• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.18 no.3
• /
• pp.59-88
• /
• 2008

Digital Convergence means integration between industry, technology, and contents, and in marketing, it usually comes with creation of new types of product and service under the base of digital technology as digitalization progress in electro-communication industries including telecommunication, home appliance, and computer industries. One can see digital convergence not only in instruments such as PC, AV appliances, cellular phone, but also in contents, network, service that are required in production, modification, distribution, re-production of information. Convergence in contents started around 1990. Convergence in network and service begins as broadcasting and telecommunication integrates and DMB(digital multimedia broadcasting), born in May, 2005 is the symbolic icon in this trend. There are some positive and negative expectations about DMB. The reason why two opposite expectations exist is that DMB does not come out from customer's need but from technology development. Therefore, customers might have hard time to interpret the real meaning of DMB. Time is quite critical to a high tech product, like DMB because another product with same function from different technology can replace the existing product within short period of time. If DMB does not positioning well to customer's mind quickly, another products like Wibro, IPTV, or HSPDA could replace it before it even spreads out. Therefore, positioning strategy is critical for success of DMB product. To make correct positioning strategy, one needs to understand how consumer interprets DMB and how consumer's interpretation can be changed via communication strategy. In this study, we try to investigate how consumer perceives a new product, like DMB and how AD strategy change consumer's perception. More specifically, the paper segment consumers into sub-groups based on their DMB perceptions and compare their characteristics in order to understand how they perceive DMB. And, expose them different printed ADs that have messages guiding consumer think DMB in specific ways, either cellular phone or personal TV. Research Question 1: Segment consumers according to perceptions about DMB and compare characteristics of segmentations. Research Question 2: Compare perceptions about DMB after AD that induces categorization of DMB in direction for each segment. If one understand and predict a direction in which consumer perceive a new product, firm can select target customers easily. We segment consumers according to their perception and analyze characteristics in order to find some variables that can influence perceptions, like prior experience, usage, or habit. And then, marketing people can use this variables to identify target customers and predict their perceptions. If one knows how customer's perception is changed via AD message, communication strategy could be constructed properly. Specially, information from segmented customers helps to develop efficient AD strategy for segment who has prior perception. Research framework consists of two measurements and one treatment, O1 X O2. First observation is for collecting information about consumer's perception and their characteristics. Based on first observation, the paper segment consumers into two groups, one group perceives DMB similar to Cellular phone and the other group perceives DMB similar to TV. And compare characteristics of two segments in order to find reason why they perceive DMB differently. Next, we expose two kinds of AD to subjects. One AD describes DMB as Cellular phone and the other Ad describes DMB as personal TV. When two ADs are exposed to subjects, consumers don't know their prior perception of DMB, in other words, which subject belongs 'similar-to-Cellular phone' segment or 'similar-to-TV' segment? However, we analyze the AD's effect differently for each segment. In research design, final observation is for investigating AD effect. Perception before AD is compared with perception after AD. Comparisons are made for each segment and for each AD. For the segment who perceives DMB similar to TV, AD that describes DMB as cellular phone could change the prior perception. And AD that describes DMB as personal TV, could enforce the prior perception. For data collection, subjects are selected from undergraduate students because they have basic knowledge about most digital equipments and have open attitude about a new product and media. Total number of subjects is 240. In order to measure perception about DMB, we use indirect measurement, comparison with other similar digital products. To select similar digital products, we pre-survey students and then finally select PDA, Car-TV, Cellular Phone, MP3 player, TV, and PSP. Quasi experiment is done at several classes under instructor's allowance. After brief introduction, prior knowledge, awareness, and usage about DMB as well as other digital instruments is asked and their similarities and perceived characteristics are measured. And then, two kinds of manipulated color-printed AD are distributed and similarities and perceived characteristics for DMB are re-measured. Finally purchase intension, AD attitude, manipulation check, and demographic variables are asked. Subjects are given small gift for participation. Stimuli are color-printed advertising. Their actual size is A4 and made after several pre-test from AD professionals and students. As results, consumers are segmented into two subgroups based on their perceptions of DMB. Similarity measure between DMB and cellular phone and similarity measure between DMB and TV are used to classify consumers. If subject whose first measure is less than the second measure, she is classified into segment A and segment A is characterized as they perceive DMB like TV. Otherwise, they are classified as segment B, who perceives DMB like cellular phone. Discriminant analysis on these groups with their characteristics of usage and attitude shows that Segment A knows much about DMB and uses a lot of digital instrument. Segment B, who thinks DMB as cellular phone doesn't know well about DMB and not familiar with other digital instruments. So, consumers with higher knowledge perceive DMB similar to TV because launching DMB advertising lead consumer think DMB as TV. Consumers with less interest on digital products don't know well about DMB AD and then think DMB as cellular phone. In order to investigate perceptions of DMB as well as other digital instruments, we apply Proxscal analysis, Multidimensional Scaling technique at SPSS statistical package. At first step, subjects are presented 21 pairs of 7 digital instruments and evaluate similarity judgments on 7 point scale. And for each segment, their similarity judgments are averaged and similarity matrix is made. Secondly, Proxscal analysis of segment A and B are done. At third stage, get similarity judgment between DMB and other digital instruments after AD exposure. Lastly, similarity judgments of group A-1, A-2, B-1, and B-2 are named as 'after DMB' and put them into matrix made at the first stage. Then apply Proxscal analysis on these matrixes and check the positional difference of DMB and after DMB. The results show that map of segment A, who perceives DMB similar as TV, shows that DMB position closer to TV than to Cellular phone as expected. Map of segment B, who perceive DMB similar as cellular phone shows that DMB position closer to Cellular phone than to TV as expected. Stress value and R-square is acceptable. And, change results after stimuli, manipulated Advertising show that AD makes DMB perception bent toward Cellular phone when Cellular phone-like AD is exposed, and that DMB positioning move towards Car-TV which is more personalized one when TV-like AD is exposed. It is true for both segment, A and B, consistently. Furthermore, the paper apply correspondence analysis to the same data and find almost the same results. The paper answers two main research questions. The first one is that perception about a new product is made mainly from prior experience. And the second one is that AD is effective in changing and enforcing perception. In addition to above, we extend perception change to purchase intention. Purchase intention is high when AD enforces original perception. AD that shows DMB like TV makes worst intention. This paper has limitations and issues to be pursed in near future. Methodologically, current methodology can't provide statistical test on the perceptual change, since classical MDS models, like Proxscal and correspondence analysis are not probability models. So, a new probability MDS model for testing hypothesis about configuration needs to be developed. Next, advertising message needs to be developed more rigorously from theoretical and managerial perspective. Also experimental procedure could be improved for more realistic data collection. For example, web-based experiment and real product stimuli and multimedia presentation could be employed. Or, one can display products together in simulated shop. In addition, demand and social desirability threats of internal validity could influence on the results. In order to handle the threats, results of the model-intended advertising and other "pseudo" advertising could be compared. Furthermore, one can try various level of innovativeness in order to check whether it make any different results (cf. Moon 2006). In addition, if one can create hypothetical product that is really innovative and new for research, it helps to make a vacant impression status and then to study how to form impression in more rigorous way.

• Korean Journal of Poultry Science
• /
• v.45 no.3
• /
• pp.219-228
• /
• 2018

This study was conducted twice to investigate egg purchase behavior and perception on animal welfare of Korean consumers. This study included women, who were the main decision makers and caretakers in the household, and men with one-person household. This survey was conducted with by the Computer Assisted Web Interview and Gang Survey methods. On the key considerations factor, the highest response rate was considered to be 'price', and the response rate of considering 'packing date' increased in the second survey. At a reasonable price based on 10 eggs, the response rate was the highest at 53.8% and 42.9% in both the first and second surveys and the appropriate price averages were 2,482 won and 2,132 won, respectively. The highest rate of purchase of egg consumers from 'Large Mart' followed by 'Medium sized supermarket' and 'Chain supermarket'. As for the awareness about animal welfare, the recognition ratio (73.5%) was higher in the result of the second survey than the first. The cognitive period of animal welfare was 59.0% before the insecticide egg crisis and 41.0% thereafter. Regarding whether or not they have ever seen an animal welfare certification mark and an animal welfare animal farm certification mark, 59.6% of respondents said that they saw it for the first time and 37.6% answered that they knew the animal welfare certification mark. On the animal welfare system, the 'free-range' response rate was the highest at 85.8%. The 'free-range' fit response decreased by 34.2%p, while the 'barn' and 'European type' fit response increased by 13.2%p and 24.1%p, respectively. The number of 'I have never seen' and 'I have ever eaten' responses to the recognition and eating experience of animal welfare certified eggs decreased while the number of those who answered 'Have ever seen' and 'Have eaten' increased. The answer of purchasing animal welfare certified eggs at department stores, organic farming cooperatives, and internet shopping malls was higher than that of buying conventional eggs. Of the total respondents, 92.0% were willing to purchase an animal welfare egg before the price was offered, but after offering the prices of animal welfare eggs, the intention to purchase was 62.7%, which was about 30%p lower than before. The reason for purchasing an animal welfare certified egg was the highest score of 71.0% for 'I think it is likely to be high in food safety', and 38.1% for 'I think the price is high' for lack of intention to purchase. In the sensory evaluation of animal welfare eggs, egg color and skin texture of conventional eggs were significantly higher than those of certified welfare eggs (P<0.05), and boiled eggs showed that egg whites of animal welfare certified eggs were more (P<0.05). As a result, the results of this study will contribute to the activation of the animal welfare certification system for laying hens by providing basic data on consumer awareness to animal welfare certified farmers.

• KIPS Transactions on Computer and Communication Systems
• /
• v.9 no.11
• /
• pp.281-290
• /
• 2020

With the spread of smartphones, services that want to use personalized data are increasing. In particular, healthcare-related services deal with a variety of data, and data visualization techniques are used to effectively show this. As data visualization techniques are used, interactions in visualization are also naturally emphasized. In the PC environment, since the interaction for data visualization is performed with a mouse, various filtering for data is provided. On the other hand, in the case of interaction in a mobile environment, the screen size is small and it is difficult to recognize whether or not the interaction is possible, so that only limited visualization provided by the app can be provided through a button touch method. In order to overcome the limitation of interaction in such a mobile environment, we intend to enable data visualization interactions through conversations with chatbots so that users can check individual data through various visualizations. To do this, it is necessary to convert the user's query into a query and retrieve the result data through the converted query in the database that is storing data periodically. There are many studies currently being done to convert natural language into queries, but research on converting user queries into queries based on visualization has not been done yet. Therefore, in this paper, we will focus on query generation in a situation where a data visualization technique has been determined in advance. Supported interactions are filtering on task x-axis values and comparison between two groups. The test scenario utilized data on the number of steps, and filtering for the x-axis period was shown as a bar graph, and a comparison between the two groups was shown as a line graph. In order to develop a natural language processing model that can receive requested information through visualization, about 15,800 training data were collected through a survey of 1,000 people. As a result of algorithm development and performance evaluation, about 89% accuracy in classification model and 99% accuracy in query generation model was obtained.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.22 no.3
• /
• pp.71-89
• /
• 2016

Sentiment analysis is used for identifying emotions or sentiments embedded in the user generated data such as customer reviews from blogs, social network services, and so on. Various research fields such as computer science and business management can take advantage of this feature to analyze customer-generated opinions. In previous studies, the star rating of a review is regarded as the same as sentiment embedded in the text. However, it does not always correspond to the sentiment polarity. Due to this supposition, previous studies have some limitations in their accuracy. To solve this issue, the present study uses a supervised sentiment classification model to measure a more accurate sentiment polarity. This study aims to propose an advanced sentiment classifier and to discover the correlation between movie reviews and box-office success. The advanced sentiment classifier is based on two supervised machine learning techniques, the Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Feedforward Neural Network (FNN). The sentiment scores of the movie reviews are measured by the sentiment classifier and are analyzed by statistical correlations between movie reviews and box-office success. Movie reviews are collected along with a star-rate. The dataset used in this study consists of 1,258,538 reviews from 175 films gathered from Naver Movie website (movie.naver.com). The results show that the proposed sentiment classifier outperforms Naive Bayes (NB) classifier as its accuracy is about 6% higher than NB. Furthermore, the results indicate that there are positive correlations between the star-rate and the number of audiences, which can be regarded as the box-office success of a movie. The study also shows that there is the mild, positive correlation between the sentiment scores estimated by the classifier and the number of audiences. To verify the applicability of the sentiment scores, an independent sample t-test was conducted. For this, the movies were divided into two groups using the average of sentiment scores. The two groups are significantly different in terms of the star-rated scores.

• The Journal of Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education
• /
• v.3
• /
• pp.99-116
• /
• 1997

In response of the increasing demand for professional degree in nursing, some university in Korea offers RN-BSN program for R. N. from diploma in nursing. However, RN-BSN program in Korea is in formative period. Therefore, the purpose of this survey study is for the comparative analysis of RN-BSN curriculum in Korea and U.S.A. In this study, subjects consisted of 18 department of nursing in university and 5 RN-BSN programs in Korea and 18 department of nursing in university and 12 RN-BSN programs in U.S.A. For earn the degree of Bachelor of Science in Nursing, the student earns 134 of mean credits in U.S.A., whereas 150.3 of mean credits in Korea. The mean credit for clinical pratice is 30.1 in U.S.A., whereas 23.9 in Korea. Students are assigned to individually planned clinical experiences under the direction of a preceptor in U.S.A. In RN-BSN program, total mean credits through lecture and clinical practice for earn the degree of BSN is 35.5(lecture : 27.7, practice ; 7.8)in U.S.A., whereas,48.1 (lecture;42.1, practice;6.0) in Korea. RN-BSN program can be taken on a full-or-part time basis in U.S.A., whereas didn't in Korea. Especially, emphasis is place on the advanced nursing practicum that focus on the role of the professional nurse in providing health care to individuals, families, and groups in community setting in U.S.A. 27.7 of mean credits was earned through lecture in U.S.A., whereas 42.1 of mean credits in Korea. It means that RN-BSN program in Korea is the lesser development in teaching method and appraisal method than in U.S.A. Students of RN-BSN program in U.S.A. can earns credit through CLEP, NLN achievement test, portfolio review session etc as well as lecture. Therefore, the authors suggests some recommendations for the development of curriculum of RN-BSN program in Korea based on comparative analysis of RN-BSN curricula in U.S.A. and Korea. 1. The curriculum of RN-BSN Program in nursing was required to do some alterations. Nursing care, today, is complex and ever changing. According to change of public need, RN-BSN curriculum intensified primary care program in community setting, geriatric nursing, marketing skill, computer language. 2. The various and new methods of earning credit should be developed. That is, the students will earn credits through the transfer of previous nursing college credits, accredited examination of university, advanced placement examination, portfolio review session, case study, report, self-directed learning and so on. Flexible teaching place should ile offered. 3. Flexible teaching place should be offered. The RN-BSN curriculum should accommodate each RN student's geographical needs and school/work schedule. Therefore, the university should search a variety of teaching places and the RN students can obtain their degrees comfortably throughout the teaching place such as lecture room inside the health care agency and establishment of the branch school in each student's residence area. 4. The RN-BSN program should offer a long distance education to place-bound RN student in many parts of Korea. That is, from the main office of university, the RN-BSN courses are delivered to many areas by Internet, EdNet (satellite telecommunication) and other non-traditional methods. 5. For allowing RN student to take nursing courses, program length should be various, depending upon the student's study/work schedule. That is, the various term systems such as semester, three terms, quarter systems and the student's status like full time or part time should be considered. Therefore, the student can take advantage of the many other educational and professional opportunities, making them available during the school year.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
• /
• v.45 no.3
• /
• pp.343-354
• /
• 2003

Simulation studies were carried out to investigate the responses of selection for three carcass traits (longissimus muscle area: EMA, fat thickness: BF, and marbling score: MS) based on either adjusted phenotypes (APH) or estimated breeding values (EBV) in multivariate animal model with different breeding schemes. Selection responses were estimated and compared on six different models with respect to breeding schemes using either carcass measurements or real time ultrasonic (RTU) scans generated by Monte Carlo computer simulation supporting closed breeding population. From the base population with 100 sires and 2000 dams, 20 sires and 1000 dams by each generation were selected by either APH or EBV for 10 generations. Relative economic weights were equal of three traits as EMA(1): BF(－1) : MS(1) for standardized either APH or EBV. For first two models which were similarly designed with current progeny-test program in Korean cattle, three carcass traits with records either only on male progenies (Model 1) or on male and female progenies (Model 2) were used for selecting breeding stocks. Subsequently, generation intervals on males were assumed as 6${\sim}$10 years in these two models. The other two models were designed with tools of selection by RTU rather than carcass measurements with genetic correlations of 0.81${\sim}$0.97 between RTU and corresponding carcass traits in addition to whether with records (Model 4) or without records (Model 3) on female. In these cases, generation intervals on males were assumed as 2${\sim}$4 years. The remaining last two models were designed as similar with Models 3 and 4 except genetic correlations of 0.63${\sim}$0.68 between RTU and corresponding carcass traits with records (Model 6) and without records (Model 5) on females. The results from 10 replicates on each model and selecting methods suggested that responses indirect selection for carcass traits in Model 4 were 1.66${\sim}$2.44 times efficient rather than those in Model 1. Otherwise, in Model 6 with assuming moderate genetic correlations, those efficiencies were 1.18${\sim}$2.08 times with comparing to responses in Model 1. However, selection response for marbling score was the smallest among three carcass traits because of small variation of measurements. From these results, this study suggested that indirect selection using RTU technology for improving high meat qualities in Korean cattle would be valuable with modifying measuring rules of marbling score forward to large variation or modifying relative economic weight for selection.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.21 no.3
• /
• pp.53-77
• /
• 2015

Korea has witnessed an increasing number of domestic patent applications, but a majority of them are not utilized to their maximum potential but end up becoming obsolete. According to the 2012 National Congress' Inspection of Administration, about 73% of patents possessed by universities and public-funded research institutions failed to lead to creating social values, but remain latent. One of the main problem of this issue is that patent creators such as individual researcher, university, or research institution lack abilities to commercialize their patents into viable businesses with those enterprises that are in need of them. Also, for enterprises side, it is hard to find the appropriate patents by searching keywords on all such occasions. This system proposes a patent recommendation system that can identify and recommend intellectual rights appropriate to users' interested fields among a rapidly accumulating number of patent assets in a more easy and efficient manner. The proposed system extracts core contents and technology sectors from the existing pool of patents, and combines it with secondary social knowledge, which derives from tags information created by users, in order to find the best patents recommended for users. That is to say, in an early stage where there is no accumulated tag information, the recommendation is done by utilizing content characteristics, which are identified through an analysis of key words contained in such parameters as 'Title of Invention' and 'Claim' among the various patent attributes. In order to do this, the suggested system extracts only nouns from patents and assigns a weight to each noun according to the importance of it in all patents by performing TF-IDF analysis. After that, it finds patents which have similar weights with preferred patents by a user. In this paper, this similarity is called a "Domain Similarity". Next, the suggested system extract technology sector's characteristics from patent document by analyzing the international technology classification code (International Patent Classification, IPC). Every patents have more than one IPC, and each user can attach more than one tag to the patents they like. Thus, each user has a set of IPC codes included in tagged patents. The suggested system manages this IPC set to analyze technology preference of each user and find the well-fitted patents for them. In order to do this, the suggeted system calcuates a 'Technology_Similarity' between a set of IPC codes and IPC codes contained in all other patents. After that, when the tag information of multiple users are accumulated, the system expands the recommendations in consideration of other users' social tag information relating to the patent that is tagged by a concerned user. The similarity between tag information of perferred 'patents by user and other patents are called a 'Social Simialrity' in this paper. Lastly, a 'Total Similarity' are calculated by adding these three differenent similarites and patents having the highest 'Total Similarity' are recommended to each user. The suggested system are applied to a total of 1,638 korean patents obtained from the Korea Industrial Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS) run by the Korea Intellectual Property Office. However, since this original dataset does not include tag information, we create virtual tag information and utilized this to construct the semi-virtual dataset. The proposed recommendation algorithm was implemented with JAVA, a computer programming language, and a prototype graphic user interface was also designed for this study. As the proposed system did not have dependent variables and uses virtual data, it is impossible to verify the recommendation system with a statistical method. Therefore, the study uses a scenario test method to verify the operational feasibility and recommendation effectiveness of the system. The results of this study are expected to improve the possibility of matching promising patents with the best suitable businesses. It is assumed that users' experiential knowledge can be accumulated, managed, and utilized in the As-Is patent system, which currently only manages standardized patent information.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
• /
• v.33 no.4
• /
• pp.167-176
• /
• 2022

Adaptive optics (AO) systems compensate for atmospheric disturbance, especially phase distortion, by introducing counter-wavefront deformation calculated from real-time wavefront sensing or prediction. Because AO system implementations are time-consuming and costly, it is highly desirable to estimate the system's performance during the development of the AO system or its parts. Among several techniques, we mostly apply statistical analysis, computational simulation, and optical-bench tests. Statistical analysis estimates performance based on the sum of performance variances due to all design parameters, but ignores any correlation between them. Computational simulation models every part of an adaptive optics system, including atmospheric disturbance and a closed loop between wavefront sensor and deformable mirror, as close as possible to reality, but there are still some differences between simulation models and reality. The optical-bench test implements an almost identical AO system on an optical bench, to confirm the predictions of the previous methods. We are currently developing an AO system for a 1.6-m ground telescope using a deformable mirror that was recently developed in South Korea. This paper reports the results of the statistical analysis and computer simulation for the system's design and confirmation. For the analysis, we apply the Strehl ratio as the performance criterion, and the median seeing conditions at the Bohyun observatory in Korea. The statistical analysis predicts a Strehl ratio of 0.31. The simulation method similarly reports a slightly larger value of 0.32. During the study, the simulation method exhibits run-to-run variation due to the random nature of atmospheric disturbance, which converges when the simulation time is longer than 0.9 seconds, i.e., approximately 240 times the critical time constant of the applied atmospheric disturbance.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.1-25
• /
• 2020

In this paper, we suggest an application system architecture which provides accurate, fast and efficient automatic gasometer reading function. The system captures gasometer image using mobile device camera, transmits the image to a cloud server on top of private LTE network, and analyzes the image to extract character information of device ID and gas usage amount by selective optical character recognition based on deep learning technology. In general, there are many types of character in an image and optical character recognition technology extracts all character information in an image. But some applications need to ignore non-of-interest types of character and only have to focus on some specific types of characters. For an example of the application, automatic gasometer reading system only need to extract device ID and gas usage amount character information from gasometer images to send bill to users. Non-of-interest character strings, such as device type, manufacturer, manufacturing date, specification and etc., are not valuable information to the application. Thus, the application have to analyze point of interest region and specific types of characters to extract valuable information only. We adopted CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) based object detection and CRNN (Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network) technology for selective optical character recognition which only analyze point of interest region for selective character information extraction. We build up 3 neural networks for the application system. The first is a convolutional neural network which detects point of interest region of gas usage amount and device ID information character strings, the second is another convolutional neural network which transforms spatial information of point of interest region to spatial sequential feature vectors, and the third is bi-directional long short term memory network which converts spatial sequential information to character strings using time-series analysis mapping from feature vectors to character strings. In this research, point of interest character strings are device ID and gas usage amount. Device ID consists of 12 arabic character strings and gas usage amount consists of 4 ~ 5 arabic character strings. All system components are implemented in Amazon Web Service Cloud with Intel Zeon E5-2686 v4 CPU and NVidia TESLA V100 GPU. The system architecture adopts master-lave processing structure for efficient and fast parallel processing coping with about 700,000 requests per day. Mobile device captures gasometer image and transmits to master process in AWS cloud. Master process runs on Intel Zeon CPU and pushes reading request from mobile device to an input queue with FIFO (First In First Out) structure. Slave process consists of 3 types of deep neural networks which conduct character recognition process and runs on NVidia GPU module. Slave process is always polling the input queue to get recognition request. If there are some requests from master process in the input queue, slave process converts the image in the input queue to device ID character string, gas usage amount character string and position information of the strings, returns the information to output queue, and switch to idle mode to poll the input queue. Master process gets final information form the output queue and delivers the information to the mobile device. We used total 27,120 gasometer images for training, validation and testing of 3 types of deep neural network. 22,985 images were used for training and validation, 4,135 images were used for testing. We randomly splitted 22,985 images with 8:2 ratio for training and validation respectively for each training epoch. 4,135 test image were categorized into 5 types (Normal, noise, reflex, scale and slant). Normal data is clean image data, noise means image with noise signal, relfex means image with light reflection in gasometer region, scale means images with small object size due to long-distance capturing and slant means images which is not horizontally flat. Final character string recognition accuracies for device ID and gas usage amount of normal data are 0.960 and 0.864 respectively.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.1-29
• /
• 2007

The flow theory becomes one of the most important frameworks in the internet research arena. Hoffman and Novak proposed a hierarchical flow model showing the antecedents and outcomes of flow and the relationship among these variables in the hyper-media computer circumstances (Hoffman and Novak 1996). This model was further tested after their initial research (Novak, Hoffman, and Yung 2000). At their paper, Hoffman and Novak explained that the balance of challenge and skill leads to flow which means the positive optimal state of mind (Hoffman and Novak 1996). An imbalance between challenge and skill, leads to negative states of mind like anxiety, boredom, apathy (Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi 1988). Almost all research on the flow 4-channel model have been focusingon flow, the positive state of mind (Ellis, Voelkl, and Morris 1994 Mathwick and Rigdon 2004). However, it also needs to examine the formation of the negative states of minds and their outcomes. Flow researchers explain play or playfulness as antecedents or the early state of flow. However, play has been regarded as a distinct concept from flow in the flow literatures (Hoffman and Novak 1996; Novak, Hoffman, and Yung 2000). Mathwick and Rigdon discovered the influences of challenge and skill on play; they also observed the influence of play on web-loyalty and brand loyalty (Mathwick and Rigdon 2004). Unfortunately, they did not go so far as to test the influences of play on state of mind. This study focuses on the relationships between state of mind in the flow 4-channel model and play. Early research has attempted to hypothetically explain state of mind in flow theory, but has not been tested except flow until now. Also the importance of play has been emphasized in the flow theory, but has not been tested in the flow 4-channel model context. This researcher attempts to analyze the relationships among state of mind, skill of play, challenge, state of mind and web loyalty. For this objective, I developed a measure for state of mind and defined the concept of play as a trait. Then, the influences of challenge and skill on the state of mind and play under on-line shopping conditions were tested. Also the influences of play on state of mind were tested and those of flow and play on web loyalty were highlighted. 294 undergraduate students participated in this research survey. They were asked to respond about their perceptions of challenge, skill, state of mind, play, and web-loyalty to on-line shopping mall. Respondents were restricted to students who bought products on-line in a month. In case of buying products at two or more on-line shopping malls, they asked to respond about the shopping mall where they bought the most important one. Construct validity, discriminant validity, and convergent validity were used to check the measurement validations. Also, Cronbach's alpha was used to check scale reliability. A series of exploratory factor analyses was conducted. This researcher conducted confirmatory factor analyses to assess the validity of measurements. All items loaded significantly on their respective constructs. Also, all reliabilities were greater than.70. Chi-square difference tests and goodness of fit tests supported discriminant and convergent validity. The results of clustering and ANOVA showed that high challenge and high skill leaded to flow, low challenge and high skill leaded to boredom, and low challenge and low skill leaded to apathy. But, it was different from my expectation that high challenge and low skill didnot lead to anxiety but leaded to apathy. The results also showed that high challenge and high skill, and high challenge and low skill leaded to the highest play. Low challenge leaded to low play. 4 Structural Equation Models were built by flow, anxiety, boredom, apathy for analyzing not only the impact of play on state of mind and web-loyalty, but also that of state of mind on web-loyalty. According the analyses results of these models, play impacted flow and web-loyalty positively, but impacted anxiety, boredom, and apathy negatively. Results also showed that flow impacted web-loyalty positively, but anxiety, boredom, and apathy impacted web-loyalty negatively. The interpretations and implications of the test results of the hypotheses are as follows. First, respondents belonging to different clusters based on challenge and skill level experienced different states of mind such as flow, anxiety, boredom, apathy. The low challenge and low skill group felt the highest anxiety and apathy. It could be interpreted that this group feeling high anxiety or fear, then avoided attempts to shop on-line. Second, it was found that higher challenge leads to higher levels of play. Test results show that the play level of the high challenge and low skill group (anxiety group) was higher than that of the high challenge and high skill group (flow group). However, this was not significant. Third, play positively impacted flow and negatively impacted boredom. The negative impacts on anxiety and apathy were not significant. This means that the combination of challenge and skill creates different results. Forth, play and flow positively impacted web-loyalty, but anxiety, boredom, apathy had negative impacts. The effect of play on web-loyalty was stronger in case of anxiety, boredom, apathy group than fl ow group. These results show that challenge and skill influences state of mind and play. Results also demonstrate how play and flow influence web-loyalty. It implies that state of mind and play should be the core marketing variables in internet marketing. The flow theory has been focusing on flow and on the positive outcomes of flow experiences. But, this research shows that lots of consumers experience the negative state of mind rather than flow state in the internet shopping circumstance. Results show that the negative state of mind leads to low or negative web-loyalty. Play can have an important role with the web-loyalty when consumers have the negative state of mind. Results of structural equation model analyses show that play influences web-loyalty positively, even though consumers may be in the negative state of mind. This research found the impacts of challenge and skill on state of mind in the flow 4-channel model, not only flow but also anxiety, boredom, apathy. Also, it highlighted the role of play in the flow 4-channel model context and impacts on web-loyalty. However, tests show a few different results from hypothetical expectations such as the highest anxiety level of apathy group and insignificant impacts of play on anxiety and apathy. Further research needs to replicate this research and/or to compare 3-channel model with 4-channel model.