• Title/Summary/Keyword: Five Factor Model

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A Study on the Relationship between Business Plan Components and Corporate Performance (사업계획서의 구성요소와 기업성과와의 관계에 관한 연구)

  • Koh, In-Kon;Lee, Sang-Seok;Kim, Dae-Ho
    • 한국벤처창업학회:학술대회논문집
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    • 2006.04a
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    • pp.45-75
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    • 2006
  • How much influence does a business plan have on a corporate performance? Whilst previous studies and literatures all assert a strong correlation between the two, very few have actually conducted practical analyses to support that. This study takes an empirical approach in its analysis of Korea' s small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) with the view to finding an answer to the question. A business plan' s components, which have to date been suggested only in theory and in concept, have been selected through the study of literatures and preliminary examination. The selected components were then narrowed down into five factors of productivity, implementation, operational direction, product/service and customer accessibility by applying factor analysis. With which items to measure corporate performance is also an important question as results differ depending on which measurement items were used. For the purpose of this study, corporate performance was classified into effectiveness, adaptability and efficiency to measure how greatly each is influenced by the components of a business plan. Results show that effectiveness and adaptability have a positive (+) influence on corporate performance. The regression model seems to explain effectiveness particularly well. However, different directions of influences were showed in explain power of the research model were not high. And it can be interpreted that implementation of the plan is as important as the establishment of it. Thus a good corporate performance is to be had only under an excellent plan and following an excellent implementation. In most of the companies surveyed, business plans were established regularly led by the intense involvement of the CEO. Such plans were then used in internal operations, such as guiding operational direction and measuring corporate performance. Unlike general expectations, relatively few companies used them in financing from external sources such as banks or venture capitals. These findings are different from previous studies conducted in this field. Also, as market uncertainty was pointed out as the biggest obstacle to business planning. a manager must pay more attention to acquiring external information and knowledge so as to minimize it.

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The Effects of Self-Congruity and Functional Congruity on e-WOM: The Moderating Role of Self-Construal in Tourism (중국 관광객의 온라인 구전에 대한 자아일치성과 기능일치성의 효과: 자기해석의 조절효과를 중심으로)

  • Yang, Qin;Lee, Young-Chan
    • The Journal of Information Systems
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    • v.25 no.1
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    • pp.1-23
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    • 2016
  • Purpose Self-congruity deals with the effect of symbolic value-expressive attributes on consumer decision and behavior, which is the theoretical foundation of the "non-utilitarian destination positioning". Functional congruity refers to utilitarian evaluation of a product or service by consumers. In addition, recent years, social network services, especially mobile social network services have created many opportunities for e-WOM communication that enables consumers to share personal consumption related information anywhere at any time. Moreover, self-construal is a hot and popular topic that has been discussed in the field of modem psychology as well as in marketing area. This study aims to examine the moderating effect of self-construal on the relationship between self-congruity, functional congruity and tourists' positive electronic word of mouth (e-WOM). Design/methodology/approach In order to verify the hypotheses, we developed a questionnaire with 32 survey items. We measured all the items on a five-point Likert-type scale. We used Sojump.com to collect questionnaire and gathered 218 responses from whom have visited Korea before. After a pilot test, we analyzed the main survey data by using SPSS 20.0 and AMOS 18.0, and employed structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. We first estimated the measurement model for its overall fit, reliability and validity through a confirmatory factor analysis and used common method bias test to make sure that whether measures are affected by common-method variance. Then we tested the hypotheses through the structural model and used regression analysis to measure moderating effect of self-construal. Findings The results reveal that the effect of self-congruity on tourists' positive e-WOM is stronger for tourists with an independent self-construal compared with those with interdependent self-construal. Moreover, it shows that the effect of functional congruity on tourists' positive e-WOM becomes salient when tourists' self-construal is primed to be interdependent rather than independent. We expect that the results of this study can provide important implications for academic and practical perspective.

Machine Learning Based MMS Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation (머신러닝 기반 MMS Point Cloud 의미론적 분할)

  • Bae, Jaegu;Seo, Dongju;Kim, Jinsoo
    • Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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    • v.38 no.5_3
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    • pp.939-951
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    • 2022
  • The most important factor in designing autonomous driving systems is to recognize the exact location of the vehicle within the surrounding environment. To date, various sensors and navigation systems have been used for autonomous driving systems; however, all have limitations. Therefore, the need for high-definition (HD) maps that provide high-precision infrastructure information for safe and convenient autonomous driving is increasing. HD maps are drawn using three-dimensional point cloud data acquired through a mobile mapping system (MMS). However, this process requires manual work due to the large numbers of points and drawing layers, increasing the cost and effort associated with HD mapping. The objective of this study was to improve the efficiency of HD mapping by segmenting semantic information in an MMS point cloud into six classes: roads, curbs, sidewalks, medians, lanes, and other elements. Segmentation was performed using various machine learning techniques including random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), k-nearest neighbor (KNN), and gradient-boosting machine (GBM), and 11 variables including geometry, color, intensity, and other road design features. MMS point cloud data for a 130-m section of a five-lane road near Minam Station in Busan, were used to evaluate the segmentation models; the average F1 scores of the models were 95.43% for RF, 92.1% for SVM, 91.05% for GBM, and 82.63% for KNN. The RF model showed the best segmentation performance, with F1 scores of 99.3%, 95.5%, 94.5%, 93.5%, and 90.1% for roads, sidewalks, curbs, medians, and lanes, respectively. The variable importance results of the RF model showed high mean decrease accuracy and mean decrease gini for XY dist. and Z dist. variables related to road design, respectively. Thus, variables related to road design contributed significantly to the segmentation of semantic information. The results of this study demonstrate the applicability of segmentation of MMS point cloud data based on machine learning, and will help to reduce the cost and effort associated with HD mapping.

A Study on the Characteristics of Enterprise R&D Capabilities Using Data Mining (데이터마이닝을 활용한 기업 R&D역량 특성에 관한 탐색 연구)

  • Kim, Sang-Gook;Lim, Jung-Sun;Park, Wan
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.27 no.1
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    • pp.1-21
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    • 2021
  • As the global business environment changes, uncertainties in technology development and market needs increase, and competition among companies intensifies, interests and demands for R&D activities of individual companies are increasing. In order to cope with these environmental changes, R&D companies are strengthening R&D investment as one of the means to enhance the qualitative competitiveness of R&D while paying more attention to facility investment. As a result, facilities or R&D investment elements are inevitably a burden for R&D companies to bear future uncertainties. It is true that the management strategy of increasing investment in R&D as a means of enhancing R&D capability is highly uncertain in terms of corporate performance. In this study, the structural factors that influence the R&D capabilities of companies are explored in terms of technology management capabilities, R&D capabilities, and corporate classification attributes by utilizing data mining techniques, and the characteristics these individual factors present according to the level of R&D capabilities are analyzed. This study also showed cluster analysis and experimental results based on evidence data for all domestic R&D companies, and is expected to provide important implications for corporate management strategies to enhance R&D capabilities of individual companies. For each of the three viewpoints, detailed evaluation indexes were composed of 7, 2, and 4, respectively, to quantitatively measure individual levels in the corresponding area. In the case of technology management capability and R&D capability, the sub-item evaluation indexes that are being used by current domestic technology evaluation agencies were referenced, and the final detailed evaluation index was newly constructed in consideration of whether data could be obtained quantitatively. In the case of corporate classification attributes, the most basic corporate classification profile information is considered. In particular, in order to grasp the homogeneity of the R&D competency level, a comprehensive score for each company was given using detailed evaluation indicators of technology management capability and R&D capability, and the competency level was classified into five grades and compared with the cluster analysis results. In order to give the meaning according to the comparative evaluation between the analyzed cluster and the competency level grade, the clusters with high and low trends in R&D competency level were searched for each cluster. Afterwards, characteristics according to detailed evaluation indicators were analyzed in the cluster. Through this method of conducting research, two groups with high R&D competency and one with low level of R&D competency were analyzed, and the remaining two clusters were similar with almost high incidence. As a result, in this study, individual characteristics according to detailed evaluation indexes were analyzed for two clusters with high competency level and one cluster with low competency level. The implications of the results of this study are that the faster the replacement cycle of professional managers who can effectively respond to changes in technology and market demand, the more likely they will contribute to enhancing R&D capabilities. In the case of a private company, it is necessary to increase the intensity of input of R&D capabilities by enhancing the sense of belonging of R&D personnel to the company through conversion to a corporate company, and to provide the accuracy of responsibility and authority through the organization of the team unit. Since the number of technical commercialization achievements and technology certifications are occurring both in the case of contributing to capacity improvement and in case of not, it was confirmed that there is a limit in reviewing it as an important factor for enhancing R&D capacity from the perspective of management. Lastly, the experience of utility model filing was identified as a factor that has an important influence on R&D capability, and it was confirmed the need to provide motivation to encourage utility model filings in order to enhance R&D capability. As such, the results of this study are expected to provide important implications for corporate management strategies to enhance individual companies' R&D capabilities.

The Effect of Users' Personality on Emotional and Cognitive Evaluation in UCC Web Site Usage (UCC(user-created-contents) 웹 사이트에서 사용자의 인성이 감정적, 인지적 평가와 UCC 활용에 미치는 영향)

  • Moon, Yun-Ji;Kang, So-Ra;Kim, Woo-Gon
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.167-190
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    • 2010
  • The research conducted here focuses on the effect of factors that affect the behavior of UCC (User Created Content) website users, other than user's rational recognition of how useful a UCC website can be. Most discussions in the existing literature on information systems have focused on users' evaluation how a UCC website can help to attain the users' own goals. However, there are other factors and this research pays attention to an individual's 'personality,' which is stable and biological in nature. Specifically, I have noted here that 'extroversion' and 'neuroticism,' the two common personality factors presented in Eysenck's most representative 'EPQ Model' and 'Big Five Model,' are the two personality factors that affect a site's 'usefulness,' by this I mean how useful does the user consider the website and its content. How useful a site is considered by the user is the other factor that has been regarded as the antecedent factor that influences the adoption of information systems in the existing MIS (Management Information System) research. Secondly, as using or creating a UCC website does not guarantee the user's or the creator's extrinsic motivation, unlike when using the information system within an organization, there is a greater likelihood that the increase in user's activities in relation to a UCC website is motivated by emotional factors rather than rational factors. Thus, I have decided to include the relationship between an individual's personality and what they find pleasurable in the research model. Thirdly, when based on the S-O-R Paradigm of Mehrabian and Russell, the two cognitive factors and emotional factors are finally affected by stimulus, and thus these factors ultimately have an effect on an individual's respondent behavior. Therefore, this research has presented an assumption that the recognition of how useful the site and content is and what emotional pleasure it provides will finally affect the behavior of the UCC website users. Finally, the relationship between the recognition of how useful a site is and how pleasurable it is to useand UCC usage may differ depending on certain situational conditions. In other words, the relationship between the three factors may vary according to how much users are involved in the creation of the website content. Creation thus emerges as the keyword of UCC. I analyzed the above relationships through the moderating variable of the user's involvement in the creation of the site. The research result shows the following: When it comes to the relationship between an individual's personality and what they find pleasurable it is extroverted users who have a greater likelihood to feel pleasure when using a UCC website, as was expected in this research. This in turn leads to a more active usage of the UCC web site because a person who is an extrovert likes to spend time on activities with other people, is sensitive to new experiences and stimuli and thus actively responds to these. An extroverted person accepts new UCC activities as part of his/her social life, rather than getting away from this new UCC environment. This is represented by the term 'Foxonomy' where the users meet a variety of users from all over the world and contact new types of content created by these users. However, neuroticism creates the opposite situation to that created by extroversion. The representative symptoms of neuroticism are instability, stress, and tension. These dispositions are more closely related to stress caused by a new environment rather than this creatingcuriosity or pleasure. Thus, neurotic persons have an uneasy feeling and will eventually avoid the situation where their own or others' daily lives are frequently exposed to the open web environment, this eventually makes them have a negative attitude towards the web environment. When it comes to an individual's personality and how useful site is, the two personality factors of extroversion and neuroticism both have a positive relationship with the recognition of how useful the site and its content is. The positive, curious, and social dispositions of extroverted persons tend to make them consider the future usefulness and possibilities of a new type of information system, or website, based on their positive attitude, which has a significant influence on the recognition of how useful these UCC sites are. Neuroticism also favorably affects how useful a UCC website can be through a different mechanism from that of extroversion. As the neurotic persons tend to feel uneasy and have much doubt about a new type of information system, they actively explore its usefulness in order to relieve their uncomfortable feelings. In other words, neurotic persons seek out how useful a site can be in order to secure their own stable feelings. Meanwhile, extroverted persons explore how useful a site can be because of their positive attitude and curiosity. As a lot of MIS research has revealed that the recognition of how useful a site can be and how pleasurable it can be to use have been proven to have a significant effect on UCC activity. However, the relationship between these factors reveals different aspects based on the user's involvement in creation. This factor of creationgauges the interest of users in the creation of UCC contents. Involvement is a variable that shows the level of an individual's mental effort in creating UCC contents. When a user is highly involved in the creation process and makes an enormous effort to create UCC content (classed a part of a high-involvement group), their own pleasure and recognition of how useful the site is have a significantly higher effect on the future usage of the UCC contents, more significantly than the users who sit back and just retrieve the UCC content created by others. The cognitive and emotional response of those in the low-involvement group is unlikely to last long,even if they recognize the contents of a UCC website is pleasurable and useful to them. However, the high-involvement group tends to participate in the creation and the usage of UCC more favorably, connecting the experience with their own goals. In this respect, this research presents an answer to the question; why so many people are participating in the usage of UCC, the representative form of the Web 2.0 that has drastically involved more and more people in the creation of UCC, even if they cannot gain any monetary or social compensation. Neither information system nor a website can succeed unless it secures a certain level of user base. Moreover, it cannot be further developed when the reasons, or problems, for people's participation are not suitably explored, even if it has a certain user base. Thus, what is significant in this research is that it has studied users' respondent behavior based on an individual's innate personality, emotion, and cognitive interaction, unlike the existing research that has focused on 'compensation' to explain users' participation with the UCC website. There are also limitations in this research. Firstly, I divided an individual's personality into extroversion and neuroticism; however, there are many other personal factors such as neuro-psychiatricism, which also needs to be analyzed for its influence on UCC activities. Secondly, as a UCC website comes in many types such as multimedia, Wikis, and podcasting, these types need to be included as a sub-category of the UCC websites and their relationship with personality, emotion, cognition, and behavior also needs to be analyzed.

The Effect of Franchisor's On-going Support Services on Franchisee's Relationship Quality and Business Performance in the Foodservice Industry (외식 프랜차이즈 가맹본부의 사후 지원서비스가 가맹점의 관계품질과 경영성과에 미치는 영향)

  • Lee, Jae-Han;Lee, Yong-Ki;Han, Kyu-Chul
    • Journal of Distribution Research
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    • v.15 no.3
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    • pp.1-34
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    • 2010
  • Introduction The purpose of this research is to develop overall model which involves the effect of ongoing support services by franchisor on franchisee's relationship quality(trust, satisfaction, and commitment) and business performance(financial and non-financial performance), and to investigate the relationships among trust, satisfaction, commitment, financial and non-financial performance. This study also suggests franchise business or franchise system should be based on long-term orientation between franchisor and franchisee rather than short-term orientation, or transactional relationship, and proposes the most effective way of providing on-going support services by franchisor with franchisee thru symbiotic relationship among franchisor and franchisee Research Model and Hypothesis The research model as Figure 1 shows the variables on-going support services which affect the relationship quality between franchisor and franchisee such as trust, satisfaction, and commitment, and also analyze the effects of relationship quality on business performance including financial and non-financial performance We established 12 hypotheses to test as follows; Relationship between on-going support services and trust H1: On-going support services factors (product category & price, logistics service, promotion, information providing & problem solving capability, supervisor's support, and education & training support) have positive effect on franchisee's trust. Relationship between on-going support services and satisfaction H2: On-going support services factors (product category & price, logistics service, promotion, information providing & problem solving capability, supervisor's support, and education & training support) have positive effect on franchisee's satisfaction. Relationship between on-going support services and commitment H3: On-going support services factors (product category & price, logistics service, promotion, information providing & problem solving capability, supervisor's support, and education & training support) have positive effect on franchisee's commitment. Relationship among relationship quality: trust, satisfaction, and commitment H4: Franchisee's trust has positive effect on franchisee's satisfaction. H5: Franchisee's trust has positive effect on franchisee's commitment. H6: Franchisee's satisfaction has positive effect on franchisee's commitment. Relationship between relationship quality and business performance H7: Franchisee's trust has positive effect on franchisee's financial performance. H8: Franchisee's trust has positive effect on franchisee's non-financial performance. H9: Franchisee's satisfaction has positive effect on franchisee's financial performance. H10: Franchisee's satisfaction has positive effect on franchisee's non-financial performance. H11: Franchisee's commitment has positive effect on franchisee's financial performance. H12: Franchisee's commitment has positive effect on franchisee's non-financial performance. Method The on-going support services were defined as an organized system of continuous supporting services by franchisor for the purpose of satisfying the expectation of franchisee based on long-term orientation and classified into six constructs such as product category & price, logistics service, promotion, providing information & problem solving capability, supervisor's support, and education & training support. The six constructs were measured agreement using a 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree)as follows. The product category & price was measured by four items: menu variety, price of food material provided by franchisor, and support for developing new menu. The logistics service was measured by six items: distribution system of franchisor, return policy for provided food materials, timeliness, inventory control level of franchisor, accuracy of order, and flexibility of emergency order. The promotion was measured by five items: differentiated promotion activities, brand image of franchisor, promotion effect such as customer increase, long-term plan of promotion, and micro-marketing concept in promotion. The providing information & problem solving capability was measured by information providing of new products, information of competitors, information of cost reduction, and efforts for solving problems in franchisee's operations. The supervisor's support was measured by supervisor operations, frequency of visiting franchisee, support by data analysis, processing the suggestions by franchisee, diagnosis and solutions for the franchisee's operations, and support for increasing sales in franchisee. Finally, the of education & training support was measured by recipe training by specialist, service training for store people, systemized training program, and tax & human resources support services. Analysis and results The data were analyzed using Amos. Figure 2 and Table 1 present the result of the structural equation model. Implications The results of this research are as follows: Firstly, the factors of product category, information providing and problem solving capacity influence only franchisee's satisfaction and commitment. Secondly, logistic services and supervising factors influence only trust and satisfaction. Thirdly, continuing education and training factors influence only franchisee's trust and commitment. Fourthly, sales promotion factor influences all the relationship quality representing trust, satisfaction, and commitment. Fifthly, regarding relationship among relationship quality, trust positively influences satisfaction, however, does not directly influence commitment, but satisfaction positively affects commitment. Therefore, satisfaction plays a mediating role between trust and commitment. Sixthly, trust positively influence only financial performance, and satisfaction and commitment influence positively both financial and non-financial performance.

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Effect of Service Convenience on the Relationship Performance in B2B Markets: Mediating Effect of Relationship Factors (B2B 시장에서의 서비스 편의성이 관계성과에 미치는 영향 : 관계적 요인의 매개효과 분석)

  • Han, Sang-Lin;Lee, Seong-Ho
    • 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.

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The Effect of Attributes of Innovation and Perceived Risk on Product Attitudes and Intention to Adopt Smart Wear (스마트 의류의 혁신속성과 지각된 위험이 제품 태도 및 수용의도에 미치는 영향)

  • Ko, Eun-Ju;Sung, Hee-Won;Yoon, Hye-Rim
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.2
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    • pp.89-111
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    • 2008
  • Due to the development of digital technology, studies regarding smart wear integrating daily life have rapidly increased. However, consumer research about perception and attitude toward smart clothing hardly could find. The purpose of this study was to identify innovative characteristics and perceived risk of smart clothing and to analyze the influences of theses factors on product attitudes and intention to adopt. Specifically, five hypotheses were established. H1: Perceived attributes of smart clothing except for complexity would have positive relations to product attitude or purchase intention, while complexity would be opposite. H2: Product attitude would have positive relation to purchase intention. H3: Product attitude would have a mediating effect between perceived attributes and purchase intention. H4: Perceived risks of smart clothing would have negative relations to perceived attributes except for complexity, and positive relations to complexity. H5: Product attitude would have a mediating effect between perceived risks and purchase intention. A self-administered questionnaire was developed based on previous studies. After pretest, the data were collected during September, 2006, from university students in Korea who were relatively sensitive to innovative products. A total of 300 final useful questionnaire were analyzed by SPSS 13.0 program. About 60.3% were male with the mean age of 21.3 years old. About 59.3% reported that they were aware of smart clothing, but only 9 respondents purchased it. The mean of attitudes toward smart clothing and purchase intention was 2.96 (SD=.56) and 2.63 (SD=.65) respectively. Factor analysis using principal components with varimax rotation was conducted to identify perceived attribute and perceived risk dimensions. Perceived attributes of smart wear were categorized into relative advantage (including compatibility), observability (including triability), and complexity. Perceived risks were identified into physical/performance risk, social psychological risk, time loss risk, and economic risk. Regression analysis was conducted to test five hypotheses. Relative advantage and observability were significant predictors of product attitude (adj $R^2$=.223) and purchase intention (adj $R^2$=.221). Complexity showed negative influence on product attitude. Product attitude presented significant relation to purchase intention (adj $R^2$=.692) and partial mediating effect between perceived attributes and purchase intention (adj $R^2$=.698). Therefore hypothesis one to three were accepted. In order to test hypothesis four, four dimensions of perceived risk and demographic variables (age, gender, monthly household income, awareness of smart clothing, and purchase experience) were entered as independent variables in the regression models. Social psychological risk, economic risk, and gender (female) were significant to predict relative advantage (adj $R^2$=.276). When perceived observability was a dependent variable, social psychological risk, time loss risk, physical/performance risk, and age (younger) were significant in order (adj $R^2$=.144). However, physical/performance risk was positively related to observability. The more Koreans seemed to be observable of smart clothing, the more increased the probability of physical harm or performance problems received. Complexity was predicted by product awareness, social psychological risk, economic risk, and purchase experience in order (adj $R^2$=.114). Product awareness was negatively related to complexity, meaning high level of product awareness would reduce complexity of smart clothing. However, purchase experience presented positive relation with complexity. It appears that consumers can perceive high level of complexity when they are actually consuming smart clothing in real life. Risk variables were positively related with complexity. That is, in order to decrease complexity, it is also necessary to consider minimizing anxiety factors about social psychological wound or loss of money. Thus, hypothesis 4 was partially accepted. Finally, in testing hypothesis 5, social psychological risk and economic risk were significant predictors for product attitude (adj $R^2$=.122) and purchase intention (adj $R^2$=.099) respectively. When attitude variable was included with risk variables as independent variables in the regression model to predict purchase intention, only attitude variable was significant (adj $R^2$=.691). Thus attitude variable presented full mediating effect between perceived risks and purchase intention, and hypothesis 5 was accepted. Findings would provide guidelines for fashion and electronic businesses who aim to create and strengthen positive attitude toward smart clothing. Marketers need to consider not only functional feature of smart clothing, but also practical and aesthetic attributes, since appropriateness for social norm or self image would reduce uncertainty of psychological or social risk, which increase relative advantage of smart clothing. Actually social psychological risk was significantly associated to relative advantage. Economic risk is negatively associated with product attitudes as well as purchase intention, suggesting that smart-wear developers have to reflect on price ranges of potential adopters. It will be effective to utilize the findings associated with complexity when marketers in US plan communication strategy.

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An Analysis on Factors Affecting Local Control and Survival in Nasopharvngeal Carcinoma (비인두암의 국소 종양 치유와 생존율에 관한 예후 인자 분석)

  • Chung Woong-Ki;Cho Jae-Shik;Park Seung Jin;Lee Jae-Hong;Ahn Sung Ja;Nam Taek Keun;Choi Chan;Noh Young Hee;Nah Byung Sik
    • Radiation Oncology Journal
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.91-99
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    • 1999
  • Propose : This study was performed to find out the prognostic factors affecting local control, survival and disease free survival rate in nasopharyngeal carcinomas treated with chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Materials and Methods : We analysed 47 patients of nasopharyngeal carcinomas, histologically confirmed and treated at Chonnam University Hospital between July 1986 and June 1996, retrospectively. Range of patients' age were from 16 to 80 years (median; 52 years). Thirty three (70$\%$) patients was male. Histological types were composed of 3 (6$\%$) keratinizing, 30 (64$\%$) nonkeratinizing squamous cell carcinoma and 13 (28$\%$) undifferentiated carcinoma. Histoiogicai type was not known in 1 patient (2$\%$). We restaged according to the staging system of 1997 American Joint Committee on Cancer Forty seven patients were recorded as follows: 71: 11 (23$\%$), T2a; 6 (13$\%$), T2b; 9 (19$\%$), 73; 7 (15$\%$), 74: 14 (30$\%$), and NO; 7 (15$\%$), Nl: 14 (30$\%$), N2; 21 (45%), N3: 5 (10%). Clinical staging was grouped as follows: Stage 1; 2 (4$\%$), IIA: 2 (4$\%$), IIB; 10 (21$\%$), III; 14 (30$\%$), IVA; 14 (30$\%$) and IVB; 5 (11$\%$). Radiation therapy was done using 6 MV and 10 MV X- ray of linear accelerator. Electron beam was used for the Iymph nodes of posterior neck after 4500 cGy. The range of total radiation dose delivered to the primary tumor was from 6120 to 7920 cGy (median; 7020 cGy). Neoadjuvant chemotherapy was performed with cisplatin +5-fluorouracil (25 patients) or cisplatin+pepleomycin (17 patients) with one to three cycles. Five patients did not received chemotherapy. Local control rate, survival and disease free suwival rate were calculated by Kaplan-Meier method. Generalized Wilcoxon test was used to evaluate the difference of survival rates between groups. multivariate analysis using Cox proportional hazard model was done for finding prognostic factors. Results: Local control rate was 81$\%$ in 5 year. Five year survival rate was 60$\%$ (median survival; 100 months). We included age, sex, cranial nerve deflicit, histologic type, stage group, chemotherapy, elapsed days between chemotherapy and radiotherapy, total radiation dose, period of radiotherapy as potential prognostic factors in multivariate analysis. As a result, cranial none deficit (P=0.004) had statistical significance in local control rate. Stage group and total radiation dose were significant prognostic factors in survival (P=0.000, P=0.012), and in disease free survival rates (P=0.003, P=0.008), respectively. Common complications were xerostomia, tooth and ear problems. Hypothyroidism was developed in 2 patients. Conclusion : In our study, cranial none deficit was a significant prognostic factor in local control rate, and stage group and total radiation dose were significant factors in both survival and disease free survival of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. We have concluded that chemotherapy and radiotherapy used in our patients were effective without any serious complication.

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Biological Stream Health and Physico-chemical Characteristics in the Keum-Ho River Watershed (금호강 수계에서 생물학적 하천 건강도 및 이화학적 특성)

  • Kwon, Young-Soo;An, Kwang-Guk
    • Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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    • v.39 no.2 s.116
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    • pp.145-156
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    • 2006
  • The objective of this study was to evaluate biological health conditions and physicochemical status using multi-metric models at five sites of the Keum-Ho River during August 2004 and June 2005. The research approach was based on a qualitative habitat evaluation index (QHEI), index of biological integrity (IBI) using fish assemblage, and long-term chemical data (1995 ${\sim}$ 2004), which was obtained from the Ministry of Environment, Korea. For the biological health assessments, regional model of the IBI in Korea (An,2003), was applied for this study. Mean IBI in the river was 30 and varied from 23 to 48 depending on the sampling sites. The river health was judged to be "fair condition", according to the stream health criteria of US EPA (1993) and Barbour et al. (1999). According to the analysis of the chemical water quality data of the river, BOD, COD, conductivity, TP, TN, and TSS largely varied epending on the sampling sites, seasons and years. Variabilities of some parameters including BOD, COD, TP, TN, and conductivity were greater in the downstream than in the upstream reach. This phenomenon was evident in the dilution by the rain during the monsoon. This indicates that precipitation is a very important factor of the chemical variations of water quality. Community analyses showed that species diversity index was highest (H=0.78) in the site 1, while community dominance index was highest in the site 3, where Opsariichthys uncirostris largely dominated. In contrast, the proportions of omnivore and tolerant species were greater in the downstream reach, than in the upstream reach. Overall, this study suggests that some sites in the downstream reach may need to restore the aquatic ecosystem for better biological health.