• Current Research on Agriculture and Life Sciences
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.25-31
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• 2015

This study investigated the operation criteria of specialized complexes for horticultural production reflecting the farmers' preferences. First, the analysis of the communal activity included six factors: the group purchase of consumables for common activity, group purchase of the greenhouse apparatus, cooperative seed raising, use of a common air conditioning and heating system, cooperative shipping, and soil examination and certification system. The results of the Importance-Performance analysis can be summarized as follows. The factors requiring good management included the group purchase of consumables for common activity, group purchase of the greenhouse apparatus, and cooperative shipping. The factors with a lower priority included cooperative seed raising and the use of a common air conditioning and heating system. While the importance of the soil examination and certification system was low, the satisfaction was high, so this factor needs to be managed to avoid overkill. Second, the analysis of information exchange and education included six factors: production technique information, greenhouse facility management information, distribution-related information, production technique education, greenhouse facility management education, and distribution-related education. The results of the Importance-Performance analysis can be summarized as follows. The factor of production technique education was the most important determinant, plus the factors requiring good management included production technique information, greenhouse facility management information, and distribution-related information. The factors with a lower priority included greenhouse facility management education and distribution-related education. Therefore, to enhance productivity through facility modernization, the scaling up and creation of more specialized horticulture complexes are recommended as policy measures to gain export competitiveness. As the Korean government is expected to expand the scale of specialized horticulture complexes, the results of this paper can be widely utilized.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.115-130
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• 2011

Many online stores bring features that can build trust in their customers. More so, the number of products or content services on online stores has been increasing rapidly. Hence, personalization on online stores is considered to be an important technology to companies and customers. Recommender systems that provide favorable products and customer product reviews to users are the most commonly used features in this purpose. There are many studies to that investigated the relationship between social presence as an antecedent of trust and provision of recommender systems or customer product reviews. Many online stores have made efforts to increase perceived social presence of their customers through customer reviews, recommender systems, and analyzing associations among products. Primarily because social presence can increase customer trust or reuse intention for online stores. However, there were few studies that investigated the interactions between recommendation type, product type and provision of customer product reviews on social presence. Therefore, one of the purposes of this study is to identify the effects of personalized recommender systems and compare the role of customer reviews with product types. This study performed an experiment to see these interactions. Experimental web pages were developed with $2{\times}2$ factorial setting based on how to provide social presence to users with customer reviews and two product types such as hedonic and utilitarian. The hedonic type was a ringtone chosen from Nate.com while the utilitarian was a TOEIC study aid book selected from Yes24.com. To conduct the experiment, web based experiments were conducted for the participants who have been shopping on the online stores. Participants were a total of 240 and 30% of the participants had the chance of getting the presents. We found out that social presence increased for hedonic products when personalized recommendations were given compared to non.personalized recommendations. Although providing customer reviews for two product types did not significantly increase social presence, provision of customer product reviews for hedonic (ringtone) increased perceived social presence. Otherwise, provision of customer product reviews could not increase social presence when the systems recommend utilitarian products (TOEIC study.aid books). Therefore, it appears that the effects of increasing perceived social presence with customer reviews have a difference for product types. In short, the role of customer reviews could be different based on which product types were considered by customers when they are making a decision related to purchasing on the online stores. Additionally, there were no differences for increasing perceived social presence when providing customer reviews. Our participants might have focused on how recommendations had been provided and what products were recommended because our developed systems were providing recommendations after participants rating their preferences. Thus, the effects of customer reviews could appear more clearly if our participants had actual purchase opportunity for the recommendations. Personalized recommender systems can increase social presence of customers more than nonpersonalized recommender systems by using user preference. Online stores could find out how they can increase perceived social presence and satisfaction of their customers when customers want to find the proper products with recommender systems and customer reviews. In addition, the role of customer reviews of the personalized recommendations can be different based on types of the recommended products. Even if this study conducted two product types such as hedonic and utilitarian, the results revealed that customer reviews for hedonic increased social presence of customers more than customer reviews for utilitarian. Thus, online stores need to consider the role of providing customer reviews with highly personalized information based on their product types when they develop the personalized recommender systems.

• Korea Science and Art Forum
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• v.19
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• pp.281-292
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• 2015

For this study, I conducted a survey investigating current situation, user preference, and field experiment. Hospitals utilizing digital sign systems at least five years were selected, which are connected with visual elements (layout, typo, color) used in waiting areas and elements of the systems (time, video time line). The results obtained from the field survey showed that digital sign systems used the color of typo and background contrasted to one another to increase explicitness and to ensure easy understanding of contents. In addition, the Gothic typo with relatively high legibility was adopted. Time and video timeline, which characterize digital sign systems, showed the advertising screens of the hospitals and the guidance of medical treatment at regular intervals. Moreover, survey results on user satisfaction showed that a majority of respondents indicated they had difficulty in understanding digital information conveyed from digital sign systems due to time setting for rotational speed or the small size of typo although most of the users had previous experience with digital sign systems. The highest proportion of respondents (n=86, 86%) answered that information related to medical departments was what they sought most frequently and that this kind of information should be importantly considered in digital sign systems. For the experiment, new samples with restructured contents of current digital sign systems were created and tested while keeping its design unchanged as well as applying these new samples. Study participants were in their 20s through 50s. When the size of typo was larger under the same conditions for all age groups, study participants found the desired information approximately 3.5 seconds faster. In addition, those in their 20-30s and 40-50s showed the time difference of 4.7 seconds for small typo and 6 seconds for large typo, which suggested that there was a difference by age in the amount of time taken in the experiment to find the desired information from the rotating digital sign system regardless of age and the size of typo.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.147-161
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• 2010

As broadcasting and communication are converged recently, communication is jointed to TV. TV viewing has brought about many changes. The IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) provides information service, movie contents, broadcast, etc. through internet with live programs + VOD (Video on demand) jointed. Using communication network, it becomes an issue of new business. In addition, new technical issues have been created by imaging technology for the service, networking technology without video cuts, security technologies to protect copyright, etc. Through this IPTV network, users can watch their desired programs when they want. However, IPTV has difficulties in search approach, menu approach, or finding programs. Menu approach spends a lot of time in approaching programs desired. Search approach can't be found when title, genre, name of actors, etc. are not known. In addition, inserting letters through remote control have problems. However, the bigger problem is that many times users are not usually ware of the services they use. Thus, to resolve difficulties when selecting VOD service in IPTV, a personalized service is recommended, which enhance users' satisfaction and use your time, efficiently. This paper provides appropriate programs which are fit to individuals not to save time in order to solve IPTV's shortcomings through filtering and recommendation-related system. The proposed recommendation system collects TV program information, the user's preferred program genres and detailed genre, channel, watching program, and information on viewing time based on individual records of watching IPTV. To look for these kinds of similarities, similarities can be compared by using ontology for TV programs. The reason to use these is because the distance of program can be measured by the similarity comparison. TV program ontology we are using is one extracted from TV-Anytime metadata which represents semantic nature. Also, ontology expresses the contents and features in figures. Through world net, vocabulary similarity is determined. All the words described on the programs are expanded into upper and lower classes for word similarity decision. The average of described key words was measured. The criterion of distance calculated ties similar programs through K-medoids dividing method. K-medoids dividing method is a dividing way to divide classified groups into ones with similar characteristics. This K-medoids method sets K-unit representative objects. Here, distance from representative object sets temporary distance and colonize it. Through algorithm, when the initial n-unit objects are tried to be divided into K-units. The optimal object must be found through repeated trials after selecting representative object temporarily. Through this course, similar programs must be colonized. Selecting programs through group analysis, weight should be given to the recommendation. The way to provide weight with recommendation is as the follows. When each group recommends programs, similar programs near representative objects will be recommended to users. The formula to calculate the distance is same as measure similar distance. It will be a basic figure which determines the rankings of recommended programs. Weight is used to calculate the number of watching lists. As the more programs are, the higher weight will be loaded. This is defined as cluster weight. Through this, sub-TV programs which are representative of the groups must be selected. The final TV programs ranks must be determined. However, the group-representative TV programs include errors. Therefore, weights must be added to TV program viewing preference. They must determine the finalranks.Based on this, our customers prefer proposed to recommend contents. So, based on the proposed method this paper suggested, experiment was carried out in controlled environment. Through experiment, the superiority of the proposed method is shown, compared to existing ways.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.41 no.11
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• pp.1639-1644
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• 2012

This study analyzed the Importance-Performance Analysis of selective attributes of Home Meal Replacement (HMR). This study was conducted using a primary field survey on department stores and wholesale markets in Seoul and Gyeonggi province. A total of 201 out of 234 questionnaires were analyzed. First, the highest intake frequency was 1~3 times a month (100 respondents: 48%), the most common purchasing place was wholesale market (148 respondents: 73.6%), and the most cited reason for preference was convenience (115 respondents: 57.2%). According to the IPA results, selective attributes with low satisfaction and high importance in the second quadrant were 'quality', 'health', 'hygiene', 'origin of food', and 'safety'. These results suggest that the microbiological and sensory qualities of HMR production should be improved to meet consumer's expectations.

• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.15-35
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• 2002

This study was conducted to provide basic data for policy of Oriental medicine by analyzing community resident's consciousness of taking herb medicine and its related factors. Data were collected from 1478 residents from March 2, 2001 to May 31, 2001. The results of this study are summarized as follows. 1) The rate of experience of taking herb medicine was 85.2%(88.2% of 'male'; 82.5% of 'female'). It appeared to be significantly higher in the groups of 'the married', 'housewife', and 'Buddhist'. As the age increased, so the rate of experience of taking herb medicine was significantly high. 2) In case of purpose of taking herb medicine, taking herb medicine as a restorative(66.8%) was much higher than taking it as a curative medicine. 3) 52.1% of the respondents satisfied with the effect of herb medicine. The groups of 'male', 'older age', 'residents in a big city', 'insurant in company', and 'the employed' showed significantly high rate in satisfying with herb medicine than the other groups. 4) According to the reason for preferring herb medicine, 36.7% of the respondents preferred herb medicine because the herb medicine was effective, while 27.8% preferred it because its side effect was low. 16.7% preferred it because persons around them recommended it. 5) 42.6% of the respondents did not want to take the herb medicine because the price of the herb medicine was high. Also 20.6% of the respondents did not want to take herb medicine because it is uneasy to take herb medicine. 15.8% did not want to take it because certain food should not be taken during the period of taking it. 9.4% did not want to take it because it tasted bitter. 6) In case of opinions on side effects of herb medicine, 40.8% of the respondents thinks that herb medicine is free from side effects, while 37.5% thinks that it causes side effects. There were significant difference in the opinions on side effects by sex, age, marital status, resident area, education level, occupation, and type of health insurance. 7) 60.7% of the respondents thinks the price of herb medicine is not resonable, while only 10.9% thinks it is resonable. 8) 45.2% of the respondents uses packs of decocted herbs although they think the packs of decocted herb are a little low effective because decocting herbs in home is bothersome. 45.2% uses packs of decocted herbs because they are convenient, being not related to the effect. 7.6% takes medicinal herbs after decocting them in a clay pot because they think the packs of decocted herbs have low effect. 51.9% does not know whether taking herb medicine in summer is effective or not because the effect is different according to their physical constitutions. 35.5% thinks that taking herb medicine is summer is effective because their physical stamina is weakened after sweated a lot, while 12.6% thinks that it is not effective because the effect of herb medicine disappears with sweat. 9) According to the level of satisfaction with Oriental medical care, the respondents marked $3.47{\pm}0.64$ points on the base of 5 points. It was significantly higher in the groups of 'male', 'the married, resident in a big city', 'highschool graduate', 'the unemployed', 'office clerk', 'growing up in a big city', 'insurant in region', and 'the middle class'. 10) According to the result of a regression analysis of factors influencing preference for herb medicine, the factors displayed significant difference by sex, age, education level, health status, and times of receiving Oriental medical care. As shown in the above results, the community residents satisfy with the effect of herb medicine. Therefore, the method of taking herb medicine without difficulty must be devised. The medicinal herbs in packages need to be included in health insurance coverage and resonable price of herb medicine must be set. Also, education program for community residents must be developed in order to provide right information in herb medicine. Therefore, related public authority, associations, and professionals must make efforts, forming organic cooperative system.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.42 no.9
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• pp.1499-1512
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to compare the coffee shop visits of Koreans and Mongolians, and to determine the quality attributes that should be managed by Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA). The survey was conducted in Seoul and the Gyeonggi Province of Korea, and at Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia from April to May 2012. The questionnaire was distributed to 380 Koreans and 380 Mongolians, with 253 and 250 responses from the Koreans and Mongolians, respectively, used for statistical analyses. From the results, Koreans visited coffee shops more frequently than Mongolians, with both groups mainly visiting a coffee shop with friends. Koreans also spent more time in a coffee shop than Mongolians. In addition, they generally used a coffee shop, regardless of time. In terms of coffee preference, Koreans preferred Americano and Mongolians preferred Espresso. The most frequently stated purpose of Koreans for visiting a coffee shop was to rest, while Mongolians typically visited to drink coffee. The general price range respondents spent on coffee was less than 4~8 thousand won for the Koreans and 2~4 thousand won for the Mongolians. Both Koreans and Mongolians obtained information about coffee shops from recommendations. According to the IPA results of 20 quality attributes of coffee shops, the selection attributes with high importance but low satisfaction were quality, price, and kindness for Koreans, but none of the attributes was found for Mongolians.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.247-269
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• 2007

In recent years, one of the major reasons for the fierce competition amongst firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares and customer acquisition rate in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Because of this change in recent marketing environment, the differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important to gain competitive advantage. Price promotion is the favorite strategy that most retailers use to achieve short-term sales increase, induce consumer's brand switch, in troduce new product into market, and so forth. However, if marketers apply or copy an identical price promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in product and consumer preference, it will cause serious problems because discounted price itself could make people skeptical about product quality, and the changes of perceived value might appear differently depending on other factors such as consumer involvement or brand attitude. Previous studies showed that price promotion would certainly increase sales, and the discounted price compared to regular price would enhance the consumer's perceived values. On the other hand, discounted price itself could make people depreciate or skeptical about product quality, and reduce the consumers' positivity bias because consumers might be unsure whether the current price promotion is the retailer's best price offer. Moreover, we cannot say that discounted price absolutely enhances the consumer's perceived values regardless of product category and purchase situations. That is, the factors that affect consumers' value perceptions and buying behavior are so diverse in reality that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what variable was used or how experiment conditions were designed. Majority of previous researches on the effect of price-comparison advertising have used consumers' buying behavior as dependent variable. In order to figure out consumers' buying behavior theoretically, analysis of value perceptions which influence buying intentions is needed. In addition, they did not combined the independent variables such as brand loyalty and price discount rate together. For this reason, this paper tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception. And we provided with theoretical and managerial implications that marketers need to consider such variables as product attributes, brand loyalty, and consumer involvement at the same time, and then establish a differentiated pricing strategy case by case in order to enhance consumer's perceived values properl. Three research concepts were used in our study and each concept based on past researches was defined. The perceived acquisition value in this study was defined as the perceived net gains associated with the products or services acquired. That is, the perceived acquisition value of the product will be positively influenced by the benefits buyers believe they are getting by acquiring and using the product, and negatively influenced by the money given up to acquire the product. And the perceived transaction value was defined as the perception of psychological satisfaction or pleasure obtained from taking advantage of the financial terms of the price deal. Lastly, the brand loyalty was defined as favorable attitude towards a purchased product. Thus, a consumer loyal to a brand has an emotional attachment to the brand or firm. Repeat purchasers continue to buy the same brand even though they do not have an emotional attachment to it. We assumed that if the degree of brand loyalty is high, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value will increase when higher discount rate is provided. But we found that there are no significant differences in values between two different discount rates as a result of empirical analysis. It means that price reduction did not affect consumer's brand choice significantly because the perceived sacrifice decreased only a little, and customers are satisfied with product's benefits when brand loyalty is high. From the result, we confirmed that consumers with high degree of brand loyalty to a specific product are less sensitive to price change. Thus, using price promotion strategy to merely expect sale increase is not recommendable. Instead of discounting price, marketers need to strengthen consumers' brand loyalty and maintain the skimming strategy. On the contrary, when the degree of brand loyalty is low, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value decreased significantly when higher discount rate is provided. Generally brands that are considered inferior might be able to draw attention away from the quality of the product by making consumers focus more on the sacrifice component of price. But considering the fact that consumers with low degree of brand loyalty are known to be unsatisfied with product's benefits and have relatively negative brand attitude, bigger price reduction offered in experiment condition of this paper made consumers depreciate product's quality and benefit more and more, and consumer's psychological perceived sacrifice increased while perceived values decreased accordingly. We infer that, in the case of inferior brand, a drastic price-cut or frequent price promotion may increase consumers' uncertainty about overall components of product. Therefore, it appears that reinforcing the augmented product such as after-sale service, delivery and giving credit which is one of the levels consisting of product would be more effective in reality. This will be better rather than competing with product that holds high brand loyalty by reducing sale price. Although this study tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception, there are several limitations. This study was conducted in controlled conditions where the high involvement product and two different levels of discount rate were applied. Given the presence of low involvement product, when both pieces of information are available, it is likely that the results we have reported here may have been different. Thus, this research results explain only the specific situation. Second, the sample selected in this study was university students in their twenties, so we cannot say that the results are firmly effective to all generations. Future research that manipulates the level of discount along with the consumer involvement might lead to a more robust understanding of the effects various discount rate. And, we used a cellular phone as a product stimulus, so it would be very interesting to analyze the result when the product stimulus is an intangible product such as service. It could be also valuable to analyze whether the change of perceived value affects consumers' final buying behavior positively or negatively.