• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.209-237
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• 2012

1. Research Purpose Consumers rely on various clues to evaluate their decision to patronize a retail store, and store brand is one of them (Dodds 1991; Grewal et al. 1998). As consumers find ever increasing variety of contact points connecting them to specific store, the value of experiential shopping as a means of increasing store's brand equity warrants greater attention from scholars of retail management. Retail shopping values are credited for creating not only cognitive experiences like brand knowledge but also emotional experiences such as shopping pleasure and pride (Schmitt 1999). This may be because today's consumers place emphasis on emotional values associated with shopping pleasure, lifestyle brought to life, brand relationship, and store atmosphere more than utilitarian values such as product quality and price. Many previous literature found this to be true (Ahn and Lee 2011; Mathwick et al. 2001). This brings forth important research issues and questions regarding the roles of shopping experiential values and brand equity with regard to consumer's retail patronage choice. However, despite this importance, research on this area remains quite inadequate (Hwang 2010). For this reason, this study aims to verify the relationships among experiential shopping values, retail store brand equity and tries to link that with customer loyalty by surveying large-scale discount store shoppers in Korea and China. 2. Research Contents In order to carry out the research objective, this study conducted comprehensive literature survey on previous literature by discussing major findings and implications with regard to shopping values and retail brand equity and store loyalty. For data collection, researcher employed survey-based research method where data were collected in two major cities of Korea (Seoul) and China (Bejing) and sampling frame was based on patrons of large discount stores in both countries. Specific research questions raised in this study are as follows; RQ1: How do Korean and Chinese consumers differently perceive of shopping values regarding shopping at large-sclae discount stores? RQ2: Are there differences in consumers' emotional consumption propensities? RQ3: Do Korean and Chinese consumers display different perceptions of brand equity towards large-scale discount stores? RQ4: Are there differences in relationships between shopping values and brand equity for Korean and Chinese consumers? For statistical analysis, SPSS17.0, AMOS17.0 and SmartPLS were employed. 3. Research Results The data collected through face-to-face survey conducted in Seoul and Bejing revealed appropriate data validity and reliability as a result of exploratory/confirmatory factor analysis and reliability tests, andh SEM model yielding satisfactory model fitness. The result of the study may be summarized by three main points. First, as a result of testing differences in consumption dispositions, Chinese consumers showed higher scores in aesthetic and symbolic dispositions, whereas Korean consumers scored higher in hedonic disposition. Second, testing on perceptions toward brand equity of large discount stores showed that Korean consumers exhibited more positive perceptions of brand awareness and brand image than Chinese counterparts. Third, the result of exploratory factor analysis on the experiential shopping values revealed different factors for each country. On Korean side, consumer interest value, aesthetic value, and hedonic value were prominent, whereas on Chinese side, hedonic value, aesthetic value, consumer interest value, and service excellence value were found salient. 4. Research Implications While many previous studies on inter-country differences in retailing area mainly focused on cultural dispositions or orientations to explain the differences, this study sets itself apart by specifically targeting individual consumer's shopping values from an experiential viewpoint. The study result provides important theoretical as well as practical implications for large-scale discount store, especially the impotance of fully exploring the linkage between shopping values and brand equity, which has significant influence on loyalty. Therefore, the specific implications deriving from the result shed some important insights upon the consumption values based on shopping experiences and brand equity. The differences found in store shoppers between the two countries may also provide useful insights for Korean and Chinese retailers who plan to expand their operations globally. Related strategic implications derived from this study is the importance of localizing retail strategy which is based on the differences found in experiential shopping values between the two country groups. Especially the finding that Chinese consumers value consumer interest and service excellence, whereas Koreans place importance on hedonic or aesthetic values indicates the need to differentiate the consumer's psychographical profiles when it comes to expanding retail operations globally. Particularly important will be to pursue price-orienated strategy in China in consideration of the high emphasis on consumer interests and service excellence, but to emphasize the symbolic aspects of brand equity in Korea by maximizing the brand equity associated with aesthetic values and hedonic orientations. 5. Recommendations This study focused on generic retail branded discount stores in both countries, thus making it difficult to tease out store-specific strategies based on specific retail brands. Future studies may benefit fro employing actual brand names in survey questionnaire to verify relationship between shopping values and brand-based store strategy. As with other studies of this nature, this study needs to strengthen the result's generalizability by selecting respondents from a wider spectrum of respondents.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.155-166
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• 2010

Studies on the production of cell-wall bound innerpolysaccharides (IPS) (soluble ${\beta}$-D-glucan) have been performed by use of suspended myelial cultures of Inonotus obliquus. This product has promising potentials as an effective antidiabetic as well as an immunostimulating agents. As a first step to enhanced production of IPS, Intensive strain improvement programs were carried out by obtaining a large amounts of protoplasts for the isolation of single cell colonies. Rapid and large screening of high-yielding producers was possible because about fivefold higher amount of protoplasts ($2.3{\times}10^6$ protoplasts/mL) could be recovered with relatively high regeneration rates of $10^{-2}{\sim}10^{-3}$ by applying a modified filtration method, as compared to the previously used trapping method. A basic protocol necessary for UV-mutation of the protoplasts was also developed, resulting in several overproducing variants with good fermentation properties. Since the amount of IPS extracted from the mycelial cell walls of I. obliquus turned out to be almost constant per g DCW, increase in cell mass was considered the most important factor for the enhancement in IPS production. Therefore, attempts were made to screen mutant cells showing rapid mycelial growth rate in the final suspended cultures. Notably, the mutant strains showing an active cellgrowth in the preceding solid growth cultures were observed to produce higher amount of IPS in the suspended fermentations as well. A striking mutant, OBLQ756-15-5 strain, obtained from the survivors of a harsh UV-treated condition (97% death rate) was found to stably produce as high cell mass as 22 g DCW/L in the final fermentations. Currently, this strain is being tested for development of a scaled-up fermentation process for mass production of IPS.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.57 no.7
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• pp.437-449
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• 2024

Rainfall-runoff prediction studies using deep learning while considering catchment attributes have been gaining attention. In this study, we selected two models: the Transformer model, which is suitable for large-scale data training through the self-attention mechanism, and the LSTM-based multi-state-vector sequence-to-sequence (LSTM-MSV-S2S) model with an encoder-decoder structure. These models were constructed to incorporate catchment attributes and predict the inflow of 10 multi-purpose dam watersheds in South Korea. The experimental design consisted of three training methods: Single-basin Training (ST), Pretraining (PT), and Pretraining-Finetuning (PT-FT). The input data for the models included 10 selected watershed attributes along with meteorological data. The inflow prediction performance was compared based on the training methods. The results showed that the Transformer model outperformed the LSTM-MSV-S2S model when using the PT and PT-FT methods, with the PT-FT method yielding the highest performance. The LSTM-MSV-S2S model showed better performance than the Transformer when using the ST method; however, it showed lower performance when using the PT and PT-FT methods. Additionally, the embedding layer activation vectors and raw catchment attributes were used to cluster watersheds and analyze whether the models learned the similarities between them. The Transformer model demonstrated improved performance among watersheds with similar activation vectors, proving that utilizing information from other pre-trained watersheds enhances the prediction performance. This study compared the suitable models and training methods for each multi-purpose dam and highlighted the necessity of constructing deep learning models using PT and PT-FT methods for domestic watersheds. Furthermore, the results confirmed that the Transformer model outperforms the LSTM-MSV-S2S model when applying PT and PT-FT methods.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.97-107
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• 1981

This study was carried out in order to provide the basic data necessary to develop the effective and desirable cooking method on large scale for investigating the physical characteristics of cooked rices and studying optimum cooking conditions by pressure in kettle cooking rices. Milyang-15, local Japonica type and Milyang-23, high yielding Indica type major varieties cultivated in Korea were used as cooking sample after polishing 70% and 90% respectively, and the results obtained are summarized as follows. 1. The average moisture content of cooked rice by open kettle and pressure kettle method in typical households were 65.17% and 64.52%, respectively. 2. In water absorption capacity of rice grain Milyang-23 was 4.5% higher than Milyang-15, and maximum water content after absorption in Milyang-23 was 29.14%. 3. The expansion volume of cooked rice was changed proportionally by water absorption, heating temperature and time, and maximum expansion volume of cooked rice was 3.2 times greater than rice grain. 4. The gelatinization degree of cooked rice intensively concerning in hardness of rice grain was increased as water-to-rice ratio, heating temperature and time increased, and it was 0.44 in Milyang-23 and 0.64 in Milyang-15 under the optimum cooking conditions as 160% water-to-rice ratio, $0.2kg/cm^2$ cooking pressure and 25 minutes cooking time. 5. The hardness of cooked rice was decreased as water-to-rice ratio, heating temperature and time increased, and it showed 2.35kg/wt in 90% polished Milyang-23 and 2.0kg/wt in 90 polished Milyang-15 under optimum cooking conditions. For maintaining the same level of hardness of cooking rice Milyang-23 required 25% much more water than Milyang-15. 6. The elasticity of cooked rice was changed proportionally by water-to-rice ratio, heating temperature and time, and it appeared 19.2mm and 15.7mm in 90% polished Milyang-15 and Milyang-23 respectively. 7. The gumminess of cooked rice was decreased as water-to-rice ratio, heating temperature and time increased, and it showed 60 and 73 in 90% polished Milyang-23 and Milyang-15, respectively. 8. The optimum cooking time on differerent pressure in kettle took 25 minutes at $0.2kg/cm^2$, 20 minutes at $0.4kg/cm^2$, 15 minutes at $0.6kg/cm^2$, and 10 minutes at $0.8kg/cm^2$.