• Title/Summary/Keyword: technology transaction

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Research Framework for International Franchising (국제프랜차이징 연구요소 및 연구방향)

  • Kim, Ju-Young;Lim, Young-Kyun;Shim, Jae-Duck
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.4
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    • pp.61-118
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    • 2008
  • The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.

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The Factors Influencing Intention to Use Bit Coin of Domestic Consumers (국내 소비자들의 비트코인 사용 의도에 영향을 미치는 요인 연구)

  • Shin, Dong-Hee;Kim, Yong-Moon
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.16 no.1
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    • pp.24-41
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    • 2016
  • Study is about Bit Coin that is electronic cash that is received attention globally in recent. It is increasing domestically that uses bit coin for convenience of micro payment, and also bit coin is possible to exchange each countries' currency. In this point, we searched understanding degree and acceptance of bit coin. Also we applied transformed TAM(Technology Acceptance Model) to search factors that have an effect on consumers' intention to use it. In advance, we analyze features of bit coin, and extract factors through preceding researches for existing electronic cash, because studies for intention to use bit coin are weak in internal and external. First of results is that 'economic efficiency' which is a characteristic variable of bit coin influences 'intention to use,' a dependent variable through 'perceived usefulness,' a parameter. It was investigated that monetary and mental costs that was costed when we use bit coin were less than using other cash. Secondly, 'payment convenience' that is a characteristic variable affects 'intention to use', a dependent variable through 'perceived usefulness,' a parameter. It was measured that problems of inconvenience that include transaction process, cash management time shortage and exchange changes will be solved by using bit coin. Thirdly, 'reliability' that is a perceived risk variable of bit coin has a direct effect on 'intention to use,' a dependent variable. It was investigated that we could achieve purpose of payment because we weren't influenced by breakdown on system by processing distributed database in some computers. Fourthly, 'perceived usefulness,' a parameter of bit coin directly affects 'intention to use,' a dependent variable. Then consumers who want to use bit coin are fascinated bit coin for various usability. Moreover, we want to provide implications to all of finance corporations, companies related electronic cash and bit coin users based on these results.

The Effect of Herding Behavior and Perceived Usefulness on Intention to Purchase e-Learning Content: Comparison Analysis by Purchase Experience (무리행동과 지각된 유용성이 이러닝 컨텐츠 구매의도에 미치는 영향: 구매경험에 의한 비교분석)

  • Yoo, Chul-Woo;Kim, Yang-Jin;Moon, Jung-Hoon;Choe, Young-Chan
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.18 no.4
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    • pp.105-130
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    • 2008
  • Consumers of e-learning market differ from those of other markets in that they are replaced in a specific time scale. For example, e-learning contents aimed at highschool senior students cannot be consumed by a specific consumer over the designated period of time. Hence e-learning service providers need to attract new groups of students every year. Due to lack of information on products designed for continuously emerging consumers, the consumers face difficulties in making rational decisions in a short time period. Increased uncertainty of product purchase leads customers to herding behaviors to obtain information of the product from others and imitate them. Taking into consideration of these features of e-learning market, this study will focus on the online herding behavior in purchasing e-learning contents. There is no definite concept for e-learning. However, it is being discussed in a wide range of perspectives from educational engineering to management to e-business etc. Based upon the existing studies, we identify two main view-points regarding e-learning. The first defines e-learning as a concept that includes existing terminologies, such as CBT (Computer Based Training), WBT (Web Based Training), and IBT (Internet Based Training). In this view, e-learning utilizes IT in order to support professors and a part of or entire education systems. In the second perspective, e-learning is defined as the usage of Internet technology to deliver diverse intelligence and achievement enhancing solutions. In other words, only the educations that are done through the Internet and network can be classified as e-learning. We take the second definition of e-learning for our working definition. The main goal of this study is to investigate what factors affect consumer intention to purchase e-learning contents and to identify the differential impact of the factors between consumers with purchase experience and those without the experience. To accomplish the goal of this study, it focuses on herding behavior and perceived usefulness as antecedents to behavioral intention. The proposed research model in the study extends the Technology Acceptance Model by adding herding behavior and usability to take into account the unique characteristics of e-learning content market and e-learning systems use, respectively. The current study also includes consumer experience with e-learning content purchase because the previous experience is believed to affect purchasing intention when consumers buy experience goods or services. Previous studies on e-learning did not consider the characteristics of e-learning contents market and the differential impact of consumer experience on the relationship between the antecedents and behavioral intention, which is the target of this study. This study employs a survey method to empirically test the proposed research model. A survey questionnaire was developed and distributed to 629 informants. 528 responses were collected, which consist of potential customer group (n = 133) and experienced customer group (n = 395). The data were analyzed using PLS method, a structural equation modeling method. Overall, both herding behavior and perceived usefulness influence consumer intention to purchase e-learning contents. In detail, in the case of potential customer group, herding behavior has stronger effect on purchase intention than does perceived usefulness. However, in the case of shopping-experienced customer group, perceived usefulness has stronger effect than does herding behavior. In sum, the results of the analysis show that with regard to purchasing experience, perceived usefulness and herding behavior had differential effects upon the purchase of e-learning contents. As a follow-up analysis, the interaction effects of the number of purchase transaction and herding behavior/perceived usefulness on purchase intention were investigated. The results show that there are no interaction effects. This study contributes to the literature in a couple of ways. From a theoretical perspective, this study examined and showed evidence that the characteristics of e-learning market such as continuous renewal of consumers and thus high uncertainty and individual experiences are important factors to be considered when the purchase intention of e-learning content is studied. This study can be used as a basis for future studies on e-learning success. From a practical perspective, this study provides several important implications on what types of marketing strategies e-learning companies need to build. The bottom lines of these strategies include target group attraction, word-of-mouth management, enhancement of web site usability quality, etc. The limitations of this study are also discussed for future studies.

The Impact of Education-Orientation on Technology Innovation and Company Outcome : Focusing on Korean Companies in China (기업의 교육지향성이 기술혁신과 기업성과에 미치는 영향 : 대 중국 투자 한국기업을 중심으로)

  • Kim, Jung Hoon;Lim, Young Taek
    • The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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    • v.19 no.4
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    • pp.231-249
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    • 2014
  • We define $21^{st}$ century as an amalgamation of globalization and localization, or Glocalization. Additionally, due to the increasing supply of smart phones and wide usage of social networking services, the ability to utilize such global and regional information has increased a coperation's competitiveness in its market, and even the business models have evolved from the conventional "production and distribution" to E-commerce, through which either a direct or a non-direct transaction is possible. My hypothesis is that the ability to adapt to this trend is possible through transfer of learning, and consequently, this will have an impact on company's performance. Thus, this thesis analyzes the mid- to the long-term impact of such ability and environmental factors on the performance and technology innovation of Korean companies in China. Ultimately, this study intends to engender a basic foundation for a corporation's management strategy in China. Finally this research focuses on those Korean companies in China only and on the proof of influential factors' impact on technological innovation and technological innovation's impact on those corporations' future performances. Section I is an abstract and section II, the case examines the uniqueness and current status of Korean companies in China identifies the concept and the definition of influential factors such as education-orientation, technological innovation, and performance, and then scrutinizes each factors through a closer look at their past researches. Section III explains the thesis model, the survey's method and target, the thesis, variable factors, the content, and the method of analysis. In section IV, the thesis is proved based on the outcome of the survey. The result in Section V highlights the high comprehension of technological innovation: both education-orientation and technological innovation prove to have a positive (+) correlation with the performance. The vision on education orientation proves to have a positive (+) influence on technological innovation. The vision on education-orientation and technological innovation prove to have a positive (+) influence individually on company's performance.

A Study on Agrifood Purchase Decision-making and Online Channel Selection according to Consumer Characteristics, Perceived Risks, and Eating Lifestyles (소비자 특성, 지각된 위험, 식생활 라이프스타일에 따른 농식품 구매결정 및 온라인 구매채널 선택에 관한 연구)

  • Lee, Myoung-Kwan;Park, Sang-Hyeok;Kim, Yeon-Jong
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.16 no.1
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    • pp.147-159
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    • 2021
  • After the 2020 Corona 19 pandemic, consumers' online consumption is increasing rapidly, and non-store online retail channels are showing high growth. In particular, social media is gaining its status as a social media market where direct transactions take place in the means of promoting companies' brands and products. In this study, changes in consumer behavior after the Corona 19 pandemic are different in choosing online shopping media such as existing online shopping malls and SNS markets that can be classified into open social media and closed social media when purchasing agri-food online. We tried to find out what type of product is preferred in the selection of agri-food products. For this study, demographic characteristics of consumers, perceived risk of consumers, and dietary lifestyle were set as independent variables to investigate the effect on online shopping media type and product selection. The summary of the empirical analysis results is as follows. When consumers purchase agri-food online, there are significant differences in demographic characteristics, consumer perception risks, and detailed factors of dietary lifestyle in selecting shopping channels such as online shopping malls, open social media, and closed social media. Appeared to be. The consumers who choose the open SNS market are higher in men than in women, with lower household income, and higher in consumers seeking health and taste. Consumers who choose the closed SNS market were analyzed as consumers who live in rural areas and have a high degree of risk perception for delivery. Consumers who choose existing online shopping malls have high educational background, high personal income, and high consumers seeking taste and economy. Through this study, we tried to provide practical assistance by providing a basis for judgment to farmers who have difficulty in selecting an online shopping medium suitable for their product characteristics. As a shopping channel for agri-food, social media is not a simple promotional channel, but a direct transaction. It can be differentiated from existing studies in that it is approached as a market that arises.

The Building Plan of Online ADR Model related to the International Commercial Transaction Dispute Resolution (국제상거래 분쟁해결을 위한 온라인 ADR 모델 구축방안)

  • Kim Sun-Kwang;Kim Jong-Rack;Hong Sung-Kyu
    • Journal of Arbitration Studies
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    • v.15 no.2
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    • pp.3-35
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    • 2005
  • The meaning of Online ADR lies in the prompt and economical resolution of disputes by applying the information/communication element (Internet) to existing ADR. However, if the promptness and economical efficiency are overemphasized, the fairness and appropriateness of dispute resolution may be compromised and consequently Online ADR will be belittled and criticized as second-class trials. In addition, as communication is mostly made using texts in Online ADR it is difficult to investigate cases and to create atmosphere and induce dynamic feelings, which are possible in the process of dispute resolution through face-to-face contact. Despite such difficulties, Online ADR is expanding its area not only in online but also in offline due to its advantages such as promptness, low expenses and improved resolution methods, and is expected to develop rapidly as the electronic government decided to adopt it in the future. Accordingly, the following points must be focused on for the continuous First, in the legal and institutional aspects for the development of Online ADR, it is necessary to establish a framework law on ADR. A framework law on ADR comprehending existing mediation and arbitration should be established and it must include contents of Online ADR, which utilizes electronic communication means. However, it is too early to establish a separate law for Online ADR because Online ADR must develop based on the theoretical system of ADR. Second, although Online ADR is expanding rapidly, it may take time to be settled as a tool of dispute resolution. As discussed earlier, additionally, if the amount of money in dispute is large or the dispute is complicated, Online ADR may have a negative effect on the resolution of the dispute. Thus, it is necessary to apply Online ADR to trifle cases or domestic cases in the early stage, accumulating experiences and correcting errors. Moreover, in order to settle numerous disputes effectively, Online ADR cases should be analyzed systematically and cases should be classified by type so that similar disputes may be settled automatically. What is more, these requirements should reflected in developing Online ADR system. Third, the application of Online ADR is being expanded to consumer disputes, domain name disputes, commercial disputes, legal disputes, etc., millions of cases are settled through Online ADR, and 115 Online ADR sites are in operation throughout the world. Thus Online ADR requires not temporary but continuous attention, and mediators and arbitrators participating in Online ADR should be more intensively educated on negotiation and information technologies. In particular, government-led research projects should be promoted to establish Online ADR model and these projects should be supported by comprehensive researches on mediation, arbitration and Online ADR. Fourth, what is most important in the continuous development and expansion of Online ADR is to secure confidence in Online ADR and advertise Online ADR to users. For this, incentives and rewards should be given to specialists such as lawyers when they participate in Online ADR as mediators and arbitrators in order to improve their expertise. What is more, from the early stage, the government and public institutions should have initiative in promoting Online ADR so that parties involved in disputes recognize the substantial contribution of Online ADR to dispute resolution. Lastly, dispute resolution through Online ADR is performed by organizations such as Korea Institute for Electronic Commerce and Korea Consumer Protection Board and partially by Korean Commercial Arbitration Board. Online ADR is expected to expand its area to commercial disputes in offline in the future. In response to this, Korean Commercial Arbitration Board, which is an organization for commercial dispute resolution, needs to be restructured.

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A Study about Development of Environment Printing Technology and $CO_2$ (환경 인쇄 기술의 발전과 인쇄물의 $CO_2$ 발생량에 관한 연구)

  • Lee, Mun-Hag
    • Journal of the Korean Graphic Arts Communication Society
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    • v.30 no.3
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    • pp.89-114
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    • 2012
  • For as to world, the concern about the environment problem is enhanced than any other time in the past because of being 21 century. And the environment problem is highlighted as the world-wide issue. The time of the environment problem intimidates the alive of the mankind and presence of an earth over the time. It becomes the essentiality not being selection in the personal living or the economical viewpoint now to prepare for the climatic modification. As to the company management, the green growth period which it excludes the environment management considering an environment, cannot carry on the company the continued management comes. That is, in the change center of the management paradigm, there is the environment management. Nearly, the greenhouse gas which the publication industry is the environmental toxic material like all industries is generated. The greenhouse gas is ejected in the process of running the manufacturing process and print shop of the various kinds material used as the raw material of the book. Particularly, the tree felling for getting the material of the paper is known to reach the direct influence on the global warming. This study does according to an object it considers and organizes the environment parameter based on this kind of fact as to the publication industry. And it is determined as the reference which is used as the basic materials preparing the case that carbon exhaust right transaction(CAP and TRADE) drawing are enforced in all industries and is sustainable the management of the publication industry and reduces the environmental risk among the company many risk management elements and plans and enforces the publication related policy that there is a value. In the printing publication industry, this study tried to inquire into elements discharging the environmental pollutant or the greenhouse gas. Additionally, in the printed publication production process, it tried to inquire into the effort for an environment-friendly and necessity at the printing paper and the printers ink, regarded as the element discharging the greenhouse gas all kinds of the printing materials, operation of the print shop and all kinds of the machines and recycle process, and etc. These considerations make these industrial field employees aware of the significance about a conservation and environmental protection. They try to give a help in the subsequent study producing quantitatively each environmental parameter emission of green house gas. This makes the calculation of the relative $CO_2$ output reproached ultimately possible. Meanwhile, in a sense, many research protects and improving an environment in connection with the contents of research at the printing publication industrial field is in progress. There will be the voluntary human face that it has to protect an environment but this can not do by the outside factor according to all kinds of environment related law and regulation. Anyway, because of acting on company management as the factor of oppression, the increase of this environment-related correspondence cost could know that the research that the environment loading relates with a procurement and development, environment management system introduction, quality control standard, including, normalizing including a material, and etc. through the part of the effort to reduce the cost low was actively in progress. As to the green growth era, as follows, this paper prescribed the subject and alternative of the print publication industry. It is surrounded by the firstly new digital environment and the generation of the subject. And secondly the printing industry is caused by the point of time when the green growth leaves by the topic which is largest in the global industry and it increases. The printing publication industry has to prepare the bridgehead for the environment-friendly green growth as the alternative for this resolution with first. The support blown in each industry becomes the obligation not being selection. Prestek in which the print publishing was exposed to spend many energies and which is known as the practice of the sustainable print publishing insisted that it mentioned importance of the green printing through the white pages in 2008 and a company had to be the green growth comprised through the environment-friendly activity. The core management for the sustainable printing publication industry presented from Presstack white pages is compacted to 4 words that it is a remove, reduce, recover, and recycle. Second, positively the digital printing(POD) system should be utilized. In the worldwide print out market, the digital printing area stops at the level of 10% or so but the change over and growth of the market of an analog-to-digital will increase rapidly in the future. As to the CEO Jeff Hayes of the Infoland, the offset print referred to that it of the traditional method got old and infirm with the minor phase of the new printing application like the customer to be wanted publication and the print of the digital method led the market. In conclusion, print publishers have to grasp well the market flow in the situation where a digitalization cannot be generalized and a support cannot avoid. And it keeps pace with the flow of the digital age and the recognition about the effort for the development and environment problem have to be raised. Particularly, the active green strategy is employed for the active green strategy.

A Study on the Buyer's Decision Making Models for Introducing Intelligent Online Handmade Services (지능형 온라인 핸드메이드 서비스 도입을 위한 구매자 의사결정모형에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Jong-Won;Yang, Sung-Byung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.22 no.1
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    • pp.119-138
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    • 2016
  • Since the Industrial Revolution, which made the mass production and mass distribution of standardized goods possible, machine-made (manufactured) products have accounted for the majority of the market. However, in recent years, the phenomenon of purchasing even more expensive handmade products has become a noticeable trend as consumers have started to acknowledge the value of handmade products, such as the craftsman's commitment, belief in their quality and scarcity, and the sense of self-esteem from having them,. Consumer interest in these handmade products has shown explosive growth and has been coupled with the recent development of three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies. Etsy.com is the world's largest online handmade platform. It is no different from any other online platform; it provides an online market where buyers and sellers virtually meet to share information and transact business. However, Etsy.com is different in that shops within this platform only deal with handmade products in a variety of categories, ranging from jewelry to toys. Since its establishment in 2005, despite being limited to handmade products, Etsy.com has enjoyed rapid growth in membership, transaction volume, and revenue. Most recently in April 2015, it raised funds through an initial public offering (IPO) of more than 1.8 billion USD, which demonstrates the huge potential of online handmade platforms. After the success of Etsy.com, various types of online handmade platforms such as Handmade at Amazon, ArtFire, DaWanda, and Craft is ART have emerged and are now competing with each other, at the same time, which has increased the size of the market. According to Deloitte's 2015 holiday survey on which types of gifts the respondents plan to buy during the holiday season, about 16% of U.S. consumers chose "homemade or craft items (e.g., Etsy purchase)," which was the same rate as those for the computer game and shoes categories. This indicates that consumer interests in online handmade platforms will continue to rise in the future. However, this high interest in the market for handmade products and their platforms has not yet led to academic research. Most extant studies have only focused on machine-made products and intelligent services for them. This indicates a lack of studies on handmade products and their intelligent services on virtual platforms. Therefore, this study used signaling theory and prior research on the effects of sellers' characteristics on their performance (e.g., total sales and price premiums) in the buyer-seller relationship to identify the key influencing e-Image factors (e.g., reputation, size, information sharing, and length of relationship). Then, their impacts on the performance of shops within the online handmade platform were empirically examined; the dataset was collected from Etsy.com through the application of web harvesting technology. The results from the structural equation modeling revealed that the reputation, size, and information sharing have significant effects on the total sales, while the reputation and length of relationship influence price premiums. This study extended the online platform research into online handmade platform research by identifying key influencing e-Image factors on within-platform shop's total sales and price premiums based on signaling theory and then performed a statistical investigation. These findings are expected to be a stepping stone for future studies on intelligent online handmade services as well as handmade products themselves. Furthermore, the findings of the study provide online handmade platform operators with practical guidelines on how to implement intelligent online handmade services. They should also help shop managers build their marketing strategies in a more specific and effective manner by suggesting key influencing e-Image factors. The results of this study should contribute to the vitalization of intelligent online handmade services by providing clues on how to maximize within-platform shops' total sales and price premiums.

A Regression-Model-based Method for Combining Interestingness Measures of Association Rule Mining (연관상품 추천을 위한 회귀분석모형 기반 연관 규칙 척도 결합기법)

  • Lee, Dongwon
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.23 no.1
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    • pp.127-141
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    • 2017
  • Advances in Internet technologies and the proliferation of mobile devices enabled consumers to approach a wide range of goods and services, while causing an adverse effect that they have hard time reaching their congenial items even if they devote much time to searching for them. Accordingly, businesses are using the recommender systems to provide tools for consumers to find the desired items more easily. Association Rule Mining (ARM) technology is advantageous to recommender systems in that ARM provides intuitive form of a rule with interestingness measures (support, confidence, and lift) describing the relationship between items. Given an item, its relevant items can be distinguished with the help of the measures that show the strength of relationship between items. Based on the strength, the most pertinent items can be chosen among other items and exposed to a given item's web page. However, the diversity of the measures may confuse which items are more recommendable. Given two rules, for example, one rule's support and confidence may not be concurrently superior to the other rule's. Such discrepancy of the measures in distinguishing one rule's superiority from other rules may cause difficulty in selecting proper items for recommendation. In addition, in an online environment where a web page or mobile screen can provide a limited number of recommendations that attract consumer interest, the prudent selection of items to be included in the list of recommendations is very important. The exposure of items of little interest may lead consumers to ignore the recommendations. Then, such consumers will possibly not pay attention to other forms of marketing activities. Therefore, the measures should be aligned with the probability of consumer's acceptance of recommendations. For this reason, this study proposes a model-based approach to combine those measures into one unified measure that can consistently determine the ranking of recommended items. A regression model was designed to describe how well the measures (independent variables; i.e., support, confidence, and lift) explain consumer's acceptance of recommendations (dependent variables, hit rate of recommended items). The model is intuitive to understand and easy to use in that the equation consists of the commonly used measures for ARM and can be used in the estimation of hit rates. The experiment using transaction data from one of the Korea's largest online shopping malls was conducted to show that the proposed model can improve the hit rates of recommendations. From the top of the list to 13th place, recommended items in the higher rakings from the proposed model show the higher hit rates than those from the competitive model's. The result shows that the proposed model's performance is superior to the competitive model's in online recommendation environment. In a web page, consumers are provided around ten recommendations with which the proposed model outperforms. Moreover, a mobile device cannot expose many items simultaneously due to its limited screen size. Therefore, the result shows that the newly devised recommendation technique is suitable for the mobile recommender systems. While this study has been conducted to cover the cross-selling in online shopping malls that handle merchandise, the proposed method can be expected to be applied in various situations under which association rules apply. For example, this model can be applied to medical diagnostic systems that predict candidate diseases from a patient's symptoms. To increase the efficiency of the model, additional variables will need to be considered for the elaboration of the model in future studies. For example, price can be a good candidate for an explanatory variable because it has a major impact on consumer purchase decisions. If the prices of recommended items are much higher than the items in which a consumer is interested, the consumer may hesitate to accept the recommendations.

A Multimodal Profile Ensemble Approach to Development of Recommender Systems Using Big Data (빅데이터 기반 추천시스템 구현을 위한 다중 프로파일 앙상블 기법)

  • Kim, Minjeong;Cho, Yoonho
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.21 no.4
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    • pp.93-110
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    • 2015
  • The recommender system is a system which recommends products to the customers who are likely to be interested in. Based on automated information filtering technology, various recommender systems have been developed. Collaborative filtering (CF), one of the most successful recommendation algorithms, has been applied in a number of different domains such as recommending Web pages, books, movies, music and products. But, it has been known that CF has a critical shortcoming. CF finds neighbors whose preferences are like those of the target customer and recommends products those customers have most liked. Thus, CF works properly only when there's a sufficient number of ratings on common product from customers. When there's a shortage of customer ratings, CF makes the formation of a neighborhood inaccurate, thereby resulting in poor recommendations. To improve the performance of CF based recommender systems, most of the related studies have been focused on the development of novel algorithms under the assumption of using a single profile, which is created from user's rating information for items, purchase transactions, or Web access logs. With the advent of big data, companies got to collect more data and to use a variety of information with big size. So, many companies recognize it very importantly to utilize big data because it makes companies to improve their competitiveness and to create new value. In particular, on the rise is the issue of utilizing personal big data in the recommender system. It is why personal big data facilitate more accurate identification of the preferences or behaviors of users. The proposed recommendation methodology is as follows: First, multimodal user profiles are created from personal big data in order to grasp the preferences and behavior of users from various viewpoints. We derive five user profiles based on the personal information such as rating, site preference, demographic, Internet usage, and topic in text. Next, the similarity between users is calculated based on the profiles and then neighbors of users are found from the results. One of three ensemble approaches is applied to calculate the similarity. Each ensemble approach uses the similarity of combined profile, the average similarity of each profile, and the weighted average similarity of each profile, respectively. Finally, the products that people among the neighborhood prefer most to are recommended to the target users. For the experiments, we used the demographic data and a very large volume of Web log transaction for 5,000 panel users of a company that is specialized to analyzing ranks of Web sites. R and SAS E-miner was used to implement the proposed recommender system and to conduct the topic analysis using the keyword search, respectively. To evaluate the recommendation performance, we used 60% of data for training and 40% of data for test. The 5-fold cross validation was also conducted to enhance the reliability of our experiments. A widely used combination metric called F1 metric that gives equal weight to both recall and precision was employed for our evaluation. As the results of evaluation, the proposed methodology achieved the significant improvement over the single profile based CF algorithm. In particular, the ensemble approach using weighted average similarity shows the highest performance. That is, the rate of improvement in F1 is 16.9 percent for the ensemble approach using weighted average similarity and 8.1 percent for the ensemble approach using average similarity of each profile. From these results, we conclude that the multimodal profile ensemble approach is a viable solution to the problems encountered when there's a shortage of customer ratings. This study has significance in suggesting what kind of information could we use to create profile in the environment of big data and how could we combine and utilize them effectively. However, our methodology should be further studied to consider for its real-world application. We need to compare the differences in recommendation accuracy by applying the proposed method to different recommendation algorithms and then to identify which combination of them would show the best performance.