• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.239-248
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• 2010

This paper describes a collaborative project between academia and industry which focused on improving the marketing and product development strategies for two private label apparel brands of a large regional department store chain in the southeastern United States. The goal of the project was to revitalize product lines of the two brands by incorporating student ideas for new solutions, thereby giving the students practical experience with a real-life industry situation. There were a number of key players involved in the project. A privately-owned department store chain based in the southeastern United States which was seeking an academic partner had recognized a need to update two existing private label brands. They targeted middle-aged consumers looking for casual, moderately priced merchandise. The company was seeking to change direction with both packaging and presentation, and possibly product design. The branding and product development divisions of the company contacted professors in an academic department of a large southeastern state university. Two of the professors agreed that the task would be a good fit for their classes - one was a junior-level Intermediate Brand Management class; the other was a senior-level Fashion Product Development class. The professors felt that by working collaboratively on the project, students would be exposed to a real world scenario, within the security of an academic learning environment. Collaboration within an interdisciplinary team has the advantage of providing experiences and resources beyond the capabilities of a single student and adds "brainpower" to problem-solving processes (Lowman 2000). This goal of improving the capabilities of students directed the instructors in each class to form interdisciplinary teams between the Branding and Product Development classes. In addition, many universities are employing industry partnerships in research and teaching, where collaboration within temporal (semester) and physical (classroom/lab) constraints help to increase students' knowledge and experience of a real-world situation. At the University of Tennessee, the Center of Industrial Services and UT-Knoxville's College of Engineering worked with a company to develop design improvements in its U.S. operations. In this study, Because should be lower case b with a private label retail brand, Wickett, Gaskill and Damhorst's (1999) revised Retail Apparel Product Development Model was used by the product development and brand management teams. This framework was chosen because it addresses apparel product development from the concept to the retail stage. Two classes were involved in this project: a junior level Brand Management class and a senior level Fashion Product Development class. Seven teams were formed which included four students from Brand Management and two students from Product Development. The classes were taught the same semester, but not at the same time. At the beginning of the semester, each class was introduced to the industry partner and given the problem. Half the teams were assigned to the men's brand and half to the women's brand. The teams were responsible for devising approaches to the problem, formulating a timeline for their work, staying in touch with industry representatives and making sure that each member of the team contributed in a positive way. The objective for the teams was to plan, develop, and present a product line using merchandising processes (following the Wickett, Gaskill and Damhorst model) and develop new branding strategies for the proposed lines. The teams performed trend, color, fabrication and target market research; developed sketches for a line; edited the sketches and presented their line plans; wrote specifications; fitted prototypes on fit models, and developed final production samples for presentation to industry. The branding students developed a SWOT analysis, a Brand Measurement report, a mind-map for the brands and a fully integrated Marketing Report which was presented alongside the ideas for the new lines. In future if the opportunity arises to work in this collaborative way with an existing company who wishes to look both at branding and product development strategies, classes will be scheduled at the same time so that students have more time to meet and discuss timelines and assigned tasks. As it was, student groups had to meet outside of each class time and this proved to be a challenging though not uncommon part of teamwork (Pfaff and Huddleston, 2003). Although the logistics of this exercise were time-consuming to set up and administer, professors felt that the benefits to students were multiple. The most important benefit, according to student feedback from both classes, was the opportunity to work with industry professionals, follow their process, and see the results of their work evaluated by the people who made the decisions at the company level. Faculty members were grateful to have a "real-world" case to work with in the classroom to provide focus. Creative ideas and strategies were traded as plans were made, extending and strengthening the departmental links be tween the branding and product development areas. By working not only with students coming from a different knowledge base, but also having to keep in contact with the industry partner and follow the framework and timeline of industry practice, student teams were challenged to produce excellent and innovative work under new circumstances. Working on the product development and branding for "real-life" brands that are struggling gave students an opportunity to see how closely their coursework ties in with the real-world and how creativity, collaboration and flexibility are necessary components of both the design and business aspects of company operations. Industry personnel were impressed by (a) the level and depth of knowledge and execution in the student projects, and (b) the creativity of new ideas for the brands.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.739-756
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• 2016

The purpose of the study is to reflect on 'myself' as a teacher educator of college of education in depth and to improve my instruction through self-study with three critical collaborators. 17 pre-service science teachers and I have participated in this study of a teacher educator's course since March 2016 after the preliminary practice in 2015. The video recorded the course for 11 weeks with about 40 hours of lessons. The data source also included teacher educator's reflective journals, lecture evaluations, online boards and so on. Questionnaires were distributed and answered both at the beginning and at the end of the course and pre-service teachers wrote their reflective journals. Four of them were in the focus group interviews. During the course, the weekly group meeting of critical collaborators analyzed the emerging issues based on the lesson clips and teacher educator's reflective journals with discussion for the course innovation. Four phases were revealed in the process and for the purpose of the course such as exploration, conflicts, challenges, and changes. The results showed that first, we identified tensions among the teacher educator's multiple identities as a lecturer, a faculty member, and a researcher. Second, there were differences between goals of teacher educator and pre-service teachers in the course, and this obstructed the success of the course sometimes. Third, these practices led to explore balanced alternative views and interpretations of the problem by critical views and to expand and improve our teaching practice and thinking. In addition, the self-study with critical collaborators helped to bring conflicts and issues below my practice to light for collaborative reflection and it gave a chance to understand ourselves as teacher educators in different ways.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.67-86
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• 2020

Recommender Systems have been huge influence users and business more and more. Recently the importance of E-commerce has been reached rapid growth greatly in world-wide COVID-19 pandemic. Recommender system is the center of E-commerce lively. Top ranked E-commerce managers mentioned that recommender systems have a major influence on customer's purchase such as about 50% of Netflix, Amazon sales from their recommender systems. Most algorithms have been focused on improving accuracy of recommender system regardless of novelty, diversity, serendipity etc. Recommender systems with only high accuracy cannot satisfy business long-term profit because of generating sales polarization. In addition, customers do not experience enjoyment of shopping from only focusing accuracy recommender system because customer's preference is changed constantly. Therefore, recommender systems with various values need to be developed for user's high satisfaction. Reranking is the most useful methodology to realize diversity of recommender system. In this paper, diversity of recommender system is represented through constructing high similarity with users who have different preference using each user's purchased item's category algorithm. It is distinguished from past research approach which is changing the algorithm of recommender system without user's diversity preference level. We tried to discover user's diversity preference level and observed the results how the effect was different according to user's diversity preference level. In addition, graph-based recommender system was used to show diversity through user's network, not collaborative filtering. In this paper, Amazon Grocery and Gourmet Food data was used because the low-involvement product, such as habitual product, foods, low-priced goods etc., had high probability to show customer's diversity. First, a bipartite graph with users and items simultaneously is constructed to make graph-based recommender system. However, each users and items unipartite graph also need to be established to show diversity of recommender system. The weight of each unipartite graph has played crucial role changing Jaccard Distance of item's category. We can observe two important results from the user's unipartite network. First, the user's diversity preference level is observed from the network and second, dissimilar users can be discovered in the user's network. Through the research process, diversity of recommender system is presented highly with small accuracy loss and optimalization for higher accuracy is possible controlling diversity ratio. This paper has three important theoretical points. First, this research expands recommender system research for user's satisfaction with various values. Second, the graph-based recommender system is developed newly. Third, the evaluation indicator of diversity is made for diversity. In addition, recommender systems are useful for corporate profit practically and this paper has contribution on business closely. Above all, business long-term profit can be improved using recommender system with diversity and the recommender system can provide right service according to user's diversity level. Lastly, the corporate selling low-involvement products have great effect based on the results.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.11-27
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• 2024

This study aimed to investigate the role of scientific empathy in influencing students' productive disciplinary engagement in scientific activities and analyze the key factors of scientific empathy that manifest during this process. Twelve fifth-grade students were divided into three subgroups based on their general empathic abilities. Lessons promoting productive disciplinary engagement, integrating design thinking processes, were conducted. Subgroup discourse analysis during idea generation and prototype stages, two of five problem-solving steps, enabled observation of scientific empathy and practice aspects. The results showed that applying scientific empathy effectively through design thinking facilitated students' productive disciplinary engagement in science. In the idea generation stage, we observed an initial increase followed by a decrease in scientific empathy and practice utterances, while during the prototyping stage, utterance frequency increased, particularly in the later part. However, subgroups with lower empathic abilities displayed decreased discourse frequency in scientific empathy and practice during the prototype stage due to a lack of collaborative communication. Across all empathic ability levels, the students articulated all five key factors of scientific empathy through their utterances in situations involving productive science engagement. In the high empathic ability subgroup, empathic understanding and concern were emphasized, whereas in the low empathic ability subgroup, sensitivity, scientific imagination, and situational interest, factors of empathizing with the research object, were prominent. These results indicate that experiences of scientific empathy with research objects, beyond general empathetic abilities, serve as a distinct and crucial factor in stimulating diverse participation and sustaining students' productive engagement in scientific activities during science classes. By suggesting the potential multidimensional impact of scientific empathy on productive disciplinary engagement, this study contributes to discussions on the theoretical structure and stability of scientific empathy in science education.