• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.209-237
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• 2012

1. Research Purpose Consumers rely on various clues to evaluate their decision to patronize a retail store, and store brand is one of them (Dodds 1991; Grewal et al. 1998). As consumers find ever increasing variety of contact points connecting them to specific store, the value of experiential shopping as a means of increasing store's brand equity warrants greater attention from scholars of retail management. Retail shopping values are credited for creating not only cognitive experiences like brand knowledge but also emotional experiences such as shopping pleasure and pride (Schmitt 1999). This may be because today's consumers place emphasis on emotional values associated with shopping pleasure, lifestyle brought to life, brand relationship, and store atmosphere more than utilitarian values such as product quality and price. Many previous literature found this to be true (Ahn and Lee 2011; Mathwick et al. 2001). This brings forth important research issues and questions regarding the roles of shopping experiential values and brand equity with regard to consumer's retail patronage choice. However, despite this importance, research on this area remains quite inadequate (Hwang 2010). For this reason, this study aims to verify the relationships among experiential shopping values, retail store brand equity and tries to link that with customer loyalty by surveying large-scale discount store shoppers in Korea and China. 2. Research Contents In order to carry out the research objective, this study conducted comprehensive literature survey on previous literature by discussing major findings and implications with regard to shopping values and retail brand equity and store loyalty. For data collection, researcher employed survey-based research method where data were collected in two major cities of Korea (Seoul) and China (Bejing) and sampling frame was based on patrons of large discount stores in both countries. Specific research questions raised in this study are as follows; RQ1: How do Korean and Chinese consumers differently perceive of shopping values regarding shopping at large-sclae discount stores? RQ2: Are there differences in consumers' emotional consumption propensities? RQ3: Do Korean and Chinese consumers display different perceptions of brand equity towards large-scale discount stores? RQ4: Are there differences in relationships between shopping values and brand equity for Korean and Chinese consumers? For statistical analysis, SPSS17.0, AMOS17.0 and SmartPLS were employed. 3. Research Results The data collected through face-to-face survey conducted in Seoul and Bejing revealed appropriate data validity and reliability as a result of exploratory/confirmatory factor analysis and reliability tests, andh SEM model yielding satisfactory model fitness. The result of the study may be summarized by three main points. First, as a result of testing differences in consumption dispositions, Chinese consumers showed higher scores in aesthetic and symbolic dispositions, whereas Korean consumers scored higher in hedonic disposition. Second, testing on perceptions toward brand equity of large discount stores showed that Korean consumers exhibited more positive perceptions of brand awareness and brand image than Chinese counterparts. Third, the result of exploratory factor analysis on the experiential shopping values revealed different factors for each country. On Korean side, consumer interest value, aesthetic value, and hedonic value were prominent, whereas on Chinese side, hedonic value, aesthetic value, consumer interest value, and service excellence value were found salient. 4. Research Implications While many previous studies on inter-country differences in retailing area mainly focused on cultural dispositions or orientations to explain the differences, this study sets itself apart by specifically targeting individual consumer's shopping values from an experiential viewpoint. The study result provides important theoretical as well as practical implications for large-scale discount store, especially the impotance of fully exploring the linkage between shopping values and brand equity, which has significant influence on loyalty. Therefore, the specific implications deriving from the result shed some important insights upon the consumption values based on shopping experiences and brand equity. The differences found in store shoppers between the two countries may also provide useful insights for Korean and Chinese retailers who plan to expand their operations globally. Related strategic implications derived from this study is the importance of localizing retail strategy which is based on the differences found in experiential shopping values between the two country groups. Especially the finding that Chinese consumers value consumer interest and service excellence, whereas Koreans place importance on hedonic or aesthetic values indicates the need to differentiate the consumer's psychographical profiles when it comes to expanding retail operations globally. Particularly important will be to pursue price-orienated strategy in China in consideration of the high emphasis on consumer interests and service excellence, but to emphasize the symbolic aspects of brand equity in Korea by maximizing the brand equity associated with aesthetic values and hedonic orientations. 5. Recommendations This study focused on generic retail branded discount stores in both countries, thus making it difficult to tease out store-specific strategies based on specific retail brands. Future studies may benefit fro employing actual brand names in survey questionnaire to verify relationship between shopping values and brand-based store strategy. As with other studies of this nature, this study needs to strengthen the result's generalizability by selecting respondents from a wider spectrum of respondents.

• Journal of Oral Medicine and Pain
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.283-296
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• 2006

Along with the development of scientific technologies, health care has been growing remarkably, and as the social life quality improves with increasing interest in health, the demand for medical service is rapidly increasing. However, medical accident and medical dispute also are rapidly increasing due to various factors such as, increasing sense of people's right, lack of understanding in the nature of medical practice, over expectation on medical technique, commercialize medical supply system, moral degeneracy and unawareness of medical jurisprudence by doctors, widespread trend of mutual distrust, and lack of systematized device for solution of medical dispute. This study analysed 30 cases of civil suit in the year between 1994 to 2004, which were selected among the medical dispute cases in dental field with the judgement collected from organizations related to dentistry and department of oral medicine, Yonsei university dental hospital. The following results were drawn from the analyses: 1. The distribution of year showed rapid increase of medical dispute after the year 2000. 2. In the types of medical dispute, suit associated with tooth extraction took 36.7% of all. 3. As for the cause of medical dispute, uncomfortable feeling and dissatisfaction with the treatment showed 36.7%, death and permanent damage showed 16.7% each. 4. Winning the suit, compulsory mediation and recommendation for settlement took 60.0% of judgement result for the plaintiff. 5. For the type of medical organization in relation to medical dispute, 60.0% was found to be the private dental clinics, and 30.0% was university dental hospitals. 6. For the level of trial, dispute that progressed above 2 or 3 trials was of 30.0%. 7. For the amount of claim for damage, the claim amounting between 50 million to 100 million won was of 36.7%, and that of more than 100 million won was 13.3%, and in case of the judgement amount, the amount ranging from 10 million to 30 million won was of 40.0%, and that of more than 100 million won was of 6.7%. 8. For the number of dentist involved in the suit, 26.7% was of 2 or more dentists. 9. For the amount of time spent until the judgement, 46.7% took 11 to 20 months, and 36.7% took 21 to 30 months. 10. For medical malpractice, 46.7% was judged to be guilty, and 70% of the cases had undergone medical judgement or verification of the case by specialists during the process of the suit. 11. In the lost cases of doctors(18 cases), 72.2% was due to violence of carefulness in practice and 16.7% was due to missing of explanation to patient. Medical disputes occurring in the field of dentistry are usually of relatively less risky cases. Hence, the importance of explanation to patient is emphasized, and since the levels of patient satisfaction are subjective, improvement of the relationship between the patient and the dentist and recovery of autonomy within the group dentist are essential in addition to the reduction of technical malpractice. Moreover, management measure against the medical dispute should be set up through complement of the current doctors and hospitals medical malpractice insurance which is being conducted irrationally, and establishment of system in which education as well as consultation for medical disputes lead by the group of dental clinicians and academic scholars are accessible.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.191-207
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• 2021

Up to this day, mobile communications have evolved rapidly over the decades, mainly focusing on speed-up to meet the growing data demands of 2G to 5G. And with the start of the 5G era, efforts are being made to provide such various services to customers, as IoT, V2X, robots, artificial intelligence, augmented virtual reality, and smart cities, which are expected to change the environment of our lives and industries as a whole. In a bid to provide those services, on top of high speed data, reduced latency and reliability are critical for real-time services. Thus, 5G has paved the way for service delivery through maximum speed of 20Gbps, a delay of 1ms, and a connecting device of 106/㎢ In particular, in intelligent traffic control systems and services using various vehicle-based Vehicle to X (V2X), such as traffic control, in addition to high-speed data speed, reduction of delay and reliability for real-time services are very important. 5G communication uses high frequencies of 3.5Ghz and 28Ghz. These high-frequency waves can go with high-speed thanks to their straightness while their short wavelength and small diffraction angle limit their reach to distance and prevent them from penetrating walls, causing restrictions on their use indoors. Therefore, under existing networks it's difficult to overcome these constraints. The underlying centralized SDN also has a limited capability in offering delay-sensitive services because communication with many nodes creates overload in its processing. Basically, SDN, which means a structure that separates signals from the control plane from packets in the data plane, requires control of the delay-related tree structure available in the event of an emergency during autonomous driving. In these scenarios, the network architecture that handles in-vehicle information is a major variable of delay. Since SDNs in general centralized structures are difficult to meet the desired delay level, studies on the optimal size of SDNs for information processing should be conducted. Thus, SDNs need to be separated on a certain scale and construct a new type of network, which can efficiently respond to dynamically changing traffic and provide high-quality, flexible services. Moreover, the structure of these networks is closely related to ultra-low latency, high confidence, and hyper-connectivity and should be based on a new form of split SDN rather than an existing centralized SDN structure, even in the case of the worst condition. And in these SDN structural networks, where automobiles pass through small 5G cells very quickly, the information change cycle, round trip delay (RTD), and the data processing time of SDN are highly correlated with the delay. Of these, RDT is not a significant factor because it has sufficient speed and less than 1 ms of delay, but the information change cycle and data processing time of SDN are factors that greatly affect the delay. Especially, in an emergency of self-driving environment linked to an ITS(Intelligent Traffic System) that requires low latency and high reliability, information should be transmitted and processed very quickly. That is a case in point where delay plays a very sensitive role. In this paper, we study the SDN architecture in emergencies during autonomous driving and conduct analysis through simulation of the correlation with the cell layer in which the vehicle should request relevant information according to the information flow. For simulation: As the Data Rate of 5G is high enough, we can assume the information for neighbor vehicle support to the car without errors. Furthermore, we assumed 5G small cells within 50 ~ 250 m in cell radius, and the maximum speed of the vehicle was considered as a 30km ~ 200 km/hour in order to examine the network architecture to minimize the delay.

• The Korean Nurse
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.77-96
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• 1997

The duty shifts of hospital nurses not only affect nurses' physical and mental health but also present various personnel management problems which often result in high turnover rates. In this context a study was carried out from October to November 1995 for a period of two months to find out the status of hospital nurses' duty shift patterns, and preferred duty hours and fixed duty shifts. The study population was 867 RNs working in five general hospitals located in Seoul and its vicinity. The questionnaire developed by the writer was used for data collection. The response rate was 85.9 percent or 745 returns. The SAS program was used for data analysis with the computation of frequencies, percentages and Chi square test. The findings of the study are as follows: 1. General characteristics of the study population: 56 percent of respondents was (25 years group and 76.5 percent were "single": the predominant proportion of respondents was junior nursing college graduates(92.2%) and have less than 5 years nursing experience in hospitals(65.5%). For their future working plan in nursing profession, nearly 50% responded as uncertain The reasons given for their career plan was predominantly 'personal growth and development' rather than financial reasons. 2. The interval for rotations of duty stations was found to be mostly irregular(56.4%) while others reported as weekly(16.1%), monthly(12.9%), and fixed terms(4.6%). 3. The main problems related to duty shifts particularly the evening and night duty nurses reported were "not enough time for the family, " "afraid of security problems after the work when returning home late at night." and "lack of leisure time". "problems in physical and physiological adjustment." "problems in family life." "lack of time for interactions with fellow nurses" etc. 4. The forty percent of respondents reported to have '1-2 times' of duty shift rotations while all others reported that '0 time'. '2-3 times'. 'more than 3 times' etc. which suggest the irregularity in duty shift rotations. 5. The majority(62.8%) of study population found to favor the rotating system of duty stations. The reasons for favoring the rotation system were: the opportunity for "learning new things and personal development." "better human relations are possible. "better understanding in various duty stations." "changes in monotonous routine job" etc. The proportion of those disfavor the rotating 'system was 34.7 percent. giving the reasons of"it impedes development of specialization." "poor job performances." "stress factors" etc. Furthermore. respondents made the following comments in relation to the rotation of duty stations: the nurses should be given the opportunity to participate in the. decision making process: personal interest and aptitudes should be considered: regular intervals for the rotations or it should be planned in advance. etc. 6. For the future career plan. the older. married group with longer nursing experiences appeared to think the nursing as their lifetime career more likely than the younger. single group with shorter nursing experiences ($x^2=61.19.{\;}p=.000;{\;}x^2=41.55.{\;}p=.000$). The reason given for their future career plan regardless of length of future service, was predominantly "personal growth and development" rather than financial reasons. For further analysis, the group those with the shorter career plan appeared to claim "financial reasons" for their future career more readily than the group who consider the nursing job as their lifetime career$(x^2$= 11.73, p=.003) did. This finding suggests the need for careful .considerations in personnel management of nursing administration particularly when dealing with the nurses' career development. The majority of respondents preferred the fixed day shift. However, further analysis of those preferred evening shift by age and civil status, "< 25 years group"(15.1%) and "single group"(13.2) were more likely to favor the fixed evening shift than > 25 years(6.4%) and married(4.8%)groups. This differences were statistically significant ($x^2=14.54, {\;}p=.000;{\;}x^2=8.75, {\;}p=.003$). 7. A great majority of respondents(86.9% or n=647) found to prefer the day shifts. When the four different types of duty shifts(Types A. B. C, D) were presented, 55.0 percent of total respondents preferred the A type or the existing one followed by D type(22.7%). B type(12.4%) and C type(8.2%). 8. When the condition of monetary incentives for the evening(20% of salary) and night shifts(40% of. salary) of the existing duty type was presented. again the day shift appeared to be the most preferred one although the rate was slightly lower(66.4% against 86.9%). In the case of evening shift, with the same incentive, the preference rates for evening and night shifts increased from 11.0 to 22.4 percent and from 0.5 to 3.0 percent respectively. When the age variable was controlled. < 25 yrs group showed higher rates(31.6%. 4.8%) than those of > 25 yrs group(15.5%. 1.3%) respectively preferring the evening and night shifts(p=.000). The civil status also seemed to operate on the preferences of the duty shifts as the single group showed lower rate(69.0%) for day duty against 83. 6% of the married group. and higher rates for evening and night duties(27.2%. 15.1%) respectively against those of the married group(3.8%. 1.8%) while a higher proportion of the married group(83. 6%) preferred the day duties than the single group(69.0%). These differences were found to be statistically all significant(p=.001). 9. The findings on preferences of three different types of fixed duty hours namely, B, C. and D(with additional monetary incentives) are as follows in order of preference: B type(12hrs a day, 3days a wk): day shift(64.1%), evening shift(26.1%). night shift(6.5%) C type(12hrs a day. 4days a wk) : evening shift(49.2%). day shift(32.8%), night shift(11.5%) D type(10hrs a day. 4days a wk): showed the similar trend as B type. The findings of higher preferences on the evening and night duties when the incentives are given. as shown above, suggest the need for the introductions of different patterns of duty hours and incentive measures in order to overcome the difficulties in rostering the nursing duties. However, the interpretation of the above data, particularly the C type, needs cautions as the total number of respondents is very small(n=61). It requires further in-depth study. In conclusion. it seemed to suggest that the patterns of nurses duty hours and shifts in the most hospitals in the country have neither been tried for different duty types nor been flexible. The stereotype rostering system of three shifts and insensitiveness for personal life aspect of nurses seemed to be prevailing. This study seems to support that irregular and frequent rotations of duty shifts may be contributing factors for most nurses' maladjustment problems in physical and mental health. personal and family life which eventually may result in high turnover rates. In order to overcome the increasing problems in personnel management of hospital nurses particularly in rostering of evening and night duty shifts, which may related to eventual high turnover rates, the findings of this study strongly suggest the need for an introduction of new rostering systems including fixed duties and appropriate incentive measures for evenings and nights which the most nurses want to avoid, In considering the nursing care of inpatients is the round-the clock business. the practice of the nursing duty shift system is inevitable. In this context, based on the findings of this study. the following are recommended: 1. The further in-depth studies on duty shifts and hours need to be undertaken for the development of appropriate and effective rostering systems for hospital nurses. 2. An introduction of appropriate incentive measures for evening and night duty shifts along with organizational considerations such as the trials for preferred duty time bands, duty hours, and fixed duty shifts should be considered if good quality of care for the patients be maintained for the round the clock. This may require an initiation of systematic research and development activities in the field of hospital nursing administration as a part of permanent system in the hospital. 3. Planned and regular intervals, orientation and training, and professional and personal growth should be considered for the rotation of different duty stations or units. 4. In considering the higher degree of preferences in the duty type of "10hours a day, 4days a week" shown in this study, it would be worthwhile to undertake the R&D type studies in large hospital settings.