• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
• /
• v.31 no.1
• /
• pp.113-121
• /
• 2024

Purpose: In response to the surge in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) omicron variant cases, we have implemented preemptive testing for preschool and school. The purpose is to quickly detect COVID-19 cases using a rapid antigen test (RAT) kit so that normal school activities can continue. Methods: The results entered in The Healthcare Self-Test App were merged with the information on the status of confirmed cases in the COVID-19 Information Management System by Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) for preschool and school of students and staffs March 2 to May 1, 2022 to analyze the RAT positive rate and positive predictive value of RAT. Results: In preschool and school 19,458,575 people were tested, weekly RAT positive rate ranged from 1.10% to 5.90%, positive predictive value of RAT ranged from 86.42% to 93.18%. By status, RAT positive rate ranged from 1.13% to 6.16% for students, 0.99% to 3.93% for staffs, positive predictive value of RAT ranged from 87.19% to 94.03% for students, 77.55% to 83.10% for staffs. RAT positive rate by symptoms ranged from 76.32% to 88.02% for those with symptoms and 0.34% to 1.11% for those without symptoms. As a result of preschool and school RAT, 943,342 confirmed cases were preemptively detected, before infection spread in preschool and school. Conclusions: RAT was well utilized to detect confirmed cases at an early stage, reducing the risk of transmission to minimize the educational gap in preschool and school. To compensate for the limitations of RAT, further research should continue to reevaluate the performance of RAT as new strains of viruses continue to emerge. We will have to come up with various ways to utilize it, such as performing periodic and repeated RAT and parallel polymerase chain reaction.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
• /
• v.45 no.3
• /
• pp.335-341
• /
• 2024

Objectives: Patients with cancer eventually fail to respond to therapy when malignant cells develop effective ways to evade immunosurveillance. Conventional cancer treatments, such as radiation therapy and chemotherapy, aim to cure the disease or prolong the patient's life. However, the toxicity and side effects of conventional treatments limit their efficacy. Herbal medicine is a typical complementary and integrative form of medicine for cancer treatment in Asia. This protocol evaluates the effectiveness of herbal medicines in improving the immune function of patients with cancer. Methods: The following electronic databases will be searched: MEDLINE via PubMed, EMBASE via Elsevier, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Korean databases including Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS), National Digital Science Library (NDSL), and Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated System (OASIS). Additionally, prospective randomized controlled trials that evaluate the effectiveness of herbal medicines on immune function in patients with cancer will be included in this review. All outcomes related to the immune function of patients with cancer (e.g., CD3, CD4, CD8, CD4/CD8 ratio, CD19 (B cells), dendritic cells (CD11), CD56 (NK cells), and macrophages) will be included in this review. Results: This review is expected to provide data on the effectiveness of herbal medicines on improving immune functions in patients with cancers. Conclusion: This systematic review will help patients and clinicians establish new management options for cancer treatment.

• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
• /
• no.78
• /
• pp.197-249
• /
• 2023

This paper focus on the demand for broadcast and video archive contents by users outside broadcasters as the archive openness and sharing projects of terrestrial broadcasters have become more active in recent years. In the process of creating works using broadcasters' released video footage, the study examined the criteria by which video footage is selected and the methods and processes utilized for editing. To this end, the study analyzed the the case of the 5.18 footage video sharing project 〈May Story(Owol-Iyagi)〉 contest organized by KBS in 2022, in which KBS released its footage about the May 18 Democratic Uprising and invited external users to create new content using them. Analyzing the works that were selected as the winners of the contest, the research conducts in-depth interviews with the creators of each work. As a result, the following points are identified. Among the submitted works, many works deal with the direct or indirect experience of the May 18 Democratic Uprising and focus on the impact of this historical event on individuals and our current society. The study also examined the ways in which broadcasters' footage is used in secondary works. We found ways to use video as a means to share historical events, or to present video as evidence or metaphor. It is found that the need for broadcasters to provide a wider range of public video materials such as the May 18 Democratic Uprising, describing more metadata including copyright information before releasing selected footage, ensuring high-definition and high-fidelity videos that can be used for editing, and strengthening streaming or downloading functions for user friendliness. Through this, the study explores the future direction of broadcasters' video data openness and sharing business, and confirms that broadcasters' archival projects can be an alternative to fulfill public responsibilities such as strengthening social integration between regions, generations, and classes through moving images.

• Information Systems Review
• /
• v.26 no.1
• /
• pp.269-288
• /
• 2024

The main objective of this study is to empirically explore how the organizational culture influences financial performance of companies. To achieve this, 58 companies included in the KOSPI 200 were selected from an online job platform in South Korea, JobPlanet. In order to understand the organizational culture of these companies, data was collected and analyzed from 81,067 reviews written by current and former members of these companies on JobPlanet over a period of 9 years from 2014 to 2022. To define the organizational culture of each company based on the review data, this study utilized well-known text analysis techniques, namely Word2Vec and FastText analysis methods. By modifying, supplementing, and extending the keywords associated with the five organizational culture values (Innovation, Integrity, Quality, Respect, and Teamwork) defined by Guiso et al. (2015), this study created a new Culture Dictionary. By using this dictionary, this study explored which cultural values-related keywords appear most often in the review data of each company, revealing the relative strength of specific cultural values within companies. Going a step further, the study also investigated which cultural values statistically impact financial performance. The results indicated that the organizational culture focusing on innovation and creativity (Innovation) and on customers and the market (Quality) positively influenced Tobin's Q, an indicator of a company's future value and growth. For the indicator of profitability, ROA, only the organizational culture emphasizing customers and the market (Quality) showed statistically significant impact. This study distinguishes itself from traditional surveys and case analysis-based research on organizational culture by analyzing large-scale text data to explore organizational culture.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.211-232
• /
• 2014

Recently, there is a growing interest toward social commerce using SNS(Social Networking Service), and the size of its market is also expanding due to popularization of smart phones, tablet PCs and other smart devices. Accordingly, various studies have been attempted but it is shown that most of the previous studies have been conducted from perspectives of the users. The purpose of this study is to derive user-centered CSF(Critical Success Factor) of social commerce from the previous studies and analyze the CSF perception gap between social commerce service providers and users. The CSF perception gap between two groups shows that there is a difference between ideal images the service providers hope for and the actual image the service users have on social commerce companies. This study provides effective improvement directions for social commerce companies by presenting current business problems and its solution plans. For this, This study selected Korea's representative social commerce business Ticket Monster, which is dominant in sales and staff size together with its excellent funding power through M&A by stock exchange with the US social commerce business Living Social with Amazon.com as a shareholder in August, 2011, as a target group of social commerce service provider. we have gathered questionnaires from both service providers and the users from October 22, 2012 until October 31, 2012 to conduct an empirical analysis. We surveyed 160 service providers of Ticket Monster We also surveyed 160 social commerce users who have experienced in using Ticket Monster service. Out of 320 surveys, 20 questionaries which were unfit or undependable were discarded. Consequently the remaining 300(service provider 150, user 150)were used for this empirical study. The statistics were analyzed using SPSS 12.0. Implications of the empirical analysis result of this study are as follows: First of all, There are order differences in the importance of social commerce CSF between two groups. While service providers regard Price Economic as the most important CSF influencing purchasing intention, the users regard 'Trust' as the most important CSF influencing purchasing intention. This means that the service providers have to utilize the unique strong point of social commerce which make the customers be trusted rathe than just focusing on selling product at a discounted price. It means that service Providers need to enhance effective communication skills by using SNS and play a vital role as a trusted adviser who provides curation services and explains the value of products through information filtering. Also, they need to pay attention to preventing consumer damages from deceptive and false advertising. service providers have to create the detailed reward system in case of a consumer damages caused by above problems. It can make strong ties with customers. Second, both service providers and users tend to consider that social commerce CSF influencing purchasing intention are Price Economic, Utility, Trust, and Word of Mouth Effect. Accordingly, it can be learned that users are expecting the benefit from the aspect of prices and economy when using social commerce, and service providers should be able to suggest the individualized discount benefit through diverse methods using social network service. Looking into it from the aspect of usefulness, service providers are required to get users to be cognizant of time-saving, efficiency, and convenience when they are using social commerce. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the usefulness of social commerce through the introduction of a new management strategy, such as intensification of search engine of the Website, facilitation in payment through shopping basket, and package distribution. Trust, as mentioned before, is the most important variable in consumers' mind, so it should definitely be managed for sustainable management. If the trust in social commerce should fall due to consumers' damage case due to false and puffery advertising forgeries, it could have a negative influence on the image of the social commerce industry in general. Instead of advertising with famous celebrities and using a bombastic amount of money on marketing expenses, the social commerce industry should be able to use the word of mouth effect between users by making use of the social network service, the major marketing method of initial social commerce. The word of mouth effect occurring from consumers' spontaneous self-marketer's duty performance can bring not only reduction effect in advertising cost to a service provider but it can also prepare the basis of discounted price suggestion to consumers; in this context, the word of mouth effect should be managed as the CSF of social commerce. Third, Trade safety was not derived as one of the CSF. Recently, with e-commerce like social commerce and Internet shopping increasing in a variety of methods, the importance of trade safety on the Internet also increases, but in this study result, trade safety wasn't evaluated as CSF of social commerce by both groups. This study judges that it's because both service provider groups and user group are perceiving that there is a reliable PG(Payment Gateway) which acts for e-payment of Internet transaction. Accordingly, it is understood that both two groups feel that social commerce can have a corporate identity by website and differentiation in products and services in sales, but don't feel a big difference by business in case of e-payment system. In other words, trade safety should be perceived as natural, basic universal service. Fourth, it's necessary that service providers should intensify the communication with users by making use of social network service which is the major marketing method of social commerce and should be able to use the word of mouth effect between users. The word of mouth effect occurring from consumers' spontaneous self- marketer's duty performance can bring not only reduction effect in advertising cost to a service provider but it can also prepare the basis of discounted price suggestion to consumers. in this context, it is judged that the word of mouth effect should be managed as CSF of social commerce. In this paper, the characteristics of social commerce are limited as five independent variables, however, if an additional study is proceeded with more various independent variables, more in-depth study results will be derived. In addition, this research targets social commerce service providers and the users, however, in the consideration of the fact that social commerce is a two-sided market, drawing CSF through an analysis of perception gap between social commerce service providers and its advertisement clients would be worth to be dealt with in a follow-up study.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.125-148
• /
• 2018

Recently, as the demand for big data analysis increases, cases of analyzing unstructured data and using the results are also increasing. Among the various types of unstructured data, text is used as a means of communicating information in almost all fields. In addition, many analysts are interested in the amount of data is very large and relatively easy to collect compared to other unstructured and structured data. Among the various text analysis applications, document classification which classifies documents into predetermined categories, topic modeling which extracts major topics from a large number of documents, sentimental analysis or opinion mining that identifies emotions or opinions contained in texts, and Text Summarization which summarize the main contents from one document or several documents have been actively studied. Especially, the text summarization technique is actively applied in the business through the news summary service, the privacy policy summary service, ect. In addition, much research has been done in academia in accordance with the extraction approach which provides the main elements of the document selectively and the abstraction approach which extracts the elements of the document and composes new sentences by combining them. However, the technique of evaluating the quality of automatically summarized documents has not made much progress compared to the technique of automatic text summarization. Most of existing studies dealing with the quality evaluation of summarization were carried out manual summarization of document, using them as reference documents, and measuring the similarity between the automatic summary and reference document. Specifically, automatic summarization is performed through various techniques from full text, and comparison with reference document, which is an ideal summary document, is performed for measuring the quality of automatic summarization. Reference documents are provided in two major ways, the most common way is manual summarization, in which a person creates an ideal summary by hand. Since this method requires human intervention in the process of preparing the summary, it takes a lot of time and cost to write the summary, and there is a limitation that the evaluation result may be different depending on the subject of the summarizer. Therefore, in order to overcome these limitations, attempts have been made to measure the quality of summary documents without human intervention. On the other hand, as a representative attempt to overcome these limitations, a method has been recently devised to reduce the size of the full text and to measure the similarity of the reduced full text and the automatic summary. In this method, the more frequent term in the full text appears in the summary, the better the quality of the summary. However, since summarization essentially means minimizing a lot of content while minimizing content omissions, it is unreasonable to say that a "good summary" based on only frequency always means a "good summary" in its essential meaning. In order to overcome the limitations of this previous study of summarization evaluation, this study proposes an automatic quality evaluation for text summarization method based on the essential meaning of summarization. Specifically, the concept of succinctness is defined as an element indicating how few duplicated contents among the sentences of the summary, and completeness is defined as an element that indicating how few of the contents are not included in the summary. In this paper, we propose a method for automatic quality evaluation of text summarization based on the concepts of succinctness and completeness. In order to evaluate the practical applicability of the proposed methodology, 29,671 sentences were extracted from TripAdvisor 's hotel reviews, summarized the reviews by each hotel and presented the results of the experiments conducted on evaluation of the quality of summaries in accordance to the proposed methodology. It also provides a way to integrate the completeness and succinctness in the trade-off relationship into the F-Score, and propose a method to perform the optimal summarization by changing the threshold of the sentence similarity.

• Journal of Distribution Research
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.141-177
• /
• 2011

I. Research Objectives: Most of the previous studies on diffusion have concentrated on efficacy of WOM communication with the use of variables at individual level (Iacobucci 1996; Midgley et al. 1992). However, there is a paucity of studies which investigated network's structural properties as antecedents of WOM from the perspective of consumers' sociocultural propensities. Against this research backbone, this study attempted to link the network's structural properties and consumer' WOM behavior on cross-national basis. The major research objective of this study was to examine the relationship between network properties and WOM by comparing Korean and Chinese consumers. Specific objectives of this research are threefold; firstly, it sought to examine whether network properties (i.e., tie strength, centrality, range) affect WOM (WOM intention and quality of WOM). Secondly, it aimed to explore the moderating effects of cutural orientation (uncertainty avoidance and individuality) on the relationship between network properties and WOM. Thirdly, it substantiates the role of innovativeness as antecedents to both network properties and WOM. II. Research Hypotheses: Based on the above research objectives, the study put forth the following research hypotheses to validate. ${\cdot}$ H 1-1 : The Strength of tie between two counterparts within network will positively influence WOM effectivenes ${\cdot}$ H 1-2 : The network centrality will positively influence the WOM effectiveness ${\cdot}$ H 1-3 : The network range will positively influence the WOM effectiveness ${\cdot}$ H 2-1 : The consumer's uncertainty avoidance tendency will moderate the relationship between network properties and WOM effectiveness ${\cdot}$ H 2-2 : The consumer's individualism tendency will moderate the relationship between network properties and WOM effectiveness ${\cdot}$ H 3-1 : The consumer's innovativeness will positively influence the social network properties ${\cdot}$ H 3-2 : The consumer's innovativeness will positively influence WOM effectiveness III. Methodology: Through a pilot study and back-translation, two versions of questionnaire were prepared, one in Korean and the other in Chinese. The chinese data were collected from the chinese students enrolled in language schools in Suwon city in Korea, while Korean data were collected from students taking classes in a major university in Seoul. A total of 277 questionnaire were used for analysis of Korean data and 212 for Chinese data. The reason why Chinese students living in Korea rather than in China were selected was based on two factors: one was to neutralize the differences (ie, retail channel availability) that may arise from living in separate countries and the second was to minimize the difference in communication venues such as internet accessibility and cell phone usability. SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 7.0 were used for analysis. IV. Results: Prior to hypothesis verification, mean differences between the two countries in terms of major constructs were performed with the following result; As for network properties (tie strength, centrality and range), Koreans showed higher scores in all three constructs. For cultural orientation traits, Koreans scored higher only on uncertainty avoidance trait than Chinese. As a result of verifying the first research objective, confirming the relationship between network properties and WOM effectiveness, on Korean side, tie strength(Beta=.116; t=1.785) and centrality (Beta=.499; t=6.776) significantly influenced on WOM intention, and similar finding was obtained for Chinese side, with tie strength (Beta=.246; t=3.544) and centrality (Beta=.247; t=3.538) being significant. However, with regard to WOM argument quality, Korean data yielded only centrality (Beta=.82; t=7.600) having a significant impact on WOM, whereas China showed both tie strength(Beat=.142; t=2.052) and centrality(Beta=.348; t=5.031) being influential. To answer for the second research objective addressing the moderating role of cultural orientation, moderated regression anaylsis was performed and the result showed that uncertainty avoidance moderated between network range and WOM intention for both Korea and China, But for Korea, the uncertainty avoidance moderated between tie strength and WOM quality, while for China it moderated between network range and WOM intention. And innovativeness moderated between tie strength and WOM intention for Korea but it moderated between network range and WOM intention for China. As a result of analysing for third research objective, we found that for Korea, innovativeness positively influenced centrality only (Beta=.546; t=10.808), while for China it influenced both tie strength (Beta=.203; t=2.998) and centrality(Beta=.518; t=8.782). But for both countries alike, the innovativeness influenced positively on WOM (WOM intention and WOM quality). V. Implications: The study yields the two practical implications. Firstly, the result suggests that companies targeting multinational customers need to identify segments which are susceptible to the positive WOM and WOM information based on individual traits such as uncertainty avoidance and individualism and based on that, develop marketing communication strategy. Secondly, the companies need to divide the market on Roger's five innovation stages and based on this information, enforce marketing strategy which utilizes social networking tools such as public media and WOM. For instance, innovator and early adopters, if provided with new product information, will be able to capitalize upon the network advantages and thus add informational value to network operations using SNS or corporate blog.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.27-55
• /
• 2008

Due to the increasing and intensifying competition in the Internet shopping market, it has been recognized as very important to develop an effective policy and strategy for acquiring loyal customers. For this reason, web site designers need to know if a new Internet shopping mall(ISM) will be accepted. Researchers have been working on identifying factors for explaining and predicting user acceptance of an ISM. Some studies, however, revealed inconsistent findings on the antecedents of user acceptance of a website. Lack of consideration for individual differences in user ability is believed to be one of the key reasons for the mixed findings. The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and several studies have suggested that individual differences in ability plays an moderating role on the relationship between the antecedents and user acceptance. Despite the critical role of user ability, little research has examined the role of user ability in the Internet shopping mall context. The purpose of this study is to develop a user acceptance model that consider the moderating role of user ability in the context of Internet shopping. This study was initiated to see the ability of the technology acceptance model(TAM) to explain the acceptance of a specific ISM. According to TAM. which is one of the most influential models for explaining user acceptance of IT, an intention to use IT is determined by usefulness and ease of use. Given that interaction between user and website takes place through web interface, the decisions to accept and continue using an ISM depend on these beliefs. However, TAM neglects to consider the fact that many users would not stick to an ISM until they trust it although they may think it useful and easy to use. The importance of trust for user acceptance of ISM has been raised by the relational views. The relational view emphasizes the trust-building process between the user and ISM, and user's trust on the website is a major determinant of user acceptance. The proposed model extends and integrates the TAM and relational views on user acceptance of ISM by incorporating usefulness, ease of use, and trust. User acceptance is defined as a user's intention to reuse a specific ISM. And user ability is introduced into the model as moderating variable. Here, the user ability is defined as a degree of experiences, knowledge and skills regarding Internet shopping sites. The research model proposes that the ease of use, usefulness and trust of ISM are key determinants of user acceptance. In addition, this paper hypothesizes that the effects of the antecedents(i.e., ease of use, usefulness, and trust) on user acceptance may differ among users. In particular, this paper proposes a moderating effect of a user's ability on the relationship between antecedents with user's intention to reuse. The research model with eleven hypotheses was derived and tested through a survey that involved 470 university students. For each research variable, this paper used measurement items recognized for reliability and widely used in previous research. We slightly modified some items proper to the research context. The reliability and validity of the research variables were tested using the Crobnach's alpha and internal consistency reliability (ICR) values, standard factor loadings of the confirmative factor analysis, and average variance extracted (AVE) values. A LISREL method was used to test the suitability of the research model and its relating six hypotheses. Key findings of the results are summarized in the following. First, TAM's two constructs, ease of use and usefulness directly affect user acceptance. In addition, ease of use indirectly influences user acceptance by affecting trust. This implies that users tend to trust a shopping site and visit repeatedly when they perceive a specific ISM easy to use. Accordingly, designing a shopping site that allows users to navigate with heuristic and minimal clicks for finding information and products within the site is important for improving the site's trust and acceptance. Usefulness, however, was not found to influence trust. Second, among the three belief constructs(ease of use, usefulness, and trust), trust was empirically supported as the most important determinants of user acceptance. This implies that users require trustworthiness from an Internet shopping site to be repeat visitors of an ISM. Providing a sense of safety and eliminating the anxiety of online shoppers in relation to privacy, security, delivery, and product returns are critically important conditions for acquiring repeat visitors. Hence, in addition to usefulness and ease of use as in TAM, trust should be a fundamental determinants of user acceptance in the context of internet shopping. Third, the user's ability on using an Internet shopping site played a moderating role. For users with low ability, ease of use was found to be a more important factors in deciding to reuse the shopping mall, whereas usefulness and trust had more effects on users with high ability. Applying the EML theory to these findings, we can suggest that experienced and knowledgeable ISM users tend to elaborate on such usefulness aspects as efficient and effective shopping performance and trust factors as ability, benevolence, integrity, and predictability of a shopping site before they become repeat visitors of the site. In contrast, novice users tend to rely on the low elaborating features, such as the perceived ease of use. The existence of moderating effects suggests the fact that different individuals evaluate an ISM from different perspectives. The expert users are more interested in the outcome of the visit(usefulness) and trustworthiness(trust) than those novice visitors. The latter evaluate the ISM in a more superficial manner focusing on the novelty of the site and on other instrumental beliefs(ease of use). This is consistent with the insights proposed by the Heuristic-Systematic model. According to the Heuristic-Systematic model. a users act on the principle of minimum effort. Thus, the user considers an ISM heuristically, focusing on those aspects that are easy to process and evaluate(ease of use). When the user has sufficient experience and skills, the user will change to systematic processing, where they will evaluate more complex aspects of the site(its usefulness and trustworthiness). This implies that an ISM has to provide a minimum level of ease of use to make it possible for a user to evaluate its usefulness and trustworthiness. Ease of use is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the acceptance and use of an ISM. Overall, the empirical results generally support the proposed model and identify the moderating effect of the effects of user ability. More detailed interpretations and implications of the findings are discussed. The limitations of this study are also discussed to provide directions for future research.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.22 no.1
• /
• pp.29-52
• /
• 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).

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.26 no.3
• /
• pp.171-191
• /
• 2020

This study focused on digital music, which is the most valuable cultural asset in the modern society and occupies a particularly important position in the flow of the Korean Wave. Digital music was collected based on the "Gaon Chart," a well-established music chart in Korea. Through this, the changes in the ranking of the music that entered the chart for 73 weeks were collected. Afterwards, patterns with similar characteristics were derived through time series cluster analysis. Then, a descriptive analysis was performed on the notable features of each pattern. The research process suggested by this study is as follows. First, in the data collection process, time series data was collected to check the ranking change of digital music. Subsequently, in the data processing stage, the collected data was matched with the rankings over time, and the music title and artist name were processed. Each analysis is then sequentially performed in two stages consisting of exploratory analysis and explanatory analysis. First, the data collection period was limited to the period before 'the music bulk buying phenomenon', a reliability issue related to music ranking in Korea. Specifically, it is 73 weeks starting from December 31, 2017 to January 06, 2018 as the first week, and from May 19, 2019 to May 25, 2019. And the analysis targets were limited to digital music released in Korea. In particular, digital music was collected based on the "Gaon Chart", a well-known music chart in Korea. Unlike private music charts that are being serviced in Korea, Gaon Charts are charts approved by government agencies and have basic reliability. Therefore, it can be considered that it has more public confidence than the ranking information provided by other services. The contents of the collected data are as follows. Data on the period and ranking, the name of the music, the name of the artist, the name of the album, the Gaon index, the production company, and the distribution company were collected for the music that entered the top 100 on the music chart within the collection period. Through data collection, 7,300 music, which were included in the top 100 on the music chart, were identified for a total of 73 weeks. On the other hand, in the case of digital music, since the cases included in the music chart for more than two weeks are frequent, the duplication of music is removed through the pre-processing process. For duplicate music, the number and location of the duplicated music were checked through the duplicate check function, and then deleted to form data for analysis. Through this, a list of 742 unique music for analysis among the 7,300-music data in advance was secured. A total of 742 songs were secured through previous data collection and pre-processing. In addition, a total of 16 patterns were derived through time series cluster analysis on the ranking change. Based on the patterns derived after that, two representative patterns were identified: 'Steady Seller' and 'One-Hit Wonder'. Furthermore, the two patterns were subdivided into five patterns in consideration of the survival period of the music and the music ranking. The important characteristics of each pattern are as follows. First, the artist's superstar effect and bandwagon effect were strong in the one-hit wonder-type pattern. Therefore, when consumers choose a digital music, they are strongly influenced by the superstar effect and the bandwagon effect. Second, through the Steady Seller pattern, we confirmed the music that have been chosen by consumers for a very long time. In addition, we checked the patterns of the most selected music through consumer needs. Contrary to popular belief, the steady seller: mid-term pattern, not the one-hit wonder pattern, received the most choices from consumers. Particularly noteworthy is that the 'Climbing the Chart' phenomenon, which is contrary to the existing pattern, was confirmed through the steady-seller pattern. This study focuses on the change in the ranking of music over time, a field that has been relatively alienated centering on digital music. In addition, a new approach to music research was attempted by subdividing the pattern of ranking change rather than predicting the success and ranking of music.