• Title/Summary/Keyword: Online performance

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A Study on Improvement of Collaborative Filtering Based on Implicit User Feedback Using RFM Multidimensional Analysis (RFM 다차원 분석 기법을 활용한 암시적 사용자 피드백 기반 협업 필터링 개선 연구)

  • Lee, Jae-Seong;Kim, Jaeyoung;Kang, Byeongwook
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.25 no.1
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    • pp.139-161
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    • 2019
  • The utilization of the e-commerce market has become a common life style in today. It has become important part to know where and how to make reasonable purchases of good quality products for customers. This change in purchase psychology tends to make it difficult for customers to make purchasing decisions in vast amounts of information. In this case, the recommendation system has the effect of reducing the cost of information retrieval and improving the satisfaction by analyzing the purchasing behavior of the customer. Amazon and Netflix are considered to be the well-known examples of sales marketing using the recommendation system. In the case of Amazon, 60% of the recommendation is made by purchasing goods, and 35% of the sales increase was achieved. Netflix, on the other hand, found that 75% of movie recommendations were made using services. This personalization technique is considered to be one of the key strategies for one-to-one marketing that can be useful in online markets where salespeople do not exist. Recommendation techniques that are mainly used in recommendation systems today include collaborative filtering and content-based filtering. Furthermore, hybrid techniques and association rules that use these techniques in combination are also being used in various fields. Of these, collaborative filtering recommendation techniques are the most popular today. Collaborative filtering is a method of recommending products preferred by neighbors who have similar preferences or purchasing behavior, based on the assumption that users who have exhibited similar tendencies in purchasing or evaluating products in the past will have a similar tendency to other products. However, most of the existed systems are recommended only within the same category of products such as books and movies. This is because the recommendation system estimates the purchase satisfaction about new item which have never been bought yet using customer's purchase rating points of a similar commodity based on the transaction data. In addition, there is a problem about the reliability of purchase ratings used in the recommendation system. Reliability of customer purchase ratings is causing serious problems. In particular, 'Compensatory Review' refers to the intentional manipulation of a customer purchase rating by a company intervention. In fact, Amazon has been hard-pressed for these "compassionate reviews" since 2016 and has worked hard to reduce false information and increase credibility. The survey showed that the average rating for products with 'Compensated Review' was higher than those without 'Compensation Review'. And it turns out that 'Compensatory Review' is about 12 times less likely to give the lowest rating, and about 4 times less likely to leave a critical opinion. As such, customer purchase ratings are full of various noises. This problem is directly related to the performance of recommendation systems aimed at maximizing profits by attracting highly satisfied customers in most e-commerce transactions. In this study, we propose the possibility of using new indicators that can objectively substitute existing customer 's purchase ratings by using RFM multi-dimensional analysis technique to solve a series of problems. RFM multi-dimensional analysis technique is the most widely used analytical method in customer relationship management marketing(CRM), and is a data analysis method for selecting customers who are likely to purchase goods. As a result of verifying the actual purchase history data using the relevant index, the accuracy was as high as about 55%. This is a result of recommending a total of 4,386 different types of products that have never been bought before, thus the verification result means relatively high accuracy and utilization value. And this study suggests the possibility of general recommendation system that can be applied to various offline product data. If additional data is acquired in the future, the accuracy of the proposed recommendation system can be improved.

Evaluation of the LG AdvansureTM Malaria P.f./P.v. real-time QPCR for the Diagnosis of Malaria (LG AdvansureTM Malaria P.f./P.v. real-time QPCR의 말라리아 진단 유용성)

  • Lee, Hye Jin;Kim, Ha Nui;Yoo, Byong Joon;Kim, Jang Su;Kim, Myong Han;Lim, Chae Seung;Lee, Kap No
    • Laboratory Medicine Online
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    • v.1 no.2
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    • pp.100-104
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    • 2011
  • Background: Malaria is a problematic disease in Korea, and microscopic examination of Giemsa-stained blood smear has been used as the gold standard for its diagnosis. However, this technique is time-consuming and has low sensitivity in samples with low numbers of malarial parasites (<20 parasites/μL). Here, we evaluated the performance characteristics of the LG AdvansureTM Malaria P.f./P.v. real-time QPCR (LG life sciences, Korea). Methods: Blood samples from 173 persons who visited Korea University Ansan Hospital were evaluated. QPCR was performed in 73 malaria patients and 100 healthy subjects by using the LG Advansure Malaria P.f./P.v. real-time QPCRR kit, and the results were compared with those of microscopy. The detection limit of this kit was determined by serial dilution of Plasmodium-infected blood with normal blood (blood not infected with Plasmodium). Results: Among the 73 patients that were microscopically confirmed to have malaria (Plasmodium vivax infection, N=70, P. falciparum infection, N=3), 69 patients were diagnosed with P. vivax infection and 3 were diagnosed with P. falciparum infection by LG AdvansureTM Malaria P.f./P.v. realtime QPCR. Both the tests indicated absence of infection in the 100 healthy subjects. The detection limit of LG AdvansureTM Malaria P.f./P.v. real-time QPCR was 0.1 parasite/μL. Conclusions: LG AdvansureTM Malaria P.f./P.v. real-time QPCRis a very sensitive and specific technique and can be used as a confirmatory test for malaria.

A Study on the Effect of User Value on Smartwatch Digital HealthcareAcceptance Intention to Promote Digital Healthcare Venture Start Up (Digital Healthcare 벤처창업 촉진을 위한, 사용자 가치가 Smartwatch Digital Healthcare 수용의도에 미치는 영향 연구)

  • Eekseong Jin;soyoung Lee
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.18 no.2
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    • pp.35-52
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    • 2023
  • Recently, as the non-face-to-face environment has developed due to COVID-19 and environmental pollution, the importance of online digital healthcare is increasing, and venture start-ups and activities such as health care, telemedicine, and digital treatments are also actively underway. This study conducted the impact on the acceptability of digital healthcare smartwatches with an integrated approach of the expanded integrated technology acceptance model (UTAUT2) and the behavioral inference model (BRT). The most advanced integrated technology acceptance model for innovative technology acceptance research was used to identify major factors such as utility expectations, social effects, convenience, price barriers, lack of alternatives, and behavioral intentions. For the study, about 410 responses from ordinary people in their teens to 60s across the country were collected, and based on this, the hypothesis was verified using structural equations after testing reliability and validity of the data. SPSS 23 and AMOS 23 were used for research analysis. Studies have shown that personal innovation has a significant impact on the reasons for acceptance (use value, social impact, convenience of use), attitude, and non-use (price barriers, lack of alternatives, and barriers to use). These results are the same as the results of previous studies that confirmed the influence of the main value of innovative ICT on user acceptance intention. In addition, the reason for acceptance had a significant effect on attitude, but the effect of the reason for non-acceptance was not significant. It can be analyzed that consumers are interested in new ICT products and new services, but purchase them more carefully and selectively. This study has evolved from the acceptance analysis of general-purpose consumer innovation technology to the acceptance analysis of consumer value in smartwatch digital healthcare, which is a new and important area in the future. Industrially, it can contribute to the product's purchase and marketing. It is hoped that this study will contribute to increasing research in the digital healthcare sector, which will play an important role in our lives in the future, and that it will develop into in-depth factors that are more suitable for consumer value through integrated approach models and integrated analysis of consumer acceptance and non-acceptance.

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Patterns in the Use and Perception of Digital Breast Tomosynthesis: A Survey of Korean Breast Radiologists (디지털 유방 토모신테시스에 대한 국내 사용 현황과 인식에 관한 설문조사 연구)

  • Eun Young Chae;Joo Hee Cha;Hee Jung Shin;Woo Jung Choi;Jihye Kim;Sun Mi Kim;Hak Hee Kim
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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    • v.83 no.6
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    • pp.1327-1341
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    • 2022
  • Purpose To evaluate the pattern of use and the perception of digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) among Korean breast radiologists. Materials and Methods From March 22 to 29, 2021, an online survey comprising 27 questions was sent to members of the Korean Society of Breast Imaging. Questions related to practice characteristics, utilization and perception of DBT, and research interests. Results were analyzed based on factors using logistic regression. Results Overall, 120 of 257 members responded to the survey (response rate, 46.7%), 67 (55.8%) of whom reported using DBT. The overall satisfaction with DBT was 3.31 (1-5 scale). The most-cited DBT advantages were decreased recall rate (55.8%), increased lesion conspicuity (48.3%), and increased cancer detection (45.8%). The most-cited DBT disadvantages were extra cost for patients (46.7%), insufficient calcification characterization (43.3%), insufficient improvement in diagnostic performance (39.2%), and radiation dose (35.8%). Radiologists reported increased storage requirements and interpretation time for barriers to implementing DBT. Conclusion Further improvement of DBT techniques reflecting feedback from the user's perspective will help increase the acceptance of DBT in Korea.

The Factors Affecting Attitudes Toward HSDPA Service and Intention to Use: A Cross-Cultural Comparison between Asia and Europe (대영향(对影响)HSDPA복무적태도화사용의도적인소적연구(服务的态度和使用意图的因素的研究): 재아주화구주지간적(在亚洲和欧洲之间的)-개과문화비교(个跨文化比较))

  • Jung, Hae-Sung;Shin, Jong-Kuk;Park, Min-Sook;Jung, Hong-Seob;Hooley, Graham;Lee, Nick;Kwak, Hyok-Jin;Kim, Sung-Hyun
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.19 no.4
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    • pp.11-23
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    • 2009
  • HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) is a 3.5-generation asynchronous mobile communications service based on the third generation of W-CDMA. In Korea, it is mainly provided in through videophone service. Because of the diffusion of more powerful and diversified services, along with steep advances in mobile communications technology, consumers demand a wide range of choices. However, because of the variety of technologies, which tend to overflow the market regardless of consumer preferences, consumers feel increasingly confused. Therefore, we should not adopt strategies that focus only on developing new technology on the assumption that new technologies are next-generation projects. Instead, we should understand the process by which consumers accept new forms of technology and devise schemes to lower market entry barriers through strategies that enable developers to understand and provide what consumers really want. In the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are suggested as the most important factors affecting the attitudes of people adopting new technologies (Davis, 1989; Taylor and Todd, 1995; Venkatesh, 2000; Lee et al., 2004). Perceived usefulness is the degree to which a person believes that a particular technology will enhance his or her job performance. Perceived ease of use is the degree of subjective belief that using a particular technology will require little physical and mental effort (Davis, 1989; Morris and Dillon, 1997; Venkatesh, 2000). Perceived pleasure and perceived usefulness have been shown to clearly affect attitudes toward accepting technology (Davis et al., 1992). For example, pleasure in online shopping has been shown to positively impact consumers' attitudes toward online sellers (Eighmey and McCord, 1998; Mathwick, 2002; Jarvenpaa and Todd, 1997). The perceived risk of customers is a subjective risk, which is distinguished from an objective probabilistic risk. Perceived risk includes a psychological risk that consumers perceive when they choose brands, stores, and methods of purchase to obtain a particular item. The ability of an enterprise to revolutionize products depends on the effective acquisition of knowledge about new products (Bierly and Chakrabarti, 1996; Rothwell and Dodgson, 1991). Knowledge acquisition is the ability of a company to perceive the value of novelty and technology of the outside (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990), to evaluate the outside technology that has newly appeared (Arora and Gambaradella, 1994), and to predict the future evolution of technology accurately (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). Consumer innovativeness is the degree to which an individual adopts innovation earlier than others in the social system (Lee, Ahn, and Ha, 2001; Gatignon and Robertson, 1985). That is, it shows how fast and how easily consumers adopt new ideas. Innovativeness is regarded as important because it has a significant effect on whether consumers adopt new products and on how fast they accept new products (Midgley and Dowling, 1978; Foxall, 1988; Hirschman, 1980). We conducted cross-national comparative research using the TAM model, which empirically verified the relationship between the factors that affect attitudes - perceived usefulness, ease of use, perceived pleasure, perceived risk, innovativeness, and perceived level of knowledge management - and attitudes toward HSDPA service. We also verified the relationship between attitudes and usage intention for the purpose of developing more effective methods of management for HSDPA service providers. For this research, 346 questionnaires were distributed among 350 students in the Republic of Korea. Because 26 of the returned questionnaires were inconsistent or had missing data, 320 questionnaires were used in the hypothesis tests. In UK, 192 of the total 200 questionnaires were retrieved, and two incomplete ones were discarded, bringing the total to 190 questionnaires used for statistical analysis. The results of the overall model analysis are as follows: Republic of Korea x2=333.27(p=0.0), NFI=0.88, NNFI=0.88, CFI=0.91, IFI=0.91, RMR=0.054, GFI=0.90, AGFI=0.84, UK x2=176.57(p=0.0), NFI=0.88, NNFI=0.90, CFI=0.93, IFI=0.93, RMR=0.062, GFI=0.90, AGFI=0.84. From the results of the hypothesis tests of Korean consumers about the relationship between factors that affect intention to use HSDPA services and attitudes, we can conclude that perceived usefulness, ease of use, pleasure, a high level of knowledge management, and innovativeness promote positive attitudes toward HSDPA mobile phones. However, ease of use and perceived pleasure did not have a direct effect on intention to use HSDPA service. This may have resulted from the fact that the use of video phones is not necessary for everyday life yet. Moreover, it has been shown that attitudes toward HSDPA video phones are directly correlated with usage intention, which means that perceived usefulness, ease of use, pleasure, a high level of knowledge management, and innovativeness. These relationships form the basis of the intention to buy, contributing to a situation in which consumers decide to choose carefully. A summary of the results of the hypothesis tests of European consumers revealed that perceived usefulness, pleasure, risk, and the level of knowledge management are factors that affect the formation of attitudes, while ease of use and innovativeness do not have an effect on attitudes. In particular, with regard to the effect value, perceived usefulness has the largest effect on attitudes, followed by pleasure and knowledge management. On the contrary, perceived risk has a smaller effect on attitudes. In the Asian model, ease of use and perceived pleasure were found not to have a direct effect on intention to use. However, because attitudes generally affect the intention to use, perceived usefulness, pleasure, risk, and knowledge management may be considered key factors in attitude development from which usage intention arises. In conclusion, perceived usefulness, pleasure, and the level of knowledge management have an effect on attitude formation in both Asian and European consumers, and such attitudes shape these consumers' intention to use. Furthermore, the hypotheses that ease of use and perceived pleasure affect usage intention are rejected. However, ease of use, perceived risk, and innovativeness showed different results. Perceived risk had no effect on attitude formation among Asians, while ease of use and innovativeness had no effect on attitudes among Europeans.

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A Comparative Analysis of Social Commerce and Open Market Using User Reviews in Korean Mobile Commerce (사용자 리뷰를 통한 소셜커머스와 오픈마켓의 이용경험 비교분석)

  • Chae, Seung Hoon;Lim, Jay Ick;Kang, Juyoung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.21 no.4
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    • pp.53-77
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    • 2015
  • Mobile commerce provides a convenient shopping experience in which users can buy products without the constraints of time and space. Mobile commerce has already set off a mega trend in Korea. The market size is estimated at approximately 15 trillion won (KRW) for 2015, thus far. In the Korean market, social commerce and open market are key components. Social commerce has an overwhelming open market in terms of the number of users in the Korean mobile commerce market. From the point of view of the industry, quick market entry, and content curation are considered to be the major success factors, reflecting the rapid growth of social commerce in the market. However, academics' empirical research and analysis to prove the success rate of social commerce is still insufficient. Henceforward, it is to be expected that social commerce and the open market in the Korean mobile commerce will compete intensively. So it is important to conduct an empirical analysis to prove the differences in user experience between social commerce and open market. This paper is an exploratory study that shows a comparative analysis of social commerce and the open market regarding user experience, which is based on the mobile users' reviews. Firstly, this study includes a collection of approximately 10,000 user reviews of social commerce and open market listed Google play. A collection of mobile user reviews were classified into topics, such as perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use through LDA topic modeling. Then, a sentimental analysis and co-occurrence analysis on the topics of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use was conducted. The study's results demonstrated that social commerce users have a more positive experience in terms of service usefulness and convenience versus open market in the mobile commerce market. Social commerce has provided positive user experiences to mobile users in terms of service areas, like 'delivery,' 'coupon,' and 'discount,' while open market has been faced with user complaints in terms of technical problems and inconveniences like 'login error,' 'view details,' and 'stoppage.' This result has shown that social commerce has a good performance in terms of user service experience, since the aggressive marketing campaign conducted and there have been investments in building logistics infrastructure. However, the open market still has mobile optimization problems, since the open market in mobile commerce still has not resolved user complaints and inconveniences from technical problems. This study presents an exploratory research method used to analyze user experience by utilizing an empirical approach to user reviews. In contrast to previous studies, which conducted surveys to analyze user experience, this study was conducted by using empirical analysis that incorporates user reviews for reflecting users' vivid and actual experiences. Specifically, by using an LDA topic model and TAM this study presents its methodology, which shows an analysis of user reviews that are effective due to the method of dividing user reviews into service areas and technical areas from a new perspective. The methodology of this study has not only proven the differences in user experience between social commerce and open market, but also has provided a deep understanding of user experience in Korean mobile commerce. In addition, the results of this study have important implications on social commerce and open market by proving that user insights can be utilized in establishing competitive and groundbreaking strategies in the market. The limitations and research direction for follow-up studies are as follows. In a follow-up study, it will be required to design a more elaborate technique of the text analysis. This study could not clearly refine the user reviews, even though the ones online have inherent typos and mistakes. This study has proven that the user reviews are an invaluable source to analyze user experience. The methodology of this study can be expected to further expand comparative research of services using user reviews. Even at this moment, users around the world are posting their reviews about service experiences after using the mobile game, commerce, and messenger applications.

Methods for Integration of Documents using Hierarchical Structure based on the Formal Concept Analysis (FCA 기반 계층적 구조를 이용한 문서 통합 기법)

  • Kim, Tae-Hwan;Jeon, Ho-Cheol;Choi, Joong-Min
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.17 no.3
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    • pp.63-77
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    • 2011
  • The World Wide Web is a very large distributed digital information space. From its origins in 1991, the web has grown to encompass diverse information resources as personal home pasges, online digital libraries and virtual museums. Some estimates suggest that the web currently includes over 500 billion pages in the deep web. The ability to search and retrieve information from the web efficiently and effectively is an enabling technology for realizing its full potential. With powerful workstations and parallel processing technology, efficiency is not a bottleneck. In fact, some existing search tools sift through gigabyte.syze precompiled web indexes in a fraction of a second. But retrieval effectiveness is a different matter. Current search tools retrieve too many documents, of which only a small fraction are relevant to the user query. Furthermore, the most relevant documents do not nessarily appear at the top of the query output order. Also, current search tools can not retrieve the documents related with retrieved document from gigantic amount of documents. The most important problem for lots of current searching systems is to increase the quality of search. It means to provide related documents or decrease the number of unrelated documents as low as possible in the results of search. For this problem, CiteSeer proposed the ACI (Autonomous Citation Indexing) of the articles on the World Wide Web. A "citation index" indexes the links between articles that researchers make when they cite other articles. Citation indexes are very useful for a number of purposes, including literature search and analysis of the academic literature. For details of this work, references contained in academic articles are used to give credit to previous work in the literature and provide a link between the "citing" and "cited" articles. A citation index indexes the citations that an article makes, linking the articleswith the cited works. Citation indexes were originally designed mainly for information retrieval. The citation links allow navigating the literature in unique ways. Papers can be located independent of language, and words in thetitle, keywords or document. A citation index allows navigation backward in time (the list of cited articles) and forwardin time (which subsequent articles cite the current article?) But CiteSeer can not indexes the links between articles that researchers doesn't make. Because it indexes the links between articles that only researchers make when they cite other articles. Also, CiteSeer is not easy to scalability. Because CiteSeer can not indexes the links between articles that researchers doesn't make. All these problems make us orient for designing more effective search system. This paper shows a method that extracts subject and predicate per each sentence in documents. A document will be changed into the tabular form that extracted predicate checked value of possible subject and object. We make a hierarchical graph of a document using the table and then integrate graphs of documents. The graph of entire documents calculates the area of document as compared with integrated documents. We mark relation among the documents as compared with the area of documents. Also it proposes a method for structural integration of documents that retrieves documents from the graph. It makes that the user can find information easier. We compared the performance of the proposed approaches with lucene search engine using the formulas for ranking. As a result, the F.measure is about 60% and it is better as about 15%.

Surrogate Internet Shopping Malls: The Effects of Consumers' Perceived Risk and Product Evaluations on Country-of-Buying-Origin Image (망상대구점(网上代购店): 소비자감지풍험화산품평개대원산국형상적영향(消费者感知风险和产品评价对原产国形象的影响))

  • Lee, Hyun-Joung;Shin, So-Hyoun;Kim, Sang-Uk
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.20 no.2
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    • pp.208-218
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    • 2010
  • Internet has grown fast and become one of the most important retail channels now. Various types of Internet retailers, hereafter etailers, have been introduced so far and as one type of Internet shopping mall, 'surrogate Internet shopping mall' has been prosperous and attracting consumers in the domestic market. Surrogate Internet shopping mall is a unique type of etailer that globally purchases well-known brand goods that are not imported in the market, completes delivery in the favor of individual buyers, and collects fees for these specific services. The consumers, who are usually interested in purchasing high-end and unique but not eligible brands, have difficulties to purchase these items overseas directly from the retailers or brands in other countries due to worries of payment failure and no address available for their usually domestic only delivery. In Korea, both numbers of surrogate Internet shopping malls and the magnitude of sales have been growing rapidly up to more than 430 active malls and 500 billion Korean won in 2008 since the population of consumers who want this agent shopping service is also expending. This etail business concept is originated from 'surrogate-mediated purchase' and this type of shopping agent has existed in many different forms and also in wide ranges of context level for quite a long time. As marketers face their individual buyers' representatives instead of a direct contact with them in many occasions, the impact of surrogate shoppers on consumer's decision making has been enormously important and many scholars have explored various range of agent's impact on consumer's purchase decisions in marketing and psychology field. However, not much rigorous research in the Internet commerce has been conveyed yet. Moreover, since as one of the shopping agent surrogate Internet shopping malls specifically connect overseas brands or retailers to domestic consumers, one specific character of the mall's, image of surrogate buying country, where surrogate purchases are conducted in, may play an important role to form consumers' attitude and purchase intention toward products. Furthermore it also possibly affects various dimensions of perceived risk in consumer's information processing. However, though tremendous researches have been carried exploring the effects of diverse dimensions of country of origin, related studies in Internet context has been rarely executed. There have been some studies that prove the positive impact of country of origin on consumer's evaluations as one of information clues in product manufacture descriptions, yet studies detecting the relationship between country image of surrogate buying origin and product evaluations rarely undertaken regarding this specific mall type. Thus, the authors have found it well-worth investigating in this specific retail channel and explored systematic relationships among focal constructs and elaborated their different paths. The authors have proven that country image of surrogate buying origin in the mall, where surrogate malls purchase products in and brings them from for buyers, not only has a positive effect on consumers' product evaluations including attitude and purchase intention but also has a negative effect on all three dimensions of perceived risk: product-related risk, shipping-related risk, and post-purchase risk. Specifically among all the perceived risk, product-related risk which is arisen from high uncertainty of product performance is most affected (${\beta}$= -.30) by negative country image of surrogate buying origin, and also shipping-related risk (${\beta}$= -.18) and post-purchase risk (${\beta}$= -.15) get influenced in order. Its direct effects on product attitude (${\beta}$= .10) and purchase intention (${\beta}$= .14) are also secured. Each of perceived risk dimension is proven to have a negative effect on purchase intention through product attitude as a mediator (${\beta}$= -.57: product-related risk ${\rightarrow}$ product attitude; ${\beta}$= -.24: shipping-related risk ${\rightarrow}$ product attitude; ${\beta}$= -.44: post-purchase risk ${\rightarrow}$ product attitude) as well. From the additional analysis, the paths of consumers' information processing are shown to be different based on their levels of product knowledge. While novice consumers with low level of knowledge consider only perceived risk important, expert consumers with high level of knowledge take both the country image, where surrogate services are conducted in, and perceived risk seriously to build their attitudes and formulate decisions toward products more delicately and systematically, which is in line with previous studies. This study suggests several pieces of academic and practical advice. Precisely, country image of surrogate buying origin does affect on consumer's risk perceptions and behavioral consequences. Therefore a careful selection of surrogate buying origin is recommended. Furthermore, reducing consumers' risk level is required to blossom this new type of retail business whether its consumer are novices or experts. Additionally, since consumer take different paths of elaborating information based on their knowledge levels, sophisticated marketing approaches to each group of consumers are required. For novice buyers strong devices for risk mitigation are needed to induce them to form better attitudes and for experts selections of better and advanced countries as surrogate buying origins are advised while endorsement strategy for the site might work as a reliable information clue to all consumers to mitigate the barriers to purchase goods online. The authors have also explained that the study suffers from some limitations, including generalizability. In future studies, tests of and comparisons among different types of etailers with relevant constructs are recommended to broaden the findings.

An Analysis of the Moderating Effects of User Ability on the Acceptance of an Internet Shopping Mall (인터넷 쇼핑몰 수용에 있어 사용자 능력의 조절효과 분석)

  • Suh, Kun-Soo
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.18 no.4
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    • pp.27-55
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    • 2008
  • Due to the increasing and intensifying competition in the Internet shopping market, it has been recognized as very important to develop an effective policy and strategy for acquiring loyal customers. For this reason, web site designers need to know if a new Internet shopping mall(ISM) will be accepted. Researchers have been working on identifying factors for explaining and predicting user acceptance of an ISM. Some studies, however, revealed inconsistent findings on the antecedents of user acceptance of a website. Lack of consideration for individual differences in user ability is believed to be one of the key reasons for the mixed findings. The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and several studies have suggested that individual differences in ability plays an moderating role on the relationship between the antecedents and user acceptance. Despite the critical role of user ability, little research has examined the role of user ability in the Internet shopping mall context. The purpose of this study is to develop a user acceptance model that consider the moderating role of user ability in the context of Internet shopping. This study was initiated to see the ability of the technology acceptance model(TAM) to explain the acceptance of a specific ISM. According to TAM. which is one of the most influential models for explaining user acceptance of IT, an intention to use IT is determined by usefulness and ease of use. Given that interaction between user and website takes place through web interface, the decisions to accept and continue using an ISM depend on these beliefs. However, TAM neglects to consider the fact that many users would not stick to an ISM until they trust it although they may think it useful and easy to use. The importance of trust for user acceptance of ISM has been raised by the relational views. The relational view emphasizes the trust-building process between the user and ISM, and user's trust on the website is a major determinant of user acceptance. The proposed model extends and integrates the TAM and relational views on user acceptance of ISM by incorporating usefulness, ease of use, and trust. User acceptance is defined as a user's intention to reuse a specific ISM. And user ability is introduced into the model as moderating variable. Here, the user ability is defined as a degree of experiences, knowledge and skills regarding Internet shopping sites. The research model proposes that the ease of use, usefulness and trust of ISM are key determinants of user acceptance. In addition, this paper hypothesizes that the effects of the antecedents(i.e., ease of use, usefulness, and trust) on user acceptance may differ among users. In particular, this paper proposes a moderating effect of a user's ability on the relationship between antecedents with user's intention to reuse. The research model with eleven hypotheses was derived and tested through a survey that involved 470 university students. For each research variable, this paper used measurement items recognized for reliability and widely used in previous research. We slightly modified some items proper to the research context. The reliability and validity of the research variables were tested using the Crobnach's alpha and internal consistency reliability (ICR) values, standard factor loadings of the confirmative factor analysis, and average variance extracted (AVE) values. A LISREL method was used to test the suitability of the research model and its relating six hypotheses. Key findings of the results are summarized in the following. First, TAM's two constructs, ease of use and usefulness directly affect user acceptance. In addition, ease of use indirectly influences user acceptance by affecting trust. This implies that users tend to trust a shopping site and visit repeatedly when they perceive a specific ISM easy to use. Accordingly, designing a shopping site that allows users to navigate with heuristic and minimal clicks for finding information and products within the site is important for improving the site's trust and acceptance. Usefulness, however, was not found to influence trust. Second, among the three belief constructs(ease of use, usefulness, and trust), trust was empirically supported as the most important determinants of user acceptance. This implies that users require trustworthiness from an Internet shopping site to be repeat visitors of an ISM. Providing a sense of safety and eliminating the anxiety of online shoppers in relation to privacy, security, delivery, and product returns are critically important conditions for acquiring repeat visitors. Hence, in addition to usefulness and ease of use as in TAM, trust should be a fundamental determinants of user acceptance in the context of internet shopping. Third, the user's ability on using an Internet shopping site played a moderating role. For users with low ability, ease of use was found to be a more important factors in deciding to reuse the shopping mall, whereas usefulness and trust had more effects on users with high ability. Applying the EML theory to these findings, we can suggest that experienced and knowledgeable ISM users tend to elaborate on such usefulness aspects as efficient and effective shopping performance and trust factors as ability, benevolence, integrity, and predictability of a shopping site before they become repeat visitors of the site. In contrast, novice users tend to rely on the low elaborating features, such as the perceived ease of use. The existence of moderating effects suggests the fact that different individuals evaluate an ISM from different perspectives. The expert users are more interested in the outcome of the visit(usefulness) and trustworthiness(trust) than those novice visitors. The latter evaluate the ISM in a more superficial manner focusing on the novelty of the site and on other instrumental beliefs(ease of use). This is consistent with the insights proposed by the Heuristic-Systematic model. According to the Heuristic-Systematic model. a users act on the principle of minimum effort. Thus, the user considers an ISM heuristically, focusing on those aspects that are easy to process and evaluate(ease of use). When the user has sufficient experience and skills, the user will change to systematic processing, where they will evaluate more complex aspects of the site(its usefulness and trustworthiness). This implies that an ISM has to provide a minimum level of ease of use to make it possible for a user to evaluate its usefulness and trustworthiness. Ease of use is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the acceptance and use of an ISM. Overall, the empirical results generally support the proposed model and identify the moderating effect of the effects of user ability. More detailed interpretations and implications of the findings are discussed. The limitations of this study are also discussed to provide directions for future research.

Study on 3D Printer Suitable for Character Merchandise Production Training (캐릭터 상품 제작 교육에 적합한 3D프린터 연구)

  • Kwon, Dong-Hyun
    • Cartoon and Animation Studies
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    • s.41
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    • pp.455-486
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    • 2015
  • The 3D printing technology, which started from the patent registration in 1986, was a technology that did not attract attention other than from some companies, due to the lack of awareness at the time. However, today, as expiring patents are appearing after the passage of 20 years, the price of 3D printers have decreased to the level of allowing purchase by individuals and the technology is attracting attention from industries, in addition to the general public, such as by naturally accepting 3D and to share 3D data, based on the generalization of online information exchange and improvement of computer performance. The production capability of 3D printers, which is based on digital data enabling digital transmission and revision and supplementation or production manufacturing not requiring molding, may provide a groundbreaking change to the process of manufacturing, and may attain the same effect in the character merchandise sector. Using a 3D printer is becoming a necessity in various figure merchandise productions which are in the forefront of the kidult culture that is recently gaining attention, and when predicting the demand by the industrial sites related to such character merchandise and when considering the more inexpensive price due to the expiration of patents and sharing of technology, expanding opportunities and sectors of employment and cultivating manpower that are able to engage in further creative work seems as a must, by introducing education courses cultivating manpower that can utilize 3D printers at the education field. However, there are limits in the information that can be obtained when seeking to introduce 3D printers in school education. Because the press or information media only mentions general information, such as the growth of the industrial size or prosperous future value of 3D printers, the research level of the academic world also remains at the level of organizing contents in an introductory level, such as by analyzing data on industrial size, analyzing the applicable scope in the industry, or introducing the printing technology. Such lack of information gives rise to problems at the education site. There would be no choice but to incur temporal and opportunity expenses, since the technology would only be able to be used after going through trials and errors, by first introducing the technology without examining the actual information, such as through comparing the strengths and weaknesses. In particular, if an expensive equipment introduced does not suit the features of school education, the loss costs would be significant. This research targeted general users without a technology-related basis, instead of specialists. By comparing the strengths and weaknesses and analyzing the problems and matters requiring notice upon use, pursuant to the representative technologies, instead of merely introducing the 3D printer technology as had been done previously, this research sought to explain the types of features that a 3D printer should have, in particular, when required in education relating to the development of figure merchandise as an optional cultural contents at cartoon-related departments, and sought to provide information that can be of practical help when seeking to provide education using 3D printers in the future. In the main body, the technologies were explained by making a classification based on a new perspective, such as the buttress method, types of materials, two-dimensional printing method, and three-dimensional printing method. The reason for selecting such different classification method was to easily allow mutual comparison of the practical problems upon use. In conclusion, the most suitable 3D printer was selected as the printer in the FDM method, which is comparatively cheap and requires low repair and maintenance cost and low materials expenses, although rather insufficient in the quality of outputs, and a recommendation was made, in addition, to select an entity that is supportive in providing technical support.