• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.65-93
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• 2011

As relationship between buyer and seller has been brought closer and long-term relationship has been more important in B2B markets, the importance of service and service convenience increases as well as product. In homogeneous markets, where service offerings are similar and therefore not key competitive differentiator, providing greater convenience may enable a competitive advantage. Service convenience, as conceptualized by Berry et al. (2002), is defined as the consumers' time and effort perceptions related to buying or using a service. For this reason, B2B customers are interested in how fast the service is provided and how much save non-monetary cost like time or effort by the service convenience along with service quality. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impact of service convenience on relationship factors such as relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The purpose of this study is to find out whether service convenience can be a new antecedent of relationship quality and relationship performance. In addition, this study tries to examine how five-dimensional service convenience constructs (decision convenience, access convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affect customers' relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The service convenience comprises five fundamental components - decision convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with service purchase or use decisions), access convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with initiating service delivery), transaction convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with finalizing the transaction), benefit convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with experiencing the core benefits of the offering) and post-benefit convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with reestablishing subsequent contact with the firm). Earlier studies of perceived service convenience in the industrial market are none. The conventional studies that have dealt with service convenience have usually been made in the consumer market, or they have dealt with convenience aspects in the service process. This service convenience measure for consumer market can be useful tool to estimate service quality in B2B market. The conceptualization developed by Berry et al. (2002) reflects a multistage, experiential consumption process in which evaluations of convenience vary at each stage. For this reason, the service convenience measure is good for B2B service environment which has complex processes and various types. Especially when categorizing B2B service as sequential stage of service delivery like Kumar and Kumar (2004), the Berry's service convenience measure which reflect sequential flow of service deliveries suitable to establish B2B service convenience. For this study, data were gathered from respondents who often buy business service and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The sample size in the present study is 119. Composite reliability values and average variance extracted values were examined for each variable to have reliability. We determine whether the measurement model supports the convergent validity by CFA, and discriminant validity was assessed by examining the correlation matrix of the constructs. For each pair of constructs, the square root of the average variance extracted exceeded their correlations, thus supporting the discriminant validity of the constructs. Hypotheses were tested using the Smart PLS 2.0 and we calculated the PLS path values and followed with a bootstrap re-sampling method to test the hypotheses. Among the five dimensional service convenience constructs, four constructs (decision convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affected customers' positive relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. This result means that service convenience is important cue to improve relationship between buyer and seller. One of the five service convenience dimensions, access convenience, does not affect relationship quality and performance, which implies that the dimension of service convenience is not important factor of cumulative satisfaction. The Cumulative satisfaction can be distinguished from transaction-specific customer satisfaction, which is an immediate post-purchase evaluative judgment or an affective reaction to the most recent transactional experience with the firm. Because access convenience minimizes the physical effort associated with initiating an exchange, the effect on relationship satisfaction similar to cumulative satisfaction may be relatively low in terms of importance than transaction-specific customer satisfaction. Also, B2B firms focus on service quality, price, benefit, follow-up service and so on than convenience of time or place in service because it is relatively difficult to change existing transaction partners in B2B market compared to consumer market. In addition, this study using partial least squares methods reveals that customers' satisfaction and commitment toward relationship has mediating role between the service convenience and relationship performance. The result shows that management and investment to improve service convenience make customers' positive relationship satisfaction, and then the positive relationship satisfaction can enhance the relationship commitment and relationship performance. And to conclude, service convenience management is an important part of successful relationship performance management, and the service convenience is an important antecedent of relationship between buyer and seller such as the relationship commitment and relationship performance. Therefore, it has more important to improve relationship performance that service providers enhance service convenience although competitive service development or service quality improvement is important. Given the pressure to provide increased convenience, it is not surprising that organizations have made significant investments in enhancing the convenience aspect of their product and service offering.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.25-51
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• 2008

Researchers have been continuously interested in the adoption of information technology (IT) since it is of great importance to the information systems success and it is also an important stage to the success. Adoption alone, however, does not ensure information systems success because it does not necessarily lead to achieving organizational or individual objectives. When an organization or an individual decide to adopt certain information technologies, they have objectives to accomplish by using those technologies. Adoption itself is not the ultimate goal. The period after adoption is when users continue to use IT and intended objectives can be accomplished. Therefore, continued IT use in the post-adoption period accounts more for the accomplishment of the objectives and thus information systems success. Previous studies also suggest that continued IT use in the post-adoption period is one of the important factors to improve long-term productivity. Despite the importance there are few empirical studies focusing on the user behavior of continued IT use in the post-adoption period. User behavior in the post-adoption period is different from that in the pre-adoption period. According to the technology acceptance model, which explains well about the IT adoption, users decide to adopt IT assessing the usefulness and the ease of use. After adoption, users are exposed to new experiences and they shape new beliefs different from the thoughts they had before. Users come to make decisions based on their experiences of IT use whether they will continue to use it or not. Most theories about the user behaviors in the pre-adoption period are limited in describing them after adoption since they do not consider user's experiences of using the adopted IT and the beliefs formed by those experiences. Therefore, in this study, we explore user's experiences and beliefs in the post-adoption period and examine how they affect user's intention to continue to use IT. Through deep literature reviews on the construction of subjective beliefs by experiences, we draw three meaningful constructs which theoretically have great impacts on the continued use of IT: perceived habit, confirmation, and computer self-efficacy. Then, we examine the role of the subjective beliefs on the cognitive/affective attitudes and intention to continue to use that IT. We set up a research model and conducted survey research. Since IT use implies interactions among a user, IT, and a task, we carefully selected the sample of users using same/similar IT to perform same/similar tasks, to exclude unwanted influences of other factors than subjective beliefs on the IT use. We also considered that the sample of users were able to make decisions to continue to use IT volitionally or at least quasi-volitionally. For each construct, we used measurement items recognized for reliability and widely used in the previous research. We slightly modified some items proper to the research context and a pilot test was carried out for forty users of a portal service in a university. We performed a full-scale survey after verifying the reliability of the measurement. The results show that the intention to continue to use IT is strongly influenced by cognitive/affective attitudes, perceived habits, and computer self-efficacy. Confirmation affects the intention to continue indirectly through cognitive/affective attitudes. All the constructs representing the subjective beliefs built by the experiences of IT use have direct and/or indirect impacts on the intention of users. The results also show that the attitudes in the post-adoption period are formed, at least partly, by the experiences of IT use and newly shaped beliefs after adoption. The findings suggest that subjective beliefs built by the experiences have deep impacts on the continued use. The results of the study signify that while experiencing IT in the post-adoption period users form new beliefs, attitudes, and intentions which may be different from those of the pre-adoption period. The results of this study partly demonstrate that the beliefs shaped by the behaviors, those are the experiences of IT use, influence users' attitudes and intention. The results also suggest that behaviors (experiences) also change attitudes while attitudes shape behaviors. If we combine the findings of this study with the results of the previous research on IT adoption, we can propose a cycle of IT adoption and use where behavior shapes attitude, the attitude forms new behavior, and that behavior shapes new attitude. Different from the previous research, the study focused on the user experience after IT adoption and empirically demonstrated the strong influence of the subjective beliefs formed in the post-adoption period on the continued use. This partly confirms the differences between attitudes in the pre-adoption and in the post-adoption period. Users continuously change their attitudes and intentions while experiencing (using) IT. Therefore, to make users adopt IT and to make them use IT after adoption is a different problem. To encourage users to use IT after adoption, experiential variables such as perceived habit, confirmation, and computer self-efficacy should be managed properly.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.75-86
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• 2016

The purpose of the present study is to develop and validate an instrument to assess STEM career motivation. We developed 32 items for 7 constructs (i.e. education experience, career value, academic self-efficacy, career self-efficacy, career interest, parents' support, and career motivation) on STEM career motivation based on Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT; Lent et al.,1994). 767 first year high school students participated in this study. The items were validated by Messick's framework (1995). In this study, we examined the validity of items in four aspects (i.e. content, substantive, structural and generalizability of validity). Methodologically, we used Rasch analysis, Exploratory factor analysis, confirmative factor analysis based on structural equation modelling. We confirmed that our instrument with 32 items as valid and reliable for measuring the STEM career motivation. In addition, we tested the STEM career motivation model based on SCCT. Our model explained the data well, suggesting that external factors (education experience and parents' support) and cognitive factors (perception of value, self-efficacy and interest) were significantly related to STEM career motivation.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.79-89
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• 2018

Purpose - This research aims to investigate the factors that influence consumer's overseas online shopping behavior. Consumers adopt overseas online shopping as a new buying way and more and more consumers prefer overseas online shopping than traditional shopping ways. Consumers' behaviors in this shopping experience can be different from other shopping experiences. With the increase of overseas online shopping, we need to find antecedents and results of overseas online shopping. Especially there would be positive or negative factors which influence overseas online shopping motivation. To find the relationship, this study examines self-efficacy and impulsivity as major factors which influence overseas online shopping. We also suggest that several attitude factors increase self-efficacy and it is positively related to customer satisfaction. On the other hand, we assume that overseas online shopping factors influence impulsivity of buying and it will decrease customer satisfaction. Research design, data, and methodology - This empirical study data were collected from Korean people who experience overseas online shopping. The subjects for this study were confined to shoppers who used overseas online shopping within the past six months. A total of 267 responses were gathered. SPSS 23.0, PLS 2.0 software were used in the data analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to show sample characteristics. We examined reliability, validity test for constructs. All measurement items used seven-point scales(1= very strong disagree, 7 = very strongly agree) drawn from previously published papers. Partial Least Square method was applied to find the relationship between antecedent factors and dependent factors and hypotheses were estimated. Results - Results show that perceived superiority, perceived ease of use, perceived transaction safety, perceived behavioral control positively affect self-efficacy. Self-efficacy influences positively to consumer's post purchase satisfaction. Perceived monetary benefit and perceived uniqueness motivated impulse buying. This can make consumer's post purchase dissatisfaction. Conclusions - This paper attempted to confirm the existence of both the positive and negative faces of overseas online shopping. The result reveals that self-efficacy is a major factor which may increase satisfaction in the overseas online shopping. Usually, we can think monetary benefit and uniqueness of products motivate overseas online shopping. But it can also intrigue impulse buying and negatively affect customer relationship. Therefore companies should provide enough products information to their potential customers and they might apply adequate processes such as recommendation, comparing systems to build long term relationship with their customers.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• no.39
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• pp.83-113
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• 2008

The purpose of the study is to explore the mental health social workers' experiences concerning client's self-determination by grounded theory, one of the qualitative method. Although a lot of previous studies has proved that the practitioners have suffered from the ethical considerations in their practice, on which the matter of client's self-determination is centered, little attention is paid to deep exploration of practitioners' real experience about those aspects. To carry out the research question, first, through literature reviews focusing on clarify the underlying issues about client's self-determination, three intrinsic clues are found out; incompetence, medical benefits, the harm to the third party. Data obtained by in-depth interview with 10 participants are analyzed by employing the methode developed by Corbin and Strauss, which could categorize the raw data into several high-level concepts and constructs. The findings of the study show that most practitioners would consider the clients as the intrinsic subject of self-determination. Therefore, in practice, they are trying to support the client's self-determination even within the some constraints. In addition, they also experience the clients' latent potential in actualizing autonomy and self-determination, and identifies the positive effect of self-determination not only on the client's self-help and mental health but also on the practitioners themselves. The results of the study clearly suggests that it is critical to provide the practitioners with adequate ethical education and training to help them to overcome their ethical suffering concerning clients self-determination.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.105-116
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• 2023

Improved fish post-harvest technologies (IFPT) have been promoted as more efficient methods of fish processing, preservation, and value addition than the traditional methods prevalent in developing countries. The adoption rates, however, do not appear to be convincing. The purpose of this study was to determine the socio-demographic and psychological factors that influence intention of Kenyan farmed fish traders to use IFPT. The technology acceptance model (TAM) was used to properly explain the impact of TAM constructs such as perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), and attitude (ATT), as well as socio-demographic factors such as gender, age, education level and fish trading experience on traders' intention to use the technologies. A cross-sectional survey was conducted to collect data using a semi-structured questionnaire from 146 traders in Busia, Siaya and Kakamega counties. At a significance level of p = 0.05, a linear regression model was used to examine the socio-demographic and psychological determinants of the traders' behavioral intention to use the improved technologies. The regression analysis revealed that PU (β = 0.443; p = 0.000), PEOU (β = 0.364; p = 0.000) and ATT (β = 0.615; p = 0.000) influence traders' intention to use IFPT, with ATT having the highest influence on intention. However, the traders' socio-demographic characteristics have no effect on their intention to use the technologies, as the coefficients for gender (β = 0.148; p = 0.096), age (β = 0.016; p = 0.882), level of education (β = -0.135; p = 0.141) and fish trading experience (β = 0.017; p = 0.869) are all insignificant. These findings show that the traders intend to use IFPT and will use them when it is in their best economic interests.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.125-151
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• 2008

Both companies and consumers are highly interested in on-line customer reviews which enable consumers to share their experience and knowledge about products. In this study, after classifying real reviews into context units and deriving categories, we analyzed differences between categories based on channel(manufacturers' homepage/ shopping mall), product attribute(search/experience) and price(high/low). The method to derive categories is based on roughly adopting constructs of ACSI model and elaborate and repetitive classification of real reviews. We set up the classification category with 3 levels. Level 1 consists of product and service, level 2 consists of function, design, price, purchase motive, suggestion/user-tip and recommendation/repurchase in product and AS/up-grade and delivery/others in service and level 3 is composed of details of level 2 of category. We could find remarkable differences between channels in all 8 items of level 2 of category. As the number of context units in homepage is more than in shopping mall, we found reviews in homepage is more concrete. Moreover, overall satisfaction in review was higher at homepage's. Also, in product attribute dimension, we found different patterns of reviews in design, purchase motive, suggestion/user-tip, recommendation/repurchase, AS/up-grade and delivery/others and no difference in overall customer's satisfaction. In price dimension, we found differences between high and low price in design, price and AS/up-grade and no difference in overall customer's satisfaction.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.363-377
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• 2019

This study reveals the aspects of subjectivity in the test results in a science-specific aspect when assessing science-related affective characteristic through self-report items. The science-specific response was defined as the response that appear due to student's recognition of nature or characteristics of science when his or her concepts or perceptions about science were attempted to measure. We have searched for cases where science-specific responses especially interfere with the measurement objective or accurate self-reports. The results of the error due to the science-specific factors were derived from the quantitative data of 649 students in the 1st and 2nd grade of high school and the qualitative data of 44 students interviewed. The perspective of science and the characteristics of science that students internalize from everyday life and science learning experiences interact with the items that form the test tool. As a result, it was found that there were obstacles to accurate self-report in three aspects: characteristics of science, personal science experience, and science in tool. In terms of the characteristic of science in relation to the essential aspect of science, students respond to items regardless of the measuring constructs, because of their views and perceived characteristics of science based on subjective recognition. The personal science experience factor representing the learner side consists of student's science motivation, interaction with science experience, and perception of science and life. Finally, from the instrumental point of view, science in tool leads to terminological confusion due to the uncertainty of science concepts and results in a distance from accurate self-report eventually. Implications from the results of the study are as follows: review of inclusion of science-specific factors, precaution to clarify the concept of measurement, check of science specificity factors at the development stage, and efforts to cross the boundaries between everyday science and school science.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.5-15
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• 2011

Research regarding corporate associations in marketing has generally been approached using the association theory. However, limited research investigates the effect of corporate associations on consumer loyalty to individual brands by examining the role of self connectedness with a corporate image. The activation of behavior-related constructs can influence individuals' behaviors without their intention or conscious awareness. A recently developed body of research suggests that self connection can play an important role in affecting subsequent behaviors. Although these effects have received considerable attention, the set of mechanisms involved in self connectedness and loyalty to individual brands is not clear. An active self account in which associative constructs can affect behavior by temporarily altering the active self-concept may lead to behavior or evaluation. If the exposure to a corporate brand can induce consumers' cognitive associations and goal-primed effects through the role of active self accounting, the connectedness between the consumer's self and the corporate brand could be developed and this connectedness could be explained by associative and connection models and the goal priming theory. Therefore, this study investigates the influence of corporate associations on loyalty to individual brands through connections between the corporate and the consumer's self. There are three main purposes of the research. First, theories regarding corporate associations will be explored. Second, theories of self-concept will be investigated and self connectedness with corporate brands will be explored. Third, the effects of the connectedness between the self and the corporation on corporate identification and loyalty to individual brands will be investigated. For the purposes of this research, the types of corporate associations are classified into corporate ability (CA) associations and corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations. Furthermore, the connectedness between the consumer's self and the corporate image are divided into two concepts: the connectedness between the individual self-concept and the corporate identity and the connectedness between social self-concept and the corporate identity. This study suggests the hypotheses that the types of consumer self connections with the corporate image could vary according to the types of corporate associations created and further that the connectedness between the corporate association and the consumer's self-concept have positive effects on loyalty to corporate individual brands. The results of testing these hypotheses are as follows. First, corporate ability associations enhance the connectedness between the consumer's individual self and corporate brands. That is, corporate ability associations influence individual connectedness between the corporate and individual self-concept positively from the viewpoint of the consumer's personal ability and branding success. In addition, corporate social responsibility associations have a positive effect on social connectedness between the corporation and the consumer's social self-concept. Second, the connectedness between the corporate brand and the consumer's self-concept affects identification with the corporation. The consumer's personal self and social self connectedness induces corporate identification. Third, individual self connectedness has a positive effect on loyalty to corporate individual brands, while social self connectedness does not. This also means that individual self connectedness with the corporate image or brand plays a more important role in forming individual brand loyalty than social self connectedness with the corporate does. In addition, social connectedness cannot influence individual brand loyalty until it passes through identification with the corporate. Fourth, consumers who experience identification with a corporate identity also show positive responses to corporate individual brands. That is, consumers also develop loyalties toward individual brands through the corporate identification because self-pursued goals that are induced by corporate associations can be achieved by consuming the individual brands that are sold by the corporate that the consumers identify with.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.603-646
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• 2009

This paper explores in depth Gaston Bachelard's theory of imagination so as to establish the philosophical bases of creativity. While he had begun his studies on imagination to eliminate unreliable subjectivity hampering objectivity of philosophy of science, he was fascinated to become a philosopher of imagination by its unlimited power. Since his theory of imagination marked a prominent spot in the history of Western idea, this paper will seek its significant implications that will also shed light on the philosophical grounds of creativity. The best way to approach his theory is to differentiate whether imagination is the power of forming images or that of transforming them. If not misguided by surface simplicity of the aforementioned differentiation, it will be revealed that it has accrued strata in the history of Western idea. The power of forming images is related to theory of mimesis or of representation, and to ocularcentric and logo-centric structures. Bachelard strongly opposes to the theory of imagination as power of forming images, since, if it is so, its expansion and development are not possible. He thereby constructs the theory of imagination as power of transforming images. The force of movement lies at the core of his theory. Imagination as an ability to intuit movement is directly related to the problem of change in the history of Western idea. If an entity is incessantly changes itself, it becomes a crucial role of imagination to capture the force perse in the perpetual movement without distortedly and abruptly fixing it at a still point of time and space. Bachelard criticizes such a method that makes movement a controllable entity consisting of partitioned moments of space; instead, he constructs theory of imagination that reveals the true power of indispensable movement. Furthermore, it will be revealed that Bachelard's theory has more affinities with Kantian imagination and reflective judgement of aesthetics than the past researches on Bachelard showed. This paper, by means of the above investigation, will transcend the superficiality of defining what are Bachelard's formal, material, and dynamic imaginations; simultaneously, it will bear philosophical conditions of possibility that makes us experience imagination fully. These conditions also become the philosophical foundations of creativity. It will draw to a provisional close its imaginative journey of everlasting movement by making ontological and ethical dimensions of imagination and creativity.