• Title/Summary/Keyword: e-Business Pattern

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A Time Series Graph based Convolutional Neural Network Model for Effective Input Variable Pattern Learning : Application to the Prediction of Stock Market (효과적인 입력변수 패턴 학습을 위한 시계열 그래프 기반 합성곱 신경망 모형: 주식시장 예측에의 응용)

  • Lee, Mo-Se;Ahn, Hyunchul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.24 no.1
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    • pp.167-181
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    • 2018
  • Over the past decade, deep learning has been in spotlight among various machine learning algorithms. In particular, CNN(Convolutional Neural Network), which is known as the effective solution for recognizing and classifying images or voices, has been popularly applied to classification and prediction problems. In this study, we investigate the way to apply CNN in business problem solving. Specifically, this study propose to apply CNN to stock market prediction, one of the most challenging tasks in the machine learning research. As mentioned, CNN has strength in interpreting images. Thus, the model proposed in this study adopts CNN as the binary classifier that predicts stock market direction (upward or downward) by using time series graphs as its inputs. That is, our proposal is to build a machine learning algorithm that mimics an experts called 'technical analysts' who examine the graph of past price movement, and predict future financial price movements. Our proposed model named 'CNN-FG(Convolutional Neural Network using Fluctuation Graph)' consists of five steps. In the first step, it divides the dataset into the intervals of 5 days. And then, it creates time series graphs for the divided dataset in step 2. The size of the image in which the graph is drawn is $40(pixels){\times}40(pixels)$, and the graph of each independent variable was drawn using different colors. In step 3, the model converts the images into the matrices. Each image is converted into the combination of three matrices in order to express the value of the color using R(red), G(green), and B(blue) scale. In the next step, it splits the dataset of the graph images into training and validation datasets. We used 80% of the total dataset as the training dataset, and the remaining 20% as the validation dataset. And then, CNN classifiers are trained using the images of training dataset in the final step. Regarding the parameters of CNN-FG, we adopted two convolution filters ($5{\times}5{\times}6$ and $5{\times}5{\times}9$) in the convolution layer. In the pooling layer, $2{\times}2$ max pooling filter was used. The numbers of the nodes in two hidden layers were set to, respectively, 900 and 32, and the number of the nodes in the output layer was set to 2(one is for the prediction of upward trend, and the other one is for downward trend). Activation functions for the convolution layer and the hidden layer were set to ReLU(Rectified Linear Unit), and one for the output layer set to Softmax function. To validate our model - CNN-FG, we applied it to the prediction of KOSPI200 for 2,026 days in eight years (from 2009 to 2016). To match the proportions of the two groups in the independent variable (i.e. tomorrow's stock market movement), we selected 1,950 samples by applying random sampling. Finally, we built the training dataset using 80% of the total dataset (1,560 samples), and the validation dataset using 20% (390 samples). The dependent variables of the experimental dataset included twelve technical indicators popularly been used in the previous studies. They include Stochastic %K, Stochastic %D, Momentum, ROC(rate of change), LW %R(Larry William's %R), A/D oscillator(accumulation/distribution oscillator), OSCP(price oscillator), CCI(commodity channel index), and so on. To confirm the superiority of CNN-FG, we compared its prediction accuracy with the ones of other classification models. Experimental results showed that CNN-FG outperforms LOGIT(logistic regression), ANN(artificial neural network), and SVM(support vector machine) with the statistical significance. These empirical results imply that converting time series business data into graphs and building CNN-based classification models using these graphs can be effective from the perspective of prediction accuracy. Thus, this paper sheds a light on how to apply deep learning techniques to the domain of business problem solving.

Predicting the Direction of the Stock Index by Using a Domain-Specific Sentiment Dictionary (주가지수 방향성 예측을 위한 주제지향 감성사전 구축 방안)

  • Yu, Eunji;Kim, Yoosin;Kim, Namgyu;Jeong, Seung Ryul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.19 no.1
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    • pp.95-110
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    • 2013
  • Recently, the amount of unstructured data being generated through a variety of social media has been increasing rapidly, resulting in the increasing need to collect, store, search for, analyze, and visualize this data. This kind of data cannot be handled appropriately by using the traditional methodologies usually used for analyzing structured data because of its vast volume and unstructured nature. In this situation, many attempts are being made to analyze unstructured data such as text files and log files through various commercial or noncommercial analytical tools. Among the various contemporary issues dealt with in the literature of unstructured text data analysis, the concepts and techniques of opinion mining have been attracting much attention from pioneer researchers and business practitioners. Opinion mining or sentiment analysis refers to a series of processes that analyze participants' opinions, sentiments, evaluations, attitudes, and emotions about selected products, services, organizations, social issues, and so on. In other words, many attempts based on various opinion mining techniques are being made to resolve complicated issues that could not have otherwise been solved by existing traditional approaches. One of the most representative attempts using the opinion mining technique may be the recent research that proposed an intelligent model for predicting the direction of the stock index. This model works mainly on the basis of opinions extracted from an overwhelming number of economic news repots. News content published on various media is obviously a traditional example of unstructured text data. Every day, a large volume of new content is created, digitalized, and subsequently distributed to us via online or offline channels. Many studies have revealed that we make better decisions on political, economic, and social issues by analyzing news and other related information. In this sense, we expect to predict the fluctuation of stock markets partly by analyzing the relationship between economic news reports and the pattern of stock prices. So far, in the literature on opinion mining, most studies including ours have utilized a sentiment dictionary to elicit sentiment polarity or sentiment value from a large number of documents. A sentiment dictionary consists of pairs of selected words and their sentiment values. Sentiment classifiers refer to the dictionary to formulate the sentiment polarity of words, sentences in a document, and the whole document. However, most traditional approaches have common limitations in that they do not consider the flexibility of sentiment polarity, that is, the sentiment polarity or sentiment value of a word is fixed and cannot be changed in a traditional sentiment dictionary. In the real world, however, the sentiment polarity of a word can vary depending on the time, situation, and purpose of the analysis. It can also be contradictory in nature. The flexibility of sentiment polarity motivated us to conduct this study. In this paper, we have stated that sentiment polarity should be assigned, not merely on the basis of the inherent meaning of a word but on the basis of its ad hoc meaning within a particular context. To implement our idea, we presented an intelligent investment decision-support model based on opinion mining that performs the scrapping and parsing of massive volumes of economic news on the web, tags sentiment words, classifies sentiment polarity of the news, and finally predicts the direction of the next day's stock index. In addition, we applied a domain-specific sentiment dictionary instead of a general purpose one to classify each piece of news as either positive or negative. For the purpose of performance evaluation, we performed intensive experiments and investigated the prediction accuracy of our model. For the experiments to predict the direction of the stock index, we gathered and analyzed 1,072 articles about stock markets published by "M" and "E" media between July 2011 and September 2011.

Dynamics of pre-shift and post-shift lung function parameters among wood workers in Ghana

  • John Ekman;Philip Quartey;Abdala Mumuni Ussif;Niklas Ricklund;Daniel Lawer Egbenya;Gideon Akuamoah Wiafe;Korantema Mawuena Tsegah;Akua Karikari;Hakan Lofstedt;Francis Tanam Djankpa
    • Annals of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
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    • v.35
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    • pp.39.1-39.14
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    • 2023
  • Background: Diseases affecting the lungs and airways contribute significantly to the global burden of disease. The problem in low- and middle-income countries appears to be exacerbated by a shift in global manufacturing base to these countries and inadequate enforcement of environmental and safety standards. In Ghana, the potential adverse effects on respiratory function associated with occupational wood dust exposure have not been thoroughly investigated. Methods: Sixty-four male sawmill workers and 64 non-woodworkers participated in this study. The concentration of wood dust exposure, prevalence and likelihood of association of respiratory symptoms with wood dust exposure and changes in pulmonary function test (PFT) parameters in association with wood dust exposure were determined from dust concentration measurements, symptoms questionnaire and lung function test parameters. Results: Sawmill workers were exposed to inhalable dust concentration of 3.09 ± 0.04 mg/m3 but did not use respirators and engaged in personal grooming habits that are known to increase dust inhalation. The sawmill operators also showed higher prevalence and likelihoods of association with respiratory symptoms, a significant cross-shift decline in some PFT parameters and a shift towards a restrictive pattern of lung dysfunction by end of daily shift. The before-shift PFT parameters of woodworkers were comparable to those of non-woodworkers, indicating a lack of chronic effects of wood dust exposure. Conclusions: Wood dust exposure at the study site was associated with acute respiratory symptoms and acute changes in some PFT parameters. This calls for institution and enforcement of workplace and environmental safety policies to minimise exposure at sawmill operating sites, and ultimately, decrease the burden of respiratory diseases.

An Intelligent Intrusion Detection Model Based on Support Vector Machines and the Classification Threshold Optimization for Considering the Asymmetric Error Cost (비대칭 오류비용을 고려한 분류기준값 최적화와 SVM에 기반한 지능형 침입탐지모형)

  • Lee, Hyeon-Uk;Ahn, Hyun-Chul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.157-173
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    • 2011
  • As the Internet use explodes recently, the malicious attacks and hacking for a system connected to network occur frequently. This means the fatal damage can be caused by these intrusions in the government agency, public office, and company operating various systems. For such reasons, there are growing interests and demand about the intrusion detection systems (IDS)-the security systems for detecting, identifying and responding to unauthorized or abnormal activities appropriately. The intrusion detection models that have been applied in conventional IDS are generally designed by modeling the experts' implicit knowledge on the network intrusions or the hackers' abnormal behaviors. These kinds of intrusion detection models perform well under the normal situations. However, they show poor performance when they meet a new or unknown pattern of the network attacks. For this reason, several recent studies try to adopt various artificial intelligence techniques, which can proactively respond to the unknown threats. Especially, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have popularly been applied in the prior studies because of its superior prediction accuracy. However, ANNs have some intrinsic limitations such as the risk of overfitting, the requirement of the large sample size, and the lack of understanding the prediction process (i.e. black box theory). As a result, the most recent studies on IDS have started to adopt support vector machine (SVM), the classification technique that is more stable and powerful compared to ANNs. SVM is known as a relatively high predictive power and generalization capability. Under this background, this study proposes a novel intelligent intrusion detection model that uses SVM as the classification model in order to improve the predictive ability of IDS. Also, our model is designed to consider the asymmetric error cost by optimizing the classification threshold. Generally, there are two common forms of errors in intrusion detection. The first error type is the False-Positive Error (FPE). In the case of FPE, the wrong judgment on it may result in the unnecessary fixation. The second error type is the False-Negative Error (FNE) that mainly misjudges the malware of the program as normal. Compared to FPE, FNE is more fatal. Thus, when considering total cost of misclassification in IDS, it is more reasonable to assign heavier weights on FNE rather than FPE. Therefore, we designed our proposed intrusion detection model to optimize the classification threshold in order to minimize the total misclassification cost. In this case, conventional SVM cannot be applied because it is designed to generate discrete output (i.e. a class). To resolve this problem, we used the revised SVM technique proposed by Platt(2000), which is able to generate the probability estimate. To validate the practical applicability of our model, we applied it to the real-world dataset for network intrusion detection. The experimental dataset was collected from the IDS sensor of an official institution in Korea from January to June 2010. We collected 15,000 log data in total, and selected 1,000 samples from them by using random sampling method. In addition, the SVM model was compared with the logistic regression (LOGIT), decision trees (DT), and ANN to confirm the superiority of the proposed model. LOGIT and DT was experimented using PASW Statistics v18.0, and ANN was experimented using Neuroshell 4.0. For SVM, LIBSVM v2.90-a freeware for training SVM classifier-was used. Empirical results showed that our proposed model based on SVM outperformed all the other comparative models in detecting network intrusions from the accuracy perspective. They also showed that our model reduced the total misclassification cost compared to the ANN-based intrusion detection model. As a result, it is expected that the intrusion detection model proposed in this paper would not only enhance the performance of IDS, but also lead to better management of FNE.

Measuring the Public Service Quality Using Process Mining: Focusing on N City's Building Licensing Complaint Service (프로세스 마이닝을 이용한 공공서비스의 품질 측정: N시의 건축 인허가 민원 서비스를 중심으로)

  • Lee, Jung Seung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.25 no.4
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    • pp.35-52
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    • 2019
  • As public services are provided in various forms, including e-government, the level of public demand for public service quality is increasing. Although continuous measurement and improvement of the quality of public services is needed to improve the quality of public services, traditional surveys are costly and time-consuming and have limitations. Therefore, there is a need for an analytical technique that can measure the quality of public services quickly and accurately at any time based on the data generated from public services. In this study, we analyzed the quality of public services based on data using process mining techniques for civil licensing services in N city. It is because the N city's building license complaint service can secure data necessary for analysis and can be spread to other institutions through public service quality management. This study conducted process mining on a total of 3678 building license complaint services in N city for two years from January 2014, and identified process maps and departments with high frequency and long processing time. According to the analysis results, there was a case where a department was crowded or relatively few at a certain point in time. In addition, there was a reasonable doubt that the increase in the number of complaints would increase the time required to complete the complaints. According to the analysis results, the time required to complete the complaint was varied from the same day to a year and 146 days. The cumulative frequency of the top four departments of the Sewage Treatment Division, the Waterworks Division, the Urban Design Division, and the Green Growth Division exceeded 50% and the cumulative frequency of the top nine departments exceeded 70%. Higher departments were limited and there was a great deal of unbalanced load among departments. Most complaint services have a variety of different patterns of processes. Research shows that the number of 'complementary' decisions has the greatest impact on the length of a complaint. This is interpreted as a lengthy period until the completion of the entire complaint is required because the 'complement' decision requires a physical period in which the complainant supplements and submits the documents again. In order to solve these problems, it is possible to drastically reduce the overall processing time of the complaints by preparing thoroughly before the filing of the complaints or in the preparation of the complaints, or the 'complementary' decision of other complaints. By clarifying and disclosing the cause and solution of one of the important data in the system, it helps the complainant to prepare in advance and convinces that the documents prepared by the public information will be passed. The transparency of complaints can be sufficiently predictable. Documents prepared by pre-disclosed information are likely to be processed without problems, which not only shortens the processing period but also improves work efficiency by eliminating the need for renegotiation or multiple tasks from the point of view of the processor. The results of this study can be used to find departments with high burdens of civil complaints at certain points of time and to flexibly manage the workforce allocation between departments. In addition, as a result of analyzing the pattern of the departments participating in the consultation by the characteristics of the complaints, it is possible to use it for automation or recommendation when requesting the consultation department. In addition, by using various data generated during the complaint process and using machine learning techniques, the pattern of the complaint process can be found. It can be used for automation / intelligence of civil complaint processing by making this algorithm and applying it to the system. This study is expected to be used to suggest future public service quality improvement through process mining analysis on civil service.

Personalized Exhibition Booth Recommendation Methodology Using Sequential Association Rule (순차 연관 규칙을 이용한 개인화된 전시 부스 추천 방법)

  • Moon, Hyun-Sil;Jung, Min-Kyu;Kim, Jae-Kyeong;Kim, Hyea-Kyeong
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.16 no.4
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    • pp.195-211
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    • 2010
  • An exhibition is defined as market events for specific duration to present exhibitors' main product range to either business or private visitors, and it also plays a key role as effective marketing channels. Especially, as the effect of the opinions of the visitors after the exhibition impacts directly on sales or the image of companies, exhibition organizers must consider various needs of visitors. To meet needs of visitors, ubiquitous technologies have been applied in some exhibitions. However, despite of the development of the ubiquitous technologies, their services cannot always reflect visitors' preferences as they only generate information when visitors request. As a result, they have reached their limit to meet needs of visitors, which consequently might lead them to loss of marketing opportunity. Recommendation systems can be the right type to overcome these limitations. They can recommend the booths to coincide with visitors' preferences, so that they help visitors who are in difficulty for choices in exhibition environment. One of the most successful and widely used technologies for building recommender systems is called Collaborative Filtering. Traditional recommender systems, however, only use neighbors' evaluations or behaviors for a personalized prediction. Therefore, they can not reflect visitors' dynamic preference, and also lack of accuracy in exhibition environment. Although there is much useful information to infer visitors' preference in ubiquitous environment (e.g., visitors' current location, booth visit path, and so on), they use only limited information for recommendation. In this study, we propose a booth recommendation methodology using Sequential Association Rule which considers the sequence of visiting. Recent studies of Sequential Association Rule use the constraints to improve the performance. However, since traditional Sequential Association Rule considers the whole rules to recommendation, they have a scalability problem when they are adapted to a large exhibition scale. To solve this problem, our methodology composes the confidence database before recommendation process. To compose the confidence database, we first search preceding rules which have the frequency above threshold. Next, we compute the confidences of each preceding rules to each booth which is not contained in preceding rules. Therefore, the confidence database has two kinds of information which are preceding rules and their confidence to each booth. In recommendation process, we just generate preceding rules of the target visitors based on the records of the visits, and recommend booths according to the confidence database. Throughout these steps, we expect reduction of time spent on recommendation process. To evaluate proposed methodology, we use real booth visit records which are collected by RFID technology in IT exhibition. Booth visit records also contain the visit sequence of each visitor. We compare the performance of proposed methodology with traditional Collaborative Filtering system. As a result, our proposed methodology generally shows higher performance than traditional Collaborative Filtering. We can also see some features of it in experimental results. First, it shows the highest performance at one booth recommendation. It detects preceding rules with some portions of visitors. Therefore, if there is a visitor who moved with very a different pattern compared to the whole visitors, it cannot give a correct recommendation for him/her even though we increase the number of recommendation. Trained by the whole visitors, it cannot correctly give recommendation to visitors who have a unique path. Second, the performance of general recommendation systems increase as time expands. However, our methodology shows higher performance with limited information like one or two time periods. Therefore, not only can it recommend even if there is not much information of the target visitors' booth visit records, but also it uses only small amount of information in recommendation process. We expect that it can give real?time recommendations in exhibition environment. Overall, our methodology shows higher performance ability than traditional Collaborative Filtering systems, we expect it could be applied in booth recommendation system to satisfy visitors in exhibition environment.

The Effects of Online Service Quality on Consumer Satisfaction and Loyalty Intention -About Booking and Issuing Air Tickets on Website- (온라인 서비스 품질이 고객만족 및 충성의도에 미치는 영향 -항공권 예약.발권 웹사이트를 중심으로-)

  • Park, Jong-Gee;Ko, Do-Eun;Lee, Seung-Chang
    • Journal of Distribution Research
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    • v.15 no.3
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    • pp.71-110
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    • 2010
  • 1. Introduction Today Internet is recognized as an important way for the transaction of products and services. According to the data surveyed by the National Statistical Office, the on-line transaction in 2007 for a year, 15.7656 trillion, shows a 17.1%(2.3060 trillion won) increase over last year, of these, the amount of B2C has been increased 12.0%(10.2258 trillion won). Like this, because the entry barrier of on-line market of Korea is low, many retailers could easily enter into the market. So the bigger its scale is, but on the other hand, the tougher its competition is. Particularly due to the Internet and innovation of IT, the existing market has been changed into the perfect competitive market(Srinivasan, Rolph & Kishore, 2002). In the early years of on-line business, they think that the main reason for success is a moderate price, they are awakened to its importance of on-line service quality with tough competition. If it's not sure whether customers can be provided with what they want, they can use the Web sites, perhaps they can trust their products that had been already bought or not, they have a doubt its viability(Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhotra, 2005). Customers can directly reserve and issue their air tickets irrespective of place and time at the Web sites of travel agencies or airlines, but its empirical studies about these Web sites for reserving and issuing air tickets are insufficient. Therefore this study goes on for following specific objects. First object is to measure service quality and service recovery of Web sites for reserving and issuing air tickets. Second is to look into whether above on-line service quality and on-line service recovery have an impact on overall service quality. Third is to seek for the relation with overall service quality and customer satisfaction, then this customer satisfaction and loyalty intention. 2. Theoretical Background 2.1 On-line Service Quality Barnes & Vidgen(2000; 2001a; 2001b; 2002) had invented the tool to measure Web sites' quality four times(called WebQual). The WebQual 1.0, Step one invented a measuring item for information quality based on QFD, and this had been verified by students of UK business school. The Web Qual 2.0, Step two invented for interaction quality, and had been judged by customers of on-line bookshop. The WebQual 3.0, Step three invented by consolidating the WebQual 1.0 for information quality and the WebQual2.0 for interactionquality. It includes 3-quality-dimension, information quality, interaction quality, site design, and had been assessed and confirmed by auction sites(e-bay, Amazon, QXL). Furtheron, through the former empirical studies, the authors changed sites quality into usability by judging that usability is a concept how customers interact with or perceive Web sites and It is used widely for accessing Web sites. By this process, WebQual 4.0 was invented, and is consist of 3-quality-dimension; information quality, interaction quality, usability, 22 items. However, because WebQual 4.0 is focusing on technical part, it's usable at the Website's design part, on the other hand, it's not usable at the Web site's pleasant experience part. Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhorta(2002; 2005) had invented the measure for measuring on-line service quality in 2002 and 2005. The study in 2002 divided on-line service quality into 5 dimensions. But these were not well-organized, so there needed to be studied again totally. So Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhorta(2005) re-worked out the study about on-line service quality measure base on 2002's study and invented E-S-QUAL. After they invented preliminary measure for on-line service quality, they made up a question for customers who had purchased at amazon.com and walmart.com and reassessed this measure. And they perfected an invention of E-S-QUAL consists of 4 dimensions, 22 items of efficiency, system availability, fulfillment, privacy. Efficiency measures assess to sites and usability and others, system availability measures accurate technical function of sites and others, fulfillment measures promptness of delivering products and sufficient goods and others and privacy measures the degree of protection of data about their customers and so on. 2.2 Service Recovery Service industries tend to minimize the losses by coping with service failure promptly. This responses of service providers to service failure mean service recovery(Kelly & Davis, 1994). Bitner(1990) went on his study from customers' view about service providers' behavior for customers to recognize their satisfaction/dissatisfaction at service point. According to them, to manage service failure successfully, exact recognition of service problem, an apology, sufficient description about service failure and some tangible compensation are important. Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhorta(2005) approached the service recovery from how to measure, rather than how to manage, and moved to on-line market not to off-line, then invented E-RecS-QUAL which is a measuring tool about on-line service recovery. 2.3 Customer Satisfaction The definition of customer satisfaction can be divided into two points of view. First, they approached customer satisfaction from outcome of comsumer. Howard & Sheth(1969) defined satisfaction as 'a cognitive condition feeling being rewarded properly or improperly for their sacrifice.' and Westbrook & Reilly(1983) also defined customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction as 'a psychological reaction to the behavior pattern of shopping and purchasing, the display condition of retail store, outcome of purchased goods and service as well as whole market.' Second, they approached customer satisfaction from process. Engel & Blackwell(1982) defined satisfaction as 'an assessment of a consistency in chosen alternative proposal and their belief they had with them.' Tse & Wilton(1988) defined customer satisfaction as 'a customers' reaction to discordance between advance expectation and ex post facto outcome.' That is, this point of view that customer satisfaction is process is the important factor that comparing and assessing process what they expect and outcome of consumer. Unlike outcome-oriented approach, process-oriented approach has many advantages. As process-oriented approach deals with customers' whole expenditure experience, it checks up main process by measuring one by one each factor which is essential role at each step. And this approach enables us to check perceptual/psychological process formed customer satisfaction. Because of these advantages, now many studies are adopting this process-oriented approach(Yi, 1995). 2.4 Loyalty Intention Loyalty has been studied by dividing into behavioral approaches, attitudinal approaches and complex approaches(Dekimpe et al., 1997). In the early years of study, they defined loyalty focusing on behavioral concept, behavioral approaches regard customer loyalty as "a tendency to purchase periodically within a certain period of time at specific retail store." But the loyalty of behavioral approaches focuses on only outcome of customer behavior, so there are someone to point the limits that customers' decision-making situation or process were neglected(Enis & Paul, 1970; Raj, 1982; Lee, 2002). So the attitudinal approaches were suggested. The attitudinal approaches consider loyalty contains all the cognitive, emotional, voluntary factors(Oliver, 1997), define the customer loyalty as "friendly behaviors for specific retail stores." However these attitudinal approaches can explain that how the customer loyalty form and change, but cannot say positively whether it is moved to real purchasing in the future or not. This is a kind of shortcoming(Oh, 1995). 3. Research Design 3.1 Research Model Based on the objects of this study, the research model derived is

    . 3.2 Hypotheses 3.2.1 The Hypothesis of On-line Service Quality and Overall Service Quality The relation between on-line service quality and overall service quality I-1. Efficiency of on-line service quality may have a significant effect on overall service quality. I-2. System availability of on-line service quality may have a significant effect on overall service quality. I-3. Fulfillment of on-line service quality may have a significant effect on overall service quality. I-4. Privacy of on-line service quality may have a significant effect on overall service quality. 3.2.2 The Hypothesis of On-line Service Recovery and Overall Service Quality The relation between on-line service recovery and overall service quality II-1. Responsiveness of on-line service recovery may have a significant effect on overall service quality. II-2. Compensation of on-line service recovery may have a significant effect on overall service quality. II-3. Contact of on-line service recovery may have a significant effect on overall service quality. 3.2.3 The Hypothesis of Overall Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction The relation between overall service quality and customer satisfaction III-1. Overall service quality may have a significant effect on customer satisfaction. 3.2.4 The Hypothesis of Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Intention The relation between customer satisfaction and loyalty intention IV-1. Customer satisfaction may have a significant effect on loyalty intention. 3.2.5 The Hypothesis of a Mediation Variable Wolfinbarger & Gilly(2003) and Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhotra(2005) had made clear that each dimension of service quality has a significant effect on overall service quality. Add to this, the authors analyzed empirically that each dimension of on-line service quality has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. With that viewpoint, this study would examine if overall service quality mediates between on-line service quality and each dimension of customer satisfaction, keeping on looking into the relation between on-line service quality and overall service quality, overall service quality and customer satisfaction. And as this study understands that each dimension of on-line service recovery also has an effect on overall service quality, this would examine if overall service quality also mediates between on-line service recovery and each dimension of customer satisfaction. Therefore these hypotheses followed are set up to examine if overall service quality plays its role as the mediation variable. The relation between on-line service quality and customer satisfaction V-1. Overall service quality may mediate the effects of efficiency of on-line service quality on customer satisfaction. V-2. Overall service quality may mediate the effects of system availability of on-line service quality on customer satisfaction. V-3. Overall service quality may mediate the effects of fulfillment of on-line service quality on customer satisfaction. V-4. Overall service quality may mediate the effects of privacy of on-line service quality on customer satisfaction. The relation between on-line service recovery and customer satisfaction VI-1. Overall service quality may mediate the effects of responsiveness of on-line service recovery on customer satisfaction. VI-2. Overall service quality may mediate the effects of compensation of on-line service recovery on customer satisfaction. VI-3. Overall service quality may mediate the effects of contact of on-line service recovery on customer satisfaction. 4. Empirical Analysis 4.1 Research design and the characters of data This empirical study aimed at customers who ever purchased air ticket at the Web sites for reservation and issue. Total 430 questionnaires were distributed, and 400 were collected. After surveying with the final questionnaire, the frequency test was performed about variables of sex, age which is demographic factors for analyzing general characters of sample data. Sex of data is consist of 146 of male(42.7%) and 196 of female(57.3%), so portion of female is a little higher. Age is composed of 11 of 10s(3.2%), 199 of 20s(58.2%), 105 of 30s(30.7%), 22 of 40s(6.4%), 5 of 50s(1.5%). The reason that portions of 20s and 30s are higher can be supposed that they use the Internet frequently and purchase air ticket directly. 4.2 Assessment of measuring scales This study used the internal consistency analysis to measure reliability, and then used the Cronbach'$\alpha$ to assess this. As a result of reliability test, Cronbach'$\alpha$ value of every component shows more than 0.6, it is found that reliance of the measured variables are ensured. After reliability test, the explorative factor analysis was performed. the factor sampling was performed by the Principal Component Analysis(PCA), the factor rotation was performed by the Varimax which is good for verifying mutual independence between factors. By the result of the initial factor analysis, items blocking construct validity were removed, and the result of the final factor analysis performed for verifying construct validity is followed above. 4.3 Hypothesis Testing 4.3.1 Hypothesis Testing by the Regression Analysis(SPSS) 4.3.2 Analysis of Mediation Effect To verify mediation effect of overall service quality of and , this study used the phased analysis method proposed by Baron & Kenny(1986) generally used. As shows, Step 1 and Step 2 are significant, and mediation variable has a significant effect on dependent variables and so does independent variables at Step 3, too. And there needs to prove the partial mediation effect, independent variable's estimate ability at Step 3(Standardized coefficient $\beta$eta : efficiency=.164, system availability=.074, fulfillment=.108, privacy=.107) is smaller than its estimate ability at Step 2(Standardized coefficient $\beta$eta : efficiency=.409, system availability=.227, fulfillment=.386, privacy=.237), so it was proved that overall service quality played a role as the partial mediation between on-line service quality and satisfaction. As
    shows, Step 1 and Step 2 are significant, and mediation variable has a significant effect on dependent variables and so does independent variables at Step 3, too. And there needs to prove the partial mediation effect, independent variable's estimate ability at Step 3(Standardized coefficient $\beta$eta : responsiveness=.164, compensation=.117, contact=.113) is smaller than its estimate ability at Step 2(Standardized coefficient $\beta$eta : responsiveness=.409, compensation=.386, contact=.237), so it was proved that overall service quality played a role as the partial mediation between on-line service recovery and satisfaction. Verified results on the basis of empirical analysis are followed. First, as the result of , it shows that all were chosen, so on-line service quality has a positive effect on overall service quality. Especially fulfillment of overall service quality has the most effect, and then efficiency, system availability, privacy in order. Second, as the result of , it shows that all were chosen, so on-line service recovery has a positive effect on overall service quality. Especially responsiveness of overall service quality has the most effect, and then contact, compensation in order. Third, as the result of and , it shows that and all were chosen, so overall service quality has a positive effect on customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction has a positive effect on loyalty intention. Fourth, as the result of and , it shows that and all were chosen, so overall service quality plays a role as the partial mediation between on-line service quality and customer satisfaction, on-line service recovery and customer satisfaction. 5. Conclusion This study measured and analyzed service quality and service recovery of the Web sites that customers made a reservation and issued their air tickets, and by improving customer satisfaction through the result, this study put its final goal to grope how to keep loyalty customers. On the basis of the result of empirical analysis, suggestion points of this study are followed. First, this study regarded E-S-QUAL that measures on-line service quality and E-RecS-QUAL that measures on-line service recovery as variables, so it overcame the limit of existing studies that used modified SERVQUAL to measure service quality of the Web sites. Second, it shows that fulfillment and efficiency of on-line service quality have the most significant effect on overall service quality. Therefore the Web sites of reserving and issuing air tickets should try harder to elevate efficiency and fulfillment. Third, privacy of on-line service quality has the least significant effect on overall service quality, but this may be caused by un-assurance of customers whether the Web sites protect safely their confidential information or not. So they need to notify customers of this fact clearly. Fourth, there are many cases that customers don't recognize the importance of on-line service recovery, but if they would think that On-line service recovery has an effect on customer satisfaction and loyalty intention, as its importance is very significant they should prepare for that. Fifth, because overall service quality has a positive effect on customer satisfaction and loyalty intention, they should try harder to elevate service quality and service recovery of the Web sites of reserving and issuing air tickets to maximize customer satisfaction and to secure loyalty customers. Sixth, it is found that overall service quality plays a role as the partial mediation, but now there are rarely existing studies about this, so there need to be more studies about this.

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  • An Empirical Study on Influencing Factors of Switching Intention from Online Shopping to Webrooming (온라인 쇼핑에서 웹루밍으로의 쇼핑전환 의도에 영향을 미치는 요인에 대한 연구)

    • Choi, Hyun-Seung;Yang, Sung-Byung
      • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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      • v.22 no.1
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      • pp.19-41
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      • 2016
    • Recently, the proliferation of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet personal computers and the development of information communication technologies (ICT) have led to a big trend of a shift from single-channel shopping to multi-channel shopping. With the emergence of a "smart" group of consumers who want to shop in more reasonable and convenient ways, the boundaries apparently dividing online and offline shopping have collapsed and blurred more than ever before. Thus, there is now fierce competition between online and offline channels. Ever since the emergence of online shopping, a major type of multi-channel shopping has been "showrooming," where consumers visit offline stores to examine products before buying them online. However, because of the growing use of smart devices and the counterattack of offline retailers represented by omni-channel marketing strategies, one of the latest huge trends of shopping is "webrooming," where consumers visit online stores to examine products before buying them offline. This has become a threat to online retailers. In this situation, although it is very important to examine the influencing factors for switching from online shopping to webrooming, most prior studies have mainly focused on a single- or multi-channel shopping pattern. Therefore, this study thoroughly investigated the influencing factors on customers switching from online shopping to webrooming in terms of both the "search" and "purchase" processes through the application of a push-pull-mooring (PPM) framework. In order to test the research model, 280 individual samples were gathered from undergraduate and graduate students who had actual experience with webrooming. The results of the structural equation model (SEM) test revealed that the "pull" effect is strongest on the webrooming intention rather than the "push" or "mooring" effects. This proves a significant relationship between "attractiveness of webrooming" and "webrooming intention." In addition, the results showed that both the "perceived risk of online search" and "perceived risk of online purchase" significantly affect "distrust of online shopping." Similarly, both "perceived benefit of multi-channel search" and "perceived benefit of offline purchase" were found to have significant effects on "attractiveness of webrooming" were also found. Furthermore, the results indicated that "online purchase habit" is the only influencing factor that leads to "online shopping lock-in." The theoretical implications of the study are as follows. First, by examining the multi-channel shopping phenomenon from the perspective of "shopping switching" from online shopping to webrooming, this study complements the limits of the "channel switching" perspective, represented by multi-channel freeriding studies that merely focused on customers' channel switching behaviors from one to another. While extant studies with a channel switching perspective have focused on only one type of multi-channel shopping, where consumers just move from one particular channel to different channels, a study with a shopping switching perspective has the advantage of comprehensively investigating how consumers choose and navigate among diverse types of single- or multi-channel shopping alternatives. In this study, only limited shopping switching behavior from online shopping to webrooming was examined; however, the results should explain various phenomena in a more comprehensive manner from the perspective of shopping switching. Second, this study extends the scope of application of the push-pull-mooring framework, which is quite commonly used in marketing research to explain consumers' product switching behaviors. Through the application of this framework, it is hoped that more diverse shopping switching behaviors can be examined in future research. This study can serve a stepping stone for future studies. One of the most important practical implications of the study is that it may help single- and multi-channel retailers develop more specific customer strategies by revealing the influencing factors of webrooming intention from online shopping. For example, online single-channel retailers can ease the distrust of online shopping to prevent consumers from churning by reducing the perceived risk in terms of online search and purchase. On the other hand, offline retailers can develop specific strategies to increase the attractiveness of webrooming by letting customers perceive the benefits of multi-channel search or offline purchase. Although this study focused only on customers switching from online shopping to webrooming, the results can be expanded to various types of shopping switching behaviors embedded in single- and multi-channel shopping environments, such as showrooming and mobile shopping.

    Ensemble Learning with Support Vector Machines for Bond Rating (회사채 신용등급 예측을 위한 SVM 앙상블학습)

    • Kim, Myoung-Jong
      • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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      • v.18 no.2
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      • pp.29-45
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      • 2012
    • Bond rating is regarded as an important event for measuring financial risk of companies and for determining the investment returns of investors. As a result, it has been a popular research topic for researchers to predict companies' credit ratings by applying statistical and machine learning techniques. The statistical techniques, including multiple regression, multiple discriminant analysis (MDA), logistic models (LOGIT), and probit analysis, have been traditionally used in bond rating. However, one major drawback is that it should be based on strict assumptions. Such strict assumptions include linearity, normality, independence among predictor variables and pre-existing functional forms relating the criterion variablesand the predictor variables. Those strict assumptions of traditional statistics have limited their application to the real world. Machine learning techniques also used in bond rating prediction models include decision trees (DT), neural networks (NN), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). Especially, SVM is recognized as a new and promising classification and regression analysis method. SVM learns a separating hyperplane that can maximize the margin between two categories. SVM is simple enough to be analyzed mathematical, and leads to high performance in practical applications. SVM implements the structuralrisk minimization principle and searches to minimize an upper bound of the generalization error. In addition, the solution of SVM may be a global optimum and thus, overfitting is unlikely to occur with SVM. In addition, SVM does not require too many data sample for training since it builds prediction models by only using some representative sample near the boundaries called support vectors. A number of experimental researches have indicated that SVM has been successfully applied in a variety of pattern recognition fields. However, there are three major drawbacks that can be potential causes for degrading SVM's performance. First, SVM is originally proposed for solving binary-class classification problems. Methods for combining SVMs for multi-class classification such as One-Against-One, One-Against-All have been proposed, but they do not improve the performance in multi-class classification problem as much as SVM for binary-class classification. Second, approximation algorithms (e.g. decomposition methods, sequential minimal optimization algorithm) could be used for effective multi-class computation to reduce computation time, but it could deteriorate classification performance. Third, the difficulty in multi-class prediction problems is in data imbalance problem that can occur when the number of instances in one class greatly outnumbers the number of instances in the other class. Such data sets often cause a default classifier to be built due to skewed boundary and thus the reduction in the classification accuracy of such a classifier. SVM ensemble learning is one of machine learning methods to cope with the above drawbacks. Ensemble learning is a method for improving the performance of classification and prediction algorithms. AdaBoost is one of the widely used ensemble learning techniques. It constructs a composite classifier by sequentially training classifiers while increasing weight on the misclassified observations through iterations. The observations that are incorrectly predicted by previous classifiers are chosen more often than examples that are correctly predicted. Thus Boosting attempts to produce new classifiers that are better able to predict examples for which the current ensemble's performance is poor. In this way, it can reinforce the training of the misclassified observations of the minority class. This paper proposes a multiclass Geometric Mean-based Boosting (MGM-Boost) to resolve multiclass prediction problem. Since MGM-Boost introduces the notion of geometric mean into AdaBoost, it can perform learning process considering the geometric mean-based accuracy and errors of multiclass. This study applies MGM-Boost to the real-world bond rating case for Korean companies to examine the feasibility of MGM-Boost. 10-fold cross validations for threetimes with different random seeds are performed in order to ensure that the comparison among three different classifiers does not happen by chance. For each of 10-fold cross validation, the entire data set is first partitioned into tenequal-sized sets, and then each set is in turn used as the test set while the classifier trains on the other nine sets. That is, cross-validated folds have been tested independently of each algorithm. Through these steps, we have obtained the results for classifiers on each of the 30 experiments. In the comparison of arithmetic mean-based prediction accuracy between individual classifiers, MGM-Boost (52.95%) shows higher prediction accuracy than both AdaBoost (51.69%) and SVM (49.47%). MGM-Boost (28.12%) also shows the higher prediction accuracy than AdaBoost (24.65%) and SVM (15.42%)in terms of geometric mean-based prediction accuracy. T-test is used to examine whether the performance of each classifiers for 30 folds is significantly different. The results indicate that performance of MGM-Boost is significantly different from AdaBoost and SVM classifiers at 1% level. These results mean that MGM-Boost can provide robust and stable solutions to multi-classproblems such as bond rating.


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