• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.99-120
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• 2010

Due to the wide spread of customers' frequent access of non face-to-face services, there have been many attempts to improve customer satisfaction using huge amounts of data accumulated throughnon face-to-face channels. Usually, a call center is regarded to be one of the most representative non-faced channels. Therefore, it is important that a call center has enough agents to offer high level customer satisfaction. However, managing too many agents would increase the operational costs of a call center by increasing labor costs. Therefore, predicting and calculating the appropriate size of human resources of a call center is one of the most critical success factors of call center management. For this reason, most call centers are currently establishing a department of WFM(Work Force Management) to estimate the appropriate number of agents and to direct much effort to predict the volume of inbound calls. In real world applications, inbound call prediction is usually performed based on the intuition and experience of a domain expert. In other words, a domain expert usually predicts the volume of calls by calculating the average call of some periods and adjusting the average according tohis/her subjective estimation. However, this kind of approach has radical limitations in that the result of prediction might be strongly affected by the expert's personal experience and competence. It is often the case that a domain expert may predict inbound calls quite differently from anotherif the two experts have mutually different opinions on selecting influential variables and priorities among the variables. Moreover, it is almost impossible to logically clarify the process of expert's subjective prediction. Currently, to overcome the limitations of subjective call prediction, most call centers are adopting a WFMS(Workforce Management System) package in which expert's best practices are systemized. With WFMS, a user can predict the volume of calls by calculating the average call of each day of the week, excluding some eventful days. However, WFMS costs too much capital during the early stage of system establishment. Moreover, it is hard to reflect new information ontothe system when some factors affecting the amount of calls have been changed. In this paper, we attempt to devise a new model for predicting inbound calls that is not only based on theoretical background but also easily applicable to real world applications. Our model was mainly developed by the interactive decision tree technique, one of the most popular techniques in data mining. Therefore, we expect that our model can predict inbound calls automatically based on historical data, and it can utilize expert's domain knowledge during the process of tree construction. To analyze the accuracy of our model, we performed intensive experiments on a real case of one of the largest car insurance companies in Korea. In the case study, the prediction accuracy of the devised two models and traditional WFMS are analyzed with respect to the various error rates allowable. The experiments reveal that our data mining-based two models outperform WFMS in terms of predicting the amount of accident calls and fault calls in most experimental situations examined.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.67-86
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• 2020

Recommender Systems have been huge influence users and business more and more. Recently the importance of E-commerce has been reached rapid growth greatly in world-wide COVID-19 pandemic. Recommender system is the center of E-commerce lively. Top ranked E-commerce managers mentioned that recommender systems have a major influence on customer's purchase such as about 50% of Netflix, Amazon sales from their recommender systems. Most algorithms have been focused on improving accuracy of recommender system regardless of novelty, diversity, serendipity etc. Recommender systems with only high accuracy cannot satisfy business long-term profit because of generating sales polarization. In addition, customers do not experience enjoyment of shopping from only focusing accuracy recommender system because customer's preference is changed constantly. Therefore, recommender systems with various values need to be developed for user's high satisfaction. Reranking is the most useful methodology to realize diversity of recommender system. In this paper, diversity of recommender system is represented through constructing high similarity with users who have different preference using each user's purchased item's category algorithm. It is distinguished from past research approach which is changing the algorithm of recommender system without user's diversity preference level. We tried to discover user's diversity preference level and observed the results how the effect was different according to user's diversity preference level. In addition, graph-based recommender system was used to show diversity through user's network, not collaborative filtering. In this paper, Amazon Grocery and Gourmet Food data was used because the low-involvement product, such as habitual product, foods, low-priced goods etc., had high probability to show customer's diversity. First, a bipartite graph with users and items simultaneously is constructed to make graph-based recommender system. However, each users and items unipartite graph also need to be established to show diversity of recommender system. The weight of each unipartite graph has played crucial role changing Jaccard Distance of item's category. We can observe two important results from the user's unipartite network. First, the user's diversity preference level is observed from the network and second, dissimilar users can be discovered in the user's network. Through the research process, diversity of recommender system is presented highly with small accuracy loss and optimalization for higher accuracy is possible controlling diversity ratio. This paper has three important theoretical points. First, this research expands recommender system research for user's satisfaction with various values. Second, the graph-based recommender system is developed newly. Third, the evaluation indicator of diversity is made for diversity. In addition, recommender systems are useful for corporate profit practically and this paper has contribution on business closely. Above all, business long-term profit can be improved using recommender system with diversity and the recommender system can provide right service according to user's diversity level. Lastly, the corporate selling low-involvement products have great effect based on the results.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.587-600
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• 2022

Purpose: This study was performed to analyze customer needs for the operation of unmanned food stores on a university campus. Methods: A total of 329 responses were collected from customers who had purchased food at the stores. Statistical analyses were conducted using the SPSS program for frequency analysis, χ2-test, t-test, one-way analysis of variance, and Duncan's multiple range test. Results: On average, the overall satisfaction score for lunch and the eating location was 3.91 out of 5 points. Overall satisfaction was significantly higher for home cooking, and lower for eating at convenience stores (p < 0.001), and the score for eating with family was significantly higher than for eating alone or with friends (p < 0.001). On average, the intention to use an unmanned store received a score of 3.98 out of 5 points, while 'home cooking (3.76)' was significantly lower than other eating locations and eating at 'convenience stores (4.38)' was significantly higher than other eating locations (p < 0.05). The desired time of use for unmanned food stores was 'lunch (54.1%)', 'dinner (46.2%)', and 'afternoon snack (41.9%)', and the desired foods were 'doshirak (62.0%)', 'sandwich (56.2%)', 'fruit cup (54.4%)', 'salad (51.7%)', and 'kimbap (50.5%)'. There were significantly more opinions that single-person households would use unmanned food stores for dinner more than family households (p < 0.05), and significantly more willingness to purchase fruit cup (p < 0.05). The average prices (Korean won) that the subjects were willing to pay for the purchase of food were 4,991 for doshirak, 3,403 for salad, 2,745 for fruit cup, 2,609 for sandwich, and 2,235 for kimbap. Conclusion: For the successful operation of the unmanned food stores on the university campus, the store manager should grasp the customer's needs in real-time and establish an effective marketing strategy.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.105-137
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• 2012

After relationship marketing emerged as a new approach in the marketing field in the 1980s, it has been widely studied in the United States, Europe and Asia. Rapid environmental changes and global competition has made it inevitable for companies to consider their relationships with the environment more closely. Under these circumstances, relationship marketing has held a position as a pivotal paradigm in the field of strategy as well as in marketing. In addition, relationship marketing has overcome the limitations of a traditional marketing research while providing richer implications in company's marketing activities. The paradigm shift to relationship marketing has brought fundamental changes in a marketing point of view. First, in philosophical aspects, unlike past research which focused solely on customer satisfaction, organizational relationship parameters which focuses on trust and commitment has become key elements of successful relationship marketing while shifts in thoughts naturally take place from adaptive marketing to strategic marketing. Second, in structural aspects, the relational mechanism of governance such as network structure with a variety of relational partners has emerged as a new marketing organization from the previous simple structure focusing on the micro-economic, marketbased trading between seller and customer. Third, in behavioral aspects, it proposed the strategic course of the action of gaining an advantage over the competition on the individual firm level by focusing on building long-term relationships and considering partnership with the components in the entire marketing system, rather than with one-time transaction-centric action between a seller and a customer. Fourth, in the aspects of marketing performance, marketing performance was sought through the long-term and cooperative relationship with various stakeholders, including customers in the marketing system, focusing on the overall competitive advantage based on relationship rather than individual performance of individual companies' marketing activities, such as market share and customer satisfaction. However, studies of relationship marketing were mostly centered in interorganizational relationships focusing on the relational structure and properties of commercial sector in the marketing system. Paradoxically, the circumstance of the consumer's side that must be considered is evolving again in relationship marketing. In structural aspects, a community, as the new relationship governance structure in the digital environment, and in behavioral aspects, the changing role of consumer participation demanding big changes in the digital environment engaged in the marketing system. The possibility of building a relationship marketing community for common value creation is presented in terms of organization of consumers with the focus on changing marketing environment and marketing system according to the new realities of the 21st century- the popularity of digital environments and the diffusion of customer participation. Therefore, future research of relationship marketing must seek for a truly integrated model including all of the existing structure and properties of the research oriented relationship from both the commercial and consumer sector.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.111-133
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• 2010

Marketing financial services used to be easier. Today, the competition in financial services is fierce. Not only has the competition become more intense, financial services have also changed structurally. In an environment with various customer needs and severe competitions, the marketing in financial services industry is getting more difficult and more important than before. However, there are still not enough studies on financial services marketing in Korea whereas lots of research papers have been published frequently in some international journals. The purpose of this paper is (1)to review the literature on financial services marketing, (2)to investigate current marketing activities based on in-depth interview with financial marketing managers in Korea, and (3)to suggest some implications for future research on the financial services marketing. Financial products are not consumer products. In fact, they are not products at all in the way product marketing is usually described. Nor are they altogether like services. The financial industry operates in a unique way, and its marketing tasks are correspondingly complex. However, the literature review shows that there has been a lack of basic studies which dealt with inherent characteristics of financial services marketing compared to the research on marketing in other industries. Many studies in domestic marketing journals have so far focused only on the general customer behaviors and the special issues in some financial industries. However, for more effective financial services marketing, we have to answer following questions. Is there any difference between financial service marketing and consumer packaged goods marketing? What are the differences between the financial services marketing and other services marketing such as education and health services? Are there different ways of marketing among banks, securities firms, insurance firms, and credit card companies? In other words, we need more detailed research as well as basic studies about the financial services marketing. For example, we need concrete definitions of financial services marketing, bank marketing, securities firm marketing, and etc. It is also required to compare the characteristics of each marketing within the financial services industry. The products sold in each market have different characteristics such as duration and degree of risk-taking. It means that there are sub-categories in financial services marketing. We have to consider them in the future research on the financial services marketing. It is also necessary to study customer decision making process in the financial markets. There have been little research on how customers search and process information, compare alternatives, make final decision, and repeat their choices. Because financial services have some unique characteristics, we need different understandings in the customer behaviors compared to the behaviors in other service markets. And also considering the rapid growth in financial markets and upcoming severe competition between domestic and global financial companies, it is time to start more systematic and detailed research on financial services marketing in Korea. In the second part of this paper, I analyzed the results of in-depth interview with 20 marketing managers of financial services companies in Korea. As a result, I found that the role of marketing departments in Korean financial companies are mainly focused on the short-term activities such as sales support, promotion, and CRM data analysis although the size and history of marketing departments to some extent show a sign of maturity. Most companies established official marketing departments before 2001. Average number of employees in a marketing department is about 58. However, marketing managers in eight companies(40% of the sample) still think that the purpose of marketing is only to support and manage general sales activities. It shows that some companies have sales-oriented concept rather than marketing-oriented concept. I also found three key words which marketing managers think importantly in financial services markets. They are (1)Trust in customer relationship, (2)Brand differentiation, and (3)Rapid response to customer needs. 50% of the sample support that "Trust" is the most important key word in the financial services marketing. It is interesting that 80% of banks and securities companies think that "Trust" is the most important thing, whereas managers in credit card companies consider "Rapid response to customer needs" as the most important key word in their market. In addition, there are different problems recognition of marketing managers depending on the types of financial industries they belong to. For example, in the case of banks and insurance companies, marketing managers consider "a lack of communication with other departments" as the most serious problem. On the other hand, in the case of securities firms, "a lack of utilization of customer data" is the most serious problem. These results imply that there are different important factors for the customer satisfaction depending on the types of financial industries, and managers have to consider them when marketing financial products in more effective ways. For example, It will be necessary for marketing managers to study different important factors which affect customer satisfaction, repeat purchase, degree of risk-taking, and possibility of cross-selling according to the types of financial industries. I also suggested six hypothetical propositions for the future research.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.91-121
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• 2008

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, has become a major business trend in these days. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily by developing the Internet technology. Most electronic commerce has being conducted between businesses to customers; therefore, the researches with respect to e-commerce are to find customer's needs, behaviors through statistical methods. However, the statistical researches, mostly based on a questionnaire, are the static researches, They can tell us the dynamic relationships between initial purchasing and repurchasing. Therefore, this study proposes dynamic research model for analyzing the cause of initial purchasing and repurchasing. This paper is based on the System-Dynamic theory, using the powerful simulation model with some restriction, The restrictions are based on the theory TAM(Technology Acceptance Model), PAM, and TPB(Theory of Planned Behavior). This article investigates not only the customer's purchasing and repurchasing behavior by passing of time but also the interactive effects to one another. This research model has six scenarios and three steps for analyzing customer behaviors. The first step is the research of purchasing situations. The second step is the research of repurchasing situations. Finally, the third step is to study the relationship between initial purchasing and repurchasing. The purpose of six scenarios is to find the customer's purchasing patterns according to the environmental changes. We set six variables in these scenarios by (1) changing the number of products; (2) changing the number of contents in on-line shopping malls; (3) having multimedia files or not in the shopping mall web sites; (4) grading on-line communities; (5) changing the qualities of products; (6) changing the customer's degree of confidence on products. First three variables are applied to study customer's purchasing behavior, and the other variables are applied to repurchasing behavior study. Through the simulation study, this paper presents some inter-relational result about customer purchasing behaviors, For example, Active community actions are not the increasing factor of purchasing but the increasing factor of word of mouth effect, Additionally. The higher products' quality, the more word of mouth effects increase. The number of products and contents on the web sites have same influence on people's buying behaviors. All simulation methods in this paper is not only display the result of each scenario but also find how to affect each other. Hence, electronic commerce firm can make more realistic marketing strategy about consumer behavior through this dynamic simulation research. Moreover, dynamic analysis method can predict the results which help the decision of marketing strategy by using the time-line graph. Consequently, this dynamic simulation analysis could be a useful research model to make firm's competitive advantage. However, this simulation model needs more further study. With respect to reality, this simulation model has some limitations. There are some missing factors which affect customer's buying behaviors in this model. The first missing factor is the customer's degree of recognition of brands. The second factor is the degree of customer satisfaction. The third factor is the power of word of mouth in the specific region. Generally, word of mouth affects significantly on a region's culture, even people's buying behaviors. The last missing factor is the user interface environment in the internet or other on-line shopping tools. In order to get more realistic result, these factors might be essential matters to make better research in the future studies.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.24
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• pp.223-246
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• 2011

Today, cultural content industry could be defined to service business rather than manufacturing business because of its own trait. Also, it has the realistic restriction that it can't hold the dominant position in the market competition when it can't provide consumers satisfaction regardless of its quality or degree of completion. In other word, it can only expect great success when the business plan and the activities get the perfect balance with its best quality and perfect of completion. As the result, it emphasizes the importance of business competition in the global market. In briefly, there is no doubt that the creativeness of content is very important in the cultural content industry but in the future, making system to maintain the distribution process and share the profits fairly will be taken more important role. Especially, animation genre has the feature, which compares to other genres, such as film or TV drama, would be free from cultural barriers, and it is a great advantage. So to speak, animation can get little influence from cultural discount. However, Korean animation can't use the advantage properly for the foreign distribution because of its poor infrastructure and short of professional human resources. For those reasons, it has been needed to set up the realistic and specific action plan to overcome the situation. Therefore, considering those needs and the situations of Korean animation facing, making B2B online marketplace could be a great solution. The online marketplace stands for taking more efficient and broad distribution channel instead of the passive way, which we have now. If we have the B2B online marketplace, we can share all the information about the Korean animation with the potential customers whom live outside of Korea at real time. It also could be use to the windows of multiple distribution, which can make additional profits and activate the optional markets for the Korean animation. Through the method, Korean animation would be expected to get the higher international competitiveness, and it would be developed in quality and quantity of the business. Finally, it would be a great chance to Korean animation, which can get the unique brand power by improving the backward distribution circumstances.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.29 no.11B
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• pp.980-990
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• 2004

In this paper, we propose the dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithm for the IEEE802.3ah Ethernet Passive Optical Network(EPON) system to provide the fairness among terminals, and evaluate the delay-throughput performance by simulation. For the conventional EPON systems, an Optical Line Termination (OLT) schedules the upstream bandwidth for each Optical Network Unit (ONU), based on its buffer state. This scheme can provide a fair bandwidth allocation for each ONU. However, it has a critical problem that it does not guarantee the fair bandwidth among terminals which are connected to ONUs. For an example, we assume that the traffic from a greedy terminal increases at a time. Then, the buffer state of its ONU is instantly reported to the OLT, and finally the OW can get more bandwidth. As a result, the less bandwidth is allocated to the other ONUs, and thus the transfer delay of terminals connected to the ONUs gets inevitably increased. Noting that this unfairness problem exists in the conventional EPON systems, we propose a fair bandwidth allocation scheme by OLT with considering the buffer state of ONU as welt as the number of terminals connected it. For the performance evaluation, we develop the EPON simulation model with SIMULA simulation language. From the result of the throughput-delay performance and the dynamics of buffer state along time for each terminal and ONU, respectively, one can see that the proposed scheme can provide the fairness among not ONUs but terminals. Finally, it is worthwhile to note that the proposed scheme for the public EPON systems might be an attractive solution for providing the fairness among subscriber terminals.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.253-277
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• 2002

Nowaday, the advanced technology in information and communication has been leading the dramatic change of transaction paradigm expansion from physical basis to electronic one. As we know, financial services support most of financial exchange between two business parties. So the expansion of electronic transaction paradigm affects to every financial institutions which provide financial services. Thus, financial institutions have accepted e-Finance systems and providing internet financial services to live in the competition. The purpose of this study is to contribute the qualitative enhancement of its customer service, rapid diffusion and accurate strategy establishment for e-Finance industry in the user side. Through the literature review and factor and reliability analysis, this study selects six diffusion factors such as efficiency of perceived e-Finance, reliability and safety of e-Finance in perceived e-Finance itself's characteristic; confidence, technical factors and the customer service quality of e-Finance system in perception on e-Finance System; inclination to innovation in the personal characteristic. According to result of hypothesis verification by using logistics regression analysis, technical factors and the customer service quality of e-Finance system in perception on e-Finance System and inclination to innovation in the personal characteristic gave statistically positive effect to the diffusion decision at the significant level 0.05 and 0.01. However efficiency of perceived e-Finance, reliability and safety of e-Finance in perceived e-Finance itself's characteristic didn't affect to diffusion decision and confidence of e-Finance system in perception on e-Finance System didn't have any statistical significancy. This study can be used as a basic material for the forward empirical study of diffusion factors in the user side and be able to apply to company and government policy making or embodiment, determination for customer service quality degree of financial institutions. But this study has some limitations like didn't touch satisfaction factors and its effect, only deal domestic customers and didn't use multi-regression analysis.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.5-15
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• 2011

Prior to the introduction of the CRM, we need to analyze the characteristics and the situations of the company, and should establish a clear vision of the CRM. And each company should identify elements and technologies for introducing the most suitable CRM for them, and optimize them, with long-term perspective. In addition, it requires the implementation strategy which integrates the existing company's routine marketing activities with the concept of the CRM. According to the implementation strategy, the company should improve the business process which is the most effective in investment step by step, and the information system strategy, which develops system investment gradually, should harmonize with it. First, we recognized that raising the company value is important by maximizing customer lifetime value (LTV) by understanding customer needs, and achieving the company's goal through customer satisfaction. Second, we understood that adopting the CRM should be accompanied by changes in the structure, business process and customer contact channels, and it can be successfully integrated with business when it gets proper understandings and attentions of the management. Third, the reality is that there are few cases of successful implementation of domestic companies, and some companies that successfully implement the system mean nothing but implement the solution for developing the CRM. Therefore, it needs to be observed for the long haul, and it seems that we need to approach more systematically to implementation cases for each industry about implementation of the CRM. Fourth, the CRM is no longer the preserve of major companies, and it is the time that medium and small sized enterprises also need it. Taking lesson from Switzerland's small size store merchants who successfully adopt right size of the CRM for their business, for domestic medium and small sized enterprises, the necessity to develop business through developing the CRM models which fit their situations and maintaining relationships with customers has been grown. Fifth, for adopting the CRM business processes, changing or converting the CRM system to the model which fits the company's situation is important rather than applying the advanced company's CRM system model. In other words, the CRM solution which can maximize their own strength by developing the CRM program that makes the most of features and characteristics of the company should be adopted.