• Title/Summary/Keyword: Firm Satisfaction

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Physicochemical and Sensorial Properties of Probiotic Yogurt as Affected by Additions of Different Types of Hydrocolloid

  • Bahrami, Masoud;Ahmadi, Dariush;Alizadeh, Mohammad;Hosseini, Fakhrisadat
    • Food Science of Animal Resources
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    • v.33 no.3
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    • pp.363-368
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    • 2013
  • The main attributes of yogurt that affect consumer satisfaction are taste, consistency, and a firm texture. This study evaluates the influence of xanthan gum, barley beta-glucan, and guar gum in concentrations of 0.05%, 0.1%, 0.2%, and 0.3% on probiotic yogurt. The set-type yogurt samples were prepared by using raw cow's milk. The statistical analysis showed that none of these gum additions had any marked effect on pH, titratable acidity, total solids content, and probiotic bacteria counts of yogurt samples. Evaluations for syneresis and water-holding capacity (WHC) in the yogurt samples were affected by the type and concentration of the stabilizer. Yogurts treated with 0.1% xanthan gum and 0.3% beta-glucan recorded the highest WHC and the least syneresis. The largest amount of gel firmness was recorded in yogurt samples treated with 0.2% xanthan gum and 0.3% beta-glucan. Yogurt samples treated with 0.1% xanthan gum and 0.3% beta-glucan were considered acceptable by trained panelists and gained the highest scores in sensory evaluations. The correlation coefficient between the amount of syneresis, WHC and stiffness of texture was significant compared to scores for sensory evaluation (p<0.01). Results for effects of guar gum on the tested parameters were contrary to the results expected from a gum. According to this study, the use of xanthan gum and beta-glucan are highly recommended for low-fat yogurt production.

The Effects of Job-Seeking Stress, Appearance Recognition, Financial Distress, Trust in Government, and Locus of Control on University Students' Happiness (취업스트레스, 외모인식, 재무스트레스, 정부신뢰도, 내외통제성이 대학생의 행복에 미치는 영향)

  • Kim, Min-Koo;Lee, Gyoung-Gun;Lee, Suk-Yong;Chun, Jun-Ha;Han, Yong-Hee
    • Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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    • v.40 no.4
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    • pp.171-182
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    • 2017
  • Most people seek a happy life and happiness positively affects sentiment, satisfaction with life, creativity, human relationship, business productivity, and even health and life extension. However, according to a survey in 2013, subjective happiness of adolescents (including university students) was very low compared to other age groups in Korea. Therefore this paper examined the effects of job-seeking stress, appearance recognition, financial situation, trust in government, and locus of control on university students' happiness using SEM (structural equation modeling). 207 university students in Seoul, Korea have been surveyed. At first, an initial experimental SEM model among these variables has been set up and reliability analysis has been conducted. Then multiple regression analyses on job-seeking stress and happiness as well as SEM analysis have been conducted. As a result of these analyses, the SEM model has been revised two times. The final SEM model passed the goodness-of-fit test (using RMR, GFI, NFI, CFI, and IFI indices). The final SEM model showed the followings. First, Higher job-seeking stress (especially sentimental part, rather than environment or action related parts) negatively affects happiness. Second, Trust in government also affects happiness both directly and indirectly. Third, Locus of control is affected both by trust in government and financial situation. Fourth, appearance recognition heavily affects job-seeking stress. In addition, appearance importance is higher than appearance interest, meaning that students who are not very interested in appearance usually recognize the importance of appearance. Finally, happiness is affected neither financial situation nor appearance recognition. Therefore, even either they are in a poor financial situation or not happy with their appearance, they can be happy if they have firm locus of control.

An Analysis of Segmented labor Market Structure of People with Disabilities in Korea : According to education level and sex (한국 장애인 노동시장의 단층구조분석 : 학력과 성(性)을 중심으로)

  • Kang, Dong-Ug
    • Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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    • v.50
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    • pp.157-172
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    • 2002
  • Most of existing studies about employment of people with disabilities have regarded the disabled groups as only one group which has different characteristics respectively. In fact, each of the disabled groups have several peculiarities of their own. So government or policy makers must regard the disabled group as different groups which have their own characteristics(example : education level, house income, wage, working hours, satisfaction level for their job, disability type and degree, service year in a firm, etc) for promoting employment of the disabled effectively and keeping their job continuously. In this study, we examine and verify the existence of segmentations in Korea labor market of the disabled according to their different education level & sex by using MDFA(Multiple Discriminant Function Analysis technique) and seek solutions for easing those segmentations.

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Effect of Consulting Firm's Organizational Effectiveness on Customer Orientation (컨설팅기업의 조직효과성이 고객지향성에 미치는 영향)

  • Eom, Mi-Sun;You, Yen-Yoo
    • Journal of Digital Convergence
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    • v.19 no.12
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    • pp.231-241
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    • 2021
  • The consulting industry is also growing as the use of management consulting increases as the importance of management strategies for the survival of companies due to rapid environmental changes is highlighted. As a result, competition among consulting firms is intensifying, and securing competitiveness is essential. This study tried to confirm the method of securing competitiveness of consulting firms from the perspective of organizational competitiveness through organizational effectiveness. As the consulting service is a knowledge service field, an empirical analysis was conducted for consultants who performed it because professional human resources were a core technology. Exploratory factors, reliability analysis, and regression analysis were performed using SPSS 22.0. As a result of a study on the effect of consultants' organizational effectiveness on customer orientation, it was found that the consultant's organizational commitment and organizational performance had a significant effect. It was possible to confirm the importance of intrinsic motivation to secure the competitiveness of consulting firms in the changing environment. This presented practical implications for organizational management regarding the continuous growth of consulting firms.

Improvement through Analysis of Current Open Book Policy for the Korean CM at Risk (국내 시공책임형 CM 오픈북 정책 현황 분석을 통한 개선방안)

  • Park, Kyungmo;Kim, Changduk
    • Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.3-11
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    • 2016
  • CM at Risk has been introduced in Korea to keep up with the global standards of construction management and provide a higher quality of cm service in line with a rapid change of the construction industry recently. However, it is widely considered that more time would required to settle down the system due to a lack of understanding towards CM at Risk, shortage of reliability and low capability to manage and undertake CM at Risk. Therefore, this research is analyzed problems of contract types, open book policies, and contract conditions of 33 numbers of projects undertaken by a bespoke domestic construction management firm in this research. Moreover, this research is suggested a method to establish an open book policy of CM at Risk aiming a better customers satisfaction through staff training, simplifying and improving a payment system, and a way to settle down an open book policy by improving a performance management system on site. It's expected that this research will contribute to a more competitive system with more dominating the market and a differentiation of the service so as clients to rely more on the CM at Risk.

Intra-ethical Characteristics Occupational Factors Impact on Business Competitiveness (Focused on Types of Construction Work) (기업내 직종별 윤리적 특성요인이 기업경쟁력에 미치는 영향(건설 직종을 중심으로))

  • Kim, Dong-Uk;Jeon, In-Oh
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.12 no.3
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    • pp.335-351
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    • 2012
  • This study is an empirical analysis completed based on a survey of the members of major construction companies and is analyzed to verify the relationship between the ethical characteristics of major construction companies and firm's competitiveness and its effects. In this study, based on previous researches in domestic and foreign, the factors that are affected by the business ethics were analyzed, and the competitiveness of firms, which is a dependant variable, was divided into four different types: quality, price, sales, and promotion. The proposal and final conclusion regarding the relationship between job satisfaction and concentration was made after the investigation of research hypothesis. The conclusions described below:(By the Linear regression analysis) 1. The product competitiveness is affected by moral competence, will to act ethical management, transparency of fairness, customers, and social responsibility. 2. The price competitiveness is affected by will to act ethical management, transparency of fairness, customers, and social responsibility.

A Study on Interorganizational Boundary Spanning Behaviors between Buyers and Sellers (유통경로 내 조직간 영역초월행동에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Sang-Deok
    • Proceedings of the Korean DIstribution Association Conference
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    • 2007.08a
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    • pp.3-26
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    • 2007
  • Recently, both scholars and marketers have asserted the importance of boundary spanning behaviors, such as external representation, being vocal advocates to outsiders of the organization's image, goods, and services, internal influence, taking individual initiative in communications to the firm and co-workers to improve service delivery by the organization, co-workers, and oneself, and service delivery, serving customers in a conscientious, responsive, flexible, and courteous manner. However, there is lack of study dealing with bourdary spanning behaviors bewteen organizational dyads, in which boundary spanning behaviors are expected to have important roles. The objectives of this paper is to investigate these important concerns with prior research by developing a theoretical model predicting how distinct buyer's boundary spanning behaviors occur. To be concrete, this paper develops a seller characteristics-based model of the attitudinal antecedents of three conceptually distinct forms of boundary spanning behaviors, and tests the hypothesized differential effects of seller characteristics on the three forms of boundary spanning behaviors, and investigates the extent to which these relationships are mediated by relationship satisfaction and organizational commitment. For the purpose of empirical testing, 420 respondents of leading automobile dealers, dining franchisees, industrial material retailers in Korea were surveyed and the analysis utilizing structural equation model indicated that communication quality, fairness, and marketing program dynamism had positive effects on buyer's boundary spanning behaviors via relationship satisfaction and organizational commitment. In addition, boundary spanning behaviors occurred more in contractural and corporate distribution channel than in conventional distribution channel.

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A Study on the Implementation of Knowledge Management in Hospital (병원의 지식경영 도입방안에 관한 연구 -병원 지식경영 단계모델 구축-)

  • Jang, Ik-Sun;Na, Jeong-Mi
    • Management & Information Systems Review
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    • v.23
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    • pp.75-97
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    • 2007
  • In the meantime hospital system of Korea has institutionally performed its errand in stable circumstance, however the system now faces with new environment of change of customer's satisfaction, of regime, deepening of competition, and opening market. Under the rapidly and complicatedly changing circumstance, the hospital system is required to promote getting a dominant position in the competition, enhancing outcome, creating value added, and customer satisfaction in both internally and externally likewise other organizations, as they continuously introduce a knowledge management and originate, accumulate, and put the knowledge to practical use. This organization capacity of knowledge management involves a process of management that requires great change of all organizations and individuals and it is brought up through four steps which are Initiation, Propagation, Integration, and Networking. The main factors of successful knowledge management are intension of the chief executive officer(CEO), organizational culture, appraisal and compensation of work, knowledge controlling system, and organizational structure, and each of these five stage has got different characteristic. To be successful by introducing knowledge management, hospital organization should be based on these premises. Not only CEO or the director of a hospital, but also the constituent members should be fully aware of knowledge, the characteristic of knowledge management, and successful factors of this operation. Should understand step-by-step characteristic of knowledge management, therefore able to analyse a situation of specific hospital and see which step corresponds to that hospital. By analysing, constituents should make up for the weak points and ready to move on to next step. CEO or the director of a hospital should be aware of knowledge management as a strategic factor which is able to get a dominant position in the rapidly changing environment, and also it should be firm in the director's intention to introduce the knowledge management into the hospital. By continuously carrying out education and training constituent members, the director of a hospital should promote their interest and participation in knowledge management, and build an organization culture that ultimately creates, accumulates, shares, and put the knowledge to practical use. The hospital organization needs to systematize an institution of objective compensation that corresponds to objective appraisal of knowledge management outcome. The hospital ought to build knowledge controlling system in stages, in order to take the initiative in rapidly changing environment. By considering the characteristic of hospital system, it is required to change the organizational structure into self-managing team which is a sort of horizontal structure that allows members to make decisions and take the responsibility by themselves. The limitation of this study is experimental study. Positive investigation about successful factors of hospital knowledge management and characteristic of each steps is expected with following study.

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Brand Equity and Purchase Intention in Fashion Products: A Cross-Cultural Study in Asia and Europe (상표자산과 구매의도와의 관계에 관한 국제비교연구 - 아시아와 유럽의 의류시장을 중심으로 -)

  • Kim, Kyung-Hoon;Ko, Eun-Ju;Graham, Hooley;Lee, Nick;Lee, Dong-Hae;Jung, Hong-Seob;Jeon, Byung-Joo;Moon, Hak-Il
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.4
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    • pp.245-276
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    • 2008
  • Brand equity is one of the most important concepts in business practice as well as in academic research. Successful brands can allow marketers to gain competitive advantage (Lassar et al.,1995), including the opportunity for successful extensions, resilience against competitors' promotional pressures, and the ability to create barriers to competitive entry (Farquhar, 1989). Branding plays a special role in service firms because strong brands increase trust in intangible products (Berry, 2000), enabling customers to better visualize and understand them. They reduce customers' perceived monetary, social, and safety risks in buying services, which are obstacles to evaluating a service correctly before purchase. Also, a high level of brand equity increases consumer satisfaction, repurchasing intent, and degree of loyalty. Brand equity can be considered as a mixture that includes both financial assets and relationships. Actually, brand equity can be viewed as the value added to the product (Keller, 1993), or the perceived value of the product in consumers' minds. Mahajan et al. (1990) claim that customer-based brand equity can be measured by the level of consumers' perceptions. Several researchers discuss brand equity based on two dimensions: consumer perception and consumer behavior. Aaker (1991) suggests measuring brand equity through price premium, loyalty, perceived quality, and brand associations. Viewing brand equity as the consumer's behavior toward a brand, Keller (1993) proposes similar dimensions: brand awareness and brand knowledge. Thus, past studies tend to identify brand equity as a multidimensional construct consisted of brand loyalty, brand awareness, brand knowledge, customer satisfaction, perceived equity, brand associations, and other proprietary assets (Aaker, 1991, 1996; Blackston, 1995; Cobb-Walgren et al., 1995; Na, 1995). Other studies tend to regard brand equity and other brand assets, such as brand knowledge, brand awareness, brand image, brand loyalty, perceived quality, and so on, as independent but related constructs (Keller, 1993; Kirmani and Zeithaml, 1993). Walters(1978) defined information search as, "A psychological or physical action a consumer takes in order to acquire information about a product or store." But, each consumer has different methods for informationsearch. There are two methods of information search, internal and external search. Internal search is, "Search of information already saved in the memory of the individual consumer"(Engel, Blackwell, 1982) which is, "memory of a previous purchase experience or information from a previous search."(Beales, Mazis, Salop, and Staelin, 1981). External search is "A completely voluntary decision made in order to obtain new information"(Engel & Blackwell, 1982) which is, "Actions of a consumer to acquire necessary information by such methods as intentionally exposing oneself to advertisements, taking to friends or family or visiting a store."(Beales, Mazis, Salop, and Staelin, 1981). There are many sources for consumers' information search including advertisement sources such as the internet, radio, television, newspapers and magazines, information supplied by businesses such as sales people, packaging and in-store information, consumer sources such as family, friends and colleagues, and mass media sources such as consumer protection agencies, government agencies and mass media sources. Understanding consumers' purchasing behavior is a key factor of a firm to attract and retain customers and improving the firm's prospects for survival and growth, and enhancing shareholder's value. Therefore, marketers should understand consumer as individual and market segment. One theory of consumer behavior supports the belief that individuals are rational. Individuals think and move through stages when making a purchase decision. This means that rational thinkers have led to the identification of a consumer buying decision process. This decision process with its different levels of involvement and influencing factors has been widely accepted and is fundamental to the understanding purchase intention represent to what consumers think they will buy. Brand equity is not only companies but also very important asset more than product itself. This paper studies brand equity model and influencing factors including information process such as information searching and information resources in the fashion market in Asia and Europe. Information searching and information resources are influencing brand knowledge that influences consumers purchase decision. Nine research hypotheses are drawn to test the relationships among antecedents of brand equity and purchase intention and relationships among brand knowledge, brand value, brand attitude, and brand loyalty. H1. Information searching influences brand knowledge positively. H2. Information sources influence brand knowledge positively. H3. Brand knowledge influences brand attitude. H4. Brand knowledge influences brand value. H5. Brand attitude influences brand loyalty. H6. Brand attitude influences brand value. H7. Brand loyalty influences purchase intention. H8. Brand value influence purchase intention. H9. There will be the same research model in Asia and Europe. We performed structural equation model analysis in order to test hypotheses suggested in this study. The model fitting index of the research model in Asia was $X^2$=195.19(p=0.0), NFI=0.90, NNFI=0.87, CFI=0.90, GFI=0.90, RMR=0.083, AGFI=0.85, which means the model fitting of the model is good enough. In Europe, it was $X^2$=133.25(p=0.0), NFI=0.81, NNFI=0.85, CFI=0.89, GFI=0.90, RMR=0.073, AGFI=0.85, which means the model fitting of the model is good enough. From the test results, hypotheses were accepted. All of these hypotheses except one are supported. In Europe, information search is not an antecedent of brand knowledge. This means that sales of global fashion brands like jeans in Europe are not expanding as rapidly as in Asian markets such as China, Japan, and South Korea. Young consumers in European countries are not more brand and fashion conscious than their counter partners in Asia. The results have theoretical, practical meaning and contributions. In the fashion jeans industry, relatively few studies examining the viability of cross-national brand equity has been studied. This study provides insight on building global brand equity and suggests information process elements like information search and information resources are working differently in Asia and Europe for fashion jean market.

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A Study for Strategy of On-line Shopping Mall: Based on Customer Purchasing and Re-purchasing Pattern (시스템 다이내믹스 기법을 활용한 온라인 쇼핑몰의 전략에 관한 연구 : 소비자의 구매 및 재구매 행동을 중심으로)

  • Lee, Sang-Gun;Min, Suk-Ki;Kang, Min-Cheol
    • 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.