• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.199-213
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• 2014

Japanese restaurant owners seek to secure their competitive advantage by implementing a unique competition strategy that may overcome hostile environment. Brand power, aggressive expansion and the partnership strategy with other businesses may be suggested. The present study is to find out the competitive advantages of Japanese restaurants, to compare the importance and satisfaction by different customer factors of choices and then, to identify what kinds of factors affect customer satisfaction. Total 205 copies of questionnaire, out of 230 distributed, were used for analyses. Cronbarch's alpha coefficient of all 20 items was 0.911. In terms of importance, Cronbarch's alpha coefficients were 0.887(food), 0.796(menu), 0.851(employee), 0.815(service), and 0.730(physical environment). For satisfaction, the coefficients were 0.876(food), 0.860(menu), 0.880(employee), 0.851(service), 0.730(physical environment). In addition, the exploratory factor analysis showed an acceptable factor loading, supporting 20 items' validity. The result showed that customers' perceptions of the importance of Japanese restaurant service quality was higher than their level of satisfaction in general. In particular, IPA analysis revealed that food and service factors were well operated as located in the first quadrant. However, service factor located in the second quadrant was perceived to be important yet perceived as being satisfied poorly. So this study suggests that Japanese restaurant owners should concentrate on the attributes included in this quadrant to improve the quality of foodservice. Lastly, menu and physical environment factors were located in the third quadrant showing low level of importance and satisfaction. On the basic of the IPA analysis, Japanese restaurant owners should identify their strengths and weaknesses and draw up a plan to improve service quality and to maximize their profits.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.1-10
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to categorize the gap between coffee shop 'importance' (as perceived by customers before patronizing the coffee shop) and 'satisfaction' (perception of customers after patronizing the coffee shop) as positive or negative and to analyze the effect of these gaps on purchasing behavior. To do this, I used the gap between importance and satisfaction regarding the choice of a coffee shop as the explanatory variable and performed an empirical analysis of the direction and size of the effect of the gap on purchasing behavior (overall satisfaction, willingness-to-revisit) by applying the Ordered Probit Model (OPM). A previous study that used IPA to evaluate the effects of gaps estimated the direction and size of a quadrant but failed to analyze the effect of gaps on customers. In this study, I evaluated the effects of positive and negative gaps on customer satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Using OPM, I quantified the effect of positive and negative gaps on overall customer satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Per-head expenditure, frequency of visits, and coffee-purchasing place had the most positive effects on overall customer satisfaction. Frequency of visits, followed by per-head expenditure and then coffee-purchasing place, had the most positive impact on willingness-to-visit. Thus per-head expenditure and frequency of visits had the greatest positive effects on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. This finding implies that the higher the actual satisfaction (gap) of customers who spend KRW5,000 or more once or more per week at coffee shops is, the higher their overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit are. Despite the fact that economical efficiency had a significant effect on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit, college and university students still use coffee shops and are willing to spend KRW5,000 because they do not only purchase coffee as a product itself, but use the coffee shop for other activities, such as working, meeting friends, or relaxing. College and university students also access the Internet in coffee shops via personal laptops, watch movies, and study; thus, coffee shops should provide their customers with the appropriate facilities and services. The fact that a positive gap for coffee shop brand had a positive effect on willingness-to-revisit implies that the higher the level of customer satisfaction, the greater the willingness-to-revisit. A negative gap for this factor, on the other hand, implies that the lower the level of customer satisfaction, the lower the willingness-to-revisit. Thus, the brand factor has a comparatively greater effect on satisfaction than the other factors evaluated in this study. Given that the domestic coffee culture is becoming more upscale and college/university students are sensitive to this trend, students are attentive to brands. In most upscale coffee shops in Korea, the outer wall is built out of glass that can be opened, the interiors are exotic with an open kitchen. These upscale coffee shops function as landmarks and match the taste of college/university students. Coffee shops in Korea have become a cultural brand. To make customers feel that coffee shops are upscale, good quality establishments and measures to provide better services in terms of brand factor should be instituted. The intensified competition among coffee shop brands in Korea as a result of the booming industry indicates that provision of additional services is needed to differentiate competitors. These customers can also use a scanner free of charge. Another strategy that can be used to boost brands could be to provide and operate a seminar room for seminars and group study. If coffee shops adopt these types of strategies, college/university students would be more likely to consider the expenses they incur worthwhile and, subsequently, they would be more likely to be satisfied with the brands of these coffee shops, with an associated increase in their willingness-to-revisit. Gender and study year had the most negative effects on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Female students were more likely to be satisfied and be willing to return than male students, and third and fourth-year students were more likely to be satisfied and willing-to-return than first or second-year students. Students who drink coffee, read books, and use laptops alone at coffee shops are easily noticeable. High-grade students tend to visit coffee shops alone in order to use their time efficiently for self-development and to find jobs. The economical efficiency factor had the greatest effect on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit in terms of a positive gap. The higher the actual satisfaction (gap) of students with the price of the coffee, the greater their overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Economical efficiency with a negative gap had a negative effect on willingness-to-revisit, which implies that a less negative gap will result in a greater willingness-to-revisit. Amid worsening market conditions, coffee shops located around colleges/universities are using strategies, such as a point or membership card, strategic alliances with credit-card companies, development of a set menu or seasonal menu, and free coffee-shot services to increase their competitive edge. Product power also had a negative effect in terms of a negative gap, which indicates that a higher negative gap will result in a lower willingness-to-revisit. Because there are many more customers that enjoy coffee in this decade, as compared to previous decades, the new generation of customers, namely college/university students, want various menu items in addition to coffee, and coffee shops should, therefore, add side menu items, such as waffles, rice cakes, cakes, sandwiches, and salads. For example, Starbucks Korea is making efforts to enhance product power by selling rice cakes flavored in strawberry, wormwood, and pumpkin, and providing coffee or cream free of charge. In summary, coffee shops should focus on increasing their economical efficiency, brand, and product power to enhance the satisfaction of college/university students. Because shops adjacent to colleges or universities enjoy a locational advantage, providing differentiated services in terms of economical efficiency, brand, and product power, is likely to increase customer satisfaction and return visits. Coffee shop brands should, therefore, be innovative and embrace change to meet their customers' desires. Because this study only targeted college/university students in Seoul, comparative studies targeting diverse regions and age groups are required to generalize the findings and recommendations of this study.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.7-19
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• 2021

Purpose: The hotel industry needs a leader who can actively demonstrate leadership to respond to and accept changes in the organization in a highly competitive and fast-changing environment. Therefore, the role of leaders who instill clear vision and goals of the organization in their members, listen to their opinions, and empathize is paramount. Leaders should encourage successful organizational activities based on active participation by employees and create the best environment for working with a sense of mission and responsibility. This study aims to identify the relationship between empathy leadership and job engagement as a result variable of team cohesion in the hotel culinary department and conduct empirical studies on the role of empathy leadership and job engagement. Research design, data, and methodology: The data were collected from employees who work in culinary department at a five-star franchise hotel located in the Seoul metropolitan area. Because it is difficult to conduct a survey through face-to-face contact with employees due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the online survey was conducted from February 1 to February 28, 2020. A total of 330 questionnaires through online were distributed and 268 employees completed the survey, yielding a response rate of 81%. Of the 268 returned responses, 27 responses were not usable due to missing information. Thus, a total of 241 responses were used for analysis. Results: The study results are as follows. First, it has been shown that the empathy leadership of culinary department in hotel companies has a significant positive impact on the job engagement. Second, it has been shown that job engagement has a significant positive effect on members' team cohesiveness. Third, empathy leadership of hotel companies' culinary department has a significant positive impact on members' team cohesiveness. Fourth, job engagement has a significant positive (+) mediating effect in the relationship between empathy leadership and team cohesiveness in culinary department. Conclusion: This study supports the theory that an emotional and empathic leader's behavior or ability can change the effectiveness or atmosphere of a rapidly changing hotel culinary team organization by presenting a research model on the effect of empathic leadership on job engagement and team cohesiveness. And hotel chefs should be more aware of the importance of empathic leadership and make them a human resource of the organization through formal and informal communication with culinary employees.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.18-29
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• 2022

This study proposes an evaluation item model for the avatar expression process, satisfaction and self-identification for each expression element in order to investigate the expression attributes on the influence on the user in setting the avatar. The evaluation of avatar expression method was composed of self-identification and satisfaction by ease of expression and expression elements on the avatar production and expression process. To evaluate the proposed evaluation model, 17 people participated in the experiment. As a result, it was found that most of the participants had a high level of understanding of the production process, and the more diverse the expression elements, the higher the satisfaction with the avatar expression process. Hair shape and face shape were the most important expression factors, and clothes and overall harmony was the most concerned facotrs. Most of them tried to express themselves as realistically as possible. However, in self-identification, there was no significant correlation between expression and production process. In this study identify the decision-making factors that appear in the avatar expression process, the direction in which satisfaction can be formed, and the factors that affect self-identification. In addition, it will be a basic study on how avatars have a lasting influence on users in the future.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.141-159
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• 2018

The study aims to explore the factors that affect the value perception, satisfaction, and frequency of smart phone taxi applications in Shanghai, China, and commuters. According to a survey conducted on the actual use of taxi application, the majority of the customers responded that they have been using taxi apps for more than one or two years, and the results showed that they use taxi apps once or twice a week. It also showed that the actual use of taxi apps varies depending on their age and academic background. Among the value attributes of smart phone taxi applications, the respondents perceived ease of use as the highest at 4.41 points out of 5 point scale, while the risk perception was the lowest at 3.34 points. Finally, when social demographic characteristics and the nature of taxi app use were controlled, the value perception variables had a significant influence on taxi application satisfaction. The higher the perception of service quality, usefulness, and system usability, the higher the satisfaction levels were. In particular, the impact of perceived usefulness and system usability perception was high.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.287-297
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• 2021

The goal of this study is to investigate and provide information to the Fintech Industry on the main factors responsible for customer loyalty via the mediating effect of customer satisfaction. Secondly, providing traditional banking reasons for customer shifts from banking to Fintech, therefore these factors could be more focused. The consumer choices presented in this study can thus serve as a foundation for further research into post-adoption behaviors associated with Fintech for cross-border payments. This study examines consumer evaluations of how key attributes of fintech using mobile payment services affect their choice by using a conjoint analysis approach, which allows for the approximation of user preferences for specific features. In our study we have used SPSS 26 to test the reliability and mediation effect on the sample size of 348 people who regularly used Fintech for cross border payments. All the questionnaires were prepared if the customers were given fintech as an option instead of traditional banks to send their remittances abroad. The result shows that(Service Quality, Customer's trust and product quality) effecting customer satisfaction significantly would be very helpful for the current fintechs working for home remittances to improve these factors and would serve as a benchmark for the upcoming fintech startups and traditional banks to focus on these factors and catch up the fintech Industry. Finally, it is argued that, in order to be successful, focusing on service quality, customer trust, and product quality triggered customer loyalty for the Fintech in comparison to other traditional options for cross-border payments via the mediation effect of customer satisfaction.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.253-291
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• 2009

Expo, as one of the types of convention, is defined as the exhibition of which primary object is the public enlightenment. It displays lots of exhibits from countries around the world created or produced by advanced technologies, but its priority is actually on suggesting value of product, usability and creativity, not on seeking for purchasers of those products. Thus, the world's event Expo can be deemed as the place for educating visitors with various features in both current and future generation in terms of "experience". This study intends to grasp the attributes and elements of the host cities and to look into the formation of city image after being a spectator and the relation for suggesting systematic and rational measures on planning and promoting the Expo. For the foregoing measures, this study suggests effective management measures for Expo spectators by disclosing attributes of host cities, relationship with the formation of city images, and satisfactory relationship among Expo spectators. For achieving the purpose of this study, the relationship between spectators who visited the 'Cheonan 2009 Wellbeing Food Expo' and each element on the basis of the measuring devices deducted through a preparatory research. Based on the results deducted through positive analysis, it intends to expect qualitative improvement of 'Cheonan 2009 Wellbeing Food Expo' and to suggest measures for elevating satisfaction level of Expo spectators by displaying alternative elements for spectators' choice at the Expo and gives continuous suggestion on managing spectators.

• Korean journal of food and cookery science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.529-538
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• 2003

The objectives of this study were to measure customers' cognition and overall satisfaction, and to identify relatively important attributes for the overall satisfaction, of home-delivered meals. Questionnaires were distributed to 243 customers. The statistical data analyses were completed by x$^2$-tests, ANOV A, factor analysis, reliability analysis and regression analysis using SPSS version 10. 56.6% of customers get obtained information from the internet, with 31.3% of these using this method at least once a week, but 72.9% of customers used this method less than once per years. The major reasons for ordering home-delivered meals were tired of cooking, more economical and no time to cook. The results were significantly different in relation to age, occupation and monthly income. The major reasons for hesitation about ordering home-delivered meals were meals should be prepared in households, not sanitary and the use of too many artificial flavors. The results for this factor were significantly different in relation to gender, age and monthly income(p<0.01). The most preferred kinds of home-delivery meals were Korean soup (guk), stew, soup (tang), speciality dishes and party dishes. The customer's cognition of kindness of the delivery staff was highest, with food temperature being the lowest among the options. The food and service level factors were derived from a factor based analysis of customer's cognition towards home-delivered meals. The customer's cognition of food taste, food quantity, kindness of delivery staff and packaging container shape were significantly different according to the use frequency and use period. The packaging method, sanitation, kindness of delivery staff, price and taste were the most relatively important attributes for overall satisfaction with home-delivered meals.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.43-54
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• 2024

This study employs text mining techniques to compare user responses across various Over-The-Top (OTT) service platforms. The primary objective of the research is to understand user satisfaction with OTT service platforms and contribute to the formulation of more effective review strategies. The key questions addressed in this study involve identifying prominent topics and keywords in user reviews of different OTT services and comprehending platform-specific user reactions. TF-IDF is utilized to extract significant words from positive and negative reviews, while BERTopic, an advanced topic modeling technique, is employed for a more nuanced and comprehensive analysis of intricate user reviews. The results from TF-IDF analysis reveal that positive app reviews exhibit a high frequency of content-related words, whereas negative reviews display a high frequency of words associated with potential issues during app usage. Through the utilization of BERTopic, we were able to extract keywords related to content diversity, app performance components, payment, and compatibility, by associating them with content attributes. This enabled us to verify that the distinguishing attributes of the platforms vary among themselves. The findings of this study offer significant insights into user behavior and preferences, which OTT service providers can leverage to improve user experience and satisfaction. We also anticipate that researchers exploring deep learning models will find our study results valuable for conducting analyses on user review text data.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.131-151
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• 2018

The purpose of this research was to examine the characteristics of typical Korean grit as opposed to Western conceptualizations. We conducted cluster analysis to identify subgroups based on three related but distinct constructs-passion(harmonious vs. obsessive) and meaning in life. Basic needs satisfaction, life satisfaction, and ego-resilience were further assessed to explore potential group-specific differences in psychological attributes. Highly gritty individuals(n=139; M=22.51 yrs) were selected by using the median. According to our results, gritty individuals were subdivided into 3 groups: the initiative who possesses highly adaptive harmonious passion and meaning in life(35.8%), the obsessive who are high in maladaptive obsessive passion(26.1%), and the passive who are the lowest in all(38.1%). The initiative grit scored the highest in all three attributes while the two other subgroups showed culturally unique patterns. Our results suggest that culture specific factors may mold differently the unfolding and psychological outcomes of grit in Korea.