• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.51-67
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• 2009

Developing an agile recommender system for nomadic users has been regarded as a promising application in mobile and ubiquitous settings. To increase the quality of personalized recommendation in terms of accuracy and elapsed time, estimating future context of the user in a correct way is highly crucial. Traditionally, time series analysis and Makovian process have been adopted for such forecasting. However, these methods are not adequate in predicting context data, only because most of context data are represented as nominal scale. To resolve these limitations, the alignment-prediction algorithm has been suggested for context prediction, especially for future context from the low-level context. Recently, an ontological approach has been proposed for guided context prediction without context history. However, due to variety of context information, acquiring sufficient context prediction knowledge a priori is not easy in most of service domains. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a novel context prediction methodology, which does not require a priori knowledge, and to increase accuracy and decrease elapsed time for service response. To do so, we have newly developed pattern-based context prediction approach. First of ail, a set of individual rules is derived from each context attribute using context history. Then a pattern consisted of results from reasoning individual rules, is developed for pattern learning. If at least one context property matches, say R, then regard the pattern as right. If the pattern is new, add right pattern, set the value of mismatched properties = 0, freq = 1 and w(R, 1). Otherwise, increase the frequency of the matched right pattern by 1 and then set w(R,freq). After finishing training, if the frequency is greater than a threshold value, then save the right pattern in knowledge base. On the other hand, if at least one context property matches, say W, then regard the pattern as wrong. If the pattern is new, modify the result into wrong answer, add right pattern, and set frequency to 1 and w(W, 1). Or, increase the matched wrong pattern's frequency by 1 and then set w(W, freq). After finishing training, if the frequency value is greater than a threshold level, then save the wrong pattern on the knowledge basis. Then, context prediction is performed with combinatorial rules as follows: first, identify current context. Second, find matched patterns from right patterns. If there is no pattern matched, then find a matching pattern from wrong patterns. If a matching pattern is not found, then choose one context property whose predictability is higher than that of any other properties. To show the feasibility of the methodology proposed in this paper, we collected actual context history from the travelers who had visited the largest amusement park in Korea. As a result, 400 context records were collected in 2009. Then we randomly selected 70% of the records as training data. The rest were selected as testing data. To examine the performance of the methodology, prediction accuracy and elapsed time were chosen as measures. We compared the performance with case-based reasoning and voting methods. Through a simulation test, we conclude that our methodology is clearly better than CBR and voting methods in terms of accuracy and elapsed time. This shows that the methodology is relatively valid and scalable. As a second round of the experiment, we compared a full model to a partial model. A full model indicates that right and wrong patterns are used for reasoning the future context. On the other hand, a partial model means that the reasoning is performed only with right patterns, which is generally adopted in the legacy alignment-prediction method. It turned out that a full model is better than a partial model in terms of the accuracy while partial model is better when considering elapsed time. As a last experiment, we took into our consideration potential privacy problems that might arise among the users. To mediate such concern, we excluded such context properties as date of tour and user profiles such as gender and age. The outcome shows that preserving privacy is endurable. Contributions of this paper are as follows: First, academically, we have improved sequential matching methods to predict accuracy and service time by considering individual rules of each context property and learning from wrong patterns. Second, the proposed method is found to be quite effective for privacy preserving applications, which are frequently required by B2C context-aware services; the privacy preserving system applying the proposed method successfully can also decrease elapsed time. Hence, the method is very practical in establishing privacy preserving context-aware services. Our future research issues taking into account some limitations in this paper can be summarized as follows. First, user acceptance or usability will be tested with actual users in order to prove the value of the prototype system. Second, we will apply the proposed method to more general application domains as this paper focused on tourism in amusement park.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.113-145
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• 2009

Recently, due to the globalization of the IT(Information Technology) market, devices and systems designed in one country are used in other countries as well. This phenomenon is becoming the key factor for increased interest on cross-cultural, or cross-national, research within the IT area. However, as the IT market is becoming bigger and more globalized, a great number of IT practitioners are having difficulty in designing and developing devices or systems which can provide optimal experience. This is because not only tangible factors such as language and a country's economic or industrial power affect the user experience of a certain device or system but also invisible and intangible factors as well. Among such invisible and intangible factors, the cultural characteristics of users from different countries may affect the user experience of certain devices or systems because cultural characteristics affect how they understand and interpret the devices or systems. In other words, when users evaluate the quality of overall user experience, the cultural characteristics of each user act as a perceptual lens that leads the user to focus on a certain elements of experience. Therefore, there is a need within the IT field to consider cultural characteristics when designing or developing certain devices or systems and plan a strategy for localization. In such an environment, existing IS studies identify the culture with the country, emphasize the importance of culture in a national level perspective, and hypothesize that users within the same country have same cultural characteristics. Under such assumptions, these studies focus on the moderating effects of cultural characteristics on a national level within a certain theoretical framework. This has already been suggested by cross-cultural studies conducted by scholars such as Hofstede(1980) in providing numerical research results and measurement items for cultural characteristics and using such results or items as they increase the efficiency of studies. However, such national level culture has its limitations in forecasting and explaining individual-level behaviors such as voluntary device or system usage. This is because individual cultural characteristics are the outcome of not only the national culture but also the culture of a race, company, local area, family, and other groups that are formulated through interaction within the group. Therefore, national or nationally dominant cultural characteristics may have its limitations in forecasting and explaining the cultural characteristics of an individual. Moreover, past studies in psychology suggest a possibility that there exist different cultural characteristics within a single individual depending on the subject being measured or its context. For example, in relation to individual vs. collective characteristics, which is one of the major cultural characteristics, an individual may show collectivistic characteristics when he or she is with family or friends but show individualistic characteristics in his or her workplace. Therefore, this study acknowledged such limitations of past studies and conducted a research within the framework of 'theoretically integrated model of user satisfaction and emotional attachment', which was developed through a former study, on how the effects of different experience elements on emotional attachment or user satisfaction are differentiated depending on the individual cultural characteristics related to a system or device usage. In order to do this, this study hypothesized the moderating effects of four cultural dimensions (uncertainty avoidance, individualism vs, collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, and power distance) as suggested by Hofstede(1980) within the theoretically integrated model of emotional attachment and user satisfaction. Statistical tests were then implemented on these moderating effects through conducting surveys with users of four digital devices (mobile phone, MP3 player, LCD TV, and refrigerator) in three countries (US, Germany, and Russia). In order to explain and forecast the behavior of personal device or system users, individual cultural characteristics must be measured, and depending on the target device or system, measurements must be measured independently. Through this suggestion, this study hopes to provide new and useful perspectives for future IS research.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.35-51
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• 2012

Cloud computing is internet-based computing where computing resources are offered over the Internet as scalable and on-demand services. In particular, in case a number of various cloud services emerge in accordance with development of internet and mobile technology, to select and provide services with which service users satisfy is one of the important issues. Most of previous works show the limitation in the degree of user satisfaction because they are based on so called concept similarity in relation to user requirements or are lack of versatility of user preferences. This paper presents cloud service selection reasoning which can be applied to the general cloud service environments including a variety of computing resource services, not limited to web services. In relation to the service environments, there are two kinds of services: atomic service and composite service. An atomic service consists of service attributes which represent the characteristics of service such as functionality, performance, or specification. A composite service can be created by composition of atomic services and other composite services. Therefore, a composite service inherits attributes of component services. On the other hand, the main participants in providing with cloud services are service users, service suppliers, and service operators. Service suppliers can register services autonomously or in accordance with the strategic collaboration with service operators. Service users submit request queries including service name and requirements to the service management system. The service management system consists of a query processor for processing user queries, a registration manager for service registration, and a selection engine for service selection reasoning. In order to enhance the degree of user satisfaction, our reasoning stands on basis of the degree of conformance to user requirements of service attributes in terms of functionality, performance, and specification of service attributes, instead of concept similarity as in ontology-based reasoning. For this we introduce so called a service attribute graph (SAG) which is generated by considering the inclusion relationship among instances of a service attribute from several perspectives like functionality, performance, and specification. Hence, SAG is a directed graph which shows the inclusion relationships among attribute instances. Since the degree of conformance is very close to the inclusion relationship, we can say the acceptability of services depends on the closeness of inclusion relationship among corresponding attribute instances. That is, the high closeness implies the high acceptability because the degree of closeness reflects the degree of conformance among attributes instances. The degree of closeness is proportional to the path length between two vertex in SAG. The shorter path length means more close inclusion relationship than longer path length, which implies the higher degree of conformance. In addition to acceptability, in this paper, other user preferences such as priority for attributes and mandatary options are reflected for the variety of user requirements. Furthermore, to consider various types of attribute like character, number, and boolean also helps to support the variety of user requirements. Finally, according to service value to price cloud services are rated and recommended to users. One of the significances of this paper is the first try to present a graph-based selection reasoning unlike other works, while considering various user preferences in relation with service attributes.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 2016

Purpose Self-congruity deals with the effect of symbolic value-expressive attributes on consumer decision and behavior, which is the theoretical foundation of the "non-utilitarian destination positioning". Functional congruity refers to utilitarian evaluation of a product or service by consumers. In addition, recent years, social network services, especially mobile social network services have created many opportunities for e-WOM communication that enables consumers to share personal consumption related information anywhere at any time. Moreover, self-construal is a hot and popular topic that has been discussed in the field of modem psychology as well as in marketing area. This study aims to examine the moderating effect of self-construal on the relationship between self-congruity, functional congruity and tourists' positive electronic word of mouth (e-WOM). Design/methodology/approach In order to verify the hypotheses, we developed a questionnaire with 32 survey items. We measured all the items on a five-point Likert-type scale. We used Sojump.com to collect questionnaire and gathered 218 responses from whom have visited Korea before. After a pilot test, we analyzed the main survey data by using SPSS 20.0 and AMOS 18.0, and employed structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. We first estimated the measurement model for its overall fit, reliability and validity through a confirmatory factor analysis and used common method bias test to make sure that whether measures are affected by common-method variance. Then we tested the hypotheses through the structural model and used regression analysis to measure moderating effect of self-construal. Findings The results reveal that the effect of self-congruity on tourists' positive e-WOM is stronger for tourists with an independent self-construal compared with those with interdependent self-construal. Moreover, it shows that the effect of functional congruity on tourists' positive e-WOM becomes salient when tourists' self-construal is primed to be interdependent rather than independent. We expect that the results of this study can provide important implications for academic and practical perspective.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.175-193
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• 2018

As a new type of business model in the market competition situation of tour companies, this study has developed to the online form of the travel industry to the business form which is the combination of the electronic commerce function and the mobile service process in the provision of the simple web-site, This study explores the difficulties of change for the development of the travel industry from the point of view that recognition is not a simple marketing strategy diversification means but a change of recognition as a business model for expanding new markets or creating new markets. The factors affecting the choice of online travel agent (OTA) and the factors that influence the choice of online travel agency were analyzed. Were used for the empirical survey. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors influencing the choice of online travel agents who have experience with or experience using online travel agency (OTA), what factors are important to them, and how they differ in importance when visiting again. The results of this study are as follows: First, there was a significant difference between the first and second visitors of online travel agencies. The results of this study were as follows: Attitude toward resolving complaints, convenience of change and cancellation, delivery of tickets and documents, convenience of complaints, The emphasis should be on establishing and strengthening service environments such as the speed of updating the latest information, the simplicity of the booking procedure, the degree of satisfaction of the past, the ability of employees to handle their work, the safety of various payment methods and settlement, The results of this study are as follows: First, the satisfaction of the online travel agency is influenced by the selection factors of the selected online tour agency, and the A/S such as the convenience of prompt delivery, Environmental factors contributed to satisfaction. It is suggested that the systematic service structure such as customer satisfaction and ease of use is a necessary marketing strategy for survival and development of online travel agencies. It is suggested that the marketing concentration strategy with the first visitors as the target market is effective and this is a part of the marketing strategy for the survival of online travel agencies.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.227-245
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• 2023

As offline company and online·mobile startups meet in an untact shopping environment, competition among companies in untact shopping is increasing. In this situation, companies need their own clear strategy to create customer value. In particular, it is very important to focus on 'customer experience' to establish such a strategy in an untact shopping environment. Customer experience refers to all processes in which consumers meet and experience a company or brand at a touch point. In this processes consumers decide whether to continue to use the company and brand. In this situation, it is thought that it will be meaningful for research to examine the customer experience of untact shopping. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the customer experience of untact shopping, which is used by all generations after COVID-19, through experience quality, and to examine the impact on the expectation-confirmation Model of untact shopping. The results of this study are as follows. First, as a result of examining whether interaction quality, information quality, and outcome quality affect expectation-confirmation it was found that all qualities except interaction quality affect expectation matching. Second, as a result of examining whether interaction quality, information quality, and outcome quality affect perceived usefulness, it was found that all qualities except interaction quality had an effect. Next, as a result of applying the expectation confirmation model to the untact shopping environment and examining whether the expectation confirmation has an effect on use satisfaction, it was found that there was a positive effect. As a result of examining whether perceived usefulness affects use satisfaction, it was found to have a positive effect. As a result of examining whether perceived usefulness affects expectation confirmation, it was found that there is a positive effect. Finally, as a result of examining whether perceived usefulness affects the intention to continue using untact shopping, it was found to be positive. Next, as a result of examining the effect of use satisfaction on trust, it was found that there was a positive effect. Finally, as a result of investigating whether trust has an effect on the intention to continue using, it was found that there is a positive effect. Looking at the important results especially, information quality was found to have the greatest influence.

• Journal of Korean Dental Hygiene Science
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.13-23
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• 2023

Background: The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in the formation of dental hygienist images based on the pathways of obtaining occupational information and to establish a foundation for the correct perception and positive promotion of the dental hygienist profession. Methods: A survey was distributed to 305 college preparatory students in the metropolitan area. The questionnaire consisted of 34 items, including general characteristics(3 items), pathway-related questions(3 items), dental hygienist image-related question(2 1items), application-related questions(2 items), and admission-related questions(5 items). The images of dental hygienists based on general characteristics, perception pathways, and admission were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis test. Results: The survey results from all participants showed that the overall image of dental hygienists was 3.75 points. Personal image scored the highest at 4.18 points, while social image was the lowest at 3.20 points(p<0.05). The overall image of dental hygienists was higher for the 'online' group (3.88) compared to the 'offline' group, and statistically significant differences were observed among groups in overall, personal, and professional images(p<0.05). The overall image of dental hygienists was higher for those who learned offline (3.87), and the only significant difference between groups was seen in the personal image. When it came to admission, the 'admitted' students gave a higher overall score (4.00) compared to 'non-admitted' students (3.64), with significance found in all areas except for social image (p<0.05). Conclusion: It is believed that effective utilization of online pathways can inform more people about the importance and expertise of dental hygienists, thereby contributing to promoting oral health and enhancing the perception of the profession. Properly valuing and educating about the role of dental hygienists through promotion and education can help improve the image of the profession.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.53-84
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• 2013

With rapid development of ICT (Information and Communications Technology), new services by the convergence of mobile network and application technology began to appear. Today, smart phone with new ICT convergence network capabilities is exceedingly popular and very useful as a new tool for the development of business opportunities. Previous studies based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) suggested critical factors, which should be considered for acquiring new customers and maintaining existing users in smart phone market. However, they had a limitation to focus on technology acceptance, not value based approach. Prior studies on customer's adoption of electronic utilities like smart phone product showed that the antecedents such as the perceived benefit and the perceived sacrifice could explain the causality between what is perceived and what is acquired over diverse contexts. So, this research conceptualizes perceived value as a trade-off between perceived benefit and perceived sacrifice, and we need to research the perceived value to grasp user's continuous intention to use of smart phone. The purpose of this study is to investigate the structured relationship between benefit (quality, usefulness, playfulness) and sacrifice (technicality, cost, security risk) of smart phone users, perceived value, and continuous intention to use. In addition, this study intends to analyze the differences between two subgroups of smart phone users by the degree of personal innovativeness. Personal innovativeness could help us to understand the moderating effect between how perceptions are formed and continuous intention to use smart phone. This study conducted survey through e-mail, direct mail, and interview with smart phone users. Empirical analysis based on 330 respondents was conducted in order to test the hypotheses. First, the result of hypotheses testing showed that perceived usefulness among three factors of perceived benefit has the highest positive impact on perceived value, and then followed by perceived playfulness and perceived quality. Second, the result of hypotheses testing showed that perceived cost among three factors of perceived sacrifice has significantly negative impact on perceived value, however, technicality and security risk have no significant impact on perceived value. Also, the result of hypotheses testing showed that perceived value has significant direct impact on continuous intention to use of smart phone. In this regard, marketing managers of smart phone company should pay more attention to improve task efficiency and performance of smart phone, including rate systems of smart phone. Additionally, to test the moderating effect of personal innovativeness, this research conducted multi-group analysis by the degree of personal innovativeness of smart phone users. In a group with high level of innovativeness, perceived usefulness has the highest positive influence on perceived value than other factors. Instead, the analysis for a group with low level of innovativeness showed that perceived playfulness was the highest positive factor to influence perceived value than others. This result of the group with high level of innovativeness explains that innovators and early adopters are able to cope with higher level of cost and risk, and they expect to develop more positive intentions toward higher performance through the use of an innovation. Also, hedonic behavior in the case of the group with low level of innovativeness aims to provide self-fulfilling value to the users, in contrast to utilitarian perspective, which aims to provide instrumental value to the users. However, with regard to perceived sacrifice, both groups in general showed negative impact on perceived value. Also, the group with high level of innovativeness had less overall negative impact on perceived value compared to the group with low level of innovativeness across all factors. In both group with high level of innovativeness and with low level of innovativeness, perceived cost has the highest negative influence on perceived value than other factors. Instead, the analysis for a group with high level of innovativeness showed that perceived technicality was the positive factor to influence perceived value than others. However, the analysis for a group with low level of innovativeness showed that perceived security risk was the second high negative factor to influence perceived value than others. Unlike previous studies, this study focuses on influencing factors on continuous intention to use of smart phone, rather than considering initial purchase and adoption of smart phone. First, perceived value, which was used to identify user's adoption behavior, has a mediating effect among perceived benefit, perceived sacrifice, and continuous intention to use smart phone. Second, perceived usefulness has the highest positive influence on perceived value, while perceived cost has significant negative influence on perceived value. Third, perceived value, like prior studies, has high level of positive influence on continuous intention to use smart phone. Fourth, in multi-group analysis by the degree of personal innovativeness of smart phone users, perceived usefulness, in a group with high level of innovativeness, has the highest positive influence on perceived value than other factors. Instead, perceived playfulness, in a group with low level of innovativeness, has the highest positive factor to influence perceived value than others. This result shows that early adopters intend to adopt smart phone as a tool to make their job useful, instead market followers intend to adopt smart phone as a tool to make their time enjoyable. In terms of marketing strategy for smart phone company, marketing managers should pay more attention to identify their customers' lifetime value by the phase of smart phone adoption, as well as to understand their behavior intention to accept the risk and uncertainty positively. The academic contribution of this study primarily is to employ the VAM (Value-based Adoption Model) as a conceptual foundation, compared to TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) used widely by previous studies. VAM is useful for understanding continuous intention to use smart phone in comparison with TAM as a new IT utility by individual adoption. Perceived value dominantly influences continuous intention to use smart phone. The results of this study justify our research model adoption on each antecedent of perceived value as a benefit and a sacrifice component. While TAM could be widely used in user acceptance of new technology, it has a limitation to explain the new IT adoption like smart phone, because of customer behavior intention to choose the value of the object. In terms of theoretical approach, this study provides theoretical contribution to the development, design, and marketing of smart phone. The practical contribution of this study is to suggest useful decision alternatives concerned to marketing strategy formulation for acquiring and retaining long-term customers related to smart phone business. Since potential customers are interested in both benefit and sacrifice when evaluating the value of smart phone, marketing managers in smart phone company has to put more effort into creating customer's value of low sacrifice and high benefit so that customers will continuously have higher adoption on smart phone. Especially, this study shows that innovators and early adopters with high level of innovativeness have higher adoption than market followers with low level of innovativeness, in terms of perceived usefulness and perceived cost. To formulate marketing strategy for smart phone diffusion, marketing managers have to pay more attention to identify not only their customers' benefit and sacrifice components but also their customers' lifetime value to adopt smart phone.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.156-172
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• 2014

This research measures and compares on-site net radiation energy, air temperature, wind speed, and surface temperature considering various spatial characteristics with a focus on land use types in urban areas in Changwon, Southern Gyeongsangnam-do, to analyze the accuracy of an ENVI-met model, which is an analysis program of microclimate. The on-site measurement was performed for three days in a mobile measurement: two days during the daytime and one day during the nighttime. The analysis using the ENVI-met model was also performed in the same time zone as the on-site measurement. The results indicated that the ENVI-met model showed higher net radiation than the on-site measurement by approximately $300Wm^{-2}$ during the daytime whereas the latter showed higher net radiation energy by approximately $200Wm^{-2}$ during the nighttime. The temperature was found to be much higher by approximately $2-6^{\circ}C$ in the on-site measurement during both the daytime and nighttime. The on-site measurement also showed higher surface temperature than the ENVI-met by approximately $7-13^{\circ}C$. In terms of the wind speed, there was a significant difference between the results of the ENVI-met model and on-site measurement. As for the correlation between the results of the ENVI-met model and on-site measurement, the temperature showed significantly high correlation whereas the correlations for the net radiation energy, surface temperature, and wind speed were very low. These results appear to be affected by excessive or under estimation of solar and terrestrial radiation and climatic conditions of the surrounding areas and characteristics of land cover. Hence, these factors should be considered when applying these findings in urban and environment planning for improving the microclimate in urban areas.

• Archives of design research
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• v.18 no.2 s.60
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• pp.155-164
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• 2005

Home-service robots need to have sufficient spatial information about the surroundings for interacting with human intelligently and performing services efficiently. It is very important to investigate the efficient interaction style that supports map building task through human-robot collaboration. We first analyzed map building task with a cleaning robot and drew 4 design factors and tentative solutions, including map building procedure (task-preferred procedure/space- preferred procedure), LCD display installation (robot/robot+remote control), navigation method (push type/pull type), feedback modality(GUI/GUI+TTS). The design factors and tentative solutions were defined as independent variables and levels. This research investigated how those variables affect to the human task performance and behavior in map building tast. 8 kinds of experiment prototypes were built and usability test among 16 house wives was conducted for acquiring empirical data. As the experiment result, in terms of map building procedure, space-preferred procedure indicated better task performance than task-proffered procedure as we expected. For the LCD display installation factor, remote control with LCD display indicated higher task performance and subjective satisfaction. In robot navigation method, it was very difficult to find a significant difference between push type and pull type which contrary to our expectation. In fact, push type indicated higher subjective satisfaction. Also in feedback modality, we have acquired negative feedback an additional TTS operation guidance. It seems that robot's autonomy before achieving spatial information is rudiment condition which means users are just interacting with a mobile appliance. Thus they prefer remote-control-based interaction style in robot map building process as they used in traditional appliance control.