• Title/Summary/Keyword: Qualitative approach

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A Phenomenological Study for Hospitalized Elderly무s Powerlessness (병원에 입원한 노인의 무력감 현상 연구)

  • 최영희;김경은
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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    • v.26 no.1
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    • pp.223-247
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    • 1996
  • This study was done to provide information which would lead to nursing care of the elderly being more holistically through an understanding of the phenomena of powerlessness based on the lived experience of powerlessness by the elderly, the meaning the elderly give to such phenomena, and what essence of powerlessness is. The methodology used in this study was Max Van Manen's phenomenological method based on the philosophy of Merleu-Ponty and a concerted approach was realized through the 11 steps suggested in the Van Manen's method. Data collection was done from March 2, 1995 to December 30, 1995. The subjects for this study were four elderly persons who lived with their families and who were over 60 years of age. Data were collected about the lived experience of the elderly, this researcher's experience of powerlessness, the linguistic meaning of powerlessness, idioms of the word or a feeling of powerlessness, and descriptions of powerlessness in the elderly as they appeared in the literature, are works, and phenomenological literature. All data were used to provide insights into the phenomena of powerlessness. Data about the experience of powerlessness by the elderly were collected through open interviews, participation, and observation. In the analysis of the theme of this study, the aspects of the theme, powerlessness in the elderly were clarified, thereby abstracting and finding meaningful statements by the elderly about their feeling of powerlessness, and then those significant statements were expressed as linguistic transformations. The summarized findings from the study are as follows : 1. Five meanings of powerlessness in the elderly were defined. 〈weakness〉, 〈dependence〉, 〈frustration〉, 〈worthlessness〉 and 〈giving up〉. 2. 〈Weakness〉 means that the elderly experience, not only their aging but also, their becoming weak and the loss of physical function frequently caused by diseases. 〈Dependence〉 means that the elderly experience dependence without any influence from the surroundings and that elderly patients who are hospitalized lose their autonomy, follow entirely their doctor's prescriptions, use aid equipment and directions, and depend only on those things. 〈Frustration〉 means that the elderly experience the loss of their roles from the past, there by feeling that there is no work for them to do anymore and therefore feel unable to do anything. 〈Worthlessness〉 means that the elderly experience the feeling of losing their social roles from the past, having no financial ability, thereby being a burden to their children or the people around them, and therefore regarding themselves useless. 〈Giving up〉 means that the elderly experience the feeling of closeness to death in the final stage of their lifetime, lose hope to be healed from their disease, and recognize the incontrollability of their own body. 3. From a general view of the meaning of the theme the powerlessness in the elderly-the most essential meaning of the theme is the 〈sense of loss〉. For the elderly are experiencing a sense of loss in the situation of being elderly and therefore being often hospitalized. Brief definitions of the five phenomena could be 〈weakness〉 meaning the loss of physical strength, 〈dependence〉 the loss of mentality caused by disease and hospitalization, 〈frustration〉 and 〈worthlessness〉 the loss of social performance caused by the loss of social functions from the past, and lastly 〈giving up〉 the loss of the controllability of such situations of aging and suffering disease. In light of the discussion above, it is understandable that the hospitalized elderly experience powerlessness not only as it related to their diseases but also to their normal aging, and this related to other characteristics of being elderly means that the 〈sense of loss〉 is the very essence of their powerlessness. 4. While most cases are of the normal elderly experiencing powerlessness in relation to their social network, cases of elderly who are hospitalized are of those experiencing powerlessness in relation to the loss of their physical desire. 5. The findings discussed above can serve as guidelines for nurses who take care of the ill elderly who are hospitalized and that can provide cues to appropriate nursing service, recognizing that the subjective experience of the objective age of the elderly is so important. Nurses can provide highly qualitative nursing service, based on their deep understanding of the suffering of the elderly due to feelings of powerlessness.

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A Comparative Case Study on the Adaptation Process of Advanced Information Technology: A Grounded Theory Approach for the Appropriation Process (신기술 사용 과정에 관한 비교 사례 연구: 기술 전유 과정의 근거이론적 접근)

  • Choi, Hee-Jae;Lee, Zoon-Ky
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.19 no.3
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    • pp.99-124
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    • 2009
  • Many firms in Korea have adopted and used advanced information technology in an effort to boost efficiency. The process of adapting to the new technology, at the same time, can vary from one firm to another. As such, this research focuses on several relevant factors, especially the roles of social interaction as a key variable that influences the technology adaptation process and the outcomes. Thus far, how a firm goes through the adaptation process to the new technology has not been yet fully explored. Previous studies on changes undergone by a firm or an organization due to information technology have been pursued from various theoretical points of views, evolved from technological and institutional views to an integrated social technology views. The technology adaptation process has been understood to be something that evolves over time and has been regarded as cycles between misalignments and alignments, gradually approaching the stable aligned state. The adaptation process of the new technology was defined as "appropriation" process according to Poole and DeSanctis (1994). They suggested that this process is not automatically determined by the technology design itself. Rather, people actively select how technology structures should be used; accordingly, adoption practices vary. But concepts of the appropriation process in these studies are not accurate while suggested propositions are not clear enough to apply in practice. Furthermore, these studies do not substantially suggest which factors are changed during the appropriation process and what should be done to bring about effective outcomes. Therefore, research objectives of this study lie in finding causes for the difference in ways in which advanced information technology has been used and adopted among organizations. The study also aims to explore how a firm's interaction with social as well as technological factors affects differently in resulting organizational changes. Detail objectives of this study are as follows. First, this paper primarily focuses on the appropriation process of advanced information technology in the long run, and we look into reasons for the diverse types of the usage. Second, this study is to categorize each phases in the appropriation process and make clear what changes occur and how they are evolved during each phase. Third, this study is to suggest the guidelines to determine which strategies are needed in an individual, group and organizational level. For this, a substantially grounded theory that can be applied to organizational practice has been developed from a longitudinal comparative case study. For these objectives, the technology appropriation process was explored based on Structuration Theory by Giddens (1984), Orlikoski and Robey (1991) and Adaptive Structuration Theory by Poole and DeSanctis (1994), which are examples of social technology views on organizational change by technology. Data have been obtained from interviews, observations of medical treatment task, and questionnaires administered to group members who use the technology. Data coding was executed in three steps following the grounded theory approach. First of all, concepts and categories were developed from interviews and observation data in open coding. Next, in axial coding, we related categories to subcategorize along the lines of their properties and dimensions through the paradigm model. Finally, the grounded theory about the appropriation process was developed through the conditional/consequential matrix in selective coding. In this study eight hypotheses about the adaptation process have been clearly articulated. Also, we found that the appropriation process involves through three phases, namely, "direct appropriation," "cooperate with related structures," and "interpret and make judgments." The higher phases of appropriation move, the more users represent various types of instrumental use and attitude. Moreover, the previous structures like "knowledge and experience," "belief that other members know and accept the use of technology," "horizontal communication," and "embodiment of opinion collection process" are evolved to higher degrees in their dimensions of property. Furthermore, users continuously create new spirits and structures, while removing some of the previous ones at the same time. Thus, from longitudinal view, faithful and unfaithful appropriation methods appear recursively, but gradually faithful appropriation takes over the other. In other words, the concept of spirits and structures has been changed in the adaptation process over time for the purpose of alignment between the task and other structures. These findings call for a revised or extended model of structural adaptation in IS (Information Systems) literature now that the vague adaptation process in previous studies has been clarified through the in-depth qualitative study, identifying each phrase with accuracy. In addition, based on these results some guidelines can be set up to help determine which strategies are needed in an individual, group, and organizational level for the purpose of effective technology appropriation. In practice, managers can focus on the changes of spirits and elevation of the structural dimension to achieve effective technology use.

Design Evaluation Model Based on Consumer Values: Three-step Approach from Product Attributes, Perceived Attributes, to Consumer Values (소비자 가치기반 디자인 평가 모형: 제품 속성, 인지 속성, 소비자 가치의 3단계 접근)

  • Kim, Keon-Woo;Park, Do-Hyung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.23 no.4
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    • pp.57-76
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    • 2017
  • Recently, consumer needs are diversifying as information technologies are evolving rapidly. A lot of IT devices such as smart phones and tablet PCs are launching following the trend of information technology. While IT devices focused on the technical advance and improvement a few years ago, the situation is changed now. There is no difference in functional aspects, so companies are trying to differentiate IT devices in terms of appearance design. Consumers also consider design as being a more important factor in the decision-making of smart phones. Smart phones have become a fashion items, revealing consumers' own characteristics and personality. As the design and appearance of the smartphone become important things, it is necessary to examine consumer values from the design and appearance of IT devices. Furthermore, it is crucial to clarify the mechanisms of consumers' design evaluation and develop the design evaluation model based on the mechanism. Since the influence of design gets continuously strong, various and many studies related to design were carried out. These studies can classify three main streams. The first stream focuses on the role of design from the perspective of marketing and communication. The second one is the studies to find out an effective and appealing design from the perspective of industrial design. The last one is to examine the consumer values created by a product design, which means consumers' perception or feeling when they look and feel it. These numerous studies somewhat have dealt with consumer values, but they do not include product attributes, or do not cover the whole process and mechanism from product attributes to consumer values. In this study, we try to develop the holistic design evaluation model based on consumer values based on three-step approach from product attributes, perceived attributes, to consumer values. Product attributes means the real and physical characteristics each smart phone has. They consist of bezel, length, width, thickness, weight and curvature. Perceived attributes are derived from consumers' perception on product attributes. We consider perceived size of device, perceived size of display, perceived thickness, perceived weight, perceived bezel (top - bottom / left - right side), perceived curvature of edge, perceived curvature of back side, gap of each part, perceived gloss and perceived screen ratio. They are factorized into six clusters named as 'Size,' 'Slimness,' 'No-Frame,' 'Roundness,' 'Screen Ratio,' and 'Looseness.' We conducted qualitative research to find out consumer values, which are categorized into two: look and feel values. We identified the values named as 'Silhouette,' 'Neatness,' 'Attractiveness,' 'Polishing,' 'Innovativeness,' 'Professionalism,' 'Intellectualness,' 'Individuality,' and 'Distinctiveness' in terms of look values. Also, we identifies 'Stability,' 'Comfortableness,' 'Grip,' 'Solidity,' 'Non-fragility,' and 'Smoothness' in terms of feel values. They are factorized into five key values: 'Sleek Value,' 'Professional Value,' 'Unique Value,' 'Comfortable Value,' and 'Solid Value.' Finally, we developed the holistic design evaluation model by analyzing each relationship from product attributes, perceived attributes, to consumer values. This study has several theoretical and practical contributions. First, we found consumer values in terms of design evaluation and implicit chain relationship from the objective and physical characteristics to the subjective and mental evaluation. That is, the model explains the mechanism of design evaluation in consumer minds. Second, we suggest a general design evaluation process from product attributes, perceived attributes to consumer values. It is an adaptable methodology not only smart phone but also other IT products. Practically, this model can support the decision-making when companies initiative new product development. It can help product designers focus on their capacities with limited resources. Moreover, if its model combined with machine learning collecting consumers' purchasing data, most preferred values, sales data, etc., it will be able to evolve intelligent design decision support system.

Ethnosientific Approach of Health Practice in Korea (한국인의 건강관행에 대한 민속과학적 접근)

  • 김귀분;최연희
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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    • v.21 no.3
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    • pp.396-417
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    • 1991
  • In order that nursing care an essential quality of nursing practice be acceptable and satisfying, it is necessary that client's culture be respected and that nursing practice be appropriate to that culture. Since cultural elements are an important influence on health practices and life patterns related to medical treatment, recovery from and prevention of disease, nurses need to have an understanding and knowledge of social and cultural phenomena to aid in the planning of nursing interventions. To understand the health practices surrounding health and illness, the health beliefs and practices of both folk and professional healing systems should be ascertained. Cultural data are required to provide care of high quality to clients and to reduce possible conflict between the client and the nurse. It is nursing's goal to provide clients from various cultures with quality nursing care which is satisfying and valuable. The problem addressed by this study was to identify Korean health practices which would contribute to the planning of professional caring practice with the culture : ultimately this study was intended to make a contribution to the development of the science of nursing. The concrete objectives of this study were ; 1) to identify Korean health practices, 2) to interpret the identitial health practices through traditional cultural thought, and 3) to compare the Korean health practices with those of other cultures. The investigator used the ethnosceintific approach outlined by spradly in a qualitative study. To discover ancestral wisdom and knowledge related to traditional health practeces, the subjects of this study were selected from residents of a small rural mountain village in south west Korea, a place considered to be maintaining and transmitting the traditional culture in a relatively well -preserved state because of being isolated from the modern world. The number of subjects was 18, aged 71 to 89. Research data were collected from January 8 to March 31, 1990. Five categories of health practices were identified : “Manage one's own mind”, “Moderation in all thing”, “Live in accord with nature”, “Live in mutuality with others”, and “Live to the best of one's ability”. Values derived from these ways of thinking from Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism help fashion a traditional way of life, examplified by the saying “Benifience to all”. Korean thought and philosophy is influenced primerily by Confucianism, Confucian principles of ethics, embedded deeply in the peoples' minds, form the idea that “heaven and human being are intimately united” based on concept that “heaven is, so to speak, reason”. Twoe Gae's theory of existential subjectivity develops the concept of self which is the basis of the spirit of reverence in modern Confucian philosophy. The human md is granted from heaven out of the idea of matter, and what control the mind is the spirit of reverence. Hence the idea of “The primacy of the mind" and provided that one should control one's own mind. The precepts of duty to parents, respect for elders and worship of ancestors, and moderation in all behavior put a restraint on life which directed that one live earnestly according to Nature's laws with their neighbors. Not only Confucianism, but also Buddism and Taoism have had an important effect upon these patterns of ideas. When compared with western culture, Korean health practices tend to be more inclusive, abstract and intuitive while westerner health practices found to be mere concrete, practical and personal. Values and beliefs based and pragmatism and existentialism infuence western civilization, Ethical values may be founded on utilitarianism, which considers what is good for the persons in their circumstances as the basis of conduct and takes a serious view of their practical lives including human aspirations rather than an absolute truth. These philosophical and ethical ideas are foundations for health practices related to active, practical and progressive attitudes. This study should be enable nursing not only to understand clients as reflections of the traditional culture when planning nursing practice, but to dovelop health education corresponding to cultural requiments for the purpose of protection against disease and improvement of health, and thus promote sound health practice. Eventually it is hoped that through these processes quality nursing care as the central idea of the science of nursing will be achieved.

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Exploring Changes in Science PCK Characteristics through a Family Resemblance Approach (가족유사성 접근을 통한 과학 PCK 변화 탐색)

  • Kwak, Youngsun
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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    • v.15 no.2
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    • pp.235-248
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    • 2022
  • With the changes in the future educational environment, such as the rapid decline of the school-age population and the expansion of students' choice of curriculum, changes are also required in PCK, the expertise of science teachers. In other words, the categories constituting the existing 'consensus-PCK' and the characteristics of 'science PCK' are not fixed, so more categories and characteristics can be added. The purpose of this study is to explore the potential area of science PCK required to cope with changes in the future educational environment in the form of 'Family Resemblance Science PCK (Family Resemblance-PCK, hereafter)' through Wittgenstein's family resemblance approach. For this purpose, in-depth interviews were conducted with three focus groups. In the focus group in-depth interview, participants discussed how the science PCK required for science teachers in future schools in 2030-2045 will change due to changes in the future society and educational environment. Qualitative analysis was performed based on the in-depth interview, and semantic network analysis was performed on the in-depth interview text to analyze the characteristics of 'Family Resemblance-PCK' differentiated from the existing 'consensus-PCK'. In results, the characteristics of Family Resemblance-PCK, which are newly requested along with changes in role expectations of science teachers, were examined by PCK area. As a result of semantic network analysis of Family Resemblance-PCK, it was found that Family Resemblance-PCK expands its boundaries from the existing consensus-PCK, which is the starting point, and new PCK elements were added. Looking at the aspects of Family Resemblance-PCK, [AI-Convergence Knowledge-Contents-Digital], [Community-Network-Human Resources-Relationships], [Technology-Exploration-Virtual Reality-Research], [Self-Directed Learning-Collaboration-Community], etc., form a distinct network cluster, and it is expected that future science teacher expertise will be formed and strengthened around these PCK areas. Based on the research results, changes in the professionalism of science teachers in future schools and countermeasures were proposed as a conclusion.

Measuring Consumer-Brand Relationship Quality (소비자-브랜드 관계 품질 측정에 관한 연구)

  • Kang, Myung-Soo;Kim, Byoung-Jai;Shin, Jong-Chil
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.111-131
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    • 2007
  • As a brand becomes a core asset in creating a corporation's value, brand marketing has become one of core strategies that corporations pursue. Recently, for customer relationship management, possession and consumption of goods were centered on brand for the management. Thus, management related to this matter was developed. The main reason of the increased interest on the relationship between the brand and the consumer is due to acquisition of individual consumers and development of relationship with those consumers. Along with the development of relationship, a corporation is able to establish long-term relationships. This has become a competitive advantage for the corporation. All of these processes became the strategic assets of corporations. The importance and the increase of interest of a brand have also become a big issue academically. Brand equity, brand extension, brand identity, brand relationship, and brand community are the results derived from the interest of a brand. More specifically, in marketing, the study of brands has been led to the study of factors related to building of powerful brands and the process of building the brand. Recently, studies concentrated primarily on the consumer-brand relationship. The reason is that brand loyalty can not explain the dynamic quality aspects of loyalty, the consumer-brand relationship building process, and especially interactions between the brands and the consumers. In the studies of consumer-brand relationship, a brand is not just limited to possession or consumption objectives, but rather conceptualized as partners. Most of the studies from the past concentrated on the results of qualitative analysis of consumer-brand relationship to show the depth and width of the performance of consumer-brand relationship. Studies in Korea have been the same. Recently, studies of consumer-brand relationship started to concentrate on quantitative analysis rather than qualitative analysis or even go further with quantitative analysis to show effecting factors of consumer-brand relationship. Studies of new quantitative approaches show the possibilities of using the results as a new concept of viewing consumer-brand relationship and possibilities of applying these new concepts on marketing. Studies of consumer-brand relationship with quantitative approach already exist, but none of them include sub-dimensions of consumer-brand relationship, which presents theoretical proofs for measurement. In other words, most studies add up or average out the sub-dimensions of consumer-brand relationship. However, to do these kind of studies, precondition of sub-dimensions being in identical constructs is necessary. Therefore, most of the studies from the past do not meet conditions of sub-dimensions being as one dimension construct. From this, we question the validity of past studies and their limits. The main purpose of this paper is to overcome the limits shown from the past studies by practical use of previous studies on sub-dimensions in a one-dimensional construct (Naver & Slater, 1990; Cronin & Taylor, 1992; Chang & Chen, 1998). In this study, two arbitrary groups were classified to evaluate reliability of the measurements and reliability analyses were pursued on each group. For convergent validity, correlations, Cronbach's, one-factor solution exploratory analysis were used. For discriminant validity correlation of consumer-brand relationship was compared with that of an involvement, which is a similar concept with consumer-based relationship. It also indicated dependent correlations by Cohen and Cohen (1975, p.35) and results showed that it was different constructs from 6 sub-dimensions of consumer-brand relationship. Through the results of studies mentioned above, we were able to finalize that sub-dimensions of consumer-brand relationship can viewed from one-dimensional constructs. This means that the one-dimensional construct of consumer-brand relationship can be viewed with reliability and validity. The result of this research is theoretically meaningful in that it assumes consumer-brand relationship in a one-dimensional construct and provides the basis of methodologies which are previously preformed. It is thought that this research also provides the possibility of new research on consumer-brand relationship in that it gives root to the fact that it is possible to manipulate one-dimensional constructs consisting of consumer-brand relationship. In the case of previous research on consumer-brand relationship, consumer-brand relationship is classified into several types on the basis of components consisting of consumer-brand relationship and a number of studies have been performed with priority given to the types. However, as we can possibly manipulate a one-dimensional construct through this research, it is expected that various studies which make the level or strength of consumer-brand relationship practical application of construct will be performed, and not research focused on separate types of consumer-brand relationship. Additionally, we have the theoretical basis of probability in which to manipulate the consumer-brand relationship with one-dimensional constructs. It is anticipated that studies using this construct, which is consumer-brand relationship, practical use of dependent variables, parameters, mediators, and so on, will be performed.

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How to improve the accuracy of recommendation systems: Combining ratings and review texts sentiment scores (평점과 리뷰 텍스트 감성분석을 결합한 추천시스템 향상 방안 연구)

  • Hyun, Jiyeon;Ryu, Sangyi;Lee, Sang-Yong Tom
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.25 no.1
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    • pp.219-239
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    • 2019
  • As the importance of providing customized services to individuals becomes important, researches on personalized recommendation systems are constantly being carried out. Collaborative filtering is one of the most popular systems in academia and industry. However, there exists limitation in a sense that recommendations were mostly based on quantitative information such as users' ratings, which made the accuracy be lowered. To solve these problems, many studies have been actively attempted to improve the performance of the recommendation system by using other information besides the quantitative information. Good examples are the usages of the sentiment analysis on customer review text data. Nevertheless, the existing research has not directly combined the results of the sentiment analysis and quantitative rating scores in the recommendation system. Therefore, this study aims to reflect the sentiments shown in the reviews into the rating scores. In other words, we propose a new algorithm that can directly convert the user 's own review into the empirically quantitative information and reflect it directly to the recommendation system. To do this, we needed to quantify users' reviews, which were originally qualitative information. In this study, sentiment score was calculated through sentiment analysis technique of text mining. The data was targeted for movie review. Based on the data, a domain specific sentiment dictionary is constructed for the movie reviews. Regression analysis was used as a method to construct sentiment dictionary. Each positive / negative dictionary was constructed using Lasso regression, Ridge regression, and ElasticNet methods. Based on this constructed sentiment dictionary, the accuracy was verified through confusion matrix. The accuracy of the Lasso based dictionary was 70%, the accuracy of the Ridge based dictionary was 79%, and that of the ElasticNet (${\alpha}=0.3$) was 83%. Therefore, in this study, the sentiment score of the review is calculated based on the dictionary of the ElasticNet method. It was combined with a rating to create a new rating. In this paper, we show that the collaborative filtering that reflects sentiment scores of user review is superior to the traditional method that only considers the existing rating. In order to show that the proposed algorithm is based on memory-based user collaboration filtering, item-based collaborative filtering and model based matrix factorization SVD, and SVD ++. Based on the above algorithm, the mean absolute error (MAE) and the root mean square error (RMSE) are calculated to evaluate the recommendation system with a score that combines sentiment scores with a system that only considers scores. When the evaluation index was MAE, it was improved by 0.059 for UBCF, 0.0862 for IBCF, 0.1012 for SVD and 0.188 for SVD ++. When the evaluation index is RMSE, UBCF is 0.0431, IBCF is 0.0882, SVD is 0.1103, and SVD ++ is 0.1756. As a result, it can be seen that the prediction performance of the evaluation point reflecting the sentiment score proposed in this paper is superior to that of the conventional evaluation method. In other words, in this paper, it is confirmed that the collaborative filtering that reflects the sentiment score of the user review shows superior accuracy as compared with the conventional type of collaborative filtering that only considers the quantitative score. We then attempted paired t-test validation to ensure that the proposed model was a better approach and concluded that the proposed model is better. In this study, to overcome limitations of previous researches that judge user's sentiment only by quantitative rating score, the review was numerically calculated and a user's opinion was more refined and considered into the recommendation system to improve the accuracy. The findings of this study have managerial implications to recommendation system developers who need to consider both quantitative information and qualitative information it is expect. The way of constructing the combined system in this paper might be directly used by the developers.

Research Framework for International Franchising (국제프랜차이징 연구요소 및 연구방향)

  • Kim, Ju-Young;Lim, Young-Kyun;Shim, Jae-Duck
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.4
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    • pp.61-118
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    • 2008
  • The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.

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A Study on the Resilience Process of Persons with Disabilities (중도장애인의 레질리언스(Resilience) 과정에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Mi-Ok
    • Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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    • v.60 no.2
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    • pp.99-129
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    • 2008
  • This study analyzed the resilience process of persons with disabilities using the grounded theory approach. To conduct this study, the researcher conducted in-depth interviews with 8 persons with disabilities. In data analysis, this study identified 393 concepts on the resilience process of persons with disabilities and the concepts were categorized into 45 sub-categories and 18 primary categories. In the paradigm model on the resilience process of persons with disabilities, it was identified that casual conditions included 'unawareness of disability before being disability', 'extreme pain', 'repressing psychological pain', and the contingent conditions were 'dis-empowerment by staying in home', 'isolation by himself with difficulty in accepting the disability', 'experience of frustration from social barriers with prejudice against persons with disabilities'. Also, it was identified that the resilience process could be dependent on the type and the degree of the disability, the gender, and the length of time being disability. In spite of the casual and contingent conditions, the central way in which persons with disabilities could acquire resilience was identified as 'enhancement of the power of positive thinking'. The control conditions which accelerate or retard central phenomenon were 'the awareness of not being alone through family, friends, neighborhood and the social system' externally and 'finding purpose in life through religion and help from other persons with disabilities', internally. The action/interactional sequences enhanced the efforts, self searching and active acting, and as a result, persons with disabilities could find comfort in life, participate in society and change the perspective of disability in society. The core categories of resilience process in persons with disabilities were a belief in affirmation and choice of life by initiative. In the process analysis, stages developed in the following: 'pain', 'strangeness', 'reflection', 'daily life'. This stage was more continuous and causal than discrete and complete. In this process, the types of resilience of persons with disabilities are divided into 'existence reflection', 'course development', 'implicit endeavor', and 'active execution'. This study showed the details of the paradigm models, the process and types with an in-depth understanding of the resilience process of persons with disabilities using grounded theory as well as theory construction and policy and clinical involvement on the study of persons with disabilities.

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The Effect of Expert Reviews on Consumer Product Evaluations: A Text Mining Approach (전문가 제품 후기가 소비자 제품 평가에 미치는 영향: 텍스트마이닝 분석을 중심으로)

  • Kang, Taeyoung;Park, Do-Hyung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.22 no.1
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    • pp.63-82
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    • 2016
  • Individuals gather information online to resolve problems in their daily lives and make various decisions about the purchase of products or services. With the revolutionary development of information technology, Web 2.0 has allowed more people to easily generate and use online reviews such that the volume of information is rapidly increasing, and the usefulness and significance of analyzing the unstructured data have also increased. This paper presents an analysis on the lexical features of expert product reviews to determine their influence on consumers' purchasing decisions. The focus was on how unstructured data can be organized and used in diverse contexts through text mining. In addition, diverse lexical features of expert reviews of contents provided by a third-party review site were extracted and defined. Expert reviews are defined as evaluations by people who have expert knowledge about specific products or services in newspapers or magazines; this type of review is also called a critic review. Consumers who purchased products before the widespread use of the Internet were able to access expert reviews through newspapers or magazines; thus, they were not able to access many of them. Recently, however, major media also now provide online services so that people can more easily and affordably access expert reviews compared to the past. The reason why diverse reviews from experts in several fields are important is that there is an information asymmetry where some information is not shared among consumers and sellers. The information asymmetry can be resolved with information provided by third parties with expertise to consumers. Then, consumers can read expert reviews and make purchasing decisions by considering the abundant information on products or services. Therefore, expert reviews play an important role in consumers' purchasing decisions and the performance of companies across diverse industries. If the influence of qualitative data such as reviews or assessment after the purchase of products can be separately identified from the quantitative data resources, such as the actual quality of products or price, it is possible to identify which aspects of product reviews hamper or promote product sales. Previous studies have focused on the characteristics of the experts themselves, such as the expertise and credibility of sources regarding expert reviews; however, these studies did not suggest the influence of the linguistic features of experts' product reviews on consumers' overall evaluation. However, this study focused on experts' recommendations and evaluations to reveal the lexical features of expert reviews and whether such features influence consumers' overall evaluations and purchasing decisions. Real expert product reviews were analyzed based on the suggested methodology, and five lexical features of expert reviews were ultimately determined. Specifically, the "review depth" (i.e., degree of detail of the expert's product analysis), and "lack of assurance" (i.e., degree of confidence that the expert has in the evaluation) have statistically significant effects on consumers' product evaluations. In contrast, the "positive polarity" (i.e., the degree of positivity of an expert's evaluations) has an insignificant effect, while the "negative polarity" (i.e., the degree of negativity of an expert's evaluations) has a significant negative effect on consumers' product evaluations. Finally, the "social orientation" (i.e., the degree of how many social expressions experts include in their reviews) does not have a significant effect on consumers' product evaluations. In summary, the lexical properties of the product reviews were defined according to each relevant factor. Then, the influence of each linguistic factor of expert reviews on the consumers' final evaluations was tested. In addition, a test was performed on whether each linguistic factor influencing consumers' product evaluations differs depending on the lexical features. The results of these analyses should provide guidelines on how individuals process massive volumes of unstructured data depending on lexical features in various contexts and how companies can use this mechanism from their perspective. This paper provides several theoretical and practical contributions, such as the proposal of a new methodology and its application to real data.