• Journal of Gastric Cancer
• /
• v.23 no.2
• /
• pp.315-327
• /
• 2023

Purpose: Oxaliplatin, a component of the capecitabine plus oxaliplatin (XELOX) regimen, has a more favorable toxicity profile than cisplatin in patients with advanced gastric cancer (GC). However, oxaliplatin can induce sensory neuropathy and cumulative, dose-related toxicities. Thus, the capecitabine maintenance regimen may achieve the maximum treatment effect while reducing the cumulative neurotoxicity of oxaliplatin. This study aimed to compare the survival of patients with advanced GC between capecitabine maintenance and observation after 1st line XELOX chemotherapy. Materials and Methods: Sixty-three patients treated with six cycles of XELOX for advanced GC in six hospitals of the Catholic University of Korea were randomized 1:1 to receive capecitabine maintenance or observation. The primary endpoint was progression-free survival (PFS), analyzed using a two-sided log-rank test stratified at a 5% significance level. Results: Between 2015 and 2020, 32 and 31 patients were randomized into the maintenance and observation groups, respectively. After randomization, the median number of capecitabine maintenance cycles was 6. The PFS was significantly higher in the maintenance group than the observation group (6.3 vs. 4.1 months, P=0.010). Overall survival was not significantly different between the 2 groups (18.2 vs. 16.5 months, P=0.624). Toxicities, such as hand-foot syndrome, were reported in some maintenance group patients. Maintenance treatment was a significant factor associated with PFS in multivariate analysis (hazard ratio, 0.472; 95% confidence interval, 0.250-0.890; P=0.020). Conclusions: After 6 cycles of XELOX chemotherapy, capecitabine maintenance significantly prolonged PFS compared with observation, and toxicity was manageable. Maintenance treatment was a significant prognostic factor associated with PFS.

• Korean Journal of Poultry Science
• /
• v.50 no.2
• /
• pp.91-99
• /
• 2023

This study aimed to develop a high-productivity breed of Korean native Samgye chicken. We evaluated the production performance of six Korean native chicken combinations (KNC-SCYC, SCYD, SDYC, SDYD, SYYC, SYYD) and GSP-Hanhyup Korean native chickens, with Baeksemi chickens used as a control group. The performance test was conducted from hatching to 7 weeks of age on 756 chickens, and we measured survival rate, body weight, shank length, feed utility, and carcass yield. The overall survival rate was nearly 100% for all strains. However, body weight showed significant differences between strains at all ages (P<0.01), with Baeksemi weighing 863.8±76.9 g, GSP-Hanhyup weighing 804.7±72.5 g, and KNC-combinations weighing 543.0±61.8 g at 5 weeks of age. The duration needed to reach 850 g was estimated to be 34.5 days for Baeksemi, 37.5 days for GSP-Hanhyup, and 45.8-48.8 days for KNC-combinations. Carcass yield percentage was highest for KNC-SYYD combination at 63.3%, followed by Baeksemi at 60.4%, and GSP-Hanhyup at 56.1%. Shank length at 850 g body weight was 7.6 cm for KNC-SYYD combination, 7.8 cm for Baeksemi, and 8.0 cm for GSP-Hanhyup. The feed conversion ratio at 850 g body weight was 1.81 for Baeksemi, 2.17 for GSP-Hanhyup, and 2.27 for KNC-SCYC combination. Our results suggest that the KNC-SYYD combination and GSP-Hanhyup breed have the potential to be used in Samgye production due to their moderate growth performance, higher carcass yield, and shorter shank length, despite their lower growth productivity and feed efficiency when compared to Baeksemi.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.107-124
• /
• 2023

As getting in 4th Industrial Revolution Times, Continuing Education Enrolled Students(CEES) trying to find loophole for jepordized current life and need job transfer have surged their interest significantly on starting new business to bring up their post career after retirement through self-improvement. Government and university have actively initiated diverse policies of promoting startup for CEES in kicking off entrepreneurship courses and programs. However, relevant main policy, 'The 2nd University Startup Education Five-Year Plan (draft)' have too chiefly focused on theoretical start-up education rather than practical courses, causing the problem of inappropriate support for implementing real startup and business (Ministry of Education, 2018). This study is brought to empirically investigate the effect of self-efficacy as perspective of the impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial intention and behavior to come up with problem of poor entrepreneurial environment and entrepreneurship education to CEES. As to empirical research, this paper deliver on-line survey to CEES from September to October 2022, collect 207 effective feedbacks, In order to verify the reliability of the scale, the Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient (Cronbach's α) was calculated, analyzed, and measured. For hypothesis test, this paper utilize the multiple regression analysis statistical analysis method and use the SPSS 22.0 statistical processing program. Empirical results show, first, it was found that self-efficacy had a significant effect on start-up education. Second, start-up education had a significant effect on the intention to start a business of adult learners. Third, start-up education had a significant effect on the start-up behavior of adult learners. Fourth, self-efficacy had a significant effect on the intention of adult learners to start a business. Fifth, self-efficacy had a significant effect on the start-up behavior of adult learners. Sixth, self-efficacy had a mediating effect in the relationship between entrepreneurship education and adult learners' intention to start a business. Seventh, self-efficacy had a complete mediating effect in the relationship between start-up education and adult learners' start-up behavior. This paper is brought three significant implications. First, main consideration developing entrepreneurship education tools for CEES need to falls on defining potential needs of CEES as segmenting as to coming up with diversity of CEES's characteristics such as gender, age, experience, education, and occupation. Second, as to design specific entrepreneurship education program, both practical training program of utilizing CEES's career field experience benchmarking best practice startup and venture cases from domestic and global, and professional startup program of CEES initiating directly startup from ideation to develop business plan with pitching and discussing. Third, entrepreneurship education for CEES should be designed to incubate self-efficacy to enhance entrepreneurial intention of implementing entrepreneurial behavior as a real, eventually leading solid support system of self-improvement for CEES' Retirement life planning.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
• /
• v.57 no.3
• /
• pp.24-35
• /
• 2024

Recently, research using deep learning technologies such as artificial intelligence, convolutional neural networks, etc. has been actively conducted in various fields including healthcare, manufacturing, autonomous driving, and security, and is having a significant influence on society. In line with this trend, the present study attempted to apply deep learning to the classification of archaeological artifacts, specifically ancient Korean roof-end tiles. Using 100 images of roof-end tiles from each of the Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla dynasties, for a total of 300 base images, a dataset was formed and expanded to 1,200 images using data augmentation techniques. After building a model using transfer learning from the pre-trained EfficientNetB0 model and conducting five-fold cross-validation, an average training accuracy of 98.06% and validation accuracy of 97.08% were achieved. Furthermore, when model performance was evaluated with a test dataset of 240 images, it could classify the roof-end tile images from the three dynasties with a minimum accuracy of 91%. In particular, with a learning rate of 0.0001, the model exhibited the highest performance, with accuracy of 92.92%, precision of 92.96%, recall of 92.92%, and F1 score of 92.93%. This optimal result was obtained by preventing overfitting and underfitting issues using various learning rate settings and finding the optimal hyperparameters. The study's findings confirm the potential for applying deep learning technologies to the classification of Korean archaeological materials, which is significant. Additionally, it was confirmed that the existing ImageNet dataset and parameters could be positively applied to the analysis of archaeological data. This approach could lead to the creation of various models for future archaeological database accumulation, the use of artifacts in museums, and classification and organization of artifacts.

• Journal of Distribution Research
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.111-137
• /
• 2010

The basic purpose of this study is to investigate perceived quality and service personal value affecting the result of long-term relationship between service buyers and suppliers. This research presented a constructive model(perceived quality affecting the service personal value and the moderate effect of NFC) in the on off line and then propose the research model base on prior researches and studies about relationships among components of service. Data were gathered from respondents who visit at the education service market. For this study, Data were analyzed by AMOS 7.0. We integrate the literature on services marketing with researches on personal values and perceived quality. The SERPVAL scale presented here allows for the creation of a common ground for assessing service personal values, giving a clear understanding of the key value dimensions behind service choice and usage. It will lead to a focus of future research in services marketing, extending knowledge in the field and stimulating further empirical research on service personal values. At the managerial level, as a tool the SERPVAL scale should allow practitioners to evaluate and improve the value of a service, and consequently, to define strategies and actions to address services for customers based on their fundamental personal values. Through qualitative and empirical research, we find that the service quality construct conforms to the structure of a second-order factor model that ties service quality perceptions to distinct and actionable dimensions: outcome, interaction, and environmental quality. In turn, each has two subdimensions that define the basis of service quality perceptions. The authors further suggest that for each of these subdimensions to contribute to improved service quality perceptions, the quality received by consumers must be perceived to be reliable, responsive, and empathetic. Although the service personal value may be found in researches that explore individual values and their consequences for consumer behavior, there is no established operationalization of a SERPVAL scale. The inexistence of an established scale, duly adapted in order to understand and analyze personal values behind services usage, exposes the need of a measurement scale with such a purpose. This need has to be rooted, however, in a conceptualization of the construct being scaled. Service personal values can be defined as a customer's overall assessment of the use of a service based on the perception of what is achieved in terms of his own personal values. As consumer behaviors serve to show an individual's values, the use of a service can also be a way to fulfill and demonstrate consumers'personal values. In this sense, a service can provide more to the customer than its concrete and abstract attributes at both the attribute and the quality levels, and more than its functional consequences at the value level. Both values and services literatures agree, that personal value is the highest-level concept, followed by instrumental values, attitudes and finally by product attributes. Purchasing behaviors are agreed to be the end result of these concepts' interaction, with personal values taking a major role in the final decision process. From both consumers' and practitioners' perspectives, values are extremely relevant, as they are desirable goals that serve as guiding principles in people's lives. While building on previous research, we propose to assess service personal values through three broad groups of individual dimensions; at the self-oriented level, we use (1) service value to peaceful life (SVPL) and, at the social-oriented level, we use (2) service value to social recognition (SVSR), and (3) service value to social integration (SVSI). Service value to peaceful life is our first dimension. This dimension emerged as a combination of values coming from the RVS scale, a scale built specifically to assess general individual values. If a service promotes a pleasurable life, brings or improves tranquility, safety and harmony, then its user recognizes the value of this service. Generally, this service can improve the user's pleasure of life, since it protects or defends the consumer from threats to life or pressures on it. While building upon both the LOV scale, a scale built specifically to assess consumer values, and the RVS scale for individual values, we develop the other two dimensions: SVSR and SVSI. The roles of social recognition and social integration to improve service personal value have been seriously neglected. Social recognition derives its outcome utility from its predictive utility. When applying this underlying belief to our second dimension, SVSR, we assume that people use a service while taking into consideration the content of what is delivered. Individuals consider whether the service aids in gaining respect from others, social recognition and status, as well as whether it allows achieving a more fulfilled and stimulating life, which might then be revealed to others. People also tend to engage in behavior that receives social recognition and to avoid behavior that leads to social disapproval, and this contributes to an individual's social integration. This leads us to the third dimension, SVSI, which is based on the fact that if the consumer perceives that a service strengthens friendships, provides the possibility of becoming more integrated in the group, or promotes better relationships at the social, professional or family levels, then the service will contribute to social integration, and naturally the individual will recognize personal value in the service. Most of the research in business values deals with individual values. However, to our knowledge, no study has dealt with assessing overall personal values as well as their dimensions in a service context. Our final results show that the scales adapted from the Schwartz list were excluded. A possible explanation is that although Schwartz builds on Rokeach work in order to explore individual values, its dimensions might be especially focused on analyzing societal values. As we are looking for individual dimensions, this might explain why the values inspired by the Schwartz list were excluded from the model. The hierarchical structure of the final scale presented in this paper also presents theoretical implications. Although we cannot claim to definitively capture the dimensions of service personal values, we believe that we come close to capturing these overall evaluations because the second-order factor extracts the underlying commonality among dimensions. In addition to obtaining respondents' evaluations of the dimensions, the second-order factor model captures the common variance among these dimensions, reflecting the respondents' overall assessment of service personal values. Towards this fact, we expect that the service personal values conceptualization and measurement scale presented here contributes to both business values literature and the service marketing field, allowing for the delineation of strategies for adding value to services. This new scale also presents managerial implications. The SERPVAL dimensions give some guidance on how to better pursue a highly service-oriented business strategy. Indeed, the SERPVAL scale can be used for benchmarking purposes, as this scale can be used to identify whether or not a firms' marketing strategies are consistent with consumers' expectations. Managerial assessment of the personal values of a service might be extremely important because it allows managers to better understand what customers want or value. Thus, this scale allows us to identify what services are really valuable to the final consumer; providing knowledge for making choices regarding which services to include. Traditional approaches have focused their attention on service attributes (as quality) and service consequences(as service value), but personal values may be an important set of variables to be considered in understanding what attracts consumers to a certain service. By using the SERPVAL scale to assess the personal values associated with a services usage, managers may better understand the reasons behind services' usage, so that they may handle them more efficiently. While testing nomological validity, our empirical findings demonstrate that the three SERPVAL dimensions are positively and significantly associated with satisfaction. Additionally, while service value to social integration is related only with loyalty, service value to peaceful life is associated with both loyalty and repurchase intent. It is also interesting and surprising that service value to social recognition appears not to be significantly linked with loyalty and repurchase intent. A possible explanation is that no mobile service provider has yet emerged in the market as a luxury provider. All of the Portuguese providers are still trying to capture market share by means of low-end pricing. This research has implications for consumers as well. As more companies seek to build relationships with their customers, consumers are easily able to examine whether these relationships provide real value or not to their own lives. The selection of a strategy for a particular service depends on its customers' personal values. Being highly customer-oriented means having a strong commitment to customers, trying to create customer value and understanding customer needs. Enhancing service distinctiveness in order to provide a peaceful life, increase social recognition and gain a better social integration are all possible strategies that companies may pursue, but the one to pursue depends on the outstanding personal values held by the service customers. Data were gathered from 284 respondents in the korean discount store and online shopping mall market. This research proposed 3 hypotheses on 6 latent variables and tested through structural equation modeling. 6 alternative measurements were compared through statistical significance test of the 6 paths of research model and the overall fitting level of structural equation model. and the result was successful. and Perceived quality more positively influences service personal value when NFC is high than when no NFC is low in the off-line market. The results of the study indicate that service quality is properly modeled as an antecedent of service personal value. We consider the research and managerial implications of the study and its limitations. In sum, by knowing the dimensions a consumer takes into account when choosing a service, a better understanding of purchasing behaviors may be realized, guiding managers toward customers expectations. By defining strategies and actions that address potential problems with the service personal values, managers might ultimately influence their firm's performance. we expect to contribute to both business values and service marketing literatures through the development of the service personal value. At a time when marketing researchers are challenged to provide research with practical implications, it is also believed that this framework may be used by managers to pursue service-oriented business strategies while taking into consideration what customers value.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.19 no.3
• /
• pp.69-98
• /
• 2009

We investigated what factors motivate gamers to participate in a guild and why they continue to be engaged as members of the guild. We find that, based on the result of focus group interviews with MMORPG gamers, social support and self-esteem factors play important roles. Considering both prior research and the focus group interviews we have conducted, we define social support and character control as independent variables. Character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem are proposed as mediating variables while guild flow and game loyalty as dependent variables. Accordingly, we develop the research model and hypotheses, and verify them empirically. Based on our experiences of playing the WoW game, we proposed a research model and conducted focus-group interviews (FGIs). FGIs involve formulating a hypothesis and then collecting some relevant data. FGIs were conducted face-to-face with students of C University in Korea. We formulated structured interview schedules, and the questions were based on our research variables and personal experiences. The questions for the interviews encompassed the following areas: (a) the demographic characteristics of the focus group; (b) the number of years for which respondents had played online games; (c) the motive for starting a game; (d) the number of game-characters assumed by each gamer; (e) the type of game played; and (f) other issues such as the reasons for involvement in the play, the willingness to reuse the game in case new versions were released, etc. On average, it took two hours to interview each of three groups. A primary set of FGIs was conducted with three groups on the premise that there would be some differences caused by character race (Horde vs. Alliance) or by playable server (Normal vs. Combat). With respect to the manner of playing, we found that guild members shared information, felt a sense of belonging, and played computer games for quite a long time through the guild; however, they did not undergo these experiences when playing alone. Gamers who belonged to a specific guild helped other players without expecting compensation for that, freely shared information about the game, gave away items for free, and more generous with other members who made mistakes. The guild members were aware of the existence other members and experienced a sense of belonging through interactions with, and evaluations from, other players. It was clear that social support was shown within the guild and that it played an important role as a major research variable. Based on the results of the first FGIs, a second set of in-depth FGIs was carried out with a focus on the psychology of the individual within the guild and the social community of the guild. The second set of FGIs also focused on the guild's offline meetings. Gamers, over all, recognize the necessity of joining a community, not only off-line but also online world of the guild. They admit that the guild is important for them to easily and conveniently enjoy playing online computer games. The active behavior and positive attitudes of existing guild members can motivate new members of the guild to adapt themselves to the guild environment. They then adopt the same behaviors and attitudes of established guild members. In this manner, the new members of the guild strengthen the bonds with other gamers while feeling a sense of belonging, and developing social identity, thereby. It was discovered that the interaction among guild members and the social support encouraged new gamers to quickly develop a sense of social identity and increase their self-esteem. The guild seemed to play the role of socializing gamers. Sometimes, even in the real world, the guild members helped one another; therefore, the features of the guild also spilled over to the offline environment. We intend to use self-esteem, which was found through the second set of FGIs, as an important research variable. To collect data, an online survey was designed with a questionnaire to be completed by WoW gamers, who belong to a guild. The survey was registered on the best three domestic game-sites: 'WoW playforum,' 'WoW gamemeca,' and 'Wow invent.' The selected items to be measured in the questionnaire were decided based on prior research and data from FGIs. To verify the content of the questionnaire, we carried out a pilot test with the same participants to point out ambiguous questions as a way to ensure maximum accuracy of the survey result. A total of 244 responses were analyzed from the 250 completed questionnaires. The SEM analysis was used to test goodness-of-fit of the model. As a result, we found important results as follows: First, according to the statistics, social support had statistically significant impacts on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Second, character control had significant effects on character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity shows its clear impact on self-esteem and game loyalty. Fourth, guild identity affected self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Fifth, self-esteem had a positive influence on the guild flow. These days, the number of virtual community is rising along with its significance largely because of the nature of the online games. Accordingly, this study is designed to clarify the psychological relationship between gamers within the guild that has been generally established by gamers to play online games together. This study focuses on the relationships in which social support influences guild flow or game loyalty through character control, character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem, which are present within a guild in the MMORPG game environment. The study results are as follows. First, the effects of social support on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem are proven to be statistically significant. It was found that character control improves character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Among the seven variables, social support, which is derived from FGIs, plays an important role in this study. With the active support of other guild members, gamers can improve their ability to develop good characters and to control them. Second, character identity has a positive effect on self-esteem and game loyalty, while guild identity has a significant effect on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Self-esteem affects guild flow. It was found that the higher the character and guild identities become, the greater the self-esteem is established. Contrary to the findings of prior research, our study results indicate that the relationship between character identity and guild flow is not significant. Rather, it was found that character identity directly affects game players' loyalty. Even though the character identity had no direct effect on increasing guild flow, it has indirectly affected guild flow through self-esteem. The significant relationship between self-esteem and guild flow indicates that gamers achieve flow, i.e., a feeling of pleasure and excitement through social support. Several important implications of this study should be noted. First, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to conduct this study. Through FGIs, it was observed that both social support and self-esteem are important variables. Second, because guilds had been rarely studied, this research is expected to play an important role in the online community. Third, according to the result, six hypotheses (H1, H5, H6, H7, H8, and H11) setup based on FGIs, were statistically significant; thus, we can suggest the corresponding relationships among the variables as a guideline for follow-up research. Our research is significant as it has following implications: first, the social support of the guild members is important when establishing character control, character identity, guildidentity and self-esteem. It is also a major variable that affects guild flow and game loyalty. Second, character control when improved by social support shows notable influence on the development of character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity and guild identity are major factors to help establish gamers' own self-esteem. Fourth, character identity affects guild flow through self-esteem and game loyalty. The gamers usually express themselves through characters; the higher character identity is, the more loyalty a gamer has. Fifth, guild identity, established within the guild, has clear effects on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Sixth, qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to conduct this study. Based on the results of focus group interviews and SEM analysis, we find that the social support by guild members and psychological factors are significant in strengthening the flow of guild and loyalty to the game. As such, game developers should provide some extra functions for guild community, through which gamers can play online games in collaboration with one another. Also, we suggest that positive self-esteem which is built up through social support can help gamers achieve higher level of flow and satisfaction, which will consequently contribute to minimizing the possibility for the players to develop negative attitude toward the guild they belong to.

• Journal of Distribution Research
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.95-115
• /
• 2011

Food service is the major part of franchise business in Korea, accounting for 69.9% of the brands in the market. As the food service industry becomes mature, many franchisees have struggled to survive in the market. In general, consumers have higher levels of expectation toward service quality of franchised outlets compared that of (non-franchised) independent ones. They also tend to believe that franchisees deliver standardized service at the uniform food price, regardless of their locations. Such beliefs seem to be important reasons that consumers prefer franchised outlets to independent ones. Nevertheless, few studies examined the impact of qualify features of franchisees on customer satisfaction so far. To this end, this study examined the characteristics of various quality features of franchisees in the food service industry, regarding their relationship with customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The quality perception of heavy-users was also compared with that of light-users in order to find insights for developing differentiated marketing strategy for the two segments. Customer satisfaction has been understood as a one-dimensional construct while there are recent studies that insist two-dimensional nature of the construct. In this regard, Kano et al. (1984) suggested to categorize quality features of a product or service into five types, based on their relation to customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction: Must-be quality, Attractive quality, One-dimensional quality, Indifferent quality, and Reverse quality. According to the Kano model, customers are more dissatisfied when Must-be quality(M) are not fulfilled, but their satisfaction does not arise above neutral no matter how fully the quality fulfilled. In comparison, customers are more satisfied with a full provision of Attactive quality(A) but manage to accept its dysfunction. One-dimensional quality(O) results in satisfaction when fulfilled and dissatisfaction when not fulfilled. For Indifferent quality(I), its presence or absence influences neither customer satisfaction nor dissatisfaction. Lastly, Reverse quality(R) refers to the features whose high degree of achievement results in customer dissatisfaction rather than satisfaction. Meanwhile, the basic guidelines of the Kano model have a limitation in that the quality type of each feature is simply determined by calculating the mode statistics. In order to overcome such limitation, the relative importance of each feature on customer satisfaction (Better value; b) and dissatisfaction (Worse value; w) were calculated following the formulas below (Timko, 1993). The Better value indicates how much customer satisfaction is increased by providing the quality feature in question. In contrast, the Worse value indicates how much customer dissatisfaction is decreased by providing the quality feature. Better = (A + O)/(A+O+M+I) Worse = (O+M)/(A+O+M+I)(-1) An on-line survey was performed in order to understand the nature of quality features of franchisees in the food service industry by applying the Kano Model. A total of twenty quality features (refer to the Table 2) were identified as the result of literature review in franchise business and a pre-test with fifty college students in Seoul. The potential respondents of our main survey was limited to the customers who have visited more than two restaurants/stores of the same franchise brand. Survey invitation e-mails were sent out to the panels of a market research company and a total of 257 responses were used for analysis. Following the guidelines of Kano model, each of the twenty quality features was classified into one of the five types based on customers' responses to a set of questions: "(1) how do you feel if the following quality feature is fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit," and "(2) how do you feel if the following quality feature is not fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit." The analyses revealed that customers' dissatisfaction with franchisees is commonly associated with the poor level of cleanliness of the store (w=-0.872), kindness of the staffs(w=-0.890), conveniences such as parking lot and restroom(w=-0.669), and expertise of the staffs(w=-0.492). Such quality features were categorized as Must-be quality in this study. While standardization or uniformity across franchisees has been emphasized in franchise business, this study found that consumers are interested only in uniformity of price across franchisees(w=-0.608), but not interested in standardizations of menu items, interior designs, customer service procedures, and food tastes. Customers appeared to be more satisfied when the franchise brand has promotional events such as giveaways(b=0.767), good accessibility(b=0.699), customer loyalty programs(b=0.659), award winning history(b=0.641), and outlets in the overseas market(b=0.506). The results are summarized in a matrix form in Table 1. Better(b) and Worse(w) index indicate relative importance of each quality feature on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction, respectively. Meanwhile, there were differences in perceiving the quality features between light users and heavy users of any specific franchise brand in the food service industry. Expertise of the staffs was labeled as Must-be quality for heavy users but Indifferent quality for light users. Light users seemed indifferent to overseas expansion of the brand and offering new menu items on a regular basis, while heavy users appeared to perceive them as Attractive quality. Such difference may come from their different levels of involvement when they eat out. The results are shown in Table 2. The findings of this study help practitioners understand the quality features they need to focus on to strengthen the competitive power in the food service market. Above all, removing the factors that cause customer dissatisfaction seems to be the most critical for franchisees. To retain loyal customers of the franchise brand, it is also recommended for franchisor to invest resources in the development of new menu items as well as training programs for the staffs. Lastly, if resources allow, promotional events, loyalty programs, overseas expansion, award-winning history can be considered as tools for attracting more customers to the business.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.177-193
• /
• 2014

Over the past decade, there has been a rapid diffusion of electronic commerce and a rising number of interconnected networks, resulting in an escalation of security threats and privacy concerns. Electronic commerce has a built-in trade-off between the necessity of providing at least some personal information to consummate an online transaction, and the risk of negative consequences from providing such information. More recently, the frequent disclosure of private information has raised concerns about privacy and its impacts. This has motivated researchers in various fields to explore information privacy issues to address these concerns. Accordingly, the necessity for information privacy policies and technologies for collecting and storing data, and information privacy research in various fields such as medicine, computer science, business, and statistics has increased. The occurrence of various information security accidents have made finding experts in the information security field an important issue. Objective measures for finding such experts are required, as it is currently rather subjective. Based on social network analysis, this paper focused on a framework to evaluate the process of finding experts in the information security field. We collected data from the National Discovery for Science Leaders (NDSL) database, initially collecting about 2000 papers covering the period between 2005 and 2013. Outliers and the data of irrelevant papers were dropped, leaving 784 papers to test the suggested hypotheses. The co-authorship network data for co-author relationship, publisher, affiliation, and so on were analyzed using social network measures including centrality and structural hole. The results of our model estimation are as follows. With the exception of Hypothesis 3, which deals with the relationship between eigenvector centrality and performance, all of our hypotheses were supported. In line with our hypothesis, degree centrality (H1) was supported with its positive influence on the researchers' publishing performance (p<0.001). This finding indicates that as the degree of cooperation increased, the more the publishing performance of researchers increased. In addition, closeness centrality (H2) was also positively associated with researchers' publishing performance (p<0.001), suggesting that, as the efficiency of information acquisition increased, the more the researchers' publishing performance increased. This paper identified the difference in publishing performance among researchers. The analysis can be used to identify core experts and evaluate their performance in the information privacy research field. The co-authorship network for information privacy can aid in understanding the deep relationships among researchers. In addition, extracting characteristics of publishers and affiliations, this paper suggested an understanding of the social network measures and their potential for finding experts in the information privacy field. Social concerns about securing the objectivity of experts have increased, because experts in the information privacy field frequently participate in political consultation, and business education support and evaluation. In terms of practical implications, this research suggests an objective framework for experts in the information privacy field, and is useful for people who are in charge of managing research human resources. This study has some limitations, providing opportunities and suggestions for future research. Presenting the difference in information diffusion according to media and proximity presents difficulties for the generalization of the theory due to the small sample size. Therefore, further studies could consider an increased sample size and media diversity, the difference in information diffusion according to the media type, and information proximity could be explored in more detail. Moreover, previous network research has commonly observed a causal relationship between the independent and dependent variable (Kadushin, 2012). In this study, degree centrality as an independent variable might have causal relationship with performance as a dependent variable. However, in the case of network analysis research, network indices could be computed after the network relationship is created. An annual analysis could help mitigate this limitation.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.141-170
• /
• 2010

User created content (UCC) is created and shared by common users on line. From the user's perspective, the increase of UCCs has led to an expansion of alternative means of communications, while from the business perspective UCCs have formed an environment in which an abundant amount of new contents can be produced. Despite outward quantitative growth, however, many aspects of UCCs do not meet the expectations of general users in terms of quality, and this can be observed through pirated contents and user-copied contents. The purpose of this research is to investigate effective methods for fostering production of creative user-generated content. This study proposes two core elements, namely, reward and motivation, which are believed to enhance content creativity as well as the mediating factor and users' committement, which will be effective for bridging the increasing motivation and content creativity. Based on this perspective, this research takes an in-depth look at issues related to constructing the dimensions of reward and motivation in UCC services for creative content product, which are identified in three phases. First, three dimensions of rewards have been proposed: task dimension, social dimension, and organizational dimention. The task dimension rewards are related to the inherent characteristics of a task such as writing blog articles and pasting photos. Four concrete ways of providing task-related rewards in UCC environments are suggested in this study, which include skill variety, task significance, task identity, and autonomy. The social dimensioni rewards are related to the connected relationships among users. The organizational dimension consists of monetary payoff and recognition from others. Second, the two types of motivations are suggested to be affected by the diverse rewards schemes: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation occurs when people create new UCC contents for its' own sake, whereas extrinsic motivation occurs when people create new contents for other purposes such as fame and money. Third, commitments are suggested to work as important mediating variables between motivation and content creativity. We believe commitments are especially important in online environments because they have been found to exert stronger impacts on the Internet users than other relevant factors do. Two types of commitments are suggested in this study: emotional commitment and continuity commitment. Finally, content creativity is proposed as the final dependent variable in this study. We provide a systematic method to measure the creativity of UCC content based on the prior studies in creativity measurement. The method includes expert evaluation of blog pages posted by the Internet users. In order to test the theoretical model of our study, 133 active blog users were recruited to participate in a group discussion as well as a survey. They were asked to fill out a questionnaire on their commitment, motivation and rewards of creating UCC contents. At the same time, their creativity was measured by independent experts using Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Finally, two independent users visited the study participants' blog pages and evaluated their content creativity using the Creative Products Semantic Scale. All the data were compiled and analyzed through structural equation modeling. We first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to validate the measurement model of our research. It was found that measures used in our study satisfied the requirement of reliability, convergent validity as well as discriminant validity. Given the fact that our measurement model is valid and reliable, we proceeded to conduct a structural model analysis. The results indicated that all the variables in our model had higher than necessary explanatory powers in terms of R-square values. The study results identified several important reward shemes. First of all, skill variety, task importance, task identity, and automony were all found to have significant influences on the intrinsic motivation of creating UCC contents. Also, the relationship with other users was found to have strong influences upon both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Finally, the opportunity to get recognition for their UCC work was found to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation of UCC users. However, different from our expectation, monetary compensation was found not to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation. It was also found that commitment was an important mediating factor in UCC environment between motivation and content creativity. A more fully mediating model was found to have the highest explanation power compared to no-mediation or partially mediated models. This paper ends with implications of the study results. First, from the theoretical perspective this study proposes and empirically validates the commitment as an important mediating factor between motivation and content creativity. This result reflects the characteristics of online environment in which the UCC creation activities occur voluntarily. Second, from the practical perspective this study proposes several concrete reward factors that are germane to the UCC environment, and their effectiveness to the content creativity is estimated. In addition to the quantitive results of relative importance of the reward factrs, this study also proposes concrete ways to provide the rewards in the UCC environment based on the FGI data that are collected after our participants finish asnwering survey questions. Finally, from the methodological perspective, this study suggests and implements a way to measure the UCC content creativity independently from the content generators' creativity, which can be used later by future research on UCC creativity. In sum, this study proposes and validates important reward features and their relations to the motivation, commitment, and the content creativity in UCC environment, which is believed to be one of the most important factors for the success of UCC and Web 2.0. As such, this study can provide significant theoretical as well as practical bases for fostering creativity in UCC contents.

• Korean Journal of Breeding Science
• /
• v.51 no.3
• /
• pp.214-221
• /
• 2019

'Aram' is a soybean cultivar developed for soy-sprout. It was developed from the crossing of 'Bosug' (Glycine max IT213209) and 'Camp' (G. max IT267356) cultivars in 2007. F₁ plants and F₂ population were developed in 2009 and 2010. A promising line was selected in the F₅ generation in 2011 using the pedigree method and it was evaluated for agronomic traits, yield, and soy-sprouts characteristics in a preliminary yield trial (PYT) in 2012 and an advanced yield trial (AYT) in 2013. Agronomic traits and yield were stable between 2014 and 2016 in the regional yield trial (RYT) in four regions (Suwon, Naju, Dalseong, and Jeju). Morphological characteristics of 'Aram' are as follows: determinate plant type, purple flowers, grey pubescence, yellow pods, and small, yellow, and spherical seeds (9.9 g 100-seeds^-1) with a light brown hilum. The flowering date was the 5^th of August and the maturity date was the 15^th of October. Plant height, first pod height, number of nods, number of branches, and number of pods were 65 cm, 13 cm, 16, 4.5, and 99, respectively. In the sprout test, germination rate and sprout characteristics of 'Aram' were comparable to that of the 'Pungsannamulkong' cultivar. The yield of 'Aram' was 3.59 ton ha^-1 and it was 12% higher than that of 'Pungsannamulkong' in southern area of Korea. The yield of 'Aram' in the Jeju region, which is the main region for soybean sprout production, was 20% higher than that of 'Pungsannamulkong'. The height of the first pod and the tolerance to lodging and pod shattering, which are connected to the adaptation to mechanized harvesting, were higher in 'Aram' compared to those in 'Pungsannamulkong'. Therefore, the 'Aram' cultivar is expected to be broadly cultivated because of its higher soybean sprout quality, and seed yield and better adaptation to mechanized harvesting. (Registration number: 7718)