• Journal of Ginseng Culture
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• v.1
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• pp.11-27
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• 2019

The Jurchens, the ancestors of the Qing Manchus, had lived scattered in Manchuria and had made their living mostly on ginseng gathering and animal hunting. Their residential areas, rich with deep forest and numerous rivers, provided great habitation for all kinds of flora and fauna, but not so proper for agriculture. Based on their activities of foraging and hunting, the Jurchens developed a unique social organization that was later transformed into the Banner System, the most distinctive Qing military institution. By the sixteenth century, that the external trade brought considerable changes to Jurchen society. A huge amount of foreign silver, imported from Japan and South America to China, first invigorated commercial economy in China proper, and later caused a huge influence on Ming frontier regions, including Manchuria. In the late sixteenth century when the tradition of foraging and hunting encountered with silver economy, the Jurchen tribes became unified after years of competition and transformed themselves into the Manchus to build the Qing empire in 1636. In 1644 the Manchus succeeded in conquering the China Proper and moved into Beijing. Even after that, the Manchu imperial court never forgot the value of Manchurii ginseng; instead, they paid great efforts to monopolize this profitable root. Until the late seventeenth century, the Qing court used the Banner System to manage Manchurian ginseng. The banner soldiers stationed in Manchuria checked unauthorized civilian entrances in this frontier and protected its ginseng producing mountains from the Han Chinese people. All the process of ginseng gathering was managed by the institutions under the direct control of the imperial court, such as the Imperial Household Department, the Butha Ula Office, and the Three Upper Banner in Shengjing. Banner soldiers were dispatched to the given mountains, collect the given amount of ginseng, and send them to the imperial court in Beijing. The state monopoly of ginseng was maintained throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries under the principle that Manchuria and its natural resources should be guarded from civilian encroachment. At the same time, Manchurian ginseng was considered as an important source of state revenue. The imperial court and financial bureau wanted to collect ginseng as much as they needed. By the late seventeenth century as the ginseng management by the banner soldiers failed in securing the ginseng tax, the Qing court began to invite civil merchants to ginseng business. During the eighteenth century the Qing ginseng policy became more dependent on civil merchants, both their money and management. In 1853 the Qing finally ended the ginseng monopoly, but it was before the early eighteenth century that wealthy merchants hired ginseng gatherers and paid ginseng tax to the state. The Qing monopoly of ginseng was in fact maintained by the active participation of civil merchants in the ginseng business.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.67-83
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• 2018

The Korean film industry with significant increase every year exceeded the number of cumulative audiences of 200 million people in 2013 finally. However, starting from 2015 the Korean film industry entered a period of low growth and experienced a negative growth after all in 2016. To overcome such difficulty, stakeholders like production company, distribution company, multiplex have attempted to maximize the market returns using strategies of predicting change of market and of responding to such market change immediately. Since a film is classified as one of experiential products, it is not easy to predict a box office record and the initial number of audiences before the film is released. And also, the number of audiences fluctuates with a variety of factors after the film is released. So, the production company and distribution company try to be guaranteed the number of screens at the opining time of a newly released by multiplex chains. However, the multiplex chains tend to open the screening schedule during only a week and then determine the number of screening of the forthcoming week based on the box office record and the evaluation of audiences. Many previous researches have conducted to deal with the prediction of box office records of films. In the early stage, the researches attempted to identify factors affecting the box office record. And nowadays, many studies have tried to apply various analytic techniques to the factors identified previously in order to improve the accuracy of prediction and to explain the effect of each factor instead of identifying new factors affecting the box office record. However, most of previous researches have limitations in that they used the total number of audiences from the opening to the end as a target variable, and this makes it difficult to predict and respond to the demand of market which changes dynamically. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to predict the weekly number of audiences of a newly released film so that the stakeholder can flexibly and elastically respond to the change of the number of audiences in the film. To that end, we considered the factors used in the previous studies affecting box office and developed new factors not used in previous studies such as the order of opening of movies, dynamics of sales. Along with the comprehensive factors, we used the machine learning method such as Random Forest, Multi Layer Perception, Support Vector Machine, and Naive Bays, to predict the number of cumulative visitors from the first week after a film release to the third week. At the point of the first and the second week, we predicted the cumulative number of visitors of the forthcoming week for a released film. And at the point of the third week, we predict the total number of visitors of the film. In addition, we predicted the total number of cumulative visitors also at the point of the both first week and second week using the same factors. As a result, we found the accuracy of predicting the number of visitors at the forthcoming week was higher than that of predicting the total number of them in all of three weeks, and also the accuracy of the Random Forest was the highest among the machine learning methods we used. This study has implications in that this study 1) considered various factors comprehensively which affect the box office record and merely addressed by other previous researches such as the weekly rating of audiences after release, the weekly rank of the film after release, and the weekly sales share after release, and 2) tried to predict and respond to the demand of market which changes dynamically by suggesting models which predicts the weekly number of audiences of newly released films so that the stakeholders can flexibly and elastically respond to the change of the number of audiences in the film.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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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.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.262-268
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• 2010

Virtual communities (VCs) have developed rapidly, with more and more people participating in them to exchange information and opinions. A virtual community is a group of people who may or may not meet one another face to face, and who exchange words and ideas through the mediation of computer bulletin boards and networks. A business-to-consumer virtual community (B2CVC) is a commercial group that creates a trustworthy environment intended to motivate consumers to be more willing to buy from an online store. B2CVCs create a social atmosphere through information contribution such as recommendations, reviews, and ratings of buyers and sellers. Although the importance of B2CVCs has been recognized, few studies have been conducted to examine members' word-of-mouth behavior within these communities. This study proposes a model of involvement, statistics, trust, "stickiness," and word-of-mouth in a B2CVC and explores the relationships among these elements based on empirical data. The objectives are threefold: (i) to empirically test a B2CVC model that integrates measures of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors; (ii) to better understand the nature of these relationships, specifically through word-of-mouth as a measure of revenue generation; and (iii) to better understand the role of stickiness of B2CVC in CRM marketing. The model incorporates three key elements concerning community members: (i) their beliefs, measured in terms of their involvement assessment; (ii) their attitudes, measured in terms of their satisfaction and trust; and, (iii) their behavior, measured in terms of site stickiness and their word-of-mouth. Involvement is considered the motivation for consumers to participate in a virtual community. For B2CVC members, information searching and posting have been proposed as the main purpose for their involvement. Satisfaction has been reviewed as an important indicator of a member's overall community evaluation, and conceptualized by different levels of member interactions with their VC. The formation and expansion of a VC depends on the willingness of members to share information and services. Researchers have found that trust is a core component facilitating the anonymous interaction in VCs and e-commerce, and therefore trust-building in VCs has been a common research topic. It is clear that the success of a B2CVC depends on the stickiness of its members to enhance purchasing potential. Opinions communicated and information exchanged between members may represent a type of written word-of-mouth. Therefore, word-of-mouth is one of the primary factors driving the diffusion of B2CVCs across the Internet. Figure 1 presents the research model and hypotheses. The model was tested through the implementation of an online survey of CTrip Travel VC members. A total of 243 collected questionnaires was reduced to 204 usable questionnaires through an empirical process of data cleaning. The study's hypotheses examined the extent to which involvement, satisfaction, and trust influence B2CVC stickiness and members' word-of-mouth. Structural Equation Modeling tested the hypotheses in the analysis, and the structural model fit indices were within accepted thresholds: ${\chi}^2^$/df was 2.76, NFI was .904, IFI was .931, CFI was .930, and RMSEA was .017. Results indicated that involvement has a significant influence on satisfaction (p<0.001, ${\beta}$=0.809). The proportion of variance in satisfaction explained by members' involvement was over half (adjusted $R^2$=0.654), reflecting a strong association. The effect of involvement on trust was also statistically significant (p<0.001, ${\beta}$=0.751), with 57 percent of the variance in trust explained by involvement (adjusted $R^2$=0.563). When the construct "stickiness" was treated as a dependent variable, the proportion of variance explained by the variables of trust and satisfaction was relatively low (adjusted $R^2$=0.331). Satisfaction did have a significant influence on stickiness, with ${\beta}$=0.514. However, unexpectedly, the influence of trust was not even significant (p=0.231, t=1.197), rejecting that proposed hypothesis. The importance of stickiness in the model was more significant because of its effect on e-WOM with ${\beta}$=0.920 (p<0.001). Here, the measures of Stickiness explain over eighty of the variance in e-WOM (Adjusted $R^2$=0.846). Overall, the results of the study supported the hypothesized relationships between members' involvement in a B2CVC and their satisfaction with and trust of it. However, trust, as a traditional measure in behavioral models, has no significant influence on stickiness in the B2CVC environment. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on B2CVCs, specifically addressing gaps in the academic research by integrating measures of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in one model. The results provide additional insights to behavioral factors in a B2CVC environment, helping to sort out relationships between traditional measures and relatively new measures. For practitioners, the identification of factors, such as member involvement, that strongly influence B2CVC member satisfaction can help focus technological resources in key areas. Global e-marketers can develop marketing strategies directly targeting B2CVC members. In the global tourism business, they can target Chinese members of a B2CVC by providing special discounts for active community members or developing early adopter programs to encourage stickiness in the community. Future studies are called for, and more sophisticated modeling, to expand the measurement of B2CVC member behavior and to conduct experiments across industries, communities, and cultures.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.119-138
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• 2016

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

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.30 no.12 s.159
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• pp.1697-1707
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• 2006

Relentless advances in information technology are constantly transforming market dynamics of the retail industry. RFID is an emerging innovative technology that can reduce labor costs, improve inventory control and increase sales by effective business processes. Apparel retailers need to recognize the benefits of RFID and identify critical success factors. By focusing on apparel retailers, this study attempts (1) to identify the reality of RFID associated with benefits; and (2) to prospect the implementation of RFID in apparel retailing. We conducted a focus group interview with selected six panels who were experts of retail industry in the United States to obtain data regarding RFID attributes. Content analysis was used to generate related excerpts and classify 31 attributes of RFID benefits from the meaningful 173 responses. For experience of RFID, retailers were familiar with RFID technology and expressed the belief that RFID basically would support an existing retail system for speed to markets. However, retailers addressed the level of experience with RFID technology that they were still in the early adoption stage among few innovative companies. The content analysis identified five dimensions of RFID benefits for apparel retailing: Visibility and Velocity, Revenue Enhancement, Customer Service, Security, and Employee Productivity. This result lends support to the belief that RFID has a significant potential to streamline supply chain management, store operation and customer service for apparel retailing. This study provides intellectual and managerial implications far practitioners and researchers by postulating the effective use of RFID in the apparel retail industry.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.73-82
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• 2011

This study presents an effective and distinctive marketing strategy through the implementation of the aesthetic art marketing communication technique of storytelling. The reason applying art to marketing is effective is that it gives "class" and aesthetic beauty to the brand's image, which will lead to an increase in revenue and loyalty of consumers. The story stands in for the brand's subject of "desire." Luxury brand customers not only consume high-quality products, require the utmost in service, and value of the brand, they also appreciate the story the brand is telling. The story, combined with art, is called art marketing communication; it makes the brand more unique through its enhanced visual elements. The study discusses art collaboration, art exhibition, a transforming architecture project, art advertisement, a flagship store, and a human resource training center. Based on the "desire," I adopted the element and principle of storytelling. By visualizing the brand with a symbol, the company is able to relate to consumers' sentimentality. Through storytelling art marketing communication, and the strategy using relevance of brand and artist's popularity, the research shows efficient art marketing influences to the brand's image. The results of the research indicate that by using adequate art marketing communication that best reflects the identity and story of the luxury brand, it produces great results; the research also demonstrated, in various ways, that art marketing will succeed. The case showed the following outcomes. First, consumers have a tendency to choose a brand that is associated with an empathizing story. World renowned brands see through the market's "desires" for unique stories, and they also provide the ability to amuse consumers. The story in a product will become an important competitive element in future markets. Second, the art marketing communication applying a story rendered a brand with distinction. The most effective art marketing communications are art collaboration, art exhibition, locomotive architecture project, and others that are adopted as various means. Third, the brand's products were considered as an art piece, which led to not only strengthening the loyalty of consumers but also an increase in sales. In addition, the company could sustain a premium price for the goods sold. By adapting art to a brand's tradition, an innovative and creative new product provides consumer satisfaction, and producing goods in limited editions creates enthusiastic collectors. Fourth, this study suggests an abridged report, implication, limitation of the study, and directions for further research. Referring to the case for the adaptation of luxury brands, efficient art marketing strategies considering Korean company brand and efficiently study preceding Korean company brand art marketing strategy could be proposed.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.22-33
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• 2019

The government has steadily revised and developed laws and systems for activating remodeling of apartments in response to the problems of aged apartments. However, despite such efforts, remodeling has yet to be activated. For many reasons, this study noted that there were no tools for reasonable profitability judgements and decision making in the preliminary stages of the remodeling project. Thus, the feasibility evaluation model was developed. Generally, the profitability judgements are made after the conceptual design. However, decisions to drive remodeling projects are made at the preliminary stage. So a feasibility evaluation model is required at the preliminary stage. Accordingly, In this study, a feasibility evaluation model was developed for determining preliminary stage profitability. Construction costs, business expenses, financial expenses, and generally sales revenue were calculated using the initial available information and remodeling variables derived through the existing cases. Through this process, we developed an algorithm that can give an overview of the return on investment. In addition, the preliminary stage feasibility evaluation model developed was applied to three cases to verify the applicability of the model. Although applied in three cases, the difference between the model's forecast and actual case values is less than 5%, which is considered highly applicable. If cases are expanded in the future, it will be a useful tool that can be used in actual work. The feasibility evaluation model developed in this study will support decision making by union members, and if the model is applied in different regions, it will be expected to help local governments to understand the size of possible remodeling projects.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.163-177
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• 2010

This study analyzes the economies of photovoltaic systems in an apartment complex of 1,185 households, in cases of feed-in tariff and subsidy for solar home program of the government. When including the revenue only from electricity sales, NPVs of subsidy and that of feed-in tariff are -560 million KRW and -87 million KRW respectively. With the avoided social cost included without the revenues from CERs, NPVs of subsidy and feed-in tariff are -556 million KRW and -84 million KRW respectively. With the revenues from CERs, NPV of subsidy is -526 million KRW and NPV of feed-in tariff is -54 million KRW. As results of sensitivity analysis based on the changes in capital costs and discount rates, while all scenarios with subsidy including the revenues from CERs are not commercially viable, all scenarios with feed-in tariff exclusive of the revenues from CERs are commercially viable when discount rate is less than 7.2% or capital cost is less than 6,840 thousand KRW/kW. In the cases that include the avoided social cost, while all scenarios with subsidy including the avoided social cost as well as the revenues from CERs are not commercially viable, all scenarios with feed-in tariff are commercially viable without the revenues from CERs when discount rate is less than 7.2% or capital cost is less than 6,856 thousand KRW/KW. The results indicate that the changes in discount rates do not influence the revenues from CERs, but the revenues from electricity sale. Considering that the number of apartment complex and the positive environmental and social benefits from PV system, government needs to promote its diffusion.