• Human Ecology Research
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• v.62 no.2
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• pp.261-278
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• 2024

This study aims to enhance the life satisfaction of the elderly population in South Korea by exploring their satisfaction levels and identifying influencing factors. Utilizing data from the 17th Korean Welfare Panel, which includes 6,260 individuals aged 65 and older, this study employs independent sample t-tests, one-way ANOVA, and hierarchical regression analysis. The results showed that, in general, the life satisfaction of the elderly population was somewhat lower than that of the general adult population in all areas, except for job satisfaction and satisfaction with housing. Key factors influencing life satisfaction among the elderly population include demographic characteristics (gender, age, economic activity, residence, education level), subjective health status factors, financial factors (disposable income, monthly living expenses), and psychological factors (depression, self-esteem). Notably, psychological factors, particularly self-esteem and depression, profoundly affect all life satisfaction domains. Enhancing life satisfaction necessitates fostering positive self-perception and capabilities in the elderly population, suggesting the need for programs focused on positive emotional experiences. Moreover, depression significantly reduces life satisfaction, underscoring the importance of policy interventions to address negative emotions in this demographic. This study is expected to provide basic data for establishing concrete and effective policies for improving the quality of life for the elderly population. Additionally, by highlighting the importance of positive psychological factors, it is anticipated that the study will offer a new direction for improving the life satisfaction of the elderly population.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.633-643
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• 2013

This study investigated the efficiency of university foodservice operations by analyzing the effect of consumer's perception towards university foodservice quality. University students in the Jeonnam area were surveyed and 571 out of 700 surveys were chosen (response rate: 97.0%). SPSS (ver. 20.0) was used to conduct descriptive analysis, factor analysis, reliability analysis, t-test, and multiple regression analysis. The results show that 21.9% of university students have never used the university foodservice, while 48.7% of university students have eaten there 1~2 times per week. The most common reasons reported for avoiding the university foodservice were a limited menu selection (51.5%) and an untasty food (45.8%). The perception of overall service quality at the university foodservice scored relatively low (3.01 points), compared with its importance (3.89 points). The food taste, menu variety, and quality of food ingredients are factors that require improvement for operational strategies by the importance-performance analysis (IPA). The food factors (taste, variety, and quality) among university foodservice qualities had a significantly positive effect on consumers' overall satisfaction (p<0.001), perceived value (p<0.01), intent to recommend (p<0.001), and intent to revisit (p<0.01). These result indicate that the university foodservice management should focus on developing food factors and strive to meet the needs of university students through continuous customer surveys.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.181-188
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• 2010

Consumer perception of processed food and restaurant food's nutrient labelling was surveyed. The subjects of this survey consisted of 1,507 parents, whose ages were 20-59 years old. The ratio of the respondents that have known nutrition labelling on processed foods was 89.8% and the ratio of whom have checked the nutrition labelling at their point of purchase was 72.3%. The nutrients which were considered important for nutrition labelling were fat (57.1%), calorie (56.3%) and sodium (49.0%). Also nutrient which were able to be recognized at a glance by the subjects were in the order of trans fat (62.1%), cholesterol (26.9%), calorie (23.9%) and sodium (21.0%). If restaurant menu's nutrient labelling be enacted, the answer rate that the menu's nutrition labelling may affect their menu choice is 90.6% of the respondents. Besides of the Fastfoods that are enforcement, restaurants of that customers want the menu to be labeled were 'pizza and chicken restaurants'. Nutrients that customers preferred to be labelled were calorie (62.0%), fat (60.3%) and sodium (50.9%).

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.103-117
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• 2022

The recent corporate economy, such as the COVID 19 pandemic that has spread all over the world since the beginning of 2020, the acceleration of the 4th industrial revolution, and supply chain management risks triggered by the US-China conflict and the Ukraine crisis, is more serious than ever before. CEOs who have started and managed small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are more concerned than ever about the sustainability of their businesses in this reality. Nevertheless, there were few empirical studies on the factors that influence the intention of SME CEOs to discontinue business. In this study, the perception of the business environment of SMEs (intensity of competition in key business areas, difficulty in manpower management), corporate competency (employee competency, company product or service competitiveness, supply chain and consumer relations, digital competency and technical expertise), and CEO's competency(trust between employees and the CEO, management competency and perceived health status of CEO) on CEO's intention to discontinue business was discussed. As a result of the study, the intensity of competition in the main business field, and the difficulty in manpower management had a positive (+) effect on the intention to discontinue the business, and the employee competency, product (service) competitiveness, digital competency of the company, and the CEO's Health status had a negative (-) effect on intention to discontinue business. The relationship between these influences was found in the order of CEO's health status, product competitiveness, employee competency, digital competency, competitive strength in the main business, and difficulty in manpower management. It was analyzed that supply chain and consumer relations, trust between employees and the CEO, and management capabilities did not significantly affect the intention to discontinue business. On the other hand, business confidence has a mediating effect between the intensity of competition in the main business field, the difficulty in manpower management, product or service competitiveness, digital competency, trust between employees and the CEO, and the management capability and intention to discontinue business was tested. This study had academic significance in that it empirically analyzed factors related to intention to discontinue business targeting small and medium-sized business CEOs. In practice, as it has been found that business environment awareness, corporate competency, managerial competency, and business confidence are factors that influence the intention to discontinue business, if an action ideas that can reinforce this part can be found, SMEs can achieve sustainable growth or it may help CEO find an meaningful exit.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.165-186
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• 2007

With the advent of a wide variety of Internet shopping malls, consumers can choose a best appealing shopping mall from among the Bricks-and-Clicks and Pure-Player malls. Pure-Players launched their operation grandiosely with the early stage of Internet use in 1995. However, after the burst of Dot-com company bubbles in 1997, Pure-Players introduce various types of business models to meet potential needs of consumers. While Pure-Players suffer skeptical views from market analysts as well as consumers, traditional offline companies learned important lessons from Dot-com companies collapse phenomena, and expanded their business channels into online in the name of Bricks-and-Clicks. Nowadays, Bricks-and-Clicks successfully establish in the market as one of reliable business partners among consumers. Therefore, it is no surprise that recent competitions between Bricks-and Clicks and Pure-Players become fiercer than ever to attract potential customers to their websites. In this situation, consumers can choose a shopping mall to their best satisfaction. Consumers can enjoy both offline and online options for shopping because Bricks-and Clicks provide both offline and online channels to consumers, which is compared with Pure-Players offering only online channel. Offline channel is unique in providing consumers with chances to touch and feel target products and services. Meanwhile, online channel is considered very viable and convenient shopping options for consumers. In this respect, it is easily assumed that consumers will show different online shopping behavior when they have to choose either Bricks-and-Clicks mall or Pure-Player mall for the sake of shopping. Remaining research issue in this case is how much consumers' schema would influence online shopping behavior between Bricks-and-Clicks and Pure-Players. Basically, schema is a framework for synthetic information recognition that individual consumers have and is very characteristic in that it focuses not on fragmentary facts but on the combination of various causes affecting results. Consumers' schema is closely represented by trust, structural assurance, and perceived relative advantage towards a specific type of shopping mall. In literature, there exist a lot of studies comparing Bricks-and-Clicks and Pure-Players. However, there is no study to pursue the analysis of consumer behaviors comparing Bricks-and Clicks and Pure-Players from the schema perspective. Therefore, this study aims to investigate this research gap. Empirical analysis is adopted by garnering valid questionnaires from 514 Internet shopping mall users. 237 were mainly using Bricks-and-Clicks for shopping, while 277 were found to visit Pure-Players for shopping. PLS was applied to analyze the survey data to verify the proposed research hypotheses. Findings from the empirical test results are as follows. First, consumers perceive more trust and relative advantage in Pure-Players, comparing with Bricks-and-Clicks. This result is against widely-accepted perception that Bricks-and-Clicks would be perceived by consumers as more trustworthy and relatively advantageous because they have offline reputation and stores. Therefore, it becomes more obvious that Internet is becoming daily necessaries, and consumers increasingly feel very comfortable in using the Internet for their own personal purposes. Second, consumers have firm faith in transaction safety, regardless Bricks-and-Clicks and Pure-Players. This seems due to the fact that most of shopping malls showing dubious transaction safety have no place in the market. In a nutshell, empirical results tell us that Pure-Players will grow very much in the future, to the extent that consumers perceive no difference in comparison with Bricks-and-Clicks. Besides, consumers' schema accumulated through trust and perceived relative advantage plays crucial role in determining consumer behavior.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.123-134
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• 2010

Considering the benefits for both consumers and suppliers, firms are taking advantage of the Internet as a medium to communicate with and sell products to their consumers. This trend makes the online shopping environment a growing field for both researchers and practitioners. This paper contributes by testing a model of online consumer behavior with websites varying in levels of hedonism. Unlike past studies, we included all three types of emotions (arousal, pleasure, and dominance) and flow into the model. In this study, we assumed that website interfaces, such as background colors, music, and fonts impact the three types of emotions at the initial exposure to the site (Mazaheri, Richard, and Laroche, 2011). In turn, these emotions influence flow and consumers' perceptions of the site atmospherics-perception of site informativeness, effectiveness, and entertainment. This assumption is consistent with Zajonc (1980) who argued that affective reactions are independent of perceptual and cognitive operations and can influence responses. We, then, propose that the perceptions of site atmospherics along with flow, influence customers' attitudes toward the website and toward the product, site involvement, and purchase intentions. In addition, we studied the moderating impact of the level of hedonism of websites on all the relationship in the model. Thus, the path coefficients were compared between "high" and "low" hedonic websites. We used 39 real websites from 12 product categories (8 services and 4 physical goods) to test the model. Among them, 20 were perceived as high hedonic and 19 as low hedonic by the respondents. The result of EQS 6.1 support the overall model: $\chi^2$=1787 (df=504), CFI=.994; RMSEA=.031. All the hypotheses were significant. In addition, the results of multi-groups analyses reveal several non-invariant structural paths between high and low hedonic website groups. The findings supported the model regarding the influence of the three types of emotions on customers' perceptions of site atmospherics, flow, and other customer behavior variables. It was found that pleasure strongly influenced site attitudes and perceptions of site entertainment. Arousal positively impacted the other two types of emotions, perceptions of site informativeness, and site involvement. Additionally, the influence of arousal on flow was found to be highly significant. The results suggested a strong association between dominance and customers' perceptions of site effectiveness. Dominance was also found to be associated with site attitudes and flow. Moreover, the findings suggested that site involvement and attitudes toward the product are the most important antecedents of purchase intentions. Site informativeness and flow also significantly influenced purchase intentions. The results of multi-group analysis supported the moderating impacts of hedonism of the websites. Compared to low (high) hedonic sites, the impacts of utilitarian (hedonic) attributes on other variables were stronger in high (low) hedonic websites. Among the three types of emotions, dominance (controlling feelings) effects were stronger in high hedonic sites and pleasure effects were stronger in low hedonic sites. Moreover, the impact of site informativeness was stronger for high hedonic websites compared to their low-hedonic counterparts. On the other hand, the influence of effectiveness of information on perceptions of site informativeness and the impact of site involvement on product attitudes were stronger for low hedonic websites than for high hedonic ones.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.92-99
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• 2017

People have become more interested in fiber intake due to the rise of noncommunicable diseases such as hyperlipemia and abdominal obesity. This study was carried out to develop dacquoise incorporating different amounts of rice bran dietary fiber (5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%). Dacquoise characteristics such as viscosity, specific volume, moisture content, color, and texture were measured. Consumer acceptance and check-all-that-apply on characteristics of dacquoise with rice bran dietary fiber were observed. Increasing amounts of rice bran dietary fiber resulted in increasing viscosity of batter as well as higher specific volume, lightness, and hardness of finished product. On the contrary, yellowness and redness of dacquoise increased as the amount of rice bran dietary fiber increased. While there was no effect of rice bran dietary fiber on moisture content (range of 26.53~25.35%). According to the consumer acceptance test, dacquoise with 5% of rice bran dietary fiber showed the highest liking score in color and overall acceptance (5.9 and 5, respectively). The findings from the principle component analysis of principle component (PC) 1 (71.04% explanation) showed that as rice bran dietary fiber increased, texture of the product got drier, and consumers described the product with 20% rice bran dietary fiber as cotton mouth and 5% rice bran dietary fiber as sticky. PC2 (16.54% explanation) demonstrated 5% and 10% rice bran dietary fiber, and dacquoise had nutty and soybean notes while 15% and 20% rice bran dietary fiber dacquoise had flour, bitter, and salty flavors. Based on these results, the optimum addition level of rice bran dietary fiber for dacquoise is 5%.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.3-34
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• 2013

This research, which was experimented by dividing tangible and intangible products, established the influence that affects recovery for consumers' complaint behavior and behavioral intention as per each different compensation program. In Experiment 1, the consumers, who experienced complaint behavior owing to company's mistake, have preferably recovered through the compensation program offered by the company. However, there was a significant difference in preference recovery between products that caused complaint behavior. According to the study result, the more clear preference recovery was shown in the case of purchasing laptop than the case of dining in family restaurant. Additionally, the consumers' emotion recovery was possible through compensation.; There was a emotion recovery disparity depending on product type between purchasing laptop case and dining in family restaurant case. The consumers, who experienced complaints, were only able to recover their preference, emotion, and behavioral intention through compensation of which recovery was greater in tangible product case than ordinary service. Meanwhile, there was no distinct difference between recovery compensation types even though the products were identical-type ones whereas it appeared that such tangible product which showed greater purchasing effort as laptop computer was more effective in stimulating emotion response. In Experiment 2, the purpose was to find out the difference between complaint behavior and its recovery process shown after purchase by Korean and Japanese college students, who have different consumer purchasing habits. The both consumers of the two countries, who experienced complaint behavior, demonstrated precise difference in preference recovery while the emotion and behavioral intention exhibited no disparity between the two consumer groups. In this experiment, it was learned that Korean college students were show-off purchase type consumers while on the other hand, the Japanese college students were famous product purchase type consumers. Thus, there was a clear difference in laptop computer purchase process and post-purchase evaluation between these two groups. In particular, the Korean college students had quicker preference recovery through compensation than the Japanese college students on account of their tendency to be consciousness of others. Nevertheless, there was no difference between the emotion recovery and re-purchase recovery and therefore, the compensation program for complaints was proven to affect the emotion and behavioral intention.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.239-250
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• 2020

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of the "contextualization" effect of web celebrity live broadcast on the e-commerce platform on consumers' perception of product value, risk and purchase intention. Live in this paper, using Taobao shopping consumers as the research object, the survey method, questionnaire survey is adopted, the form through the questionnaire and distributed network, a live in order to further validation of web celebrity effect of contextualized actual influence on consumer purchase intention, questionnaire design the Likert scale, seven and recycling questionnaire analysis using the statistical software SPSS 23.0 and AMOS 22.0 after processing the data. After determining the reliability and validity of the questionnaire, the exploratory factor analysis was used to verify the hypothesis and calculate the actual adjustment degree of the "contextualization" effect of web celebrity live broadcasting on consumers' purchase intention. The research results of this paper are summarized as follows :(1) consumers' perceived value of products can significantly positively affect their purchase intention, while perceived risk has a significantly negative impact on their purchase intention; (2) consumers' trust and purchase intention to products are regulated by the "contextualization" of web celebrity live broadcast. Specifically, for web celebrity live broadcasting with good "contextualization" effect, the perceived value of consumer products has a positive impact on product trust, which is higher than that of web celebrity live broadcasting with poor "contextualization" effect. In terms of resolving consumers' perceived risks to products, web celebrity live broadcast with good "contextualization" effect is also significantly better than web celebrity live broadcast with poor "contextualization" effect. Based on empirical analysis, this paper concludes that web celebrity live broadcasting will become a new breakthrough for the sustainable growth of the e-commerce industry, and puts forward Suggestions on the e-commerce marketing mode and the transformation of web celebrity live broadcasting industry.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.271-286
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• 2023

The global COVID-19 pandemic has transformed face masks from situational accessories to indispensable items in daily life, prompting a shift in public perception and behavior. While the relaxation of mandatory mask-wearing regulations is underway, a significant number of individuals continue to embrace face masks, turning them into a form of personal expression and identity. This phenomenon has given rise to the Fashion Mask industry, characterized by unique designs and colors, experiencing rapid growth in the market. However, existing research on masks is predominantly focused on their efficacy in preventing infection or exploring attitudes during the pandemic, leaving a gap in understanding consumer preferences for mask design. We address this gap by investigating consumer perceptions and preferences for two prevalent mask designs-horizontal fold flat masks and vertical fold flat masks. Through a comprehensive approach involving surveys and eye-tracking experiments, we aim to unravel the subtle differences in how consumers perceive these designs. Our research questions focus on determining which design is more appealing and exploring the reasons behind any observed differences. The study's findings reveal a clear preference for vertical fold flat masks, which are not only preferred but also perceived as unique, sophisticated, three-dimensional, and lively. The eye-tracking analysis provides insights into the visual attention patterns associated with mask designs, highlighting the pivotal role of the fold line in influencing these patterns. This research contributes to the evolving understanding of masks as a fashion statement and provides valuable insights for manufacturers and marketers in the Fashion Mask industry. The results have implications beyond the pandemic, emphasizing the importance of design elements in sustaining consumer interest in face masks.