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Non-invasive Brain Stimulation and its Legal Regulation - Devices using Techniques of TMS and tDCS - (비침습적 뇌자극기술과 법적 규제 - TMS와 tDCS기술을 이용한 기기를 중심으로 -)

  • Choi, Min-Young
    • The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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    • 제21권2호
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    • pp.209-244
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    • 2020
  • TMS and tDCS are non-invasive devices that treat the diseases of patients or individual users, and manage or improve their health by applying stimulation to a brain through magnetism and electricity. The effect and safety of these devices have proved to be valid in several diseases, but research in this area is still much going on. Despite increasing cases of their application, legislations directly regulating TMS and tDCS are hard to find. Legal regulation regarding TMS and tDCS in the United States, Germany and Japan reveals that while TMS has been approved as a medical device with a moderate risk, tDCS has not yet earned approval as a medical device. However, the recent FDA guidance, European MDR changes, recalls in the US, and relevant legal provisions of Germany and Japan, as well as recommendations from expert groups all show signs of tDCS growing closer to getting approved as a medical device. Of course, safety and efficacy of tDCS can still be regulated as a general product instead of as a medical device. Considering multiple potential impacts on a human brain, however, the need for independent regulation is urgent. South Korea also lacks legal provisions explicitly regulating TMS and tDCS, but they fall into the category of the grade 3 medical devices according to the notifications of the Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. And safety and efficacy of TMS are to be evaluated in compliance with the US FDA guidance. But no specific guidelines exist for tDCS yet. Given that tDCS devices are used in some hospitals in reality, and also at home by individual buyers, such a regulatory gap must quickly be addressed. In a longer term, legal system needs to be in place capable of independently regulating non-invasive brain stimulating devices.

Retrospect and prospect of political geography and general-synoptic part of human geography in Korea (한국 정치지리학과 인문지리학 일반 50년의 회고)

  • ;Im, Duck-Soon
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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    • 제31권2호
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    • pp.295-308
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    • 1996
  • 1. Retrospect of Political Geographic Studies since Liberation, 1945 : 1) Period from 1945 to mid 1960s : There was not political geography as a science in Korea at the time of liberation from Japan 1945. At that time were not pure political geographers in Korea. In 1947, Moon-Hwa Pyo, economics professor, published a book titled Outline of Korean Geopolitics. This book was a first one in the field of political geography and available at that time in the logical descriptions. Bok-Hyon Choi was a first political geographer who in 1959 wrote a book titled Political geography for the collegians of Seoul National University. Professor Choi introduced American-style political geography through the book above mentioned. In 1963, Kie-Joo Hyong published an article titled "Korean Unification: Possibility from the Geopolitical Viewpoint" which was a first article published by Korean young scholar who studied geography in this country. 2) Period from late 1960s to late 1980s : Both Yoon Cha and Duck-Soon Im published frequently several articles of political geography or geopolitics respectively in 1968-1969. And they issued geopolitical disputes on Korean geopolitical structure and an application of rimland theory to Korean peninsula in 1969 through a magazine named Joung-Kyong Younku (the political and economic researches). The disputes played an important role of showing political geography (or geopolitics) to political sciences especially international political Science. Active researches still continued in 1970s. In that atmosphere the first Korean book of political geography written by a post-liberation scholar (Duck-Soon Im) titled Principles of Political Geography was published in 1973. This book was influenced much by American political geography after Second World War. In 1980s, the researches continued more actively. Especially administrative districts, capital cities, and sub-capital cities were frequently studied during this period. 3) Period from late 1980s to Present: Recent Studies : 1985 was a year of much production of articles of political geography. The first Ph.D thesis of political geography published in the same year in our country. And since 1985 produced many M.A. articles. Several categories of esearches of political geography was made in the period from late 1980s to present. Capital cities, Korean unification, administrative districts, urban politics, elections, sub-capital cities, and defense walls were important research categories. Reviewing the researches from 1945 to present. I found eight categories of political geography in Korea: capital cities, administrative districts, geopolitical structure of Korean peninsula, division and unification of Korea, sub-capital cities, defense walls, elections, and urban politics. Each category includes several scholars respectiveiy. 2. Study Tasks and Prospects in Korean Political Geography: In relation to Korean circumstances there are three study-tasks. The first task of Korean people is unification of two Koreas. Political geographers of Korea must al survey titled Survey Methods of Human Geography for collegians. This book was first one on survey part in Korea. The book however, is insufficient in comprehensiveness in aspects too. I think that the important tasks of general-synoptic human geography in Korea are \circled1 publication of comprehensive books of human geography in the aspects and methodologies for collegians and \circled2 acceptance of academic world of human geography in Korea of variety in methodologies of human geography for future progress. progress.

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The Current Status of the Discussions on International Norms Related to Space Activities in the UN COPUOS Legal Subcommittee (우주활동 국제규범에 관한 유엔 우주평화적이용위원회 법률소위원회의 최근 논의 현황)

  • Jung, Yung-Jin
    • The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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    • 제29권1호
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    • pp.127-160
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    • 2014
  • The UN COPUOS was established in 1959 as a permanent committee of the UN General Assembly with the aims to promote international cooperation in peaceful uses of outer space, to formulate space-related programmes within the UN, to encourage research and dissemination of information on space, and to study legal problems arising from the outer space activities. Its members have been enlarged from 24 members in 1959 to 76 in 2014. The Legal Subcommittee, which has been established under COPUOS in 1962 to deal with legal problems associated with space activities, through its first three decades of work has set up a framework of international space law: the five treaties and agreements - namely the Outer Space Treaty, Rescue Agreement, Liability Convention, Registration Convention, Moon Agreement - and the five declarations and legal principles. However, some sceptical views on this legal framework has been expressed, concerning the applicability of existing international space law to practical issues and new kinds of emerging space activities. UNISPACE III, which took place in 1999, served as a momentum to revitalize the discussions of the legal issues faced by the international community in outer space activities. The agenda of the Legal Subcommittee is currently structured into three categories: regular items, single issue/items, and items considered under a multi-year workplan. The regular items, which deal with basic legal issues, include definition and delimitation of outer space, status and application of the five UN treaties on outer space, and national legislation relevant to the peaceful exploration and use of outer space. The single issues/items, which are decided upon the preceding year, are discussed only for one year in the plenary unless renewed. They include items related to the use of nuclear power sources in outer space and to the space debris mitigation. The agenda items considered under a multi-year work plan are discussed in working group. Items under this category deal with non-legally binding UN instruments on outer space and international mechanism for cooperation. In recent years, the Subcommittee has made some progress on agenda items related to nuclear power sources, space debris, and international cooperation by means of establishing non-legally binding instruments, or soft law. The Republic of Korea became the member state of COPUOS in 2001, after rotating seats every two years with Cuba and Peru since 1994. Korea's joining of COPUOS seems to be late, in considering that some countries with hardly any space activity, such Chad, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Lebanon, Cameroon, joined COPUOS as early as 1960s and 1970s and contributed to the drafting of the aforementioned treaties, declarations, and legal principles. Given the difficulties to conclude a treaty and un urgency to regulate newly emerging space activities, Legal Subcommittee now focuses its effort on developing soft law such as resolutions and guideline to be adopted by UN General Assembly. In order to have its own practices reflected in the international practices, one of the constituent elements of international customary law, Korea should analyse its technical capability, policy, and law related to outer space activities and participate actively in the formation process of the soft law.

Development of Beauty Experience Pattern Map Based on Consumer Emotions: Focusing on Cosmetics (소비자 감성 기반 뷰티 경험 패턴 맵 개발: 화장품을 중심으로)

  • Seo, Bong-Goon;Kim, Keon-Woo;Park, Do-Hyung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • 제25권1호
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    • pp.179-196
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    • 2019
  • Recently, the "Smart Consumer" has been emerging. He or she is increasingly inclined to search for and purchase products by taking into account personal judgment or expert reviews rather than by relying on information delivered through manufacturers' advertising. This is especially true when purchasing cosmetics. Because cosmetics act directly on the skin, consumers respond seriously to dangerous chemical elements they contain or to skin problems they may cause. Above all, cosmetics should fit well with the purchaser's skin type. In addition, changes in global cosmetics consumer trends make it necessary to study this field. The desire to find one's own individualized cosmetics is being revealed to consumers around the world and is known as "Finding the Holy Grail." Many consumers show a deep interest in customized cosmetics with the cultural boom known as "K-Beauty" (an aspect of "Han-Ryu"), the growth of personal grooming, and the emergence of "self-culture" that includes "self-beauty" and "self-interior." These trends have led to the explosive popularity of cosmetics made in Korea in the Chinese and Southeast Asian markets. In order to meet the customized cosmetics needs of consumers, cosmetics manufacturers and related companies are responding by concentrating on delivering premium services through the convergence of ICT(Information, Communication and Technology). Despite the evolution of companies' responses regarding market trends toward customized cosmetics, there is no "Intelligent Data Platform" that deals holistically with consumers' skin condition experience and thus attaches emotions to products and services. To find the Holy Grail of customized cosmetics, it is important to acquire and analyze consumer data on what they want in order to address their experiences and emotions. The emotions consumers are addressing when purchasing cosmetics varies by their age, sex, skin type, and specific skin issues and influences what price is considered reasonable. Therefore, it is necessary to classify emotions regarding cosmetics by individual consumer. Because of its importance, consumer emotion analysis has been used for both services and products. Given the trends identified above, we judge that consumer emotion analysis can be used in our study. Therefore, we collected and indexed data on consumers' emotions regarding their cosmetics experiences focusing on consumers' language. We crawled the cosmetics emotion data from SNS (blog and Twitter) according to sales ranking ($1^{st}$ to $99^{th}$), focusing on the ample/serum category. A total of 357 emotional adjectives were collected, and we combined and abstracted similar or duplicate emotional adjectives. We conducted a "Consumer Sentiment Journey" workshop to build a "Consumer Sentiment Dictionary," and this resulted in a total of 76 emotional adjectives regarding cosmetics consumer experience. Using these 76 emotional adjectives, we performed clustering with the Self-Organizing Map (SOM) method. As a result of the analysis, we derived eight final clusters of cosmetics consumer sentiments. Using the vector values of each node for each cluster, the characteristics of each cluster were derived based on the top ten most frequently appearing consumer sentiments. Different characteristics were found in consumer sentiments in each cluster. We also developed a cosmetics experience pattern map. The study results confirmed that recommendation and classification systems that consider consumer emotions and sentiments are needed because each consumer differs in what he or she pursues and prefers. Furthermore, this study reaffirms that the application of emotion and sentiment analysis can be extended to various fields other than cosmetics, and it implies that consumer insights can be derived using these methods. They can be used not only to build a specialized sentiment dictionary using scientific processes and "Design Thinking Methodology," but we also expect that these methods can help us to understand consumers' psychological reactions and cognitive behaviors. If this study is further developed, we believe that it will be able to provide solutions based on consumer experience, and therefore that it can be developed as an aspect of marketing intelligence.

Critical Success Factor of Noble Payment System: Multiple Case Studies (새로운 결제서비스의 성공요인: 다중사례연구)

  • Park, Arum;Lee, Kyoung Jun
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • 제20권4호
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    • pp.59-87
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    • 2014
  • In MIS field, the researches on payment services are focused on adoption factors of payment service using behavior theories such as TRA(Theory of Reasoned Action), TAM(Technology Acceptance Model), and TPB (Theory of Planned Behavior). The previous researches presented various adoption factors according to types of payment service, nations, culture and so on even though adoption factors of identical payment service were presented differently by researchers. The payment service industry relatively has strong path dependency to the existing payment methods so that the research results on the identical payment service are different due to payment culture of nation. This paper aims to suggest a successful adoption factor of noble payment service regardless of nation's culture and characteristics of payment and prove it. In previous researches, common adoption factors of payment service are convenience, ease of use, security, convenience, speed etc. But real cases prove the fact that adoption factors that the previous researches present are not always critical to success to penetrate a market. For example, PayByPhone, NFC based parking payment service, successfully has penetrated to early market and grown. In contrast, Google Wallet service failed to be adopted to users despite NFC based payment method which provides convenience, security, ease of use. As shown in upper case, there remains an unexplained aspect. Therefore, the present research question emerged from the question: "What is the more essential and fundamental factor that should takes precedence over factors such as provides convenience, security, ease of use for successful penetration to market". With these cases, this paper analyzes four cases predicted on the following hypothesis and demonstrates it. "To successfully penetrate a market and sustainably grow, new payment service should find non-customer of the existing payment service and provide noble payment method so that they can use payment method". We give plausible explanations for the hypothesis using multiple case studies. Diners club, Danal, PayPal, Square were selected as a typical and successful cases in each category of payment service. The discussion on cases is primarily non-customer analysis that noble payment service targets on to find the most crucial factor in the early market, we does not attempt to consider factors for business growth. We clarified three-tier non-customer of the payment method that new payment service targets on and elaborated how new payment service satisfy them. In case of credit card, this payment service target first tier of non-customer who can't pay for because they don't have any cash temporarily but they have regular income. So credit card provides an opportunity which they can do economic activities by delaying the date of payment. In a result of wireless phone payment's case study, this service targets on second of non-customer who can't use online payment because they concern about security or have to take a complex process and learn how to use online payment method. Therefore, wireless phone payment provides very convenient payment method. Especially, it made group of young pay for a little money without a credit card. Case study result of PayPal, online payment service, shows that it targets on second tier of non-customer who reject to use online payment service because of concern about sensitive information leaks such as passwords and credit card details. Accordingly, PayPal service allows users to pay online without a provision of sensitive information. Final Square case result, Mobile POS -based payment service, also shows that it targets on second tier of non-customer who can't individually transact offline because of cash's shortness. Hence, Square provides dongle which function as POS by putting dongle in earphone terminal. As a result, four cases made non-customer their customer so that they could penetrate early market and had been extended their market share. Consequently, all cases supported the hypothesis and it is highly probable according to 'analytic generation' that case study methodology suggests. We present for judging the quality of research designs the following. Construct validity, internal validity, external validity, reliability are common to all social science methods, these have been summarized in numerous textbooks(Yin, 2014). In case study methodology, these also have served as a framework for assessing a large group of case studies (Gibbert, Ruigrok & Wicki, 2008). Construct validity is to identify correct operational measures for the concepts being studied. To satisfy construct validity, we use multiple sources of evidence such as the academic journals, magazine and articles etc. Internal validity is to seek to establish a causal relationship, whereby certain conditions are believed to lead to other conditions, as distinguished from spurious relationships. To satisfy internal validity, we do explanation building through four cases analysis. External validity is to define the domain to which a study's findings can be generalized. To satisfy this, replication logic in multiple case studies is used. Reliability is to demonstrate that the operations of a study -such as the data collection procedures- can be repeated, with the same results. To satisfy this, we use case study protocol. In Korea, the competition among stakeholders over mobile payment industry is intensifying. Not only main three Telecom Companies but also Smartphone companies and service provider like KakaoTalk announced that they would enter into mobile payment industry. Mobile payment industry is getting competitive. But it doesn't still have momentum effect notwithstanding positive presumptions that will grow very fast. Mobile payment services are categorized into various technology based payment service such as IC mobile card and Application payment service of cloud based, NFC, sound wave, BLE(Bluetooth Low Energy), Biometric recognition technology etc. Especially, mobile payment service is discontinuous innovations that users should change their behavior and noble infrastructure should be installed. These require users to learn how to use it and cause infra-installation cost to shopkeepers. Additionally, payment industry has the strong path dependency. In spite of these obstacles, mobile payment service which should provide dramatically improved value as a products and service of discontinuous innovations is focusing on convenience and security, convenience and so on. We suggest the following to success mobile payment service. First, non-customers of the existing payment service need to be identified. Second, needs of them should be taken. Then, noble payment service provides non-customer who can't pay by the previous payment method to payment method. In conclusion, mobile payment service can create new market and will result in extension of payment market.

Emoticon by Emotions: The Development of an Emoticon Recommendation System Based on Consumer Emotions (Emoticon by Emotions: 소비자 감성 기반 이모티콘 추천 시스템 개발)

  • Kim, Keon-Woo;Park, Do-Hyung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • 제24권1호
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    • pp.227-252
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    • 2018
  • The evolution of instant communication has mirrored the development of the Internet and messenger applications are among the most representative manifestations of instant communication technologies. In messenger applications, senders use emoticons to supplement the emotions conveyed in the text of their messages. The fact that communication via messenger applications is not face-to-face makes it difficult for senders to communicate their emotions to message recipients. Emoticons have long been used as symbols that indicate the moods of speakers. However, at present, emoticon-use is evolving into a means of conveying the psychological states of consumers who want to express individual characteristics and personality quirks while communicating their emotions to others. The fact that companies like KakaoTalk, Line, Apple, etc. have begun conducting emoticon business and sales of related content are expected to gradually increase testifies to the significance of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, despite the development of emoticons themselves and the growth of the emoticon market, no suitable emoticon recommendation system has yet been developed. Even KakaoTalk, a messenger application that commands more than 90% of domestic market share in South Korea, just grouped in to popularity, most recent, or brief category. This means consumers face the inconvenience of constantly scrolling around to locate the emoticons they want. The creation of an emoticon recommendation system would improve consumer convenience and satisfaction and increase the sales revenue of companies the sell emoticons. To recommend appropriate emoticons, it is necessary to quantify the emotions that the consumer sees and emotions. Such quantification will enable us to analyze the characteristics and emotions felt by consumers who used similar emoticons, which, in turn, will facilitate our emoticon recommendations for consumers. One way to quantify emoticons use is metadata-ization. Metadata-ization is a means of structuring or organizing unstructured and semi-structured data to extract meaning. By structuring unstructured emoticon data through metadata-ization, we can easily classify emoticons based on the emotions consumers want to express. To determine emoticons' precise emotions, we had to consider sub-detail expressions-not only the seven common emotional adjectives but also the metaphorical expressions that appear only in South Korean proved by previous studies related to emotion focusing on the emoticon's characteristics. We therefore collected the sub-detail expressions of emotion based on the "Shape", "Color" and "Adumbration". Moreover, to design a highly accurate recommendation system, we considered both emotion-technical indexes and emoticon-emotional indexes. We then identified 14 features of emoticon-technical indexes and selected 36 emotional adjectives. The 36 emotional adjectives consisted of contrasting adjectives, which we reduced to 18, and we measured the 18 emotional adjectives using 40 emoticon sets randomly selected from the top-ranked emoticons in the KakaoTalk shop. We surveyed 277 consumers in their mid-twenties who had experience purchasing emoticons; we recruited them online and asked them to evaluate five different emoticon sets. After data acquisition, we conducted a factor analysis of emoticon-emotional factors. We extracted four factors that we named "Comic", Softness", "Modernity" and "Transparency". We analyzed both the relationship between indexes and consumer attitude and the relationship between emoticon-technical indexes and emoticon-emotional factors. Through this process, we confirmed that the emoticon-technical indexes did not directly affect consumer attitudes but had a mediating effect on consumer attitudes through emoticon-emotional factors. The results of the analysis revealed the mechanism consumers use to evaluate emoticons; the results also showed that consumers' emoticon-technical indexes affected emoticon-emotional factors and that the emoticon-emotional factors affected consumer satisfaction. We therefore designed the emoticon recommendation system using only four emoticon-emotional factors; we created a recommendation method to calculate the Euclidean distance from each factors' emotion. In an attempt to increase the accuracy of the emoticon recommendation system, we compared the emotional patterns of selected emoticons with the recommended emoticons. The emotional patterns corresponded in principle. We verified the emoticon recommendation system by testing prediction accuracy; the predictions were 81.02% accurate in the first result, 76.64% accurate in the second, and 81.63% accurate in the third. This study developed a methodology that can be used in various fields academically and practically. We expect that the novel emoticon recommendation system we designed will increase emoticon sales for companies who conduct business in this domain and make consumer experiences more convenient. In addition, this study served as an important first step in the development of an intelligent emoticon recommendation system. The emotional factors proposed in this study could be collected in an emotional library that could serve as an emotion index for evaluation when new emoticons are released. Moreover, by combining the accumulated emotional library with company sales data, sales information, and consumer data, companies could develop hybrid recommendation systems that would bolster convenience for consumers and serve as intellectual assets that companies could strategically deploy.

Development of Yóukè Mining System with Yóukè's Travel Demand and Insight Based on Web Search Traffic Information (웹검색 트래픽 정보를 활용한 유커 인바운드 여행 수요 예측 모형 및 유커마이닝 시스템 개발)

  • Choi, Youji;Park, Do-Hyung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • 제23권3호
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    • pp.155-175
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    • 2017
  • As social data become into the spotlight, mainstream web search engines provide data indicate how many people searched specific keyword: Web Search Traffic data. Web search traffic information is collection of each crowd that search for specific keyword. In a various area, web search traffic can be used as one of useful variables that represent the attention of common users on specific interests. A lot of studies uses web search traffic data to nowcast or forecast social phenomenon such as epidemic prediction, consumer pattern analysis, product life cycle, financial invest modeling and so on. Also web search traffic data have begun to be applied to predict tourist inbound. Proper demand prediction is needed because tourism is high value-added industry as increasing employment and foreign exchange. Among those tourists, especially Chinese tourists: Youke is continuously growing nowadays, Youke has been largest tourist inbound of Korea tourism for many years and tourism profits per one Youke as well. It is important that research into proper demand prediction approaches of Youke in both public and private sector. Accurate tourism demands prediction is important to efficient decision making in a limited resource. This study suggests improved model that reflects latest issue of society by presented the attention from group of individual. Trip abroad is generally high-involvement activity so that potential tourists likely deep into searching for information about their own trip. Web search traffic data presents tourists' attention in the process of preparation their journey instantaneous and dynamic way. So that this study attempted select key words that potential Chinese tourists likely searched out internet. Baidu-Chinese biggest web search engine that share over 80%- provides users with accessing to web search traffic data. Qualitative interview with potential tourists helps us to understand the information search behavior before a trip and identify the keywords for this study. Selected key words of web search traffic are categorized by how much directly related to "Korean Tourism" in a three levels. Classifying categories helps to find out which keyword can explain Youke inbound demands from close one to far one as distance of category. Web search traffic data of each key words gathered by web crawler developed to crawling web search data onto Baidu Index. Using automatically gathered variable data, linear model is designed by multiple regression analysis for suitable for operational application of decision and policy making because of easiness to explanation about variables' effective relationship. After regression linear models have composed, comparing with model composed traditional variables and model additional input web search traffic data variables to traditional model has conducted by significance and R squared. after comparing performance of models, final model is composed. Final regression model has improved explanation and advantage of real-time immediacy and convenience than traditional model. Furthermore, this study demonstrates system intuitively visualized to general use -Youke Mining solution has several functions of tourist decision making including embed final regression model. Youke Mining solution has algorithm based on data science and well-designed simple interface. In the end this research suggests three significant meanings on theoretical, practical and political aspects. Theoretically, Youke Mining system and the model in this research are the first step on the Youke inbound prediction using interactive and instant variable: web search traffic information represents tourists' attention while prepare their trip. Baidu web search traffic data has more than 80% of web search engine market. Practically, Baidu data could represent attention of the potential tourists who prepare their own tour as real-time. Finally, in political way, designed Chinese tourist demands prediction model based on web search traffic can be used to tourism decision making for efficient managing of resource and optimizing opportunity for successful policy.

A Study on Interactions of Competitive Promotions Between the New and Used Cars (신차와 중고차간 프로모션의 상호작용에 대한 연구)

  • Chang, Kwangpil
    • Asia Marketing Journal
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    • 제14권1호
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    • pp.83-98
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    • 2012
  • In a market where new and used cars are competing with each other, we would run the risk of obtaining biased estimates of cross elasticity between them if we focus on only new cars or on only used cars. Unfortunately, most of previous studies on the automobile industry have focused on only new car models without taking into account the effect of used cars' pricing policy on new cars' market shares and vice versa, resulting in inadequate prediction of reactive pricing in response to competitors' rebate or price discount. However, there are some exceptions. Purohit (1992) and Sullivan (1990) looked into both new and used car markets at the same time to examine the effect of new car model launching on the used car prices. But their studies have some limitations in that they employed the average used car prices reported in NADA Used Car Guide instead of actual transaction prices. Some of the conflicting results may be due to this problem in the data. Park (1998) recognized this problem and used the actual prices in his study. His work is notable in that he investigated the qualitative effect of new car model launching on the pricing policy of the used car in terms of reinforcement of brand equity. The current work also used the actual price like Park (1998) but the quantitative aspect of competitive price promotion between new and used cars of the same model was explored. In this study, I develop a model that assumes that the cross elasticity between new and used cars of the same model is higher than those amongst new cars and used cars of the different model. Specifically, I apply the nested logit model that assumes the car model choice at the first stage and the choice between new and used cars at the second stage. This proposed model is compared to the IIA (Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives) model that assumes that there is no decision hierarchy but that new and used cars of the different model are all substitutable at the first stage. The data for this study are drawn from Power Information Network (PIN), an affiliate of J.D. Power and Associates. PIN collects sales transaction data from a sample of dealerships in the major metropolitan areas in the U.S. These are retail transactions, i.e., sales or leases to final consumers, excluding fleet sales and including both new car and used car sales. Each observation in the PIN database contains the transaction date, the manufacturer, model year, make, model, trim and other car information, the transaction price, consumer rebates, the interest rate, term, amount financed (when the vehicle is financed or leased), etc. I used data for the compact cars sold during the period January 2009- June 2009. The new and used cars of the top nine selling models are included in the study: Mazda 3, Honda Civic, Chevrolet Cobalt, Toyota Corolla, Hyundai Elantra, Ford Focus, Volkswagen Jetta, Nissan Sentra, and Kia Spectra. These models in the study accounted for 87% of category unit sales. Empirical application of the nested logit model showed that the proposed model outperformed the IIA (Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives) model in both calibration and holdout samples. The other comparison model that assumes choice between new and used cars at the first stage and car model choice at the second stage turned out to be mis-specfied since the dissimilarity parameter (i.e., inclusive or categroy value parameter) was estimated to be greater than 1. Post hoc analysis based on estimated parameters was conducted employing the modified Lanczo's iterative method. This method is intuitively appealing. For example, suppose a new car offers a certain amount of rebate and gains market share at first. In response to this rebate, a used car of the same model keeps decreasing price until it regains the lost market share to maintain the status quo. The new car settle down to a lowered market share due to the used car's reaction. The method enables us to find the amount of price discount to main the status quo and equilibrium market shares of the new and used cars. In the first simulation, I used Jetta as a focal brand to see how its new and used cars set prices, rebates or APR interactively assuming that reactive cars respond to price promotion to maintain the status quo. The simulation results showed that the IIA model underestimates cross elasticities, resulting in suggesting less aggressive used car price discount in response to new cars' rebate than the proposed nested logit model. In the second simulation, I used Elantra to reconfirm the result for Jetta and came to the same conclusion. In the third simulation, I had Corolla offer $1,000 rebate to see what could be the best response for Elantra's new and used cars. Interestingly, Elantra's used car could maintain the status quo by offering lower price discount ($160) than the new car ($205). In the future research, we might want to explore the plausibility of the alternative nested logit model. For example, the NUB model that assumes choice between new and used cars at the first stage and brand choice at the second stage could be a possibility even though it was rejected in the current study because of mis-specification (A dissimilarity parameter turned out to be higher than 1). The NUB model may have been rejected due to true mis-specification or data structure transmitted from a typical car dealership. In a typical car dealership, both new and used cars of the same model are displayed. Because of this fact, the BNU model that assumes brand choice at the first stage and choice between new and used cars at the second stage may have been favored in the current study since customers first choose a dealership (brand) then choose between new and used cars given this market environment. However, suppose there are dealerships that carry both new and used cars of various models, then the NUB model might fit the data as well as the BNU model. Which model is a better description of the data is an empirical question. In addition, it would be interesting to test a probabilistic mixture model of the BNU and NUB on a new data set.

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