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Clickstream Big Data Mining for Demographics based Digital Marketing (인구통계특성 기반 디지털 마케팅을 위한 클릭스트림 빅데이터 마이닝)

  • Park, Jiae;Cho, Yoonho
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.22 no.3
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    • pp.143-163
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    • 2016
  • The demographics of Internet users are the most basic and important sources for target marketing or personalized advertisements on the digital marketing channels which include email, mobile, and social media. However, it gradually has become difficult to collect the demographics of Internet users because their activities are anonymous in many cases. Although the marketing department is able to get the demographics using online or offline surveys, these approaches are very expensive, long processes, and likely to include false statements. Clickstream data is the recording an Internet user leaves behind while visiting websites. As the user clicks anywhere in the webpage, the activity is logged in semi-structured website log files. Such data allows us to see what pages users visited, how long they stayed there, how often they visited, when they usually visited, which site they prefer, what keywords they used to find the site, whether they purchased any, and so forth. For such a reason, some researchers tried to guess the demographics of Internet users by using their clickstream data. They derived various independent variables likely to be correlated to the demographics. The variables include search keyword, frequency and intensity for time, day and month, variety of websites visited, text information for web pages visited, etc. The demographic attributes to predict are also diverse according to the paper, and cover gender, age, job, location, income, education, marital status, presence of children. A variety of data mining methods, such as LSA, SVM, decision tree, neural network, logistic regression, and k-nearest neighbors, were used for prediction model building. However, this research has not yet identified which data mining method is appropriate to predict each demographic variable. Moreover, it is required to review independent variables studied so far and combine them as needed, and evaluate them for building the best prediction model. The objective of this study is to choose clickstream attributes mostly likely to be correlated to the demographics from the results of previous research, and then to identify which data mining method is fitting to predict each demographic attribute. Among the demographic attributes, this paper focus on predicting gender, age, marital status, residence, and job. And from the results of previous research, 64 clickstream attributes are applied to predict the demographic attributes. The overall process of predictive model building is compose of 4 steps. In the first step, we create user profiles which include 64 clickstream attributes and 5 demographic attributes. The second step performs the dimension reduction of clickstream variables to solve the curse of dimensionality and overfitting problem. We utilize three approaches which are based on decision tree, PCA, and cluster analysis. We build alternative predictive models for each demographic variable in the third step. SVM, neural network, and logistic regression are used for modeling. The last step evaluates the alternative models in view of model accuracy and selects the best model. For the experiments, we used clickstream data which represents 5 demographics and 16,962,705 online activities for 5,000 Internet users. IBM SPSS Modeler 17.0 was used for our prediction process, and the 5-fold cross validation was conducted to enhance the reliability of our experiments. As the experimental results, we can verify that there are a specific data mining method well-suited for each demographic variable. For example, age prediction is best performed when using the decision tree based dimension reduction and neural network whereas the prediction of gender and marital status is the most accurate by applying SVM without dimension reduction. We conclude that the online behaviors of the Internet users, captured from the clickstream data analysis, could be well used to predict their demographics, thereby being utilized to the digital marketing.

Characteristics and Sensory Optimization of Taro (Colocasia esculenta) under Different Aging Conditions for Food Application of Black Taro (흑토란의 식품재료화를 위한 숙성 조건에 따른 토란의 특성 및 관능 최적화)

  • Jeon, Yu-Ho;Lee, Ji-Won;Son, Yang-Ju;Hwang, In-Kyeong
    • Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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    • v.48 no.2
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    • pp.133-141
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    • 2016
  • The physicochemical properties, antioxidant capacities, and sensory optimization of taro (Colocasia esculenta) under different aging conditions were investigated to develop black taro. Black taro was processed in three steps (steaming: $95{\pm}3^{\circ}C$ for 1 h; aging: 85, 90, $95^{\circ}C$ for 20, 40, and 60 h; drying: $60^{\circ}C$ for 24 h) and ground into a powder for all experiments. Black taro showed an increased crude fiber content and browning index compared to raw taro. Calcium oxalate contents, reducing sugar contents, moisture contents, and lightness values were decreased during the processing of taro. Improvements in total polyphenol content and antioxidant activity (DPPH, ABTS, FRAP) were observed in the black taro samples aged at higher temperature. Response surface methodology was used for sensory optimization, and the optimum aging conditions with the highest acceptance values were found to be $88.73^{\circ}C$ for 39.50 h for taste, and $88.82^{\circ}C$ for 42.60 h for overall acceptance.

A Study on Improvements on Legal Structure on Security of National Research and Development Projects (과학기술 및 학술 연구보고서 서비스 제공을 위한 국가연구개발사업 관련 법령 입법론 -저작권법상 공공저작물의 자유이용 제도와 연계를 중심으로-)

  • Kang, Sun Joon;Won, Yoo Hyung;Choi, San;Kim, Jun Huck;Kim, Seul Ki
    • Proceedings of the Korea Technology Innovation Society Conference
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    • 2015.05a
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    • pp.545-570
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    • 2015
  • Korea is among the ten countries with the largest R&D budget and the highest R&D investment-to-GDP ratio, yet the subject of security and protection of R&D results remains relatively unexplored in the country. Countries have implemented in their legal systems measures to properly protect cutting-edge industrial technologies that would adversely affect national security and economy if leaked to other countries. While Korea has a generally stable legal framework as provided in the Regulation on the National R&D Program Management (the "Regulation") and the Act on Industrial Technology Protection, many difficulties follow in practice when determining details on security management and obligations and setting standards in carrying out national R&D projects. This paper proposes to modify and improve security level classification standards in the Regulation. The Regulation provides a dual security level decision-making system for R&D projects: the security level can be determined either by researcher or by the central agency in charge of the project. Unification of such a dual system can avoid unnecessary confusions. To prevent a leakage, it is crucial that research projects be carried out in compliance with their assigned security levels and standards and results be effectively managed. The paper examines from a practitioner's perspective relevant legal provisions on leakage of confidential R&D projects, infringement, injunction, punishment, attempt and conspiracy, dual liability, duty of report to the National Intelligence Service (the "NIS") of security management process and other security issues arising from national R&D projects, and manual drafting in case of a breach. The paper recommends to train security and technological experts such as industrial security experts to properly amend laws on security level classification standards and relevant technological contents. A quarterly policy development committee must also be set up by the NIS in cooperation with relevant organizations. The committee shall provide a project management manual that provides step-by-step guidance for organizations that carry out national R&D projects as a preventive measure against possible leakage. In the short term, the NIS National Industrial Security Center's duties should be expanded to incorporate national R&D projects' security. In the long term, a security task force must be set up to protect, support and manage the projects whose responsibilities should include research, policy development, PR and training of security-related issues. Through these means, a social consensus must be reached on the need for protecting national R&D projects. The most efficient way to implement these measures is to facilitate security training programs and meetings that provide opportunities for communication among industrial security experts and researchers. Furthermore, the Regulation's security provisions must be examined and improved.

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A Study on Web-based Technology Valuation System (웹기반 지능형 기술가치평가 시스템에 관한 연구)

  • Sung, Tae-Eung;Jun, Seung-Pyo;Kim, Sang-Gook;Park, Hyun-Woo
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.23 no.1
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    • pp.23-46
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    • 2017
  • Although there have been cases of evaluating the value of specific companies or projects which have centralized on developed countries in North America and Europe from the early 2000s, the system and methodology for estimating the economic value of individual technologies or patents has been activated on and on. Of course, there exist several online systems that qualitatively evaluate the technology's grade or the patent rating of the technology to be evaluated, as in 'KTRS' of the KIBO and 'SMART 3.1' of the Korea Invention Promotion Association. However, a web-based technology valuation system, referred to as 'STAR-Value system' that calculates the quantitative values of the subject technology for various purposes such as business feasibility analysis, investment attraction, tax/litigation, etc., has been officially opened and recently spreading. In this study, we introduce the type of methodology and evaluation model, reference information supporting these theories, and how database associated are utilized, focusing various modules and frameworks embedded in STAR-Value system. In particular, there are six valuation methods, including the discounted cash flow method (DCF), which is a representative one based on the income approach that anticipates future economic income to be valued at present, and the relief-from-royalty method, which calculates the present value of royalties' where we consider the contribution of the subject technology towards the business value created as the royalty rate. We look at how models and related support information (technology life, corporate (business) financial information, discount rate, industrial technology factors, etc.) can be used and linked in a intelligent manner. Based on the classification of information such as International Patent Classification (IPC) or Korea Standard Industry Classification (KSIC) for technology to be evaluated, the STAR-Value system automatically returns meta data such as technology cycle time (TCT), sales growth rate and profitability data of similar company or industry sector, weighted average cost of capital (WACC), indices of industrial technology factors, etc., and apply adjustment factors to them, so that the result of technology value calculation has high reliability and objectivity. Furthermore, if the information on the potential market size of the target technology and the market share of the commercialization subject refers to data-driven information, or if the estimated value range of similar technologies by industry sector is provided from the evaluation cases which are already completed and accumulated in database, the STAR-Value is anticipated that it will enable to present highly accurate value range in real time by intelligently linking various support modules. Including the explanation of the various valuation models and relevant primary variables as presented in this paper, the STAR-Value system intends to utilize more systematically and in a data-driven way by supporting the optimal model selection guideline module, intelligent technology value range reasoning module, and similar company selection based market share prediction module, etc. In addition, the research on the development and intelligence of the web-based STAR-Value system is significant in that it widely spread the web-based system that can be used in the validation and application to practices of the theoretical feasibility of the technology valuation field, and it is expected that it could be utilized in various fields of technology commercialization.

A Study on Ontology and Topic Modeling-based Multi-dimensional Knowledge Map Services (온톨로지와 토픽모델링 기반 다차원 연계 지식맵 서비스 연구)

  • Jeong, Hanjo
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.21 no.4
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    • pp.79-92
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    • 2015
  • Knowledge map is widely used to represent knowledge in many domains. This paper presents a method of integrating the national R&D data and assists of users to navigate the integrated data via using a knowledge map service. The knowledge map service is built by using a lightweight ontology and a topic modeling method. The national R&D data is integrated with the research project as its center, i.e., the other R&D data such as research papers, patents, and reports are connected with the research project as its outputs. The lightweight ontology is used to represent the simple relationships between the integrated data such as project-outputs relationships, document-author relationships, and document-topic relationships. Knowledge map enables us to infer further relationships such as co-author and co-topic relationships. To extract the relationships between the integrated data, a Relational Data-to-Triples transformer is implemented. Also, a topic modeling approach is introduced to extract the document-topic relationships. A triple store is used to manage and process the ontology data while preserving the network characteristics of knowledge map service. Knowledge map can be divided into two types: one is a knowledge map used in the area of knowledge management to store, manage and process the organizations' data as knowledge, the other is a knowledge map for analyzing and representing knowledge extracted from the science & technology documents. This research focuses on the latter one. In this research, a knowledge map service is introduced for integrating the national R&D data obtained from National Digital Science Library (NDSL) and National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS), which are two major repository and service of national R&D data servicing in Korea. A lightweight ontology is used to design and build a knowledge map. Using the lightweight ontology enables us to represent and process knowledge as a simple network and it fits in with the knowledge navigation and visualization characteristics of the knowledge map. The lightweight ontology is used to represent the entities and their relationships in the knowledge maps, and an ontology repository is created to store and process the ontology. In the ontologies, researchers are implicitly connected by the national R&D data as the author relationships and the performer relationships. A knowledge map for displaying researchers' network is created, and the researchers' network is created by the co-authoring relationships of the national R&D documents and the co-participation relationships of the national R&D projects. To sum up, a knowledge map-service system based on topic modeling and ontology is introduced for processing knowledge about the national R&D data such as research projects, papers, patent, project reports, and Global Trends Briefing (GTB) data. The system has goals 1) to integrate the national R&D data obtained from NDSL and NTIS, 2) to provide a semantic & topic based information search on the integrated data, and 3) to provide a knowledge map services based on the semantic analysis and knowledge processing. The S&T information such as research papers, research reports, patents and GTB are daily updated from NDSL, and the R&D projects information including their participants and output information are updated from the NTIS. The S&T information and the national R&D information are obtained and integrated to the integrated database. Knowledge base is constructed by transforming the relational data into triples referencing R&D ontology. In addition, a topic modeling method is employed to extract the relationships between the S&T documents and topic keyword/s representing the documents. The topic modeling approach enables us to extract the relationships and topic keyword/s based on the semantics, not based on the simple keyword/s. Lastly, we show an experiment on the construction of the integrated knowledge base using the lightweight ontology and topic modeling, and the knowledge map services created based on the knowledge base are also introduced.

Studies on the Quality of Korean Rice (한국쌀의 품질에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Z.U.;Lee, K.H.;Kim, D.Y.
    • Applied Biological Chemistry
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    • v.15 no.1
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    • pp.65-75
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    • 1972
  • The rice qualities including cooking and eating qualities were studied using recommended Korean rice varieties (20 of japonica and 3 of indies type; IR 667) which were grown at Suwon, Korea in 1971. As the result, followings were obtained. 1. Amylose contents of white rice were varied with the varieties 21.1 to 25.5% and the average was 23.0%. Three indica type varieties (IR 667) showed higher amylose contents than the other japonica type varieties except Mankyung. Among japonica type varieties, Palkum, Mankyung composed the group of the highest amyloes content and Kimmaje was the lowest. 2. Blue values were distributed in the range of 0.38 to 0.48 and the average was 0.42 IR 667 varieties showed the highest blue value among them. Among japonica type varieties, Jaegun showd the highest blue value and Sooseung, Shirogane showed successively lower values, Shin #2, Nongbaik, Palkweng, Suwon #82, Mankyung, Nonglim #25 and Nongkwang relatively lower blue values. 3. Alkali numbers were in the range of 6.0 to 7.4 and the average was 6.8. Much difference was not shown in alkali number between IR 667 group and the japonica varieties group. 4. Gelatinization temperature were ranged from 59.5 to 64.0 IR 667 varieties showed relatively higher gelatinization temperature than japonica type varieties. 5. Water uptake ratios were measured in the range of 2.67 to 2.92 and the average was 2.79. IR 667 varieties were belonged to the group of highest water uptake ratio. Among japonica type varieties Kimmaje, Suwon #82, Nonglim #29, Deungpan #5, Jaegun, Jinhung, were belonged to the group of relatively high water uptake ratio and Palkweng, Palkeum and Paldal to the relatively low water uptake ratio. 6. Expaned volums were ranged from 29.8 to 33.7 and the average was 31.8. IR 667 varieties showed higher expanded volumes than japonica type varieties. 7. Intensities of starch-iodine blue value of residual liquid indicated 0.35 to 0.58. Among them IR 667 varieties showed relatively high intensities. 8. The range of total solids in residual liquids was 0.605 to 0.810 and the average was 0.700 Much difference was not shown in total solids in residual liquid between IR 667 varieties and japonica varieties. 9. pH values of residual liquids were in the range of 6.3 to 7.3 and the average was 6.95. IR 667 varieties showed lower pH than japonira type varieties.

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Studies on the analysis of phytin by the Chelatometric method (Chelate 법(法)에 의(依)한 Phytin 분석(分析)에 관(關)한 연구(硏究))

  • Shin, Jai-Doo
    • Applied Biological Chemistry
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    • v.10
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    • pp.1-13
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    • 1968
  • Phytin is a salt(mainly calcium and magnesium) of phytic acid and its purity and molecular formula can be determined by assaying the contents of phosporus, calcium and magnesium in phytin. In order to devise a new method for the quantitative analysis of the three elements in phytin, the chelatometric method was developed as follows: 1) As the pretreatment for phytin analysis, it was ashfied st $550{\sim}600^{\circ}C$ in the presence of concentrated nitric acid. This dry process is more accurate than the wet process. 2) Phosphorus, calcium and megnesium were analyzed by the conventional and the new method described here, for the phytin sample decomposed by the dry process. The ashfied phytin solution in hydrochloric acid was partitioned into cation and anion fractions by means of a ration exchange resin. A portion of the ration fraction was adjusted to pH 7.0, followed by readjustment to pH 10 and titrated with standard EDTA solution using the BT [Eriochrome black T] indicator to obtain the combined value of calcium and magnesium. Another portion of the ration fraction was made to pH 7.0, and a small volume of standard EDTA solution was added to it. pH was adjusted to $12{\sim}13$ with 8 N KOH and it was titrate by a standard EDTA solution in the presence of N-N[2-Hydroxy-1-(2-hydroxy-4-sulfo-1-naphytate)-3-naphthoic acid] diluted powder indicator in order to obtain the calcium content. Magnesium content was calculated from the difference between the two values. From the anion fraction the magnesium ammonium phosphate precipitate was obtained. The precipitate was dissolved in hydrochloric acid, and a standard EDTA solution was added to it. The solution was adjusted to pH 7.0 and then readjusted to pH 10.0 by a buffer solution and titrated with a standard magnesium sulfate solution in the presence of BT indicator to obtain the phosphorus content. The analytical data for phosphorus, calcium and magnesium were 98.9%, 97.1% and 99.1% respectively, in reference to the theoretical values for the formula $C_6H_6O_{24}P_6Mg_4CaNa_2{\cdot}5H_2O$. Statical analysis indicated a good coincidence of the theoretical and experimental values. On the other hand, the observed values for the three elements by the conventional method were 92.4%, 86.8% and 93.8%, respectively, revealing a remarkable difference from the theoretical. 3) When sodium phytate was admixed with starch and subjected to the analysis of phosphorus, calcium and magnesium by the chelatometric method, their recovery was almost 100% 4) In order to confirm the accuracy of this method, phytic acid was reacted with calcium chloride and magnesium chloride in the molar ratio of phytic: calcium chloride: magnesium chloride=1 : 5 : 20 to obtain sodium phytate containing one calcium atom and four magnesium atoms per molecule of sodium phytate. The analytical data for phosporus, calcium and magnesium were coincident with those as determine d by the aforementioned method. The new method employing the dry process, ion exchange resin and chelatometric assay of phosphorus, calcium and magnesium is considered accurate and rapid for the determination of phytin.

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The Effect of Gibberellic and Abscisic Acids on The Synthesis of Ribonucleic Acid in Seeds and Coleoptiles of Barley (Giberellic acid와 Abscisic acid가 대맥종자(大麥種子) 및 초엽(?葉)에서 핵산합성(核酸合成)에 미치는 영향(影響))

  • Seu, Yong-Taik
    • Applied Biological Chemistry
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    • v.21 no.2
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    • pp.84-102
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    • 1978
  • Barley embryoless half seeds were incubated in medium containing $10{\mu}M$ GA. Time course activity changes of ${\alpha}-amylase$ were studied in extract and medium seperately by the addition of $0.1{\mu}M,\;5{\mu}M,\;and\;10{\mu}M$ ABA in midcourse incubation of 10 hours after GA treatment. MAK profiles of nucleic acids in embryoless half seeds were compared either with $10{\mu}M$ GA treatment or concomitant treatment with $10{\mu}M$ GA and $10{\mu}M$ ABA after 10 hours incubation, Time course changes of weight increase, chlorophyll, protein and RNA consent in addition to RNase activity were studied in the presence of $10{\mu}M$ GA or $10{\mu}M$ ABA in barley coleoptile sections. After 20 hours incubation in the presence of plant hormones, MAK profiles of nucleic acids and reactive distribution of polysome and monosome were investigated. The above results were summarized as follows. 1) The production of ${\alpha}-amylase$ by treatment with GA alone increased at a linear rate in the incubation period and the active secretion of ${\alpha}-amylase$ began from 18 hours incubation in embryoless half seeds. 2) On the contrary to the partial inhibition by addition of $0.1{\mu}M$ ABA, the production of ${\alpha}-amylase$ was completely inhibited by both $5{\mu}M$ and $10{\mu}M$ ABA within 4 hours. Regardless of concentration of GA, the addition of $5{\mu}M$ ABA in midcourse completely inhibited the production of ${\alpha}-amylase$ 3) ABA treatment gave no effect on the secretion of ${\alpha}-amylase$. 4) There were no differences in RNA fractions between GA treatment and concomitant treatment with GA and ABA in the barlye embryoless half seeds. 5) While GA treatment increased the r-RNA fraction, ABA treatment decreased it and increased the s-RNA fraction in the coleoptile sections. 6) GA treatment increased RNA-DNA fraction best ABA treatment decreased it in the coleoptile sections. 7) While GA treatment suppressed RNase activity, ABA treatment increased it in the coleoptile sections. 8) GA treatment gave no great effect on the total RNA but ABA treatment remarkably diminished it in the coleoptile sections. 9) While GA treatment increased the growth and chlorophyll content, ABA treatment decreased them in the coleoptile sections. 10) GA treatment increased the protein synthesis and polysome formation but ABA treatment decreased them in the coleoptile sections. 11) The inhibition effect of ABA on polysome formation seemed to be resulted from the inhibition of r-RNA synthesis by ABA.

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The Study of Establishing the Multi-pass Eurasian Railroads (유라시아 철도의 다중경로 구축에 관한 연구)

  • Hahm, Beom-Hee;Huh, Nam-Kyun;Hurr, Hee-Young
    • Korean Business Review
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    • v.21 no.2
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    • pp.137-170
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    • 2008
  • This study is presenting the logistics strategy in the international logistics markets which makes competition and corporation among north-east Asian countries to establishing the multi-pass Eurasian railroads. The countries located in north-east area of Eurasia like China, Japan, Russia and Korea are paying higher costs and disutility to the transportations and communications due to repeated conflicts and confrontations causes from the politic problems. They are being used surface transportation for most of all logistics between Europe and Asia except special merchandises because of characteristic of cargo to be air, the Silk Road remains vestige only which was main logistic passage to this area since BC. So far the Trans-Siberian Railway is being used by Russia mostly as north of Eurasian transport because of difficulties of service. The Trans-China Railway built in 1992 is not accomplishing as a international logistic passages. It is expected to take a long lead time because of characteristic of resource development and poor logistic infrastructure to the countries like Uzbekistan, double landlocked country, Mongolia and Azerbaijan, the countries do not be adjacent to the sea, even they have great economic jump-up plans through the development of their own resources. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization(SCO) start to sail officially in 2001 is constructed with China, Russia, Tadzhikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as regular members of 6 countries and Mongolia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran as observers 5 countries. It is started as a military alliance to protect terror, but now, it is expended to cooperate with the traffic, transportation, trade and share of energies. The Russia is doing their best to activate TSR as a government target to developnorth area equivalently, and economic develop of far-east Siberia. And also it is agreed provisionally to improve and repair of rail road between Nahjin and Hassan to connect TSR and TKR( Trans-Korea Railroad) by Russia, North Korea and South Korea with Russian's aggressive efforts. The development plan of this area is over lapped with GTI(Greater Tumen Initiative) promoted by UNDP, and is a cooperated project by 5 countries of South Korea, Mongolia, China, Russia and North Korea, subject to review the appropriation of energy, tour, environment, rail road connection between Mongolia and China and establishing a ferry route to north-east Asia. It is Japanese situation to pay attention to Russia and China even they have been supplying large-scope of infrastructure in Mongol area without any charges, target to get East Asia Main Rail Road to connect Mongolia and Zalubino of Russia. In case of the program for the Denuclearization of North Korea is not creeping, it will be accelerated to connect the TKR and TSR, TKR and TCR by somehow attending United States, including developing program promoted by UN ESCAP. As the result, Korean peninsular will continue the central role of competition and cooperation as in the past, now and future of north-east Asia, as of geographical-economics and geographical-politics whether it is requested or not wanted by neighbor countries.

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Business Relationships and Structural Bonding: A Study of American Metal Industry (산업재 거래관계와 구조적 결합: 미국 금속산업의 분석 연구)

  • Han, Sang-Lin;Kim, Yun-Tae;Oh, Chang-Yeob;Chung, Jae-Moon
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.3
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    • pp.115-132
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    • 2008
  • Metal industry is one of the most representative heavy industries and the median sales volume of steel and nonferrous metal companies is over one billion dollars in the case America [Forbes 2006]. As seen in the recent business market situation, an increasing number of industrial manufacturers and suppliers are moving from adversarial to cooperative exchange attitudes that support the long-term relationships with their customers. This article presents the results of an empirical study of the antecedent factors of business relationships in metal industry of the United States. Commitment has been reviewed as a significant and critical variable in research on inter-organizational relationships (Hong et al. 2007, Kim et al. 2007). The future stability of any buyer-seller relationship depends upon the commitment made by the interactants to their relationship. Commitment, according to Dwyer et al. [1987], refers to "an implicit or explicit pledge of relational continuity between exchange partners" and they consider commitment to be the most advanced phase of buyer-seller exchange relationship. Bonds are made because the members need their partners in order to do something and this integration on a task basis can be either symbiotic or cooperative (Svensson 2008). To the extent that members seek the same or mutually supporting ends, there will be strong bonds among them. In other words, the principle that affects the strength of bonds is 'economy of decision making' [Turner 1970]. These bonds provide an important idea to study the causes of business long-term relationships in a sense that organizations can be mutually bonded by a common interest in the economic matters. Recently, the framework of structural bonding has been used to study the buyer-seller relationships in industrial marketing [Han and Sung 2008, Williams et al. 1998, Wilson 1995] in that this structural bonding is a crucial part of the theoretical justification for distinguishing discrete transactions from ongoing long-term relationships. The major antecedent factors of buyer commitment such as technology, CLalt, transaction-specific assets, and importance were identified and explored from the perspective of structural bonding. Research hypotheses were developed and tested by using survey data from the middle managers in the metal industry. H1: Level of technology of the relationship partner is positively related to the level of structural bonding between the buyer and the seller. H2: Comparison level of alternatives is negatively related to the level of structural bonding between the buyer and the seller. H3: Amount of the transaction-specific assets is positively related to the level of structural bonding between the buyer and the seller. H4: Importance of the relationship partner is positively related to the level of structural bonding between the buyer and the seller. H5: Level of structural bonding is positively related to the level of commitment to the relationship. To examine the major antecedent factors of industrial buyer's structural bonding and long-term relationship, questionnaire was prepared, mailed out to the sample of 400 purchasing managers of the US metal industry (SIC codes 33 and 34). After a follow-up request, 139 informants returnedthe questionnaires, resulting in a response rate of 35 percent. 134 responses were used in the final analysis after dropping 5 incomplete questionnaires. All measures were analyzed for reliability and validity following the guidelines offered by Churchill [1979] and Anderson and Gerbing [1988]., the results of fitting the model to the data indicated that the hypothesized model provides a good fit to the data. Goodness-of-fit index (GFI = 0.94) and other indices ( chi-square = 78.02 with p-value = 0.13, Adjusted GFI = 0.90, Normed Fit Index = 0.92) indicated that a major proportion of variances and covariances in the data was accounted for by the model as a whole, and all the parameter estimates showed statistical significance as evidenced by large t-values. All the factor loadings were significantly different from zero. On these grounds we judged the hypothesized model to be a reasonable representation of the data. The results from the present study suggest several implications for buyer-seller relationships. Theoretically, we attempted to conceptualize the antecedent factors of buyer-seller long-term relationships from the perspective of structural bondingin metal industry. The four underlying determinants (i.e. technology, CLalt, transaction-specific assets, and importance) of structural bonding are very critical variables of buyer-seller long-term business relationships. Our model of structural bonding makes an attempt to systematically examine the relationship between the antecedent factors of structural bonding and long-term commitment. Managerially, this research provides industrial purchasing managers with a good framework to assess the interaction processes with their partners and, ability to position their business relationships from the perspective of structural bonding. In other words, based on those underlying variables, industrial purchasing managers can determine the strength of the company's relationships with the key suppliers and its state of preparation to be a successful partner with those suppliers. Both the supplying and customer companies can also benefit by using the concept of 'structural bonding' and evaluating their relationships with key business partners from the structural point of view. In general, the results indicate that structural bonding gives a critical impact on the level of relationship commitment. Managerial implications and limitations of the study are also discussed.

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