the consumers' choices of attributes on products. Based on the conceptual structure of consumers' value cognitions on culture-art products and its dimensions, it is possible to find detailed methods to provide opportunities for education and training to form and reinforce positive value cognition on culture-art products. And through those methods, it will be possible to develop attributes of culture-art products according to the dimensions of pursued benefits, and allow conceptual products become the subject to valuable consumption in real life. These results provide theoretical understanding of consumer behavior in culture marketing and useful information to culture-art producers, companies that use culture and art, and government agencies that use culture-art as a mean to improve the public perception of quality of life. As a follow up on this study, there should be experimental studies that can develop criteria visualizing the demands of consumers who purchase culture-art products and identify their detailed attributes. Studies that compare characteristics of different areas within the culture-art product category and in-depth studies on a specific area or genre will also be needed. In order to develop marketing strategies for culture-art products, studies on the formation and reinforcement of positive value cognition on culture-art products and education for the development of consumer demand as well as on the development and differentiation of attributes of culture-art products depending on types of consumer groups should also follow.
Volatility in the stock market returns is a measure of investment risk. It plays a central role in portfolio optimization, asset pricing and risk management as well as most theoretical financial models. Engle(1982) presented a pioneering paper on the stock market volatility that explains the time-variant characteristics embedded in the stock market return volatility. His model, Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (ARCH), was generalized by Bollerslev(1986) as GARCH models. Empirical studies have shown that GARCH models describes well the fat-tailed return distributions and volatility clustering phenomenon appearing in stock prices. The parameters of the GARCH models are generally estimated by the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) based on the standard normal density. But, since 1987 Black Monday, the stock market prices have become very complex and shown a lot of noisy terms. Recent studies start to apply artificial intelligent approach in estimating the GARCH parameters as a substitute for the MLE. The paper presents SVR-based GARCH process and compares with MLE-based GARCH process to estimate the parameters of GARCH models which are known to well forecast stock market volatility. Kernel functions used in SVR estimation process are linear, polynomial and radial. We analyzed the suggested models with KOSPI 200 Index. This index is constituted by 200 blue chip stocks listed in the Korea Exchange. We sampled KOSPI 200 daily closing values from 2010 to 2015. Sample observations are 1487 days. We used 1187 days to train the suggested GARCH models and the remaining 300 days were used as testing data. First, symmetric and asymmetric GARCH models are estimated by MLE. We forecasted KOSPI 200 Index return volatility and the statistical metric MSE shows better results for the asymmetric GARCH models such as E-GARCH or GJR-GARCH. This is consistent with the documented non-normal return distribution characteristics with fat-tail and leptokurtosis. Compared with MLE estimation process, SVR-based GARCH models outperform the MLE methodology in KOSPI 200 Index return volatility forecasting. Polynomial kernel function shows exceptionally lower forecasting accuracy. We suggested Intelligent Volatility Trading System (IVTS) that utilizes the forecasted volatility results. IVTS entry rules are as follows. If forecasted tomorrow volatility will increase then buy volatility today. If forecasted tomorrow volatility will decrease then sell volatility today. If forecasted volatility direction does not change we hold the existing buy or sell positions. IVTS is assumed to buy and sell historical volatility values. This is somewhat unreal because we cannot trade historical volatility values themselves. But our simulation results are meaningful since the Korea Exchange introduced volatility futures contract that traders can trade since November 2014. The trading systems with SVR-based GARCH models show higher returns than MLE-based GARCH in the testing period. And trading profitable percentages of MLE-based GARCH IVTS models range from 47.5% to 50.0%, trading profitable percentages of SVR-based GARCH IVTS models range from 51.8% to 59.7%. MLE-based symmetric S-GARCH shows +150.2% return and SVR-based symmetric S-GARCH shows +526.4% return. MLE-based asymmetric E-GARCH shows -72% return and SVR-based asymmetric E-GARCH shows +245.6% return. MLE-based asymmetric GJR-GARCH shows -98.7% return and SVR-based asymmetric GJR-GARCH shows +126.3% return. Linear kernel function shows higher trading returns than radial kernel function. Best performance of SVR-based IVTS is +526.4% and that of MLE-based IVTS is +150.2%. SVR-based GARCH IVTS shows higher trading frequency. This study has some limitations. Our models are solely based on SVR. Other artificial intelligence models are needed to search for better performance. We do not consider costs incurred in the trading process including brokerage commissions and slippage costs. IVTS trading performance is unreal since we use historical volatility values as trading objects. The exact forecasting of stock market volatility is essential in the real trading as well as asset pricing models. Further studies on other machine learning-based GARCH models can give better information for the stock market investors.
I. Introduction The industry of domestic discount store was reorganized with 2 bigs and 1 middle, and then Home Plus took over Home Ever in 2008. In present, Oct, 2008, E-Mart has 118 outlets, Home Plus 112 outlets, and Lotte Mart 60 stores. With total number of 403 outlets, they are getting closer to a saturation point. We know that the industry of discount store has been getting through the mature stage in retail life cycle. There are many efforts to maintain existing customers rather than to get new customers. These competitions in this industry lead firms to acknowledge 'store loyalty' to be the first strategic tool for their sustainable competitiveness. In other words, the strategic goal of discount store is to boost up the repurchase rate of customers throughout increasing store loyalty. If owners of retail shops can figure out main factors for store loyalty, they can easily make more efficient and effective retail strategies which bring about more sales and profits. In this practical sense, there are many papers which are focusing on the antecedents of store loyalty. Many researchers have been inspecting causal relationships between antecedents and store loyalty; store characteristics, store image, atmosphere in store, sales promotion in store, service quality, customer characteristics, crowding, switching cost, trust, satisfaction, commitment, etc., In recent times, many academic researchers and practitioners have been interested in 'dual path model for service loyalty'. There are two paths in store loyalty. First path has an emphasis on symbolic and emotional dimension of service brand, and second path focuses on quality of product and service. We will call the former an extrinsic path and call the latter an intrinsic path. This means that consumers' cognitive path for store loyalty is not single but dual. Existing studies for dual path model are as follows; First, in extrinsic path, some papers in domestic settings show that there is 'store personality-identification-loyalty' path. Second, service quality has an effect on loyalty, which is a behavioral variable, in the mediation of customer satisfaction. But, it's very difficult to find out an empirical paper applied to domestic discount store based on this mediating model. The domestic research for store loyalty concentrates on not only intrinsic path but also extrinsic path. Relatively, an attention for intrinsic path is scarce. And then, we acknowledge that there should be a need for integrating extrinsic and intrinsic path. Also, in terms of retail industry, this study is meaningful because retailers want to achieve their competitiveness by using store loyalty. And so, the purpose of this paper is to integrate and complement two existing paths into one specific model, dual path model. This model includes both intrinsic and extrinsic path for store loyalty. With this research, we would expect to understand the full process of forming customers' store loyalty which had not been clearly explained. In other words, we propose the dual path model for discount store loyalty which has been originated from store personality and service quality. This model is composed of extrinsic path, discount store personality