• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.35-64
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• 2009

In an effort to increase our understanding of green buying behavior, the present study proposes and tests a comprehensive model of how values influence attitudes toward the environment and preferences for green products in a cross-cultural setting. Data were collected from a survey with consumers in two cultures, diametrically different on values salient to environmental consumerism, the U.S. and Korea. As a result of model testing both at the national and multi-group levels, a refined, final model is presented. While the core human values were found to relate to environmental attitudes and green buying behavior, the patterns of the relationships among the variables emerged to differ between the two cultures, highlighting the importance of cross-cultural investigations in this area. Results suggest that biospheric values significantly influence environmental attitudes and green consumption in both countries. However, the effects of egoism were significant among American respondents whereas altruism appeared to have a significant influence on attitude and behavior in the Korean sample. Findings of this study should aid international marketers in their understanding of what drives consumers' green buying behavior in different cultural settings.

• Food Science and Preservation
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.783-791
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• 2012

The purpose of the study was to provide baseline information that could encourage consumers and establish the direction of development for sprouts and leafy vegetables. A survey on the consumption and preference for sprouts and leafy vegetables of 823 people over 20 years of age in Seoul and Gyeonggi province was conducted. The preference for sprouts was higher in men ($3.75{\pm}0.96$) than in women ($3.64{\pm}0.84$), whereas the preference for leafy vegetables was higher in women ($4.06{\pm}0.74$) than in men ($3.88{\pm}0.90$). Based on age, the respondents in their 40s or above had high preferences for sprouts and leaf vegetables due to the importance that they accorded to health and nutrition (p<0.01). The sprouts and leafy vegetables were purchased mainly for their high nutritional value. The purchase frequency of once a month or more for leafy vegetables (82.7%) was higher than that for sprouts (57.1%). The consumers purchased sprouts and leafy vegetables mainly from a large discount store. The respondents in their 20s showed the highest percentage of purchasing from a local store whereas the older ones showed a high preference for traditional markets. The reason for the choice of the place of purchase was convenience. The freshness and price were important factors in the consumption of sprouts and leafy vegetables. In the case of leafy vegetables, the consumers preferred to buy them using the conventional weight measurement system rather than in small packages. On the other hand, mixed small packages were preferred for sprouts. The purchase frequency was correlated with the preferences, need for improvement and purchase intent for sprouts and leafy vegetables. The aspects that require improvement for producing high-quality sprouts and leafy vegetables were the nutritional and functional properties. To increase the consumption of sprouts and leafy vegetables, there is need for variations and improvement of the quality and safety of the products.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.81-99
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• 2010

Lately, in consumers' markets the number of new items is rapidly increasing at an overwhelming rate while consumers have limited access to information about those new products in making a sensible, well-informed purchase. Therefore, item providers and customers need a system which recommends right items to right customers. Also, whenever new items are released, for instance, the recommender system specializing in new items can help item providers locate and identify potential customers. Currently, new items are being added to an existing system without being specially noted to consumers, making it difficult for consumers to identify and evaluate new products introduced in the markets. Most of previous approaches for recommender systems have to rely on the usage history of customers. For new items, this content-based (CB) approach is simply not available for the system to recommend those new items to potential consumers. Although collaborative filtering (CF) approach is not directly applicable to solve the new item problem, it would be a good idea to use the basic principle of CF which identifies similar customers, i,e. neighbors, and recommend items to those customers who have liked the similar items in the past. This research aims to suggest a hybrid recommendation procedure based on the preference boundary of target customer. We suggest the hybrid recommendation procedure using the preference boundary in the feature space for recommending new items only. The basic principle is that if a new item belongs within the preference boundary of a target customer, then it is evaluated to be preferred by the customer. Customers' preferences and characteristics of items including new items are represented in a feature space, and the scope or boundary of the target customer's preference is extended to those of neighbors'. The new item recommendation procedure consists of three steps. The first step is analyzing the profile of items, which are represented as k-dimensional feature values. The second step is to determine the representative point of the target customer's preference boundary, the centroid, based on a personal information set. To determine the centroid of preference boundary of a target customer, three algorithms are developed in this research: one is using the centroid of a target customer only (TC), the other is using centroid of a (dummy) big target customer that is composed of a target customer and his/her neighbors (BC), and another is using centroids of a target customer and his/her neighbors (NC). The third step is to determine the range of the preference boundary, the radius. The suggested algorithm Is using the average distance (AD) between the centroid and all purchased items. We test whether the CF-based approach to determine the centroid of the preference boundary improves the recommendation quality or not. For this purpose, we develop two hybrid algorithms, BC and NC, which use neighbors when deciding centroid of the preference boundary. To test the validity of hybrid algorithms, BC and NC, we developed CB-algorithm, TC, which uses target customers only. We measured effectiveness scores of suggested algorithms and compared them through a series of experiments with a set of real mobile image transaction data. We spilt the period between 1st June 2004 and 31st July and the period between 1st August and 31st August 2004 as a training set and a test set, respectively. The training set Is used to make the preference boundary, and the test set is used to evaluate the performance of the suggested hybrid recommendation procedure. The main aim of this research Is to compare the hybrid recommendation algorithm with the CB algorithm. To evaluate the performance of each algorithm, we compare the purchased new item list in test period with the recommended item list which is recommended by suggested algorithms. So we employ the evaluation metric to hit the ratio for evaluating our algorithms. The hit ratio is defined as the ratio of the hit set size to the recommended set size. The hit set size means the number of success of recommendations in our experiment, and the test set size means the number of purchased items during the test period. Experimental test result shows the hit ratio of BC and NC is bigger than that of TC. This means using neighbors Is more effective to recommend new items. That is hybrid algorithm using CF is more effective when recommending to consumers new items than the algorithm using only CB. The reason of the smaller hit ratio of BC than that of NC is that BC is defined as a dummy or virtual customer who purchased all items of target customers' and neighbors'. That is centroid of BC often shifts from that of TC, so it tends to reflect skewed characters of target customer. So the recommendation algorithm using NC shows the best hit ratio, because NC has sufficient information about target customers and their neighbors without damaging the information about the target customers.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.301-312
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• 2008

Satisfaction of consumer preferences is a key factor for the success of the products. Therefore, design mangers try to develop the profitable products through the intensive survey on the consumer preferences. Although the studies on the preferable product design and the design factors have long been carried out, most of these studies dealt only with the design factors preferable for individual product category ignoring the relationship of the product categories which are related to each other. For designers and design managers, in this study, we propose the guidelines of successful product development by finding preferred common and distinct design factors through analysis of the relations between the consumer preferences and design factors in various portable electric devices. To this end, we analyzed the preferred common and distinct design factors from portable electric devices including the electronic dictionaries, notebook computers, cellular phones, and MP3 players. We used hierarchical regression analysis for the effects of the design factors on the preferences among the product categories and regression analysis for the effects among each product category. The analysis on the preferred common design factors among the four product categories revealed that consumers did not care about the whole body type but preferred white color, metallic and glassy texture in the body. Also, the preferred design factors in the each product category are as follows; oval body shape and black color in electronic dictionaries, white color, metallic and glassy texture in notebook computers, plastic texture in cellular phones, rectangular body shape and plastic texture in MP3 players. In the case of notebook computers, the preferred common and distinct design factors were the same. We expect these results will be helpful for designers and design managers to identify the preferred design factors to consider when developing the various portable electric devices.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.595-625
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• 2012

Recently environment-friendly pellet boilers have interests as emissions of greenhouse gases are regulated internationally and energy security becomes more important to oil addicted countries including Republic of Korea. But the Korean market for pellet boilers is on the initial stage due to the high production costs relative to other conventional boilers. Hence the Korean government has supported financially and promoted the pellet boiler business. In this sense, it would contribute market stratergy and effective promotion policy for both of the government and private companies if we can forecast market shares of pellet boilers appropriately. For this purpose, this study surveyed potential consumers' preferences on pellet boilers among various alternatives using a choice experiment reflecting intangible costs. As the market share of new technology increases, intangible costs decline. According to different intangible cost scenarios, we experimented people's preferences on oil, gas, electric, and pellet boilers. A multinomial logit model was employed to estimate coefficient parameters of common attributes for various alternative boilers. Based on the estimates, we forecasted market shares of individual boilers. We found that as intangible costs decline, the market share of pellet boiler increase substantically while market shares of electric and gas boilers decrease dramatically. The market share of oil boiler did not change significantly. Meanwhile, as people are more rich, more educated, and exposed to advertisement on pellet boilers, the likelihood of choosing the pellet boiler increases.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.108 no.1
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• pp.97-108
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• 2019

In a situation where production of short-term income forestry products has been stagnant or decreased in recent years, the government or related agencies are trying to promote consumption of short-term income forest products. While consumer sentiment studies on short-term income forestry are being conducted as part of efforts to encourage consumption, most of the studies rely solely on a survey-based method. In the information age, consumer sentiment toward consumer goods is reflected mostly on social networking sites due to the spread of the Internet. It is necessary to avoid relying solely on a survey-based method in existing research and directly analyze social networking sites that reflect consumers' wishes. In response, this study identified consumer preferences for major short-term income forest products through social big data analyses and used the results to establish strategies for promoting the sale of short-term income forest products. This paper is different from previous research using only a survey-based method, and it uses SNS to understand consumer preferences. The results of this study are expected to directly help the government or related agencies promote consumption of short-term income forest products and, ultimately, help improve forest-related income and promote healthy forest condition.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.117-122
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• 2019

This paper aims to investigate ideological preferences of news media outlets by looking at the news coverage of North Korea-Russia summit in April, 2019. The meeting has gained attention in South Korea, China, Japan and America in that the historical meeting will reflect the future direction for denuclearization on the Korean peninsular and the peace in the world. Given this, in particular, a special attention is paid to the editorials and headlines of news articles reported in two Korean quality newspapers, DongA Ilbo and Hankyoreh because both are quality newspapers, but are ideologically different. To achieve objectivity and fairness, the same issues dealt with during the summit were compared and analyzed within Martin and White (2005)'s Appraisal framework. As a result, it was found that in editorials of DongA Ilbo showed a negative stance to the summit by employing the 'attitude' factor, whereas the Hankyoreh was overwhelmingly positive toward the issue, also by employing the 'attitude' factor. The political stance is likely to be in line with those shown in the headlines of news articles from each newspaper. That is, it is clear that each news outlet shows its ideological stances to news consumers through linguistic expressions, in that both editorials and the headlines of news articles express their political preferences to the summit by means of linguistic appraisals.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.91-103
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• 2024

This study conducted surveys and in-depth interviews to explore the perception of sports psychology counseling among athletes. The participants included a total of 8 individuals: 307 athletes surveyed, 4 athletes who had received counseling, and 4 who had not. The survey investigated athletes' perceptions and management of psychological training, the perceived necessity of seeking advice for everyday concerns, willingness to use and perceived need for sports psychology counseling, prior experiences, and pre-engagement considerations. According to the survey results, 69.1% of athletes recognized the importance of mental training, but only 33.2% actually underwent psychological training. Furthermore, while 67.8% expressed a desire to receive education on psychological training from professionals, only 19.9% reported having searched for related information. When asked about their willingness to pay for sports psychology counseling services, 55.7% expressed willingness. Reasons for wanting to receive counseling, reasons for not wanting to receive counseling, and preferences or considerations for counseling sessions were listed as well. In the in-depth interviews, participants were classified into those who had received counseling and those who had not, delving deeply into motivations for seeking counseling or reasons for not doing so, perceptions during counseling sessions, considerations, preferred types of counselors, and program preferences. Based on this research, discussions and recommendations were provided with the perspective of utilizing sports psychology counseling as foundational data for providing high-quality services to users.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.15-26
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• 2010

Due to the globalization across various industries and cultural trade among many countries, oriental concepts have been attracting world’s attentions. In fashion industry, one's traditional culture is often developed as fashion theme for designers' creation and became strong strategies to stand out among competitors. Because of the increase of preferences for oriental images, opportunities abound to introduce traditional fashion goods and expand culture based business to global fashion markets. However, global fashion brands that include Korean traditional culture are yet to be developed. In order to develop a global fashion brand with Korean taste, it is very important for native citizen to accept their own culture in domestic apparel market prior to expansion into foreign market. Loungewear is evaluated to be appropriate for adopting Korean traditional details into clothing since this wardrobe category embraces various purposes which will easily lead to natural adaptation and wide spread use. Also, this market is seeing an increased demand for multipurpose wardrobes and fashionable underwear (Park et al. 2009). Despite rapid growth in the loungewear market, specific studies of loungewear is rare; and among research on developing modernized-traditional clothing, fashion items and brands do not always include the loungewear category. Therefore, this study investigated the Korean loungewear market and studied consumer evaluation toward loungewear with Korean traditional fashion design elements. Relationship among antecedents of purchase intention for Korean traditional fashion design elements were analyzed and compared between lifestyle groups for consumer targeting purposes. Product quality, retail service quality, perceived value, and preference on loungewear with Korean traditional design elements were chosen as antecedents of purchase intention and a structural equation model was designed to examine their relationship as well as their influence on purchase intention. Product quality and retail service quality among marketing mixes were employed as factors affecting preference and perceived value of loungewear with Korean traditional fashion design elements. Also effects of preference and perceived value on purchase intention were examined through the same model. A total of 357 self-administered questionnaires were completed by female consumers via web survey system. A questionnaire was developed to measure samples' lifestyle, product and retail service quality as purchasing criteria, perceived value, preference and purchase intention of loungewear with Korean traditional fashion design elements. Also, loungewear purchasing and usage behavior were asked as well in order to examine Korean loungewear market status. Data was analyzed through descriptive analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, ANOVA and structural equation model was tested via AMOS 7.0. As for the result of Korean loungewear market status investigation, loungewear was purchased by most of the consumers in our sample. Loungewear is currently recognized as clothes that are worn at home and consumers are showing comparably low involvement toward loungewear. Most of consumers in this study purchase loungewear only two to three times a year and they spend less than US$10. A total of 12 items and four factors of loungewear consumer lifestyle were found: traditional value oriented lifestyle, brand-affected lifestyle, pursuit of leisure lifestyle, and health oriented lifestyle. Drawing on lifestyle factors, loungewear consumers were classified into two groups; Well-being and Conservative. Relationships among constructs of purchasing behavior related to loungewear with Korean traditional fashion design elements were estimated. Preference and perceived value of loungewear were affected by both product quality and retail service quality. This study proved that high qualities in product and retail service develop positive preference toward loungewear. Perceived value and preference of loungewear positively influenced purchase intention. The results indicated that high preference and perceived value of loungewear with Korean traditional fashion design elements strengthen purchase intention and proved importance of developing preference and elevate perceived value in order to make sales. In a model comparison between two lifestyle groups: Well-being and Conservative lifestyle groups, results showed that product quality and retail service quality had positive influences on both preference and perceived value in case of Well-being group. However, for Conservative group, only retail service quality had a positive effect on preference and its influence to purchase intention. Since Well-being group showed more significant influence on purchase intention, loungewear brands with Korean traditional fashion design elements may want to focus on characteristics of Well-being group. However, Conservative group's relationship between preference and purchase intention of loungewear with Korean traditional fashion design elements was stronger, so that loungewear brands with Korean traditional fashion design elements should focus on creating conservative consumers' positive preference toward loungewear. The results offered information on Korean loungewear consumers' lifestyle and provided useful information for fashion brands that are planning to enter Korean loungewear market, particularly targeting female consumers similar to the sample of the present study. This study offers strategic and marketing insight for loungewear brands and also for fashion brands that are planning to create highly value-added fashion brands with Korean traditional fashion design elements. Considering different types of lifestyle groups that are associated with loungewear or traditional fashion goods, brand managers and marketers can use the results of this paper as a reference to positioning, targeting and marketing strategy buildings.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.5-14
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• 2011

One of the new roles of modern retail stores is to supply consumers with a memorable experience. In Korea, enhancing a store's environment so that customers remember a unique shopping experience is recognized as a sound strategy for strengthening the store's competitiveness. Motivated by this incentive, awareness of the experience-store concept is starting to increase in various categories of the retail industry. However, many experience stores, except in a few cases, have yet to derive a significant profit, explaining why Korean consumers are somewhat unfamiliar with, yet fascinated by, the experience stores that now exist in the country. Consumer satisfaction directly, and indirectly, affects a company's future profit and potential financial gain; customer satisfaction also affects loyalty. Therefore, knowing the significant factors that increase satisfaction and loyalty is essential for any company, in any field, to be able to effectively differentiate itself from the competition. Intrigued by increased competition opportunities, most Korean companies have adopted experience-store marketing strategies. When establishing the most effective processes for increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage of a new concept, companies should consider certain factors that influence consumers' ability to accept new concepts and ideas. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is a theory that models how people accept new concepts. TAM proposes the following two factors that influence a person's decisions about how, and when, he or she will use a new product: "perceived usefulness" and "perceived ease of use." Much of the existing research has suggested that a person's character also affects the process for accepting new ideas. Such personal character attributes as individual preferences, self-confidence, and a person's values, traits, and/or skills affect the process for willingly consenting to try something new. It will be meaningful to establish how the TAM theory's components, as well as personal character, affect individuals accepting the experience-store concept. To that end, as it pertains to an experience store, the first goal of the study is to examine the influence of innovative factors (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) on satisfaction and loyalty. The second objective is to define the moderate effect of consumers' personal characteristics on the model. The proposed model was tested on 149 respondents who were engaged in leisure sports activities and bought sports outdoor garments and equipment. According to the study's findings, the satisfaction and loyalty of an experience store can be explained by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, with the study's results demonstrating the stronger of the two factors being "perceived ease of use." The study failed to explain the effects of a person's character on the model. In conclusion, when the companies that operate the experience stores execute their marketing and promotion strategies, they should stress the stores' "ease of use" product components. Additionally, it can be extrapolated from the study data that since the experience-store idea is still relatively unfamiliar to Korean consumers, most customers are not yet able to evaluate, nor take a position regarding, their respective attitudes toward experience stores.