• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.177-207
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• 2012

Today's consumers perceive consumption as a representation of themselves. It is not simply an act that fulfills a consumer's physical and practical needs. Even in terms of life quality, consumers increasingly want to achieve an emotional and sensible experience through consumption. Consumers now make decisions based on their need to express their position in relation to other people, pursue emotional satisfaction, and try to improve the quality of life. Culture-art products that meet such internal and external demands of consumers have made significant improvements in both quantity and quality, because of the social interest and policy support. The recognition of personal and social values of culture and arts has brought about interest in and need for culture-art products. Businesses have agilely embraced such change and actively implemented various marketing strategies utilizing culture and arts. For example, businesses began to sponsor artists who produce culture-art products while building facilities for cultural and art performances or exhibitions. Businesses have also provided performances and exhibitions free-of-charge or at affordable prices. As a result, the supply in the market has started to exceed its demand as is often the case in many of other markets. However, such imbalance has occurred not because of over-supply but because of a lack of demand. Given these circumstances, the government and culture and art related organizations, which had mainly concentrated on the supply side, started to recognize the importance of creating personal and social values in culture and arts. As a result, the government and various organizations are now creating various strategies that include policy measures to achieve their new found goal. Unfortunately however, such efforts are not meeting the expectations. Focusing on above-mentioned circumstances and problems, this study aims to find measures to create demand for culture-art products in the internal conditions of those who consume culture-art products. In other words, given that the demand for culture-art products has not increased despite all external conditions to encourage consumption, this study aims to find the reasons in consumers' value judgment on culture-art products. Though there were recent studies on culture-art products that applied consumer behavior on marketing theories, most of them focused on peripheral aspects such as people's motivation for or satisfaction from watching culture-art events. Hence, there is a need to understand what kind of value consumers perceive from culture-art products and how such value cognition leads to consumption in a comprehensive manner. This study acts as follow-up to a separate study entitled "Qualitative Study about Value Cognition and Benefits of Consumer on Culture-Art Products". The current study aims to extend practical implications that enhance the effectiveness of marketing strategies among the producing and policy agencies in the industry. The purpose of this study is to investigate dimensions of value cognition, benefits and attributes of culture-art products, and identify the effects of consumer value cognition on benefits and attributes. The questionnaire was developed based on the conceptual structure of qualitative research and previous researches. It was composed of value cognition, benefits, attributes of culture-art products and demographic variables. This survey was conducted on-line and off-line among a total of 662 persons ranging from their teens to their 50's who were living in Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, various metropolitan cities, and small and medium-sized cities. The data collected was analyzed by factor analysis and path analysis using SPSS WIN 18.0 and AMOS 16.0. This empirical study found that the dimensions of value cognition of culture-art products were categorized into personal goods, aesthetic goods and public property. This shows that the consumers perceive culture-art products as products that are worthy enough to pay the costs not just for personal benefits but also for their social values. Also the formation of value cognition for culture-art products requires special conditions unlike that for physical consumer goods and services, which simply require marketing stimuli. The dimensions of benefits pursued by consuming culture-art products were found to be composed of four types - pursuit of aesthetic benefits, pursuit of actual benefits, pursuit of emotional benefits, and pursuit of conspicuous character. This result implies that people consume culture-art products not just to pursue pleasure from emotional and intelligent satisfaction as well as social relations, but also to seek the needs and benefits embodied at a social level. The dimensions of attributes of culture-art products had seven different factors, - environmental, price, evaluation, people, artwork, composition, and personal relations - which is plentiful. This is because the attributes of culture-art products are very complicated compared to other consumer goods or services. Since culture-art products include not just cultural or artistic works but also all physical, human, environmental, and systemic elements of the products in a comprehensive manner, consumers perceive everything they experience in the process of consuming culture-art products as part of the products. The dimensions of value cognition was found to affect attributes of the products, mostly using pursued benefits as a mediating factors. This result is consistent with the result of qualitative research, and proves that applying the means-end chain theory in the reverse direction is reasonable. The result can be interpreted that consumers' value cognitions for culture-art products turns into actual benefits leading to consumers' decisions. Furthermore, this result reveals that when consumers choose culture-art products, they take into account the attributes of culture-art products depending on the benefits they pursue. These results confirm that despite their conceptual and abstract attributes, culture-art products have values that contribute to actual benefits for individual consumers and society. Hence, value cognition generates benefits to be pursued and this in turn affects the consumers' choices of attributes on products. Based on the conceptual structure of consumers' value cognitions on culture-art products and its dimensions, it is possible to find detailed methods to provide opportunities for education and training to form and reinforce positive value cognition on culture-art products. And through those methods, it will be possible to develop attributes of culture-art products according to the dimensions of pursued benefits, and allow conceptual products become the subject to valuable consumption in real life. These results provide theoretical understanding of consumer behavior in culture marketing and useful information to culture-art producers, companies that use culture and art, and government agencies that use culture-art as a mean to improve the public perception of quality of life. As a follow up on this study, there should be experimental studies that can develop criteria visualizing the demands of consumers who purchase culture-art products and identify their detailed attributes. Studies that compare characteristics of different areas within the culture-art product category and in-depth studies on a specific area or genre will also be needed. In order to develop marketing strategies for culture-art products, studies on the formation and reinforcement of positive value cognition on culture-art products and education for the development of consumer demand as well as on the development and differentiation of attributes of culture-art products depending on types of consumer groups should also follow.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.175-191
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• 2011

With the MICE(Meeting, Incentive travel, Convention, Exhibition) industry coming into the spotlight, there has been a growing interest in the domestic exhibition industry. Accordingly, in Korea, various studies of the industry are being conducted to enhance exhibition performance as in the United States or Europe. Some studies are focusing particularly on analyzing visiting patterns of exhibition visitors using intelligent information technology in consideration of the variations in effects of watching exhibitions according to the exhibitory environment or technique, thereby understanding visitors and, furthermore, drawing the correlations between exhibiting businesses and improving exhibition performance. However, previous studies related to booth recommendation systems only discussed the accuracy of recommendation in the aspect of a system rather than determining changes in visitors' behavior or perception by recommendation. A booth recommendation system enables visitors to visit unplanned exhibition booths by recommending visitors suitable ones based on information about visitors' visits. Meanwhile, some visitors may be satisfied with their unplanned visits, while others may consider the recommending process to be cumbersome or obstructive to their free observation. In the latter case, the exhibition is likely to produce worse results compared to when visitors are allowed to freely observe the exhibition. Thus, in order to apply a booth recommendation system to exhibition halls, the factors affecting the performance of the system should be generally examined, and the effects of the system on visitors' unplanned visiting behavior should be carefully studied. As such, this study aims to determine the factors that affect the performance of a booth recommendation system by reviewing theories and literature and to examine the effects of visitors' perceived performance of the system on their satisfaction of unplanned behavior and intention to reuse the system. Toward this end, the unplanned behavior theory was adopted as the theoretical framework. Unplanned behavior can be defined as "behavior that is done by consumers without any prearranged plan". Thus far, consumers' unplanned behavior has been studied in various fields. The field of marketing, in particular, has focused on unplanned purchasing among various types of unplanned behavior, which has been often confused with impulsive purchasing. Nevertheless, the two are different from each other; while impulsive purchasing means strong, continuous urges to purchase things, unplanned purchasing is behavior with purchasing decisions that are made inside a store, not before going into one. In other words, all impulsive purchases are unplanned, but not all unplanned purchases are impulsive. Then why do consumers engage in unplanned behavior? Regarding this question, many scholars have made many suggestions, but there has been a consensus that it is because consumers have enough flexibility to change their plans in the middle instead of developing plans thoroughly. In other words, if unplanned behavior costs much, it will be difficult for consumers to change their prearranged plans. In the case of the exhibition hall examined in this study, visitors learn the programs of the hall and plan which booth to visit in advance. This is because it is practically impossible for visitors to visit all of the various booths that an exhibition operates due to their limited time. Therefore, if the booth recommendation system proposed in this study recommends visitors booths that they may like, they can change their plans and visit the recommended booths. Such visiting behavior can be regarded similarly to consumers' visit to a store or tourists' unplanned behavior in a tourist spot and can be understand in the same context as the recent increase in tourism consumers' unplanned behavior influenced by information devices. Thus, the following research model was established. This research model uses visitors' perceived performance of a booth recommendation system as the parameter, and the factors affecting the performance include trust in the system, exhibition visitors' knowledge levels, expected personalization of the system, and the system's threat to freedom. In addition, the causal relation between visitors' satisfaction of their perceived performance of the system and unplanned behavior and their intention to reuse the system was determined. While doing so, trust in the booth recommendation system consisted of 2nd order factors such as competence, benevolence, and integrity, while the other factors consisted of 1st order factors. In order to verify this model, a booth recommendation system was developed to be tested in 2011 DMC Culture Open, and 101 visitors were empirically studied and analyzed. The results are as follows. First, visitors' trust was the most important factor in the booth recommendation system, and the visitors who used the system perceived its performance as a success based on their trust. Second, visitors' knowledge levels also had significant effects on the performance of the system, which indicates that the performance of a recommendation system requires an advance understanding. In other words, visitors with higher levels of understanding of the exhibition hall learned better the usefulness of the booth recommendation system. Third, expected personalization did not have significant effects, which is a different result from previous studies' results. This is presumably because the booth recommendation system used in this study did not provide enough personalized services. Fourth, the recommendation information provided by the booth recommendation system was not considered to threaten or restrict one's freedom, which means it is valuable in terms of usefulness. Lastly, high performance of the booth recommendation system led to visitors' high satisfaction levels of unplanned behavior and intention to reuse the system. To sum up, in order to analyze the effects of a booth recommendation system on visitors' unplanned visits to a booth, empirical data were examined based on the unplanned behavior theory and, accordingly, useful suggestions for the establishment and design of future booth recommendation systems were made. In the future, further examination should be conducted through elaborate survey questions and survey objects.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.211-220
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to examine the job performance of dental coordinators and their perception of their job to lay the groundwork for utilizing dental personnels more efficiently. The subjects in this study were dental coordinators who worked at selected dental hospitals and clinics in Seoul, Gyeonggi province and Incheon. A survey was conducted to gather data from May 1 to August 8, 2005 and answer sheets from 108 respondents were analyzed. The findings of the study were as follows: 1. As for the length of service, 43.5 percent of the dental coordinators investigated had worked at dental institutes for five years or more, which was followed by less than two years(19.5%) and three years to less than five years(19.4%). Concerning the length of service as dental coordinators, 39.8 percent had served for less than two years, and 19.4 percent had worked for two years to less than three years and for five years or more respectively. Regarding the name of position, 38 percent were called team leaders, and 30.6 percent were called coordinators. As to duties, the largest group of them that stood at 30.6 percent were in charge of receiving, and in regard to department, the largest group, 57.4 percent, belonged to the treatment backup department. 2. Concerning education, the greatest number of them, 45.4 percent, had received education at private institutes, and 73.1 percent found it necessary for dental coordinators to take an authorized qualification test. 43.5 percent, the largest group, looked upon the central government as the best organization to authorize their qualifications and 70.8 percent believed that what they learned enabled them to perform their job successfully. As to the necessity of follow-up education as a means to improve job performance, 96.3 percent consented to it. As for the reason, 63.9 percent considered that necessary to enhance their own ability and 22.2 percent were in want of systematic education. Regarding educational expenses, 29.6 percent were subsidized by the dental institutes where they had worked and 25.9 percent had totally been responsible for that. Regarding a required course, medical service and marketing was most widely pointed out(66.7%), followed by theory and practice(65.7%) and introduction to dentistry(57.4%). As to what sort of education they wanted to receive more, dental service and marketing was selected the most, followed by practical health insurance(35.2%). 3. In regard to what type of job they performed as dental coordinators, 88.9 percent were in charge of appointment in the field of customer service, and 87.9 percent paid attention to having good manners as service providers in the area of self-management. In the field of hospital affairs, 81.3 percent were in charge of receiving. 4. As to their awareness of dental coordinator job, the largest group took pride in the job they performed ($3.99{\pm}0.76$), and the second largest group believed that dental coordinators made a great contribution to hospital management ($3.92{\pm}0.70$). The third largest group gave a great weight to their own job ($3.91{\pm}0.84$) in light of overall dental duties and the fourth largest group found themselves to get along with other employees regardless of position ($3.86{\pm}0.74$). The fifth largest group believed their job was of great use for promoting the oral health of patients ($3.76{\pm}0.75$), and the sixth largest group thought the future of dental coordinators was promising($3.74{\pm}0.86$). 5. In regard to their perception by age group, those who were older had a better opinion on every item of their job in general. Their age made a statistically significant difference to their view of the weight of dental coordinator job(P < 0.001) in light of overall dental duties, of being approved and trusted by managers(P < 0.01), of social awareness of dental coordinator, and of being understood and approved by other employees and dentists. Their pride in current job and their satisfaction with the name of their position were statistically significantly different according to their age as well. Besides, their age made a statistically significant difference to their opinion about whether or not there was an age limit to their occupation and about their contribution to hospital management (P < 0.05). 6. As for their perception by type of job, the dental hygienists were generally most satisfied with their job, followed by nursing aids and others. There was a statistically significant gap among their opinions about whether to make a job-related decision on their own(P < 0.001). the weight of their job in terms of overall dental duties, whether their job improved their ability, whether their job made a great contribution to enhancing the oral health of patients, whether their job was understood and approved by other employees(P < 0.01), social awareness of their job, whether they conflicted with other employees during job performance, and whether dental hospitals or clinics offered a self-development opportunity for them to take their ability to another level(P < 0.05). And their satisfaction with current pay was statistically significantly different as well.