• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.97-114
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• 1996

INSTRODUCTION Service quality is, unlike goods quality, an abstract and elusive constuct. Service quality and its requirements are not easily understood by consumers, and also present some critical research problems. However, quality is very important to marketers and consumers in that it has many strategic benefits in contributing to profitability of marketing activities and consumers' problem-solving activities. Moreover, despite the phenomenal growth of medical service sector, few researchers have attempted to define and model medical service quality. Especially, little research has focused on the evaluation of medical service quality and patient satisfaction from the perspectives of both the provider and the patient. As competition intensifies and patients are demanding higher quality of medical service, medical service quality and patient satisfaction has emerged as a critical research topic. The major purpose of this article is to explore the concept of medical service quality and its evaluation from both nurse and patient perspectives. This article attempts to achieve its purpose by (1)classfying critical service attibutes into threecategories(satisfiers, hygiene factors, and performance factors). (2)measuring the relative importance of need criteria, (3)evaluating SERVPERF model and SERVQUAL model in medical service sector, and (4)identifying the relationship between perceived quality and overall patient satisfaction. METHOD Data were gathered from a sample of 217 patients and 179 nurses in Seoul-area general hospitals. From the review of previous literature, 50 survey items representing various facets of the medical service quality were developed to form a questionnaire. A five-point scale ranging from "Strongly Agree"(5) to "Strongly Disagree"(1) accompanied each statement(expectation statements, perception statements, and importance statements). To measure overall satisfaction, a seven-point scale was used, ranging from "Very Satisfied"(7) to "Very Dissatisfied"(1) with no verbal labels for scale points 2 through 6 RESULTS In explaining the relationship between perceived performance and overall satisfaction, only 31 variables out of original 50 survey items were proven to be statistically significant. Hence, a penalty-reward analysis was performed on theses 31 critical attributes to find out 17 satisfiers, 8 hygiene factors, and 4 performance factors in patient perspective. The role(category) of each service quality attribute in relation to patient satisfaction was com pared across two groups, that is, patients and nurses. They were little overlapped, suggesting that two groups had different sets of 'perceived quality' attributes. Principal components factor analyses of the patients' and nurses' responses were performed to identify the underlying dimensions for the set of performance(experience) statements. 28 variables were analyzed by using a varimax rotation after deleting three obscure variables. The number of factors to be extracted was determined by evaluating the eigenvalue scores. Six factors wereextracted, accounting for 57.1% of the total variance. Reliability analysis was performed to refine the factors further. Using coefficient alpha, scores of .84 to .65 were obtained. Individual-item analysis indicated that all statements in each of the factors should remain. On 26 attributes of 31 critical service quality attributes, there were gaps between actual patient's importance of need criteria and nurse perceptions of them. Those critical attributes could be classified into four categories based on the relative importance of need criteria and perceived performance from the perspective of patient. This analysis is useful in developing strategic plans for performance improvement. (1) top priorities(high importance and low performance) (in this study)- more health-related information -accuracy in billing - quality of food - appointments at my convenience - information about tests and treatments - prompt service of business office -adequacy of accommodations(elevators, etc) (2) current strengths(high importance and high performance) (3)unnecessary strengths(low importance and high performance) (4) low priorities(low importance and low performance) While 26 service quality attributes of SERPERF model were significantly related to patient satisfation, only 13 attributes of SERVQUAL model were significantly related. This result suggested that only experience-based norms(SERVPERF model) were more appropriate than expectations to serve as a benchmark against which service experiences were compared(SERVQUAL model). However, it must be noted that the degree of association to overall satisfaction was not consistent. There were some gaps between nurse percetions and patient perception of medical service performance. From the patient's viewpoint, "personal likability", "technical skill/trust", and "cares about me" were most significant positioning factors that contributed patient satisfaction. DISCUSSION This study shows that there are inconsistencies between nurse perceptions and patient perceptions of medical service attributes. Also, for service quality improvement, it is most important for nurses to understand what satisfiers, hygiene factors, and performance factors are through two-way communications. Patient satisfaction should be measured, and problems identified should be resolved for survival in intense competitive market conditions. Hence, patient satisfaction monitoring is now becoming a standard marketing tool for healthcare providers and its role is expected to increase.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.8
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• pp.233-267
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• 2001

The management environment in Korea today is undergoing rapid changes; in particular, domestic corporations and businesses are confronting formidable adversity with IMF crisis and WTO. Though cost cutback, higher quality, rapid production, and diversification of products were accepted as important requirements for competitiveness in the past, they have been replaced by brand power. Consumption patterns have changed their focus from function to image orientation. This is why managers in corporations have invested enormous amounts of resources into producing powerful brands, which can attract consumers' attention greatly enough to improve the image of their products. Brands are regarded as a vital vehicle for marketing strategies and thus as a legal asset. Brands with remarkable and favorable image can secure a loyal consumer groups stable revenues. M & A, currently active between corporations, makes brand equity all the more important. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of internal marketing and increased brand diversification on brand equity by combining them as influential factors with marketing mix factor. For this purpose, literature review was make on previous fragmented studies of influential factors on brand equity build-up. Based on the findings of this study, some operational implications were suggested for marketing managers. The findings and implications of the present study are as follows; First, efficient communication among organization members was found to have a significant effect on product quality. Second, job satisfaction and efficient communication among members was shown to significantly influence price policies. Thirdly, efficient communication among organization workers proved to have a significant effect on distribution strategies. Forth, efficient communication among members was demonstrated to significantly influence advertisement and other public-relations activities. Fifth, opacity of market environment appeared to have a significant effect on product quality, prior market entrance as perceived by organization members turned to be of negative influence on product quality. Sixth, opacity of market environment was found to have a significant effect on price policies. Seventh, opacity of market environment was shown to be of significant effect on distribution strategies. Eighth, grater opacity of market environment proved to improve advertisement and other public-relations activities. Ninth, price policies, distribution strategies, advertisement and public-relations activities were found to have a significant effect on brand equity value. To sum up these findings, in order for corporations and businesses to cope with consumers' needs that are increasingly segmented, internal marketing strategies and brand diversification should be implemented so as to generate greater synergy effect. It is also important to stress that differentiated, higher competitiveness should be secured for Korean corporations and businesses to survive in the drastically changing, globalized market environment. In this regard, continuous and long-term management strategies for brand equity build-up should be ensured and is essential in the present unlimited competition. The last but not least important point to notice is that to increase brand equity value, intensive investment and constant emphasis should be made on internal marketing management on intra-organizational members before strengthening external marketing.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.48 no.8
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• pp.813-819
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• 2005

Purpose : Medicolegal problems start when the patient asserts the mistake of doctor and doctor does not accept it. The purpose of this study is to assess the actual condition of medicolegal problems and to provide solutions of medicolegal problems in the pediatric field. Methods : There is not official statistical data about medicolegal problems in our country. We gathered data of legal insurance program of Korean Medical Association(KMA) and court cases and other fragmentary data. Results : Between 1981 and 1995, of total 2,338 cases reported to legal problem insurance program of KMA, most common ones were 748 cases of obstetrics and gynecology. Pediatric case was ranked at the 5th, 74 cases(3.1%). According to analysis of 41 medicolegal cases' after 1990, maltreatment of patient had the highest incidence of 14 cases, injection and medication were related to 12 cases, misdiagnosis was 9 cases, patient management were related to 4 cases, and others were 2 cases. The trial result of the medicolegal cases was that 31 cases were compensated, and 8 cases were defeated, and 2 cases were still in the process. Conclusion : The aspect of medical legal problem has the tendency of radicalism and systematization. This brings an economic destitution in the patient and gives damage to a doctor. In order to reduce medicolegal problem, doctor should offer a duty of explanation and efforts to his best to satisfy patient and endeavor to make an intimate doctor-patient relationship.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.192-207
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• 2006

Today, the SSL protocol has been used as core part in various computing environments or security systems. But, the SSL protocol has several problems, because of the rigidity on operating. First, SSL protocol brings considerable burden to the CPU utilization so that performance of the security service in encryption transaction is lowered because it encrypts all data which is transferred between a server and a client. Second, SSL protocol can be vulnerable for cryptanalysis due to the key in fixed algorithm being used. Third, it is difficult to add and use another new cryptography algorithms. Finally. it is difficult for developers to learn use cryptography API(Application Program Interface) for the SSL protocol. Hence, we need to cover these problems, and, at the same time, we need the secure and comfortable method to operate the SSL protocol and to handle the efficient data. In this paper, we propose the SSL component which is designed and implemented using CBD(Component Based Development) concept to satisfy these requirements. The SSL component provides not only data encryption services like the SSL protocol but also convenient APIs for the developer unfamiliar with security. Further, the SSL component can improve the productivity and give reduce development cost. Because the SSL component can be reused. Also, in case of that new algorithms are added or algorithms are changed, it Is compatible and easy to interlock. SSL Component works the SSL protocol service in application layer. First of all, we take out the requirements, and then, we design and implement the SSL Component, confidentiality and integrity component, which support the SSL component, dependently. These all mentioned components are implemented by EJB, it can provide the efficient data handling when data is encrypted/decrypted by choosing the data. Also, it improves the usability by choosing data and mechanism as user intend. In conclusion, as we test and evaluate these component, SSL component is more usable and efficient than existing SSL protocol, because the increase rate of processing time for SSL component is lower that SSL protocol's.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.129-143
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• 2012

Recently, the rapid progress of a number of standardized web technologies and the proliferation of web users in the world bring an explosive increase of producing and consuming information documents on the web. In addition, most companies have produced, shared, and managed a huge number of information documents that are needed to perform their businesses. They also have discretionally raked, stored and managed a number of web documents published on the web for their business. Along with this increase of information documents that should be managed in the companies, the need of a solution to locate information documents more accurately among a huge number of information sources have increased. In order to satisfy the need of accurate search, the market size of search engine solution market is becoming increasingly expended. The most important functionality among much functionality provided by search engine is to locate accurate information documents from a huge information sources. The major metric to evaluate the accuracy of search engine is relevance that consists of two measures, precision and recall. Precision is thought of as a measure of exactness, that is, what percentage of information considered as true answer are actually such, whereas recall is a measure of completeness, that is, what percentage of true answer are retrieved as such. These two measures can be used differently according to the applied domain. If we need to exhaustively search information such as patent documents and research papers, it is better to increase the recall. On the other hand, when the amount of information is small scale, it is better to increase precision. Most of existing web search engines typically uses a keyword search method that returns web documents including keywords which correspond to search words entered by a user. This method has a virtue of locating all web documents quickly, even though many search words are inputted. However, this method has a fundamental imitation of not considering search intention of a user, thereby retrieving irrelevant results as well as relevant ones. Thus, it takes additional time and effort to set relevant ones out from all results returned by a search engine. That is, keyword search method can increase recall, while it is difficult to locate web documents which a user actually want to find because it does not provide a means of understanding the intention of a user and reflecting it to a progress of searching information. Thus, this research suggests a new method of combining ontology-based search solution with core search functionalities provided by existing search engine solutions. The method enables a search engine to provide optimal search results by inferenceing the search intention of a user. To that end, we build an ontology which contains concepts and relationships among them in a specific domain. The ontology is used to inference synonyms of a set of search keywords inputted by a user, thereby making the search intention of the user reflected into the progress of searching information more actively compared to existing search engines. Based on the proposed method we implement a prototype search system and test the system in the patent domain where we experiment on searching relevant documents associated with a patent. The experiment shows that our system increases the both recall and precision in accuracy and augments the search productivity by using improved user interface that enables a user to interact with our search system effectively. In the future research, we will study a means of validating the better performance of our prototype system by comparing other search engine solution and will extend the applied domain into other domains for searching information such as portal.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.305-316
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• 2011

Recommender system is the system which, by using automated information filtering technology, recommends products or services to the customers who are likely to be interested in. Those systems are widely used in many different Web retailers such as Amazon.com, Netfix.com, and CDNow.com. Various recommender systems have been developed. Among them, Collaborative Filtering (CF) has been known as the most successful and commonly used approach. CF identifies customers whose tastes are similar to those of a given customer, and recommends items those customers have liked in the past. Numerous CF algorithms have been developed to increase the performance of recommender systems. However, the relative performances of CF algorithms are known to be domain and data dependent. It is very time-consuming and expensive to implement and launce a CF recommender system, and also the system unsuited for the given domain provides customers with poor quality recommendations that make them easily annoyed. Therefore, predicting in advance whether the performance of CF recommender system is acceptable or not is practically important and needed. In this study, we propose a decision making guideline which helps decide whether CF is adoptable for a given application with certain transaction data characteristics. Several previous studies reported that sparsity, gray sheep, cold-start, coverage, and serendipity could affect the performance of CF, but the theoretical and empirical justification of such factors is lacking. Recently there are many studies paying attention to Social Network Analysis (SNA) as a method to analyze social relationships among people. SNA is a method to measure and visualize the linkage structure and status focusing on interaction among objects within communication group. CF analyzes the similarity among previous ratings or purchases of each customer, finds the relationships among the customers who have similarities, and then uses the relationships for recommendations. Thus CF can be modeled as a social network in which customers are nodes and purchase relationships between customers are links. Under the assumption that SNA could facilitate an exploration of the topological properties of the network structure that are implicit in transaction data for CF recommendations, we focus on density, clustering coefficient, and centralization which are ones of the most commonly used measures to capture topological properties of the social network structure. While network density, expressed as a proportion of the maximum possible number of links, captures the density of the whole network, the clustering coefficient captures the degree to which the overall network contains localized pockets of dense connectivity. Centralization reflects the extent to which connections are concentrated in a small number of nodes rather than distributed equally among all nodes. We explore how these SNA measures affect the performance of CF performance and how they interact to each other. Our experiments used sales transaction data from H department store, one of the well?known department stores in Korea. Total 396 data set were sampled to construct various types of social networks. The dependant variable measuring process consists of three steps; analysis of customer similarities, construction of a social network, and analysis of social network patterns. We used UCINET 6.0 for SNA. The experiments conducted the 3-way ANOVA which employs three SNA measures as dependant variables, and the recommendation accuracy measured by F1-measure as an independent variable. The experiments report that 1) each of three SNA measures affects the recommendation accuracy, 2) the density's effect to the performance overrides those of clustering coefficient and centralization (i.e., CF adoption is not a good decision if the density is low), and 3) however though the density is low, the performance of CF is comparatively good when the clustering coefficient is low. We expect that these experiment results help firms decide whether CF recommender system is adoptable for their business domain with certain transaction data characteristics.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.37-57
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• 2018

With the spread of smart phones, interest in mobile media is on the increase as useful media recently. Mobile media is assessed as having differentiated advantages from existing media in that not only can they provide consumers with desired information anytime and anywhere but also real-time interaction is possible in them. So far, studies on mobile advertising were mostly researches analyzing satisfaction with, and acceptance of, mobile advertising based on survey, researches focusing on the factors affecting acceptance of mobile advertising messages and researches verifying the effect of mobile advertising on brand recall, advertising attitude and brand attitude through experiments. Most of the domestic mobile advertising studies related to advertisement effect and advertisement attitude have been conducted through experiments and surveys. The advertising effectiveness measure of the mobile ad used the attitude of the advertisement, purchase intention, etc. To date, there have been few studies on the effects of mobile advertising on actual advertising data to prove the characteristics of the advertising platform and to prove the relationship between the factors influencing the advertising effect and the factors. In order to explore advertising effect of mobile advertising platform currently commercialized, this study defined advertising characteristics and media characteristics from the perspective of advertiser, advertising platform and publisher and analyzed the influence of each characteristic on advertising effect. As the advertisement characteristics, we classified advertisement format classified by bar type and floating type, and advertisement material classified by image and text. We defined advertisement characteristics of advertisement platform as Hedonic and Utilitarian media characteristics. As a dependent variable, we use CTR, which is the ratio of response (click) to ad exposure. The theoretical background and the analysis of the mobile advertising business, the hypothesis that the advertisement effect is different according to the advertisement specification, the advertisement material, In the ad standard, bar ads are classified as static framing, Floating ads can be categorized as dynamic framing, and the hypothetical definition of floating advertisements, which are high-profile dynamic framing ads, is highly responsive. In advertising, images with high salience are defined to have higher ad response than text. In the media characteristics classified as practical / hedonic type, it is defined that the hedonic type media has a more relaxed tendency than the practical media, and there is a high possibility of receiving various information because there is no clear target. In addition, image material and hedonic media are defined to be highly effective in the interaction between advertisement specification and advertisement material, advertisement specifications and media characteristics, and advertisement material and media characteristics. As the result of regression analysis on each characteristic, material standard, which is a characteristic of mobile advertisement, and media characteristics separated into 'Hedonic' and 'Utilitarian' had significant influence on advertisement effect and mutual interaction effect was also confirmed. In the mobile advertising standard, the advertising effect of the floating advertisement is higher than that of the bar advertisement, Floating ads were more effective than text ads for image ads. In addition, it was confirmed that the advertising effect is higher in the practical media than the hedonic media. The research was carried out with the big data collected from the mobile advertising platform, and it was possible to grasp the advertising effect of the measure index standard which is used in the practical work which could not be grasped in the previous research. In other words, the study was conducted using the CTR, which is a measure of the effectiveness of the advertisement used in the online advertisement and the mobile advertisement, which are not dependent on the attitude of the ad, the attitude of the brand, and the purchase intention. This study suggests that CTR is used as a dependent variable of advertising effect based on actual data of mobile ad platform accumulated over a long period of time. The results of this study is expected to contribute to establishment of optimum advertisement strategy such as creation of advertising materials and planning of media which suit advertised products at the time of mobile advertisement.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.29-37
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• 2016

This study aims to improve the satisfaction level of the patient who undergoes CT contrast examination by developing and applying pretreatment process system, which not only can reduce the side effects caused by the test but also can help carry out the test smoothly. The subjects were 214 patients who booked CT contrast examination from January 2014 to February 2014 but could not carry out their test on schedule. We analyzed the reasons for the delay and conducted follow-up survey on them. We analyzed the usefulness of pretreatment process system by contemplating and developing pretreatment process system and applying it to the patients for whom follow-up survey was conducted from January 2015 to February 2015. The number of outpatients who came to the hospital form January to February 2014 was 2,846 and the number of patients who could not undergo the test was 214, accounting for 7.52% of the total. The specific reason for the delay includes 214 cases of unknown creatinine 98 with 120 minutes of average delay time, 40 cases of creatinine over 1.3(19%) with 30minutes of average delay time, 34 cases of past contrast media side effect 6% with 40 minutes of average delay time and 25 cases of lack of pretreatment such as fasting, etc. 11% with 120minutes of average delay time. The number of CT scan has been increasing ever since the development of CT and the frequency of using the contrast media is expected to increase. If we can employ pretreatment process system in order to effectively control the side effect of contrast media and help the CT contrast examination to be smoothly conducted on schedule, I'm sure we could improve the quality of our medical service and increase our patients' satisfaction who come to our CT scan room.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.10
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• pp.163-169
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to present the basic data needed to improve the arts, music, and physical education provided by local child care centers based on an investigation of the current status of and satisfaction with the education. The subjects of this study were 17 local child care centers in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, and the situation of the arts, music, and physical education programs operated from 2014 to 2016 were examined. In addition, 419 children who received the education were surveyed to evaluate their level of satisfaction. The results of this study are as follows. As regards the status of the arts education from 2014 to 2016, it was observed that three of the 17 local child care centers did not have any arts, music or physical education at all, while six of them continuously implemented all three of these programs during this period of time. Two and six of the 17 institutes had arts, music, and physical education programs for two years and one year, respectively. All of the teachers who ran the arts and music education programs of the 17 institutes were arts and music majors who were certified teachers of the liberal arts. However, the physical education programs were run as volunteer activities by college students majoring in physical education. The survey on the level of satisfaction of the children who participated in the arts, music, and physical education programs showed that they were helpful for the overall life experience of the children and that they were more helpful for the boys than for the girls. The level of satisfaction with the education was high for most of the students who participated in the programs, however the boys were more satisfied than the girls. When asked whether they would participate in the arts, music, and physical education programs again, most of the respondents answered that they would do so. The boys were more likely to participate again than the girls. Based on this study, in order to enhance the creativity and personality education of the children using the local child care centers, higher quality education is needed. Arts and music education can be used to help children to learn to communicate smoothly with their friends. In addition, it seems to be necessary to enhance the education by setting goals that are suitable for its purpose, in order to provide creative arts and music education that contributes to the physical health and emotional stability of the children.

• The Korean Nurse
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.59-76
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• 1997

The purposes of this study were to identify the contents and satisfaction level of the patients received home care service, and to compare the differences of the contents by the characteristics of the patients. Seventy eight patients received home care service from 1st Jan. to 30th Sept., 1996 were data-collected to analyze the contents and outcomes of home care service. Sixty-nine patients currently receiving home care service were participated to evaluate the satisfaction level of home care service. The data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation, $x^2$ test, and ANOVA by SPSS $PC^+$ program. The findings of this study were as follow : 1. The contents & outcomes of home care service 1) The mean age of the subjects was 64.4 years: 58% of them were female. Those who living in Seoul were 83% and the rest of the subjects was living in Kyung-Gi. 2) The subjects who had one diagnosis were 41%. Over 60% of them had the disease of neurologic & sensory system. 3) The mean number of visit was 6. Only one visit was 22%. The mean time of care was 79 minutes. Duration of visit from 31 minutes to 60 minutes were 47 %. The subjects who terminated the visit because of death were 67.3%. 62% of the persons who referred them to the home care service were nurses. 4) The pain after the service was more relieved than before. The amounts of intake, the degree of bed sore, edema & fracture after the service were more improved than before. Health status after the service was improved in general. 5) There were significant differences between initial and last conscious level in tracheostomy care & oxygen inhalation care. There was significant difference between initial and last degree of activity in blood sugar check. 6) There were significant differences on the number of visit in assessment of the status, evaluation & observation, vital sign check, skin care, injection, medication, bed sore care, colostomy care, relaxation therapy for pain relief, patient education, family care, exercise therapy, position change, supply of disinfected equipments and infection control. There were significant differences on visiting time in nasogastric tube care, drainage tube care and oxygen inhalation care. 2. The satisfaction level of home care service 1) 50% were male. Over 60 years of the subjects was 61 %. Those who living in Seoul were 82%. 2) The subjects who had one or two diagnosis were 32% respectively. 55% of the persons who referred them to the home care service were nurses. 3) Total level of satisfaction of home care service was very high. 4) The older the age, the higher the satisfaction level. The larger the number of visit, the higher the satisfaction level. 5) The subjects who were in cloudy state were higher level of satisfaction than in alert or coma state. The subjects whose activity were normal or who needed assistance were higher level of satisfaction than bedridden or immobilized subjects. These findings suggested that the patients had substantial need for posthospital care. They tended to be elderly and to have experienced the wide range of health problems associated with aging, chronicity, including limitations in activities, and other serious health problems. So, the nationwide home care systems beyond the limit of demonstration program by local association and the development of the effective financial system of home based health care are necessary for the clients who are in need of home care.