• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.35-48
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• 2010

Today, the fashion market challenged by a maturing retail market needs a new paradigm in the "evolution of brand" to improve their comparative advantages. An important issue in fashion marketing is lifestyle brand extension with a specific aim to meet consumers' specific needs for their changing lifestyle. For fashion brand extensions into lifestyle product categories, Gen Y and Baby Boomer are emerging as "prospects"-Baby Boomers who are renovating their lifestyle, and generation Y experiencing changes in their life stage-with demands for buying new products. Therefore, it is imperative that apparel companies pay special attention to the consumer cohort for brand extension to create and manage their brand equity in a new product category. The purposes of this study are to (a) evaluate brand equity between parent and extension brands; (b) identify consumers' perceived marketing elements for brand extension; and (c) estimate a structural equation model for examining causative relationship between marketing elements and brand equity for brand extensions in lifestyle product category including home fashion items for the selected two groups (e.g., Gen Y, and Baby boomer). For theoretical frameworks, this study focused on the traditional marketing 4P's mix to identify what marketing element is more importantly related to brand extension equity for this study. It is assumed that comparable marketing capability can be critical to establish "brand extension equity", leads to successfully entering the new categories. Drawing from the relevant literature, this study developed research hypotheses incorporating brand equity factors and marketing elements by focusing on the selected consumers (e.g., Gen Y, Baby Boomer). In the context of brand extension in the lifestyle products, constructs of brand equity consist of brand awareness/association, brand perceptions (e.g., perceived quality, emotional value) and brand resonance adapted from CBBE factors (Keller, 2001). It is postulated that the marketing elements create brand extension equity in terms of brand awareness/association, brand perceptions by the brand extension into lifestyle products, which in turn influence brand resonance. For data collection, the sample was comprised of Korean female consumers in Gen Y and Baby Boomer consumer categories who have a high demand for lifestyle products due to changing their lifecycles. A total of 651 usable questionnaires were obtained from female consumers of Gen Y (n=326) and Baby Boomer (n=325) in South Korea. Structural and measurement models using a correlation matrix was estimated using LISREL 8.8. Findings indicated that perceived marketing elements for brand extension consisted of three factors: price/store image, product, and advertising. In the model of Gen Y consumers, price/store image had a positive effect on brand equity factors (e.g., brand awareness/association, perceived quality), while product had positive effect on emotional value in the brand extensions; and the brand awareness/association was likely to increase the perceived quality and emotional value, leading to brand resonance for brand extensions in the lifestyle products. In the model of Baby Boomer consumers, price/store image had a positive effect on perceived quality, which created brand resonance of brand extension; and product had a positive effect on perceived quality and emotional value, which leads to brand resonance for brand extension in the lifestyle products. However, advertising was negatively related to brand equity for both groups. This study provides an insight for fashion marketers in developing a successful brand extension strategy, leading to a sustainable competitive advantage. This study complements and extends prior works in the brand extension through critical factors of marketing efforts that affect brand extension success. Findings support a synergy effect on leveraging of fashion brand extensions (Aaker and Keller, 1990; Tauber, 1988; Shine et al., 2007; Pitta and Katsanis, 1995) in conjunction with marketing actions for entering into the new product category. Thus, it is recommended that marketers targeting both Gen Y and Baby Boomer can reduce marketing cost for entering the new product category (e.g., home furnishings) by standardized marketing efforts; fashion marketers can (a) offer extension lines with premium ranges of price; (b) place an emphasis on upscale features of store image positioning by a retail channel (e.g., specialty department store) in Korea, and (c) combine apparel with lifestyle product assortments including innovative style and designer’s limited editions. With respect to brand equity, a key to successful brand extension is consumers’ brand awareness or association that ensures brand identity with new product category. It is imperative for marketers to have knowledge of what contributes to more concrete associations in a market entry into new product categories. For fashion brands, a second key of brand extension can be a "luxury" lifestyle approach into new product categories, in that higher price or store image had impact on perceived quality that established brand resonance. More importantly, this study increases the theoretical understanding of brand extension and suggests directions for marketers as they establish marketing program at Gen Y and Baby Boomers.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.135-148
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• 2010

Arab boycotts of Danish products, Australian boycotts of French products and Chinese consumer aversion toward Japanese products are all examples of how adverse actions at the country level might impact consumers' behavior. The animosity literature has examined how consumers react to the adverse actions of other countries, and how such animosity impacts consumers' attitudes and preferences for products from the transgressing country. For example, Chinese consumers are less likely to buy Japanese products because of Japanese atrocities during World War II and the unjust economic dealings of the Japanese (Klein, Ettenson and Morris 1998). The marketing literature, however, has not examined how consumers react to adverse actions committed by their own country against other countries, and whether such actions affect their attitudes towards purchasing products that originated from the adversely affected country. The social psychology literature argues that consumers will experience a feeling called collective guilt, in response to such adverse actions. Collective guilt stems from the distress experienced by group members when they accept that their group is responsible for actions that have harmed another group (Branscombe, Slugoski, and Kappenn 2004). Examples include Americans feeling guilty about the atrocities committed by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison (Iyer, Schamder and Lickel 2007), and the Dutch about their occupation of Indonesia in the past (Doosje et al. 1998). The primary aim of this study is to examine consumers' perceptions of adverse actions by members of one's own country against another country and whether such perceptions affected their attitudes towards products originating from the country transgressed against. More specifically, one objective of this study is to examine the perceptual antecedents of collective guilt, an emotional reaction to adverse actions performed by members of one's country against another country. Another objective is to examine the impact of collective guilt on consumers' perceptions of, and preference for, products originating from the country transgressed against by the consumers' own country. If collective guilt emerges as a significant predictor, companies originating from countries that have been transgressed against might be able to capitalize on such unfortunate events. This research utilizes the animosity model introduced by Klein, Ettenson and Morris (1998) and later expanded on by Klein (2002). Klein finds that U.S. consumers harbor animosity toward the Japanese. This animosity is experienced in response to events that occurred during World War II (i.e., the bombing of Pearl Harbor) and more recently the perceived economic threat from Japan. Thus this study argues that the events of Word War II (i.e., bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) might lead U.S. consumers to experience collective guilt. A series of three hypotheses were introduced. The first hypothesis deals with the antecedents of collective guilt. Previous research argues that collective guilt is experienced when consumers perceive that the harm following a transgression is illegitimate and that the country from which the transgressors originate should be responsible for the adverse actions. (Wohl, Branscombe, and Klar 2006). Therefore the following hypothesis was offered: H1a. Higher levels of perceived illegitimacy for the harm committed will result in higher levels of collective guilt. H1b. Higher levels of responsibility will be positively associated with higher levels of collective guilt. The second and third hypotheses deal with the impact of collective guilt on the preferences for Japanese products. Klein (2002) found that higher levels of animosity toward Japan resulted in a lower preference for a Japanese product relative to a South Korean product but not a lower preference for a Japanese product relative to a U.S. product. These results therefore indicate that the experience of collective guilt will lead to a higher preference for a Japanese product if consumers are contemplating a choice that inv olves a decision to buy Japanese versus South Korean product but not if the choice involves a decision to buy a Japanese versus a U.S. product. H2. Collective guilt will be positively related to the preference for a Japanese product over a South Korean product, but will not be related to the preference for a Japanese product over a U.S. product. H3. Collective guilt will be positively related to the preference for a Japanese product over a South Korean product, holding constant product judgments and animosity. An experiment was conducted to test the hypotheses. The illegitimacy of the harm and responsibility were manipulated by exposing respondents to a description of adverse events occurring during World War II. Data were collected using an online consumer panel in the United States. Subjects were randomly assigned to either the low levels of responsibility and illegitimacy condition (n=259) or the high levels of responsibility and illigitemacy (n=268) condition. Latent Variable Structural Equation Modeling (LVSEM) was used to test the hypothesized relationships. The first hypothesis is supported as both the illegitimacy of the harm and responsibility assigned to the Americans for the harm committed against the Japanese during WWII have a positive impact on collective guilt. The second hypothesis is also supported as collective guilt is positively related to preference for a Japanese product over a South Korean product but is not related to preference for a Japanese product over a U.S. product. Finally there is support for the third hypothesis, since collective guilt is positively related to the preference for a Japanese product over a South Korean product while controlling for the effect of product judgments about Japanese products and animosity. The results of these studies lead to several conclusions. First, the illegitimacy of harm and responsibility can be manipulated and that they are antecedents of collective guilt. Second, collective guilt has an impact on a consumers' decision when they face a choice set that includes a product from the country that was the target of the adverse action and a product from another foreign country. This impact however disappears from a consumers' decision when they face a choice set that includes a product from the country that was the target of the adverse action and a domestic product. This result suggests that collective guilt might be a viable factor for company originating from the country transgressed against if its competitors are foreign but not if they are local.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.219-230
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• 2010

Digital content makes big changes to our daily lives while bringing opportunities and challenges for companies. Creative firms integrate pictures, texts, videos, audios, and data by digitalization to develop new products or services and create digital experiences to promote their brands. Most articles on digital content contribute to the basic concept or development of marketing it in literature. Actually, compared with traditional value chains for common products or services, the digital content industry seems to have more potential value. Because quite a bit of digital content is free to the consumer, price is not necessarily perceived as an indicator of the quality or value of information (Rowley 2008). It becomes evident that a current theme in digital content is the issue of "value," and research on customers' perceived value of digital content is a necessity. This article argues that experiential value has an advantage in customers' evaluations of digital content. Two different but related contributions to the understanding of "value" of digital content are made here. First, based on the comparison of digital content with products and services, the article proposes two key characteristics that make experiential strategy available for digital content: intangibility and near-zero reproduction cost. On top of that, based on the discussion of the gap between company's idealized value and customer's perceived value, this article emphasizes that digital content prices and pricing of digital content is different from products and services. As a result of intangibility, prices may not reflect customer value. Moreover, the cost of digital content in the development stage may be very high while reproduction costs shrink dramatically. Moreover, because of the value gap mentioned before, the pricing polices vary for different digital contents. For example, flat price policy is generally used for movies and music (Magiera 2001; Netherby 2002), while for continuous demand, digital content such as online games and anti-virus programs involves a more complicated matter of utility and competitive price levels. Digital content companies have to explore various kinds of strategies to overcome this gap. Rethinking marketing solutions such as advertisements, images, and word-of-mouth and their effect on customers' perceived value becomes essential. China's digital content industry is becoming more and more globalized and drawing special attention from different countries and regions that have respective competitive advantages. The 2008-2009 Annual Report on the Development of China's Digital Content Industry (CCIDConsulting 2009) indicates that, with the driven power of domestic demand and governmental policy support, the country's digital content industry maintained a fast growth of some 30 percent in 2008, obviously indicating the initial stage of industry expansion. In China, anti-virus programs and other software programs which need to be updated use a quarter-based pricing policy. Customers can download a trial version for free and use it for six months or a year. If they want to use it longer, continuous payment is needed. They examine the excellence of the digital content during this trial period and decide whether to pay for continued usage. For China’s music and movie industries, as a result of initial development, experiential strategy has not been much applied, even though firms in other countries find the trial experience and explore important strategies(such as customers listening to music for several seconds for free before downloading it). For the above reasons, anti-virus program may be a representative for digital content industry in China and an exploratory study of the advantage of experiential value in customer's perceived value of digital content is done in the anti-virus market of China. In order to enhance the reliability of the survey data, this study focused on people who were experienced users of anti-virus programs. The empirical results revealed that experiential value has a positive effect on customers' perceived value of digital content. In other words, because digital content is intangible and the reproduction costs are nearly zero, customers' evaluations are based heavily on their experience. Moreover, image and word-of-mouth do not have a positive effect on perceived value, only on experiential value. That is to say, a digital content value chain is different from that of a general product or service. Experiential value has a notable advantage and mediates the effect of image and word-of-mouth on perceived value. The results of this study help provide an understanding of why free digital content downloads exist in developing countries. Customers can perceive the value of digital content only by using and experiencing it. This is also why such governments support the development of digital content. Other developing countries whose digital content business is also in the beginning stage can make use of the suggestions here. Moreover, based on the advantage of experiential strategy, companies should make more of an effort to invest in customers' experience. As a result of the characteristics and value gap of digital content, customers perceive more value in the intangible digital content only by experiencing what they really want. Moreover, because of the near-zero reproduction costs, companies can perhaps use experiential strategy to enhance customer understanding of digital content.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.85-109
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• 2018

Recommender system recommends the items expected to be purchased by a customer in the future according to his or her previous purchase behaviors. It has been served as a tool for realizing one-to-one personalization for an e-commerce service company. Traditional recommender systems, especially the recommender systems based on collaborative filtering (CF), which is the most popular recommendation algorithm in both academy and industry, are designed to generate the items list for recommendation by using 'overall rating' - a single criterion. However, it has critical limitations in understanding the customers' preferences in detail. Recently, to mitigate these limitations, some leading e-commerce companies have begun to get feedback from their customers in a form of 'multicritera ratings'. Multicriteria ratings enable the companies to understand their customers' preferences from the multidimensional viewpoints. Moreover, it is easy to handle and analyze the multidimensional ratings because they are quantitative. But, the recommendation using multicritera ratings also has limitation that it may omit detail information on a user's preference because it only considers three-to-five predetermined criteria in most cases. Under this background, this study proposes a novel hybrid recommendation system, which selectively uses the results from 'traditional CF' and 'CF using multicriteria ratings'. Our proposed system is based on the premise that some people have holistic preference scheme, whereas others have composite preference scheme. Thus, our system is designed to use traditional CF using overall rating for the users with holistic preference, and to use CF using multicriteria ratings for the users with composite preference. To validate the usefulness of the proposed system, we applied it to a real-world dataset regarding the recommendation for POI (point-of-interests). Providing personalized POI recommendation is getting more attentions as the popularity of the location-based services such as Yelp and Foursquare increases. The dataset was collected from university students via a Web-based online survey system. Using the survey system, we collected the overall ratings as well as the ratings for each criterion for 48 POIs that are located near K university in Seoul, South Korea. The criteria include 'food or taste', 'price' and 'service or mood'. As a result, we obtain 2,878 valid ratings from 112 users. Among 48 items, 38 items (80%) are used as training dataset, and the remaining 10 items (20%) are used as validation dataset. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed system (i.e. hybrid selective model), we compared its performance to the performances of two comparison models - the traditional CF and the CF with multicriteria ratings. The performances of recommender systems were evaluated by using two metrics - average MAE(mean absolute error) and precision-in-top-N. Precision-in-top-N represents the percentage of truly high overall ratings among those that the model predicted would be the N most relevant items for each user. The experimental system was developed using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). The experimental results showed that our proposed system (avg. MAE = 0.584) outperformed traditional CF (avg. MAE = 0.591) as well as multicriteria CF (avg. AVE = 0.608). We also found that multicriteria CF showed worse performance compared to traditional CF in our data set, which is contradictory to the results in the most previous studies. This result supports the premise of our study that people have two different types of preference schemes - holistic and composite. Besides MAE, the proposed system outperformed all the comparison models in precision-in-top-3, precision-in-top-5, and precision-in-top-7. The results from the paired samples t-test presented that our proposed system outperformed traditional CF with 10% statistical significance level, and multicriteria CF with 1% statistical significance level from the perspective of average MAE. The proposed system sheds light on how to understand and utilize user's preference schemes in recommender systems domain.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.63-101
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• 2020

'Flight safety zone' means a zone that the Minister of National Defense designates under Articles 4 and 6 of the Protection of Military Bases and Installations Act (hereinafter 'PMBIA') for the safety of flight during takeoff and landing of military aircrafts. The purpose of flight safety zone is to contribute to the national security by providing necessary measures for the protection of military bases and installations and smooth conduct of military operations. In this case, when the state set and used the flight safety zone, the landowner claimed restitution of unjust enrichment against the country. This article is an analysis based on the existing legal theory regarding the legitimacy of plaintiff's claim, and the summary of the discussion is as follows. A person who without any legal ground derives a benefit from the property or services of another and thereby causes loss to the latter shall be bound to return such benefit (Article 741 of the Civil Act). Since the subject matter is an infringing profit, the defendant must prove that he has a legitimate right to retain the profit. The State reserves the right to use over the land designated as a flight safety zone in accordance with legitimate procedures established by the PMBIA for the safe takeoff and landing of military aircrafts. Therefore, it cannot be said that the State gained an unjust enrichment equivalent to the rent over the land without legal cause. Expropriation, use or restriction of private property from public necessity and compensation therefor shall be governed by Act: provided, that in such a case, just compensation shall be paid (Article 23 (1) of the Constitution of The Republic of KOREA). Since there is not any provision in the PMBIA for loss compensation for the case where a flight safety zone is set over land as in this case, next question would be whether or not it is unconstitutional. Even if it is designated as a flight safety zone and the use and profits of the land are limited, the justification of the purpose of the flight safety zone system, the appropriateness of the means, the minimization of infringement, and the balance of legal interests are still recognized; thus just not having any loss compensation clause does not make the act unconstitutional. In conclusion, plaintiff's claim for loss compensation based on the 'Act on Acquisition of and Compensation for land, etc. for Public Works Projects', which has no provision for loss compensation due to public limits, is unjust.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.1-8
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• 2013

Data mining techniques are used to find important and meaningful information from huge databases, and pattern mining is one of the significant data mining techniques. Pattern mining is a method of discovering useful patterns from the huge databases. Frequent pattern mining which is one of the pattern mining extracts patterns having higher frequencies than a minimum support threshold from databases, and the patterns are called frequent patterns. Traditional frequent pattern mining is based on a single minimum support threshold for the whole database to perform mining frequent patterns. This single support model implicitly supposes that all of the items in the database have the same nature. In real world applications, however, each item in databases can have relative characteristics, and thus an appropriate pattern mining technique which reflects the characteristics is required. In the framework of frequent pattern mining, where the natures of items are not considered, it needs to set the single minimum support threshold to a too low value for mining patterns containing rare items. It leads to too many patterns including meaningless items though. In contrast, we cannot mine any pattern if a too high threshold is used. This dilemma is called the rare item problem. To solve this problem, the initial researches proposed approximate approaches which split data into several groups according to item frequencies or group related rare items. However, these methods cannot find all of the frequent patterns including rare frequent patterns due to being based on approximate techniques. Hence, pattern mining model with multiple minimum supports is proposed in order to solve the rare item problem. In the model, each item has a corresponding minimum support threshold, called MIS (Minimum Item Support), and it is calculated based on item frequencies in databases. The multiple minimum supports model finds all of the rare frequent patterns without generating meaningless patterns and losing significant patterns by applying the MIS. Meanwhile, candidate patterns are extracted during a process of mining frequent patterns, and the only single minimum support is compared with frequencies of the candidate patterns in the single minimum support model. Therefore, the characteristics of items consist of the candidate patterns are not reflected. In addition, the rare item problem occurs in the model. In order to address this issue in the multiple minimum supports model, the minimum MIS value among all of the values of items in a candidate pattern is used as a minimum support threshold with respect to the candidate pattern for considering its characteristics. For efficiently mining frequent patterns including rare frequent patterns by adopting the above concept, tree based algorithms of the multiple minimum supports model sort items in a tree according to MIS descending order in contrast to those of the single minimum support model, where the items are ordered in frequency descending order. In this paper, we study the characteristics of the frequent pattern mining based on multiple minimum supports and conduct performance evaluation with a general frequent pattern mining algorithm in terms of runtime, memory usage, and scalability. Experimental results show that the multiple minimum supports based algorithm outperforms the single minimum support based one and demands more memory usage for MIS information. Moreover, the compared algorithms have a good scalability in the results.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.528-534
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• 2008

Purpose: Marginal fit is one of the important components for the successful prosthodontic restoration. Poor fitting margin of the restoration causes hypersensitivity, secondary caries, and plaque accumulation, which later result in prosthodontic failure. CAD/CAM zirconia all-ceramic restorations, such as $LAVA^{(R)}$ (3M ESPE, St.Paul, MN) and $EVEREST^{(R)}$ (KaVo Dental GmbH, Biberach, Germany) systems were recently introduced in Korea. It is clinically meaningful to evaluate the changes of the marginal fit of the CAD/CAM zirconia systems before and after build-up. The purposes of this study are to compare the marginal fit of the two CAD/CAM all-ceramic systems with that of the ceramometal restoration, before and after porcelain build-up Material and methods: A maxillary first premolar dentiform tooth was prepared with 2.0 mm occlusal reduction, 1.0 mm axial reduction, chamfer margin, and 6 degree taperness in the axial wall. The prepared dentiform die was duplicated into the metal abutment die. The metal die was placed in the dental study model, and the full arch impressions of the model were made. Twenty four copings of 3 groups which were $LAVA^{(R)}$, $EVEREST^{(R)}$, and ceramometal restorations were fabricated. Each coping was cemented on the metal die with color-mixed Fit-checker $II^{(R)}$ (GC Cor., Tokyo, Japan). The marginal opening of each coping was measured with $Microhiscope^{(R)}$ system (HIROX KH-1000 ING-Plus, Seoul, Korea. X300 magnification). After porcelain build-up, the marginal openings of $LAVA^{(R)}$, $EVEREST^{(R)}$,and ceramometal restorations were also evaluated in the same method. Statistical analysis was done with paired t-test and one-way ANOVA test. Results: In coping states, the mean marginal opening for $EVEREST^{(R)}$ restorations was $52.00{\pm}11.94\;{\mu}m$ for $LAVA^{(R)}$ restorations $56.97{\pm}10.00\;{\mu}m$, and for ceramometal restorations $97.38{\pm}18.54\;{\mu}m$. After porcelain build-up, the mean marginal opening for $EVEREST^{(R)}$ restorations was $61.69{\pm}19.33\;{\mu}m$, for $LAVA^{(R)}$ restorations $70.81{\pm}12.99\;{\mu}m$, and for ceramometal restorations $1115.25{\pm}23.86\;{\mu}m$. Conclusion: 1. $LAVA^{(R)}$ and $EVEREST^{(R)}$ restorations in comparison with ceramometal restorations showed better marginal fit, which had significant differences (P < 0.05) in coping state and also after porcelain build-up . 2. The mean marginal opening values between $LAVA^{(R)}$ and $EVEREST^{(R)}$ restorations did not showed significant differences after porcelain build-up as well as in coping state (P > .05). 3. $EVEREST^{(R)}$, $LAVA^{(R)}$ and ceramometal restorations showed a little increased marginal opening after porcelain build-up, but did not show any statistical significance (P > .05).

• Journal of Aquaculture
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.25-42
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• 1996

The study has been conducted to know an appropriate feeding strategy and effects of the rearing density on larval growth of the rockfish, Sebastes schlegeli. The results obtained are as fellowed ; 1. Thirty-day-old larvae reached at $25.25{\pm}3.76$ mm in total length and $0.23{\pm}0.07$ g in body weight in experiment A, at which rotifer was provided from the beginning to the end of 30-day experiment, Anemia from 3th to 18th day, and artificial feed from 13th to 30th day after hatching. When rotifer was provided for 30 days, Artemia from 6th to 18th day, and artificial feed from 18th to 30th day after hatching (experiment B), these larvae grew up to $27.52{\pm}2.50$ mm in total length and $0.26{\pm}0.06$ g in body weight. On the other hand, when rotifer and artificial feed were supplied with the same time schedule as shown in experiment B, and Artemia was feed from 6th to 30th day after hatching (experiment C), the total length and body weight of those larvae were $23.22{\pm}3.44$ mm and $0.15{\pm}0.05$ g, respectively. The best result for larval growth was obtained from experiment B. The survival rates estimated were $57.6\%$ in experiment A, $66.4\%$ in experiment B, and $44.4\%$ in experiment C. 2. The growth in total length of the larvae according to their rearing days could be represented by the following equations : Experiment A : Y=4.350+0.116X+$1.887X^2$ (r=0.993) Experiment B : Y=4.500+8.931X+$2.221X^2$ (r=0.994) Experiment C : Y=4.478+5.734X+$1.881X^2$(r=0.990) The average number of Artemia nauplius intaken by the larvae was rapidly increased between 15th and 20th day afer hatching, and 9, 212, 242, 750, and 1,171 nauplius were found in the different sizes of larvae, whose total length were 5.65, 6.81, 9.45, 14.96, and 24.52 mm, respectively. 3. Larval growth in total length and body weight reared at four different densites (A: 1.8 $kg/m^3$, B; 4.0 $kg/m^3$, C; 5.0 $kg/m^3$, D; 6.2 $kg/m^3$) indicated that the best growth was found in experiment A, at which the larval were reared at the lower density and the final survival rates extimated were $92.9\%$ in exp. A, $99.5\%$ in exp. C, $89.0\%$ in exp. B, and $88.2\%$ in exp. D. The amount of production per cubic meter turned out to be 30.45 kg in exp. D, 25.89 kg in exp. C, 20.75 kg in exp. B and 10.48 kg in exp. A. therefore, considering both larval growth and survival rate, higher yields seemed to be attainable at the relatively high-rearing density.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.95-115
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• 2011

Food service is the major part of franchise business in Korea, accounting for 69.9% of the brands in the market. As the food service industry becomes mature, many franchisees have struggled to survive in the market. In general, consumers have higher levels of expectation toward service quality of franchised outlets compared that of (non-franchised) independent ones. They also tend to believe that franchisees deliver standardized service at the uniform food price, regardless of their locations. Such beliefs seem to be important reasons that consumers prefer franchised outlets to independent ones. Nevertheless, few studies examined the impact of qualify features of franchisees on customer satisfaction so far. To this end, this study examined the characteristics of various quality features of franchisees in the food service industry, regarding their relationship with customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The quality perception of heavy-users was also compared with that of light-users in order to find insights for developing differentiated marketing strategy for the two segments. Customer satisfaction has been understood as a one-dimensional construct while there are recent studies that insist two-dimensional nature of the construct. In this regard, Kano et al. (1984) suggested to categorize quality features of a product or service into five types, based on their relation to customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction: Must-be quality, Attractive quality, One-dimensional quality, Indifferent quality, and Reverse quality. According to the Kano model, customers are more dissatisfied when Must-be quality(M) are not fulfilled, but their satisfaction does not arise above neutral no matter how fully the quality fulfilled. In comparison, customers are more satisfied with a full provision of Attactive quality(A) but manage to accept its dysfunction. One-dimensional quality(O) results in satisfaction when fulfilled and dissatisfaction when not fulfilled. For Indifferent quality(I), its presence or absence influences neither customer satisfaction nor dissatisfaction. Lastly, Reverse quality(R) refers to the features whose high degree of achievement results in customer dissatisfaction rather than satisfaction. Meanwhile, the basic guidelines of the Kano model have a limitation in that the quality type of each feature is simply determined by calculating the mode statistics. In order to overcome such limitation, the relative importance of each feature on customer satisfaction (Better value; b) and dissatisfaction (Worse value; w) were calculated following the formulas below (Timko, 1993). The Better value indicates how much customer satisfaction is increased by providing the quality feature in question. In contrast, the Worse value indicates how much customer dissatisfaction is decreased by providing the quality feature. Better = (A + O)/(A+O+M+I) Worse = (O+M)/(A+O+M+I)(-1) An on-line survey was performed in order to understand the nature of quality features of franchisees in the food service industry by applying the Kano Model. A total of twenty quality features (refer to the Table 2) were identified as the result of literature review in franchise business and a pre-test with fifty college students in Seoul. The potential respondents of our main survey was limited to the customers who have visited more than two restaurants/stores of the same franchise brand. Survey invitation e-mails were sent out to the panels of a market research company and a total of 257 responses were used for analysis. Following the guidelines of Kano model, each of the twenty quality features was classified into one of the five types based on customers' responses to a set of questions: "(1) how do you feel if the following quality feature is fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit," and "(2) how do you feel if the following quality feature is not fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit." The analyses revealed that customers' dissatisfaction with franchisees is commonly associated with the poor level of cleanliness of the store (w=-0.872), kindness of the staffs(w=-0.890), conveniences such as parking lot and restroom(w=-0.669), and expertise of the staffs(w=-0.492). Such quality features were categorized as Must-be quality in this study. While standardization or uniformity across franchisees has been emphasized in franchise business, this study found that consumers are interested only in uniformity of price across franchisees(w=-0.608), but not interested in standardizations of menu items, interior designs, customer service procedures, and food tastes. Customers appeared to be more satisfied when the franchise brand has promotional events such as giveaways(b=0.767), good accessibility(b=0.699), customer loyalty programs(b=0.659), award winning history(b=0.641), and outlets in the overseas market(b=0.506). The results are summarized in a matrix form in Table 1. Better(b) and Worse(w) index indicate relative importance of each quality feature on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction, respectively. Meanwhile, there were differences in perceiving the quality features between light users and heavy users of any specific franchise brand in the food service industry. Expertise of the staffs was labeled as Must-be quality for heavy users but Indifferent quality for light users. Light users seemed indifferent to overseas expansion of the brand and offering new menu items on a regular basis, while heavy users appeared to perceive them as Attractive quality. Such difference may come from their different levels of involvement when they eat out. The results are shown in Table 2. The findings of this study help practitioners understand the quality features they need to focus on to strengthen the competitive power in the food service market. Above all, removing the factors that cause customer dissatisfaction seems to be the most critical for franchisees. To retain loyal customers of the franchise brand, it is also recommended for franchisor to invest resources in the development of new menu items as well as training programs for the staffs. Lastly, if resources allow, promotional events, loyalty programs, overseas expansion, award-winning history can be considered as tools for attracting more customers to the business.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.44 no.12
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• pp.1856-1864
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to investigate the nutrient intake status of university students in Chuncheon area (175 males and 131 females). This study was conducted by employing a self-administered questionnaire. Dietary assessment was measured by a 24-h recall method. The average height and weight of male students were $175.2{\pm}6.2cm$ and $68.2{\pm}9.9kg$, respectively. For female students, average values were $161.7{\pm}5.2cm$ and $55.1{\pm}6.5kg$, respectively. The mean BMIs for both male and female students were 22.2 and 21.1, respectively. In both male and female students, the rate of skipping breakfast was high. Daily averages for energy, carbohydrates, protein, and fat intakes in male students were significantly higher than those of female students (P<0.001). For male students, protein, vitamin B1, P, Fe, and Na were above recommended nutrient intake and adequate intake, whereas for female students, they were protein, vitamin A, P, and Na. For male students, nutrient intakes for Ca, vitamin $B_2$, vitamin C, and vitamin $B_6$ were below the estimated average requirement (EAR) by at least 50% or more, whereas for female students, they were vitamin C, Fe, vitamin $B_6$, vitamin $B_2$, niacin, folate, and Ca. Ca was alarmingly low, with more than 75% of both male and female students showing levels below the EAR. Therefore, it is important that nutritional education be facilitated for college students to take responsibility of their own health through learning about nutrient intake as well as developing positive eating habits.