• Title/Summary/Keyword: fit preference

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IS Continuance of Hedonic Information Systems (헤도닉 정보시스템의 지속적인 사용에 관한 연구: UCC를 중심으로)

  • Seo, Ho-Cheol;Ahn, Joong-Ho;Yang, Ji-Youn
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.17 no.3
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    • pp.25-53
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    • 2007
  • The Expectation Confirmation Model (ECM) of information systems investigates the continued information systems usage behavior. This paper expands the original post-adoption beliefs and searches the applications in the emerging hedonic information systems. Previous IS researches focused on the organizational environments. However as the information technology (especially internet) evolves, information systems have not only emerged for the organizations but also for the individual users, such as internet portals, internet communities, on-line games etc. These information systems so called Hedonic Information Systems aims to provide self-fulfilling value rather than instrumental value to the users. Researches in other disciplines, including marketing and consumer behavior research, illustrate that the hedonic and utilitarian perspective of goods and services have different influence on the consumer behavior. Goods and services used to be classified into either hedonic or utilitarian aspect but now they may belong to both aspects simultaneously. Moreover consumer's goals or tasks have both hedonic utilitarian aspects. When a consumer makes a decision to purchase or repurchase goods or services, he/she compares the hedonic and utilitarian perspectives of goods to find most suitable ones to satisfy their goals/tasks. Finally, consumer's behavior is determined by the trade-off between what the goods can provide to the consumers and in what extent the goods fulfill consumer's purchase behavior. Consumer also shows that the salience of hedonic perspective is relatively greater when consumer decides which of several items to give up (forfeiture choices) than the time when they decide which item to acquire (acquisition choices). Some researches in MIS discipline have found out that the information systems also have both hedonic and utilitarian perspectives. The decision process of whether to use information systems or not is similar to that of a consumer's decision of purchasing or repurchasing goods or services. However most of researches in MIS tend to focus on the extrinsic motivation variables which only cover the utilitarian perspective of information systems. It is only recent that researches start to investigate the intrinsic motivation variable - Perceived Enjoyment - for the hedonic perspective. Considering the consumer's purchasing decision process, users of information systems evaluate the systems through balancing between intrinsic (hedonic) and extrinsic (utilitarian) variables according to their main tasks or tendencies. This paper proposes a model that is based on the ECM of IS Continuance model modified from Expectation Confirmation Model to fit into the continued usage of information system. It first started from the decision process regarding hedonic and utilitarian perspectives in the consumer behavior literatures. The model deals with continued usage of information systems beyond the mere technology adoption as in most of the previous MIS researches. This research is particularly important to the hedonic information systems, because their business model depends on the frequent usages rather simple adoption at the beginning. Because the basic model only considered the extrinsic motivations (perceived usefulness) to explain the users' behavior and as the information systems can have both hedonic and utilitarian dimensions, it should consider both perspectives. Therefore, this newly proposed model considers intrinsic variable (perceived enjoyment) as well. Since the individual user can have a preference on either aspects that is between the hedonic and utilitarian perspective depending on his/her main tasks or goals, some variables (Hedonic Orientation and Utilitarian Orientation) meaning the extents of users' pursuing from the information system were additionally studied.

Relationships Among Employees' IT Personnel Competency, Personal Work Satisfaction, and Personal Work Performance: A Goal Orientation Perspective (조직구성원의 정보기술 인적역량과 개인 업무만족 및 업무성과 간의 관계: 목표지향성 관점)

  • Heo, Myung-Sook;Cheon, Myun-Joong
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.21 no.4
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    • pp.63-104
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    • 2011
  • The study examines the relationships among employee's goal orientation, IT personnel competency, personal effectiveness. The goal orientation includes learning goal orientation, performance approach goal orientation, and performance avoid goal orientation. Personal effectiveness consists of personal work satisfaction and personal work performance. In general, IT personnel competency refers to IT expert's skills, expertise, and knowledge required to perform IT activities in organizations. However, due to the advent of the internet and the generalization of IT, IT personnel competency turns out to be an important competency of technological experts as well as employees in organizations. While the competency of IT itself is important, the appropriate harmony between IT personnel's business capability and technological capability enhances the value of human resources and thus provides organizations with sustainable competitive advantages. The rapid pace of organization change places increased pressure on employees to continually update their skills and adapt their behavior to new organizational realities. This challenge raises a number of important questions concerning organizational behavior? Why do some employees display remarkable flexibility in their behavioral responses to changes in the organization, whereas others firmly resist change or experience great stress when faced with the need to alter behavior? Why do some employees continually strive to improve themselves over their life span, whereas others are content to forge through life using the same basic knowledge and skills? Why do some employees throw themselves enthusiastically into challenging tasks, whereas others avoid challenging tasks? The goal orientation proposed by organizational psychology provides at least a partial answer to these questions. Goal orientations refer to stable personally characteristics fostered by "self-theories" about the nature and development of attributes (such as intelligence, personality, abilities, and skills) people have. Self-theories are one's beliefs and goal orientations are achievement motivation revealed in seeking goals in accordance with one's beliefs. The goal orientations include learning goal orientation, performance approach goal orientation, and performance avoid goal orientation. Specifically, a learning goal orientation refers to a preference to develop the self by acquiring new skills, mastering new situations, and improving one's competence. A performance approach goal orientation refers to a preference to demonstrate and validate the adequacy of one's competence by seeking favorable judgments and avoiding negative judgments. A performance avoid goal orientation refers to a preference to avoid the disproving of one's competence and to avoid negative judgements about it, while focusing on performance. And the study also examines the moderating role of work career of employees to investigate the difference in the relationship between IT personnel competency and personal effectiveness. The study analyzes the collected data using PASW 18.0 and and PLS(Partial Least Square). The study also uses PLS bootstrapping algorithm (sample size: 500) to test research hypotheses. The result shows that the influences of both a learning goal orientation (${\beta}$ = 0.301, t = 3.822, P < 0.000) and a performance approach goal orientation (${\beta}$ = 0.224, t = 2.710, P < 0.01) on IT personnel competency are positively significant, while the influence of a performance avoid goal orientation(${\beta}$ = -0.142, t = 2.398, p < 0.05) on IT personnel competency is negatively significant. The result indicates that employees differ in their psychological and behavioral responses according to the goal orientation of employees. The result also shows that the impact of a IT personnel competency on both personal work satisfaction(${\beta}$ = 0.395, t = 4.897, P < 0.000) and personal work performance(${\beta}$ = 0.575, t = 12.800, P < 0.000) is positively significant. And the impact of personal work satisfaction(${\beta}$ = 0.148, t = 2.432, p < 0.05) on personal work performance is positively significant. Finally, the impacts of control variables (gender, age, type of industry, position, work career) on the relationships between IT personnel competency and personal effectiveness(personal work satisfaction work performance) are partly significant. In addition, the study uses PLS algorithm to find out a GoF(global criterion of goodness of fit) of the exploratory research model which includes a mediating variable, IT personnel competency. The result of analysis shows that the value of GoF is 0.45 above GoFlarge(0.36). Therefore, the research model turns out be good. In addition, the study performs a Sobel Test to find out the statistical significance of the mediating variable, IT personnel competency, which is already turned out to have the mediating effect in the research model using PLS. The result of a Sobel Test shows that the values of Z are all significant statistically (above 1.96 and below -1.96) and indicates that IT personnel competency plays a mediating role in the research model. At the present day, most employees are universally afraid of organizational changes and resistant to them in organizations in which the acceptance and learning of a new information technology or information system is particularly required. The problem is due' to increasing a feeling of uneasiness and uncertainty in improving past practices in accordance with new organizational changes. It is not always possible for employees with positive attitudes to perform their works suitable to organizational goals. Therefore, organizations need to identify what kinds of goal-oriented minds employees have, motivate them to do self-directed learning, and provide them with organizational environment to enhance positive aspects in their works. Thus, the study provides researchers and practitioners with a matter of primary interest in goal orientation and IT personnel competency, of which they have been unaware until very recently. Some academic and practical implications and limitations arisen in the course of the research, and suggestions for future research directions are also discussed.

How Enduring Product Involvement and Perceived Risk Affect Consumers' Online Merchant Selection Process: The 'Required Trust Level' Perspective (지속적 관여도 및 인지된 위험이 소비자의 온라인 상인선택 프로세스에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구: 요구신뢰 수준 개념을 중심으로)

  • Hong, Il-Yoo B.;Lee, Jung-Min;Cho, Hwi-Hyung
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.22 no.1
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    • pp.29-52
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    • 2012
  • Consumers differ in the way they make a purchase. An audio mania would willingly make a bold, yet serious, decision to buy a top-of-the-line home theater system, while he is not interested in replacing his two-decade-old shabby car. On the contrary, an automobile enthusiast wouldn't mind spending forty thousand dollars to buy a new Jaguar convertible, yet cares little about his junky component system. It is product involvement that helps us explain such differences among individuals in the purchase style. Product involvement refers to the extent to which a product is perceived to be important to a consumer (Zaichkowsky, 2001). Product involvement is an important factor that strongly influences consumer's purchase decision-making process, and thus has been of prime interest to consumer behavior researchers. Furthermore, researchers found that involvement is closely related to perceived risk (Dholakia, 2001). While abundant research exists addressing how product involvement relates to overall perceived risk, little attention has been paid to the relationship between involvement and different types of perceived risk in an electronic commerce setting. Given that perceived risk can be a substantial barrier to the online purchase (Jarvenpaa, 2000), research addressing such an issue will offer useful implications on what specific types of perceived risk an online firm should focus on mitigating if it is to increase sales to a fullest potential. Meanwhile, past research has focused on such consumer responses as information search and dissemination as a consequence of involvement, neglecting other behavioral responses like online merchant selection. For one example, will a consumer seriously considering the purchase of a pricey Guzzi bag perceive a great degree of risk associated with online buying and therefore choose to buy it from a digital storefront rather than from an online marketplace to mitigate risk? Will a consumer require greater trust on the part of the online merchant when the perceived risk of online buying is rather high? We intend to find answers to these research questions through an empirical study. This paper explores the impact of enduring product involvement and perceived risks on required trust level, and further on online merchant choice. For the purpose of the research, five types or components of perceived risk are taken into consideration, including financial, performance, delivery, psychological, and social risks. A research model has been built around the constructs under consideration, and 12 hypotheses have been developed based on the research model to examine the relationships between enduring involvement and five components of perceived risk, between five components of perceived risk and required trust level, between enduring involvement and required trust level, and finally between required trust level and preference toward an e-tailer. To attain our research objectives, we conducted an empirical analysis consisting of two phases of data collection: a pilot test and main survey. The pilot test was conducted using 25 college students to ensure that the questionnaire items are clear and straightforward. Then the main survey was conducted using 295 college students at a major university for nine days between December 13, 2010 and December 21, 2010. The measures employed to test the model included eight constructs: (1) enduring involvement, (2) financial risk, (3) performance risk, (4) delivery risk, (5) psychological risk, (6) social risk, (7) required trust level, (8) preference toward an e-tailer. The statistical package, SPSS 17.0, was used to test the internal consistency among the items within the individual measures. Based on the Cronbach's ${\alpha}$ coefficients of the individual measure, the reliability of all the variables is supported. Meanwhile, the Amos 18.0 package was employed to perform a confirmatory factor analysis designed to assess the unidimensionality of the measures. The goodness of fit for the measurement model was satisfied. Unidimensionality was tested using convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. The statistical evidences proved that the three types of validity were all satisfied. Now the structured equation modeling technique was used to analyze the individual paths along the relationships among the research constructs. The results indicated that enduring involvement has significant positive relationships with all the five components of perceived risk, while only performance risk is significantly related to trust level required by consumers for purchase. It can be inferred from the findings that product performance problems are mostly likely to occur when a merchant behaves in an opportunistic manner. Positive relationships were also found between involvement and required trust level and between required trust level and online merchant choice. Enduring involvement is concerned with the pleasure a consumer derives from a product class and/or with the desire for knowledge for the product class, and thus is likely to motivate the consumer to look for ways of mitigating perceived risk by requiring a higher level of trust on the part of the online merchant. Likewise, a consumer requiring a high level of trust on the merchant will choose a digital storefront rather than an e-marketplace, since a digital storefront is believed to be trustworthier than an e-marketplace, as it fulfills orders by itself rather than acting as an intermediary. The findings of the present research provide both academic and practical implications. The first academic implication is that enduring product involvement is a strong motivator of consumer responses, especially the selection of a merchant, in the context of electronic shopping. Secondly, academicians are advised to pay attention to the finding that an individual component or type of perceived risk can be used as an important research construct, since it would allow one to pinpoint the specific types of risk that are influenced by antecedents or that influence consequents. Meanwhile, our research provides implications useful for online merchants (both online storefronts and e-marketplaces). Merchants may develop strategies to attract consumers by managing perceived performance risk involved in purchase decisions, since it was found to have significant positive relationship with the level of trust required by a consumer on the part of the merchant. One way to manage performance risk would be to thoroughly examine the product before shipping to ensure that it has no deficiencies or flaws. Secondly, digital storefronts are advised to focus on symbolic goods (e.g., cars, cell phones, fashion outfits, and handbags) in which consumers are relatively more involved than others, whereas e- marketplaces should put their emphasis on non-symbolic goods (e.g., drinks, books, MP3 players, and bike accessories).

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Hue Shift Model and Hue Correction in High Luminance Display (고휘도 디스플레이의 색상이동모델과 색 보정)

  • Lee, Tae-Hyoung;Kwon, Oh-Seol;Park, Tae-Yong;Ha, Yeong-Ho
    • Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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    • v.44 no.4 s.316
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    • pp.60-69
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    • 2007
  • The human eye usually experiences a loss of color sensitivity when it is subjected to high levels of luminance, and perceives a discrepancy in color between high and normal-luminance displays, generally known as a hue shift. Accordingly, this paper models the hue-shift phenomenon and proposes a hue-correction method to provide perceptual matching between high and normal-luminance displays. The value of hue-shift is determined by perceived hue matching experiments. At first the phenomenon is observed at three lightness levels, that is, the ratio of luminance is the same between high and normal-luminance display when the perceived hue matching experiments we performed. To quantify the hue-shift phenomenon for the whole hue angle, color patches with the same lightness are first created and equally spaced inside the hue angle. These patches are then displayed one-by-one on both displays with the ratio of luminance between two displays. Next, the hue value for each patch appearing on the high-luminance display is adjusted by observers until the perceived hue for the patches on both displays appears the same visually. After obtaining the hue-shift values, these values are fit piecewise to allow shifted-hue amounts to be approximately determined for arbitrary hue values of pixels in a high-luminance display and then used for correction. Essentially, input RGB values of an image is converted to CIELAB values, and then, LCh (lightness, chroma, and hue) values are calculated to obtain the hue values for all the pixels. These hue values are shifted according to the amount calculated by the functions of the hue-shift model. Finally, the corrected CIELAB values are calculated from corrected hue values, after that, output RGB values for all pixels are estimated. For evaluation, an observer's preference test was performed with hue-shift results and Almost observers conclude that the images from hue-shift model were visually matched with images on normal luminance display.

Comparative Study between Mathematically Gifted Elementary Students and Common Students in Self-Efficacy and Career Attitude Maturity (초등수학영재와 일반학생의 자기효능감과 진로태도성숙과의 관계 비교)

  • Lee, Jung Hwa;Ryu, Sung Rim
    • Communications of Mathematical Education
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    • v.27 no.1
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    • pp.63-80
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    • 2013
  • Reflecting the recent trends and needs of gifted education, this study set out to compare and analyze mathematically gifted elementary students and common students in self-efficacy and career attitude maturity, understand the characteristics of the former, and provide assistance for career education for both the groups. The subjects include 237 mathematically gifted elementary students and 221 common students in D Metropolitan City. The research findings were as follows: First, mathematically gifted elementary students turned out to have higher self-efficacy than common students at the significance level of .01 in the three self-efficacy subfactors, namely confidence, self-regulated efficacy, and task difficulty preference. The findings indicate that mathematically gifted elementary students have much confidence in themselves and strong faith in themselves, thus forming a habit of preferring a relatively high-level task by taking self-management and task difficulty into proper consideration. Second, mathematically gifted elementary students showed higher overall career attitude maturity than common students. There was significant difference at the significance level of .01 in decisiveness and preparedness between the two groups and significant difference at the significance level of .05 in assertiveness. However, there was no statistically significant difference in purposefulness and independence between the two groups. Finally, there were positive correlations at the significance level of .01 between all the subfactors of self-efficacy and those of career attitude maturity in all the subjects except for self-regulated efficacy and purposefulness, between which there were positive correlations at the significance level of .05. The mathematically gifted elementary students showed positive correlations between more subfactors of self-efficacy and career attitude maturity than common students. Given those findings, it is necessary to take differences in self-efficacy and career attitude maturity between mathematically gifted elementary students and common students into account when organizing and running a curriculum. The findings confirm the importance of providing students with various experiences fit for them and point to a need for helping mathematically gifted elementary students maintain a high level of self-efficacy and guiding them through career education with more appropriate career attitude maturity improvement programs.

Differences Between Wearing Styles and Preferring Styles and the Sensibility According to Men's Fashion Style (남성복의 감성 및 선호 스타일과 실제 착용간의 차이)

  • Rim, Byungmook;Lee, Janghyung;Kim, Jisu;Na, Youngjoo
    • Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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    • v.19 no.4
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    • pp.71-82
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    • 2016
  • As times change rapidly the lifestyle, personality, and values of men have changed diversely. Not only have preferences for men's clothing changed, men's fashion market has also grown, and novel, non-preexisting styles have come into place. Also, there are many studies on sensibility of women's fashion while studies on sensibility of men's fashion are insufficient. This study categorized common styles for men in their 20s into 7 different representative samples and investigated consumers' sensibility evaluations for each representative sample. Style 1 (suit), style 2 (rider jacket + skinny pants), style 3 (blouson + straight pants), style 4 (cardigan + half pants), style 5 (military jacket + straight pants), style 6 (loose fit jacket + skinny pants), and style 7 (baseball jumper + straight pants) were prepared in the evaluation questionnaire. The study compared male and female interest and knowledge of men's fashion, evaluated the sensibility difference depending on the men's fashion, analyzed whether there is a difference between preferred men's clothing and actual wearing of the clothing, and examined the preferred style in relation with the lifestyle. The results are as follows: First, men's fashion was diversified and subdivided, and interest and knowledge about men's fashion was greater for males than females. Second, sensibility of men's fashion had significant differences depending on the style, and it did not depend on genders. Third, there was a clear difference between the most favored style by the 20s and the actual style they commonly wear; the favored style and the actual worn style were consistent 66.1% of all the cases, inconsistent 33.9% of those. Style 3 had the highest preference and the actual wearing rate, and style 5 was the least preferred and worn. Fourth, the more extroverted lifestyle rather than introverted one, the more it was likely to prefer diverse styles.

Personalized Recommendation System for IPTV using Ontology and K-medoids (IPTV환경에서 온톨로지와 k-medoids기법을 이용한 개인화 시스템)

  • Yun, Byeong-Dae;Kim, Jong-Woo;Cho, Yong-Seok;Kang, Sang-Gil
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.16 no.3
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    • pp.147-161
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    • 2010
  • As broadcasting and communication are converged recently, communication is jointed to TV. TV viewing has brought about many changes. The IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) provides information service, movie contents, broadcast, etc. through internet with live programs + VOD (Video on demand) jointed. Using communication network, it becomes an issue of new business. In addition, new technical issues have been created by imaging technology for the service, networking technology without video cuts, security technologies to protect copyright, etc. Through this IPTV network, users can watch their desired programs when they want. However, IPTV has difficulties in search approach, menu approach, or finding programs. Menu approach spends a lot of time in approaching programs desired. Search approach can't be found when title, genre, name of actors, etc. are not known. In addition, inserting letters through remote control have problems. However, the bigger problem is that many times users are not usually ware of the services they use. Thus, to resolve difficulties when selecting VOD service in IPTV, a personalized service is recommended, which enhance users' satisfaction and use your time, efficiently. This paper provides appropriate programs which are fit to individuals not to save time in order to solve IPTV's shortcomings through filtering and recommendation-related system. The proposed recommendation system collects TV program information, the user's preferred program genres and detailed genre, channel, watching program, and information on viewing time based on individual records of watching IPTV. To look for these kinds of similarities, similarities can be compared by using ontology for TV programs. The reason to use these is because the distance of program can be measured by the similarity comparison. TV program ontology we are using is one extracted from TV-Anytime metadata which represents semantic nature. Also, ontology expresses the contents and features in figures. Through world net, vocabulary similarity is determined. All the words described on the programs are expanded into upper and lower classes for word similarity decision. The average of described key words was measured. The criterion of distance calculated ties similar programs through K-medoids dividing method. K-medoids dividing method is a dividing way to divide classified groups into ones with similar characteristics. This K-medoids method sets K-unit representative objects. Here, distance from representative object sets temporary distance and colonize it. Through algorithm, when the initial n-unit objects are tried to be divided into K-units. The optimal object must be found through repeated trials after selecting representative object temporarily. Through this course, similar programs must be colonized. Selecting programs through group analysis, weight should be given to the recommendation. The way to provide weight with recommendation is as the follows. When each group recommends programs, similar programs near representative objects will be recommended to users. The formula to calculate the distance is same as measure similar distance. It will be a basic figure which determines the rankings of recommended programs. Weight is used to calculate the number of watching lists. As the more programs are, the higher weight will be loaded. This is defined as cluster weight. Through this, sub-TV programs which are representative of the groups must be selected. The final TV programs ranks must be determined. However, the group-representative TV programs include errors. Therefore, weights must be added to TV program viewing preference. They must determine the finalranks.Based on this, our customers prefer proposed to recommend contents. So, based on the proposed method this paper suggested, experiment was carried out in controlled environment. Through experiment, the superiority of the proposed method is shown, compared to existing ways.

Effects of Historical and Cultural Landscape Images on Healing Characteristics - Around the Yangdong Village in Gyeongju - (역사문화경관 이미지가 치유특질에 미치는 영향 - 경주시 양동마을을 중심으로 -)

  • Chen, Geng;Lee, Sun-Ho;Yi, Young-Kyoung
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
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    • v.39 no.2
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    • pp.29-38
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    • 2021
  • According to the theory of concentration recovery(ART), experiencing landscapes with healing properties can heal human mental fatigue caused by intentional concentration. The ART illustrates four healing qualities of the landscape. ART admits that various landscapes can have healing properties, the four healing properties of the landscape explained that the greater the perceptual strength, the stronger the healing effect. Until now, research on healing landscapes has been mainly done on natural and urban landscapes. The purpose of this study is as follows. First, eIt is intended to evaluate the healing characteristics of the Yangdong village landscape using RCS and investigate the impact of the healing characteristics on the visiting preference of the target landscape. Second, Evaluating the landscape image of Yangdong Village landscape, Investigating the effect of landscape images on the healing properties of landscape. This study was conducted in Yangdong Village, Gyeongju, 127 college students participated in the survey. SD 16 items to analyze landscape images and RCS 22 items from Laumann(2001) to evaluate healing properties were used as measurement tools. The findings are summarized as follows. First, The landscape image of Yangdong Village was analyzed through SD method, the analysis of the factors of Yangdong Village landscape image results in two factors: place and singularity. Second, It demonstrates the reliability and validity of RCS, Three factors were extracted from the factor analysis results. Third, Landscape images have a positive effect on the three healing characteristics of RCS. Fourth, Three healing properties of RCS have been shown to have a positive effect on visiting preferences, The order of influence on the relative visiting preferences was analyzed as attractiveness, fit, sense of escape, and sense of space. The findings suggest that future work requires research to re-validate the reliability of RCS. It is also necessary to analyze landscape images for various landscape types to specifically understand the effects on healing characteristics.

A Study on the Market Structure Analysis for Durable Goods Using Consideration Set:An Exploratory Approach for Automotive Market (고려상표군을 이용한 내구재 시장구조 분석에 관한 연구: 자동차 시장에 대한 탐색적 분석방법)

  • Lee, Seokoo
    • Asia Marketing Journal
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    • v.14 no.2
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    • pp.157-176
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    • 2012
  • Brand switching data frequently used in market structure analysis is adequate to analyze non- durable goods, because it can capture competition between specific two brands. But brand switching data sometimes can not be used to analyze goods like automobiles having long term duration because one of main assumptions that consumer preference toward brand attributes is not changed against time can be violated. Therefore a new type of data which can precisely capture competition among durable goods is needed. Another problem of using brand switching data collected from actual purchase behavior is short of explanation why consumers consider different set of brands. Considering above problems, main purpose of this study is to analyze market structure for durable goods with consideration set. The author uses exploratory approach and latent class clustering to identify market structure based on heterogeneous consideration set among consumers. Then the relationship between some factors and consideration set formation is analyzed. Some benefits and two demographic variables - age and income - are selected as factors based on consumer behavior theory. The author analyzed USA automotive market with top 11 brands using exploratory approach and latent class clustering. 2,500 respondents are randomly selected from the total sample and used for analysis. Six models concerning market structure are established to test. Model 1 means non-structured market and model 6 means market structure composed of six sub-markets. It is exploratory approach because any hypothetical market structure is not defined. The result showed that model 1 is insufficient to fit data. It implies that USA automotive market is a structured market. Model 3 with three market structures is significant and identified as the optimal market structure in USA automotive market. Three sub markets are named as USA brands, Asian Brands, and European Brands. And it implies that country of origin effect may exist in USA automotive market. Comparison between modal classification by derived market structures and probabilistic classification by research model was conducted to test how model 3 can correctly classify respondents. The model classify 97% of respondents exactly. The result of this study is different from those of previous research. Previous research used confirmatory approach. Car type and price were chosen as criteria for market structuring and car type-price structure was revealed as the optimal structure for USA automotive market. But this research used exploratory approach without hypothetical market structures. It is not concluded yet which approach is superior. For confirmatory approach, hypothetical market structures should be established exhaustively, because the optimal market structure is selected among hypothetical structures. On the other hand, exploratory approach has a potential problem that validity for derived optimal market structure is somewhat difficult to verify. There also exist market boundary difference between this research and previous research. While previous research analyzed seven car brands, this research analyzed eleven car brands. Both researches seemed to represent entire car market, because cumulative market shares for analyzed brands exceeds 50%. But market boundary difference might affect the different results. Though both researches showed different results, it is obvious that country of origin effect among brands should be considered as important criteria to analyze USA automotive market structure. This research tried to explain heterogeneity of consideration sets among consumers using benefits and two demographic factors, sex and income. Benefit works as a key variable for consumer decision process, and also works as an important criterion in market segmentation. Three factors - trust/safety, image/fun to drive, and economy - are identified among nine benefit related measure. Then the relationship between market structures and independent variables is analyzed using multinomial regression. Independent variables are three benefit factors and two demographic factors. The result showed that all independent variables can be used to explain why there exist different market structures in USA automotive market. For example, a male consumer who perceives all benefits important and has lower income tends to consider domestic brands more than European brands. And the result also showed benefits, sex, and income have an effect to consideration set formation. Though it is generally perceived that a consumer who has higher income is likely to purchase a high priced car, it is notable that American consumers perceived benefits of domestic brands much positive regardless of income. Male consumers especially showed higher loyalty for domestic brands. Managerial implications of this research are as follow. Though implication may be confined to the USA automotive market, the effect of sex on automotive buying behavior should be analyzed. The automotive market is traditionally conceived as male consumers oriented market. But the proportion of female consumers has grown over the years in the automotive market. It is natural outcome that Volvo and Hyundai motors recently developed new cars which are targeted for women market. Secondly, the model used in this research can be applied easier than that of previous researches. Exploratory approach has many advantages except difficulty to apply for practice, because it tends to accompany with complicated model and to require various types of data. The data needed for the model in this research are a few items such as purchased brands, consideration set, some benefits, and some demographic factors and easy to collect from consumers.

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