• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.31-52
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• 2013

The metacognitive experience of the ease or difficulty with which new, external information can be processed, referred to as 'processing fluency,' has been shown to influence a wide range of human judgments including truth judgments, familiarity judgments, risk perception, evaluation, and preference (see Alter and Oppenheimer 2009 for a review). The current research explores the possibility of a consumer's product innovativeness judgment based on the difficulty of processing new information. In specific, this study examines if the inferential link between (dis)fluency-(un)familiarity can feed into the perception of innovativeness. This study also explores how a consumer's processing motivation can moderate the consumer's reliance on processing fluency in judgments and how the influence of fluency can vary depending on judgment task orders. In an experiment, participants rated a new product's innovativeness and then indicated their product attitude (or vice versa depending on the judgment task order condition) after reading a product review article that was printed in either an easy-to-read or a difficult-to-read font (for fluency manipulation). The findings show that low need for cognition individuals infer higher product innovativeness when processing product information is difficult rather than easy, consistent with the common assumption that 'new information is more difficult to process than familiar information.' The findings also suggest that once low fluency is attributed to innovativeness, it may no longer lead to a negative response to the product. High need for cognition individuals' judgments on product innovativeness are not affected by fluency. The findings also demonstrate a judgment task order effect on the use of fluency in judgments (e.g., Xu and Schwarz 2005). This study provides the first evidence that an individual's fluency experience can be used as a source of information in product innovativeness judgments especially under low processing motivation conditions. The findings can help marketers better understand the malleability of consumer judgments and perceptions of product characteristics (e.g., product innovativeness) by demonstrating an interesting interplay of processing fluency, processing motivation, and judgment task-related contextual factors.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.68 no.4
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• pp.313-326
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• 2023

Owing to adverse weather conditions, there is a heightened focus on actively researching the regulation of the sowing date in field crop cultivation. Soybean, a prominent field crop with extensive acreage and production, is a photophilic and thermophilic crop characterized by short-day photoperiodism. Identifying the optimal sowing time is crucial for mitigating the effects of severe weather conditions on soybean yield. Precise control over the timing of soybean sowing is the key to minimizing yield reduction due to unfavorable weather conditions. Temperature, photoperiod, and their interplay are the most significant factors influencing soybean cultivation among various weather factors. We conducted an experiment using three Korean soybean cultivars with varied maturities (Hwangkeumol: early maturing and Daewonkong and Pungsannamulkong: late maturing) in 2013 and 2014. Our investigation covered aspects of soybean growth, development, yield components, isoflavones, and visual seed quality. Across all three varieties, isoflavone levels increased with later sowing dates, while other measured components exhibited significant variations based on the sowing date. This study also provides valuable insights for the selection of suitable cultivars that perform well in soybean cultivation at various durations of maturity.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.55-73
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• 2016

Marketing activities play an important role in determining sales performances for B2B companies; however, prior research implies that the effect of marketing activities in the industrial market cannot be inferred from findings in the consumer market due to their differences such as types of customers or products. We further note that B2C companies (i.e. B2B client companies) serve individual consumers, and thus, B2B sales performance can be better understood as consumer market contexts are also taken into account. In this research, we study B2B marketing activities and B2C market contexts, and their effects on B2B sales performance. To this end, we focus on three factors : sales calls conducted by B2B companies, and market commercialization and social interactions in regions where B2C companies operate. Our empirical analyses provide the following results. First, B2B sales performance improves in proportion to sales calls. When sales calls serve as the means to provide product information, they help client companies understand product benefits and make purchases accordingly. Second, B2B sales performance increases as B2C markets become more commercialized, but the effect of sales calls on B2B sales declines. Commercialized markets are more attractive to individual consumers and thus, lead to greater sales in the consumer market. However, the role of sales calls as information sources weakens as B2C companies share product information themselves and develop expertise in commercialized markets. Finally, B2B sales are greater in urban markets compared to suburbs. However, the effect of sales calls on B2B sales increases in suburban markets compared to the urban counterpart. Cohesive social interactions in suburbs hinder information diffusion among B2C companies, which in turn strengthens the role of sales calls as information sources. We theoretically contribute to the B2B marketing literature and managerially suggest strategies to improve B2B sales performance.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.469-491
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• 2015

The present study investigated the inhibition mechanisms of gifted children, which is one of the main executive functions in human cognitive system. The inhibition process was subdivided into cognitive and emotion aspects in order to examine the interplay between these two aspects with respect to inhibition processing. In Experiment 1, word-color Stroop task was used to study the cognitive inhibition process of 100 gifted children(Gender: 62 males, 38 females; Academic grade: 46 Elementary school students, 54 Secondary school students). In addition, emotional Stroop task was utilized in Experiment 2 to examine the effect of emotional component during cognitive inhibition process. Results revealed a significant cognitive cost (i.e., word-color Stroop effect) when participants had to withhold automatic response during cognitive inhibition task in Experiment 1. Such cognitive cost was reduced as the chronological age of the participants increased, with no difference in gender. The results in Experiment 2 showed no significant emotional inhibition cost (i.e., emotional Stroop effect) during cognitive inhibition task, and there was no effect of gender nor age. This suggests that the emotional component conveyed in words did not lead to cognitive bias effects. This study proposes that the cognitive and emotional inhibition processes are seemingly independent mechanisms that engage in complex interactions during inhibition processing of behavioral response.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.338-348
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• 2020

This study examined the longitudinal relationship between paternal depressive symptoms and maternal depressive symptoms simultaneously. This study also identified the interplay of paternal and maternal depressive symptoms for predicting elementary children's language development, their problem behaviors and their school adjustment. Using the data from the Panel Study on Korean Children for the 4th-8th years (2011~2015 year), this study used the Latent Growth Curve Model, which is helpful for examining longitudinal relationship differences among variables. The sample subjects were 1,754 parents and children. The results are as follows. The initial level of paternal depressive symptoms had a positive impact on the rate of change in maternal depressive symptoms. The initial level of maternal depressive symptoms had a negative impact on the rate of change in maternal depressive symptoms. Mothers' depressive symptoms showed not only the mothers' own depression problem. but also the self-effect and counterpart effect of depression on the fathers' depression problem. The rate of change in maternal depressive symptom mediated the relation between the initial level of parental depressive symptoms and children's receptive language, internalizing/externalizing problems, and school adjustment. Therefore, depression prevention and intervention programs for both fathers and mothers are needed for the healthy development and school adaptation of school-age children.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.63
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• pp.5-25
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• 2013

Korean society suffers from severe divisions represented by bi-polarization and collapse of the middle class. Intensive demanding on expanding social welfare budget has emerged in accordance with such a dramatic shift. Social consensus moving toward well-financed welfare policy, however, happens to meet political opposition supported by the discourse of fiscal soundness. This paper thus pays particular attention to deciphering the discursive structure in way of understanding how discourses bring public policy into play. For this purpose, news articles about fiscal soundness collected from 8 national newspapers have been analyzed in terms of frame, attitude, perspective and world view. Research results show, first of all, that there exist persistent competition between two frames identified as 'reduced tax with fiscal discipline' and 'increased tax with welfare money.' While the 'reduced tax' frame favors in maintaining tax cut at the expense of welfare budjet, the frame of 'increased tax' supports such arguments as the flexible employment of fiscal soundness and prosperity of national community helped by widening tax revenues. Also did these frames include a number of sub-frames like welfare populism, partisan politics, trickle down effect, tax bonanza for the rich, universal welfare and market over-reactions in order to bolster its logical authority. Media's active taking a part in penetrating supportive frames in line with political stance was found as well. Taking into account both the discursive structure upheld by frames and politics materialized by the media, the authors argue that public policies should be considered more as discourse than fixed reality. Shedding additional light on understanding the interplay among public opinion, policies and media discourse is of another importance for further study.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.95-106
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• 2005

Road accidents are considered as the result of a complex interplay between road, vehicle, environments, and human factors. Little study, however, has been carried out on the attributes of human factor compared to the road geometric conditions and traffic conditions. The previous researches focused on mainly both traffic and geometric conditions on specific location. Therefore, it's hard to explain phenomenon of the high traffic accident rates where road and traffic conditions are good. Because of these reasons, accident analysis has contributed on geometric improvement and has not contributed on traffic management such as selection of attention section, driver napping alert, etc. The freeway incident management is also associated with reliable prediction of incident occurrences on freeway sections. This paper presents a method for estimating the effect of trip length on freeway accident rate. A PAR (Potential Accident Ratio), the new concept of accident analysis, considering TLFDs (Trip Length Frequency Distributions) is suggested in this paper. This approach can help to strengthen freeway management and to reduce the likelihood of accidents.

• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.75-97
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• 2023

This study aimed to investigate the effect of cognitive-motor interaction-based instrument playing on the early social skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Nine children with ASD, averaging 5.6 years of age, participated in twelve individual sessions lasting 30 minutes each. The intervention comprised five stages: self-regulation, motivation to engage in social interaction, acceptance of a partner in co-playing activities, interpersonal coordination with a partner, and engagement in joint music playing. To evaluate changes in early social skills, joint attention and social interaction behaviors were observed, and the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS-2) was administered pre- and post-intervention. Social synchronization was measured through a dyadic drum task, measuring synchronization accuracy, duration, and timing. Following the intervention, all nine children demonstrated increased early social behaviors, although there were no significant differences in SRS scores. Moreover, synchronized movement improved significantly in accuracy and maintained duration but not in reaction time. This study highlights the significance of recognizing the cognitive-motor interplay as crucial element in facilitating early social skills development in children with ASD.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.573-586
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• 2023

Joints or weak planes can induce anisotropy in the strength and deformability of fractured rock masses. Comprehending this anisotropic behavior is crucial to engineering geology. This study used plaster as a friction material to mold specimens with a single joint. The strength and deformability of the specimens were measured in true triaxial compression tests. The measured results were compared with three-dimensional numerical analysis based on the distinct element method, conducted under identical conditions, to assess the reliability of the modeled values. The numerical results highlight that the principal stress conditions in the field, in conjunction with joint orientations, are crucial factors to the study of the strength and deformability of fractured rock masses. The strength of a transversely isotropic rock mass derived numerically considering changes in the dip angle of the joint notably increases as the intermediate principal stress increases. This increment varies depending on the dip of the joint. Moreover, the interplay between the dip direction of the joint and the two horizontal principal stress directions dictates the strength of the transversely isotropic rock mass. For a rock mass with two joint sets, the set with the steeper dip angle governs the overall strength. If a rock bridge effect occurs owing to the limited continuity of one of the joint sets, the orientation of the set with longer continuity dominates the strength of the entire rock mass. Although conventional three-dimensional failure criteria for fractured rock masses have limited applicability in the field, supplementing them with numerical analysis proves highly beneficial.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.61-101
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• 2014

This study investigates when and how disagreements in online customer ratings prompt more favorable product evaluations. Among the three metrics of volume, valence, and variance that feature in the research on online customer ratings, volume and valence have exhibited consistently positive patterns in their effects on product sales or evaluations (e.g., Dellarocas, Zhang, and Awad 2007; Liu 2006). Ratings variance, or the degree of disagreement among reviewers, however, has shown rather mixed results, with some studies reporting positive effects on product sales (e.g., Clement, Proppe, and Rott 2007) while others finding negative effects on product evaluations (e.g., Zhu and Zhang 2010). This study aims to resolve these contradictory findings by introducing preference heterogeneity as a possible moderator and causal attribution as a mediator to account for the moderating effect. The main proposition of this study is that when preference heterogeneity is perceived as high, a disagreement in ratings is attributed more to reviewers' different preferences than to unreliable product quality, which in turn prompts better quality evaluations of a product. Because disagreements mostly result from differences in reviewers' tastes or the low reliability of a product's quality (Mizerski 1982; Sen and Lerman 2007), a greater level of attribution to reviewer tastes can mitigate the negative effect of disagreement on product evaluations. Specifically, if consumers infer that reviewers' heterogeneous preferences result in subjectively different experiences and thereby highly diverse ratings, they would not disregard the overall quality of a product. However, if consumers infer that reviewers' preferences are quite homogeneous and thus the low reliability of the product quality contributes to such disagreements, they would discount the overall product quality. Therefore, consumers would respond more favorably to disagreements in ratings when preference heterogeneity is perceived as high rather than low. This study furthermore extends this prediction to the various levels of average ratings. The heuristicsystematic processing model so far indicates that the engagement in effortful systematic processing occurs only when sufficient motivation is present (Hann et al. 2007; Maheswaran and Chaiken 1991; Martin and Davies 1998). One of the key factors affecting this motivation is the aspiration level of the decision maker. Only under conditions that meet or exceed his aspiration level does he tend to engage in systematic processing (Patzelt and Shepherd 2008; Stephanous and Sage 1987). Therefore, systematic causal attribution processing regarding ratings variance is likely more activated when the average rating is high enough to meet the aspiration level than when it is too low to meet it. Considering that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity occurs through the mediation of causal attribution, this greater activation of causal attribution in high versus low average ratings would lead to more pronounced interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity in high versus low average ratings. Overall, this study proposes that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity is more pronounced when the average rating is high as compared to when it is low. Two laboratory studies lend support to these predictions. Study 1 reveals that participants exposed to a high-preference heterogeneity book title (i.e., a novel) attributed disagreement in ratings more to reviewers' tastes, and thereby more favorably evaluated books with such ratings, compared to those exposed to a low-preference heterogeneity title (i.e., an English listening practice book). Study 2 then extended these findings to the various levels of average ratings and found that this greater preference for disagreement options under high preference heterogeneity is more pronounced when the average rating is high compared to when it is low. This study makes an important theoretical contribution to the online customer ratings literature by showing that preference heterogeneity serves as a key moderator of the effect of ratings variance on product evaluations and that causal attribution acts as a mediator of this moderation effect. A more comprehensive picture of the interplay among ratings variance, preference heterogeneity, and average ratings is also provided by revealing that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity varies as a function of the average rating. In addition, this work provides some significant managerial implications for marketers in terms of how they manage word of mouth. Because a lack of consensus creates some uncertainty and anxiety over the given information, consumers experience a psychological burden regarding their choice of a product when ratings show disagreement. The results of this study offer a way to address this problem. By explicitly clarifying that there are many more differences in tastes among reviewers than expected, marketers can allow consumers to speculate that differing tastes of reviewers rather than an uncertain or poor product quality contribute to such conflicts in ratings. Thus, when fierce disagreements are observed in the WOM arena, marketers are advised to communicate to consumers that diverse, rather than uniform, tastes govern reviews and evaluations of products.