• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.39-49
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• 2013

Purpose - This study attempts to examine the underlying dimensions of service quality (tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy) for low-cost carriers. It subsequently seeks to determine the effect of the relationships of the dimensions of service quality, airline image, and behavioral intentions on airline services to provide adequate basic information and attributes for developing differentiated and competitive service marketing strategies. Research design, data, and methodology - The survey for this study was conducted on patrons with low-cost carrier boarding experiences in districts near universities and central businesses of Seoul and Busan from 5/10/2012 to 16/10/2012. Out of 346 questionnaires, 20 questionnaires with missing data and insincere answers were excluded for this study. Collected data were processed using SPSS 18.0, and the hypothesis was verified by analyzing the structural equation model with Lisrel 8.54. First, the frequency analysis was conducted to identify universal characteristics. Second, the exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis were conducted to identify the accuracy of the variable measurements of the construct. Third, to assess uni-dimensionality and reliability, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted. Finally, to verify the adequacy of the research model and research hypothesis, the structural model was employed. Results - The results revealed that the factors, "tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy" were shown to be the most important dimensions of service quality for the airline image of the low-cost carrier which was consistent with previous studies. Therefore, it is fair to suggest that these verified factors are crucial attributes for the brand image of low-cost carriers. Second, as reliability and responsiveness were shown to be the most important factors for behavioral intentions, it is viable to suggest that these two attributes are crucial for the sales value of low-cost carriers. Further, it was found that the brand image of low-cost carriers was closely related to behavioral intentions. Therefore, in order to ensure the competitiveness and loyalty of patrons, the airline image value is a crucial attribute. Conclusions - The result of this study established that service quality is the most important attribute for marketing to ensure competitiveness, and intensive and differentiated service marketing play a crucial role in creating profits for low-cost carrier companies. First, as tangibility is found to be the most crucial factor in ensuring service quality, quality control and maintenance of medium and small carriers must be provided to ensure reliability, as they are the main attributes of low-cost carriers. Second, in order to promote positive behavioral intentions, it is essential to enhance the value of airline image. Third, in order to ensure competitiveness, it is imperative to carry out intensive and differentiated service marketing. Therefore, to promote the image of low-cost carriers and enhance behavioral intentions, the level of service quality must be secured by developing appropriate service improvement programs.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.797-820
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• 2018

Purpose: It is to seek for an appropriate cost rate analysis methodology of credit card value propositions in Korea. For this issue, it is claimed that methodologies based on probability distribution is more suitable than methodologies based on data-mining. The analysis model constructed for the cost rate estimation is called VCPM model. Methods: The model includes two major variables denoted as S and P. S is monthly credit card usage amount. P stands for the proportion of usage amount at special merchants over the whole monthly usage amount. The distributions assumed for P are positively skewed distributions such as exponential, gamma and lognormal. The major inputs to the model are also derived from S and P, which are E(S) and the aggregate proportion of usage amount at special merchants over the total monthly usage amount. Results: When the credit card's value proposition is general discount, the VCPM model fits well and generates reasonable cost rate(denoted as R). However, it seems that the model does not work well for other types of credit cards. Conclusion: The VCPM model is reliable for calculating cost rate for credit cards with positively skewed distribution of P, which are general discount card. However, another model should be built for cards with other types of distributions of P.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.172-191
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• 1998

In this paper, dimension tolerance design for components is studied. Three cost factors are considered: machining cost, rework cost, and loss related to product quality which is affected by the tolerances of components. We propose a procedure to determine the optimal tolerances of components and a, pp.y the procedure to design the tolerances of fine motion stage in semicoduct machine. We compare the proposed procedure with the existing model for determining tolerance economically.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.33-40
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• 2020

In order to satisfy customers, it is important to identify the quality elements that affect customers' satisfaction. The Kano model has been widely used in identifying multi-dimensional quality attributes in this purpose. However, the model suffers from various shortcomings and limitations, especially those related to survey practices such as the data amount, reply attitude and cost. In this research, a model based on the text sentiment analysis is proposed, which aims to substitute the survey-based data gathering process of Kano models with sentiment analysis. In this model, from the set of opinion text, quality elements for the research are extracted using the morpheme analysis. The opinions' polarity attributes are evaluated using text sentiment analysis, and those polarity text items are transformed into equivalent Kano survey questions. Replies for the transformed survey questions are generated based on the total score of the original data. Then, the question-reply set is analyzed using both the original Kano evaluation method and the satisfaction index method. The proposed research model has been tested using a large amount of data of public IT service project evaluations. The result shows that it can replace the existing practice and it promises advantages in terms of quality and cost of data gathering. The authors hope that the proposed model of this research may serve as a new quality analysis model for a wide range of areas.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.625-635
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating roles of the relationship quality and the switching cost during the processing of effects of service quality on the service loyalty in the beauty industry. Service quality factors were defined as the interaction quality, the outcome quality and the physical environment quality. The relationship quality were defined as the satisfaction and the trust of customer. Amos was used to analyze the research hypotheses and the proposed model. All research hypotheses were adopted. The empirical results were as follows; Service quality influenced positively on the relationship quality, and then the relationship quality yielded the service loyalty. Also the relationship quality influenced positively on the switching cost and then the switching cost influenced positively on the service loyalty. Each service quality dimension had a significant effect on the satisfaction, the trust and the relative importance of service quality dimensions on the satisfaction, the trust followed the order of the interaction quality, the outcome quality and the physical environment quality.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.231-246
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• 2023

Purpose - This study attempts to provide a new theoretical perspective on the quality signaling and its impact on a market under information asymmetry, focusing on how the accuracy and the cost of quality signaling affect sellers' and buyers' profit, suggesting appropriate designs of quality signaling methods which mitigates information asymmetry. Design/methodology/approach - In order to examine the effect of quality signaling on strategic interactions within the market, we establish an analytic model where market outcomes are determined by seller's quality claim and price, and buyers are risk-neutral. By investigating this analytic model through relevant game trees, we find the subgame perfect Nash equilibria of the market and predict related market outcomes based on sellers' quality signaling strategy. Findings - Our analytic model shows counterintuitive results that seller profit will be the lowest with inaccurate quality signaling and the highest with no quality signaling, mostly due to the certification cost. Consequently, sellers should proceed with caution if the quality signaling is less than accurate, as it may backfire. We believe that this is due to the fact that the inaccuracy of quality signaling causes some confusion and uncertainty in both sellers and buyers' decision to maximize profit, making it hard for sellers to predict buyers' behavior. Research implications or Originality - Although the sources and types of quality signaling errors have been investigated in the literature, there has not been satisfactory understanding regarding how inaccuracy of quality certification affects specific market outcomes. We expect that our theoretical model would provide important implications on how to utilize quality signaling to solve adverse selection issues in markets under information asymmetry.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.45-50
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• 2021

Machines and facilities are physically or chemically degenerated by continuous usage. The representative type of the degeneration is the wearing of tools, which results in the process mean shift. According to the increasing wear level, non-conforming products cost and quality loss cost are increasing simultaneously. Therefore, a preventive maintenance is necessary at some point. The problem of determining the maintenance period (or wear limit) which minimizes the total cost is called the 'process mean shift problem'. The total cost includes three items: maintenance cost (or adjustment cost), non-conforming cost due to the non-conforming products, and quality loss cost due to the difference between the process target value and the product characteristic value among the conforming products. In this study, we set the production volume as a decreasing function rather than a constant. Also we treat the process variance as a function to the increasing wear rather than a constant. To the quality loss function, we adopted the Cpm+, which is the left and right asymmetric process capability index based on the process target value. These can more reflect the production site. In this study, we presented a more extensive maintenance model compared to previous studies, by integrating the items mentioned above. The objective equation of this model is the total cost per unit wear. The determining variables are the wear limit and the initial process setting position that minimize the objective equation.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.185-193
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• 2011

The successful and sustainable growth of SMEs depends on their ability of strengthen their competitiveness in quality and cost and service more than anything else as a fundamental of operation. Among these key competitive factors of SMEs, quality is the most critical factor in manufacturing business fields. There are many different ways to improve the quality performance but it needs proper management decision to choose the best way what can maximize outputs with minimum inputs. And it needs effective measurement methods and some indicators to analysis the quality performance properly. The quality cost is one of the simplest key indicators to measure the quality performance and the effectiveness of quality related management decisions. In this study, through survey on local SMEs, we found that their average annual quality cost ratio versus turnover - total amount of annual quality cost divided by annual turnover - is around 3.69% excluded some SME's performances what have different quality control measures with others. And we found some results what corresponded with the early studies on the correlations between those categorized quality costs factors and some discrepancies between some of the literature model and the early case study results as follows. There were negative correlations between the Prevention costs and the External failure costs, and the Appraisal costs and the External failure costs, and there was positive correlation between the Appraisal costs and Internal failure costs same as early studies. But, we couldn't found any strong negative correlations between the Cost of control - Prevention costs & Appraisal costs - and the Cost of Failure of control - Internal & External failure costs -.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.17-26
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• 1989

This paper is concerned with forecasting the existing number of errors in the computer software and optimizing the stopping time of the software test based upon the forecasted number of errors. The most commonly used models have assessed software reliability under the assumption that the software failure late is proportional to the current fault content of the software but invariant to time since software faults are independents of others and equally likely to cause a failure during testing. In practice, it has been observed that in many situations, the failure rate decrease. Hence, this paper proposes a mathematical model to describe testing situations where the failure rate of software limearly decreases proportional to testing time. The least square method is used to estimate parameters of the mathematical model. A cost model to optimize the software testing time is also proposed. In this cost mode two cost factors are considered. The first cost is to test execution cost directly proportional to test time and the second cost is the failure cost incurred after delivery of the software to user. The failure cost is assumed to be proportional to the number of errors remained in the software at the test stopping time. The optimal stopping time is determined to minimize the total cost, which is the sum of test execution cast and the failure cost. A numerical example is solved to illustrate the proposed procedure.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2002.11b
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• pp.15-19
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• 2002

To provide a specified power quality under electric market system is becoming an important issue for customers and utility company. However, there is no realistic infra-structure to design a power system for the specified power quality. Present electric market is operating under the economic point of view. The low price could be attractive. but the effect of low price and low power quality for the long time should be considered for the system safety. This paper presents a model which conceptualize the dynamic power quality control mechanism to minimize total cost of a society which is affected electric power quality. This model aims to produce a basic infra-structure to balance cost and quality under the electric market system.