• Title/Summary/Keyword: Food Consumption Recognition

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Whole-Body Microbiota of Sea Cucumber (Apostichopus japonicus) from South Korea for Improved Seafood Management

  • Kim, Tae-Yoon;Lee, Jin-Jae;Kim, Bong-Soo;Choi, Sang Ho
    • Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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    • v.27 no.10
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    • pp.1753-1762
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    • 2017
  • Sea cucumber (Apostichopus japonicus) is a popular seafood source in Asia, including South Korea, and its consumption has recently increased with recognition of its medicinal properties. However, because raw sea cucumber contains various microbes, its ingestion can cause foodborne illness. Therefore, analysis of the microbiota in the whole body of sea cucumber can extend our understanding of foodborne illness caused by microorganisms and help to better manage products. We collected 40 sea cucumbers from four different sites in August and November, which are known as the maximum production areas in Korea. The microbiota was analyzed by an Illumina MiSeq system, and bacterial amounts were quantified by real-time PCR. The diversity and bacterial amounts in sea cucumber were higher in August than in November. Alpha-, Beta-, and Gammaproteobacteria were common dominant classes in all samples. However, the microbiota composition differed according to sampling time and site. Staphylococcus warneri and Propionibacterium acnes were commonly detected potential pathogens in August and November samples, respectively. The effect of experimental Vibrio parahaemolyticus infection on the indigenous microbiota of sea cucumber was analyzed at different temperatures, revealing clear alterations of Psychrobacter and Moraxella; thus, these shifts can be used as indicators for monitoring infection of sea cucumber. Although further studies are needed to clarify and understand the virulence and mechanisms of the identified pathogens of sea cucumber, our study provides a valuable reference for determining the potential of foodborne illness caused by sea cucumber ingestion and to develop monitoring strategies of products using microbiota information.

Egg Cholesterol : Effects on Health and Perspective (계란의 Cholesterol : 문제점과 대책)

  • 지규만
    • Korean Journal of Poultry Science
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    • v.21 no.2
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    • pp.139-150
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    • 1994
  • Egg cholesterol has been a hot issue in respect of it's effect on health and diseases in human. There is a general recognition that the cholesterol from eggs is similar to that from the other dietary sources in its biochemical functions. Many evidences show that egg yolk increased plasma cholesterol levels at an average rate of 2.3 mg /100 rnL plasma for every 100 mg cholesterol consumed. The elevation of plasma cholesterol could, however, be altered by various dietary factors such as ratios of polyunsaturated fatty acids and saturated fatty acids. Blood cholesterol levels of Korean adults have been raised up to, on the average, 193 and 187 mg /100 mL plasma for men and women, respectively, from 167/5 mg /100 mL in 1980. Furthermore, proportion of hypercholesterolemics(> 210 mg /dL) has been increased up to 23% of the population. These changes in blood cholesterol levels are attributed to the changes of dietary patterns, suggesting the arguement that Koreans are insensitive to changes of blood cholesterol is not right. Egg cholesterol levels have never been successfully reduced to any significant levels even with tremendous amounts of efforts made during last decades. The alternative and the best way to control blood cholesterol level originating from egg consumption appeares to enrich egg fat with omega-3 series fatty acids. Ingestion of the fatty acid group has specific functions to reduce hypertension and prevent various types of cancer as well as to reduce blood cholesterol. Another way to reduce egg cholesterol directly is to produce smaller egg yolk without reducing whole egg size since cholesterol is located only in the yolk. It is important to keep faith with consumers by providing correct informations on eggs, meanwhile efforts need to focus on to improve the quality of eggs as one of the best protein food items.

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Milk and Dairy Intake and Acceptability in Fifth- and Sixth-graders in Hwaseong, Korea (초등학생의 우유와 유제품 섭취와 기호도 -경기도 화성시 일부 초등학생 5~6학년 대상으로)

  • Rhie, Seung Gyo;Lee, Eun Kyoung
    • The Korean Journal of Community Living Science
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    • v.26 no.3
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    • pp.499-509
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    • 2015
  • Efforts to have children consume milk continue across the world for the sufficient supply of calcium and protein. This study examines the frequency and amount of dairy milk and the recognition, acceptability, and knowledge of milk and dairy products by considering fifth- and sixth-graders in Hwaseong, Korea. The acceptability of milk and dairy products measured based on a five-point Likert-type scale was assessed to determine its correlations with breakfast frequency, the frequency of milk intake, and milk knowledge. According to descriptive statistics, 47% and 53% of the subjects were fifth- and sixth-graders, respectively, 53% and 47% were male and female, respectively, 45.3% and 51.2% had mothers in their thirties and forties, respectively, and 57% had working mothers. Breakfast frequency was 5.2 and 5.3 times per week, and milk and dairy intake was 4.6 times. The milk knowledge score was 5.3 out of 10 points. The average daily intake of milk was a cup (55.1%), and a vast majority preferred white milk (68.6%). Ice cream bar type (4.49 points) and cone type (4.48 points) showed the highest acceptability, and breakfast frequency was positively correlated with white milk and cheddar cheese (p<0.01). Daily milk intake frequency was positively correlated with white milk and fortified milk. Milk knowledge was positively correlation with white milk, fortified milk, functional yogurt (p <0.05), fermented milk, and cheese (p<0.01). The higher the breakfast frequency, the more likely the intake of white milk (p<0.01). An increase in milk intake increased milk knowledge (p<0.05). The higher the level of knowledge, the more likely the intake of fortified milk and the frequency of milk intake. These results suggest that school lunch milk may increase awareness and milk intake through continuing education in milk knowledge. High acceptability scores for white milk, fortified milk, and fermented milk indicate their suitability for school milk consumption.

The Influence of Store Environment on Service Brand Personality and Repurchase Intention (점포의 물리적 환경이 서비스 브랜드 개성과 재구매의도에 미치는 영향)

  • Kim, Hyoung-Gil;Kim, Jung-Hee;Kim, Youn-Jeong
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.141-173
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    • 2007
  • The study examines how the environmental factors of store influence service brand personality and repurchase intention in the service environment. The service industry has been experiencing the intensified competition with the industry's continuous growth and the influence from rapid technological advancement. Under the circumstances, it has become ever more important for the brand competitiveness to be distinctively recognized against competition. A brand needs to be distinguished and differentiated from competing companies because they are all engaged in the similar environment of the service industry. The differentiation of brand achievement has become increasingly important to highlight certain brand functions to include emotional, self-expressive, and symbolic functions since the importance of such functions has been further emphasized in promoting consumption activities. That is the recent role of brand personality that has been emphasized in the service industry. In other words, customers now freely and actively express their personalities or egos in consumption activities, taking an important role in construction of a brand asset. Hence, the study suggests that it is necessary to disperse the recognition and acknowledgement that the maintenance of the existing customers contributes more to boost repurchase intention when it is compared to the efforts to create new customers, particularly in the service industry. Meanwhile, the store itself can offer a unique environment that may influence the consumer's purchase decision. Consumers interact with store environments in the process of,virtually, all household purchase they make (Sarel 1981). Thus, store environments may encourage customers to purchase. The roles that store environments play are to provide informational cues to customers about the store and goods and communicate messages to stimulate consumers' emotions. The store environments differentiate the store from competing stores and build a unique service brand personality. However, the existing studies related to brand in the service industry mostly concentrated on the relationship between the quality of service and customer satisfaction, and they are mostly generalized while the connective studies focused on brand personality. Such approaches show limitations and are insufficient to investigate on the relationship between store environment and brand personality in the service industry. Accordingly, the study intends to identify the level of contribution to the establishment of brand personality made by the store's physical environments that influence on the specific brand characteristics depending on the type of service. The study also intends to identify what kind of relationships with brand personality exists with brand personality while being influenced by store environments. In addition, the study intends to make meaningful suggestions to better direct marketing efforts by identifying whether a brand personality makes a positive influence to induce an intention for repurchase. For this study, the service industry is classified into four categories based on to the characteristics of service: experimental-emotional service, emotional -credible service, credible-functional service, and functional-experimental service. The type of business with the most frequent customer contact is determined for each service type and the enterprise with the highest brand value in each service sector based on the report made by the Korea Management Association. They are designated as the representative of each category. The selected representatives are a fast-food store (experimental-emotional service), a cinema house (emotional-credible service), a bank (credible-functional service), and discount store (functional-experimental service). The survey was conducted for the four selected brands to represent each service category among consumers who are experienced users of the designated stores in Seoul Metropolitan City and Gyeonggi province via written questionnaires in order to verify the suggested assumptions in the study. In particular, the survey adopted 15 scales, which represent each characteristic factor, among the 42 unique characteristics developed by Jennifer Aaker(1997) to assess the brand personality of each service brand. SPSS for Windows Release 12.0 and LISREL were used in the analysis of data verification. The methodology of the structural equation model was used for the study and the pivotal findings are as follows. 1) The environmental factors ware classified as design factors, ambient factors, and social factors. Therefore, the validity of measurement scale of Baker et al. (1994) was proved. 2) The service brand personalities were subdivided as sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness, which makes the use of the brand personality scales by Jennifer Aaker(1997) appropriate in the service industry as well. 3) One-way ANOVA analysis on the scales of store environment and service brand personality showed that there exist statistically significant differences in each service category. For example, the social factors were highest in discount stores, while the ambient factors and design factors were highest in fast-food stores. The discount stores were highest in the sincerity and excitement, while the highest point for banks was in the competence and ruggedness, and the highest point for fast-food stores was in the sophistication, The consumers will make a different respond to the physical environment of stores and service brand personality that are inherent to the corresponding service interface. Hence, the customers will make a different decision-making when dealing with different service categories. In this aspect, the relationships of variables in the proposed hypothesis appear to work in a different way depending on the exposed service category. 4) The store environment factors influenced on service brand personalities differently by category of service. The factors of store's physical environment are transferred to a brand and were verified to strengthen service brand personalities. In particular, the level of influence on the service brand personality by physical environment differs depending on service category or dimension, which indicates that there is a need to apply a different style of management to a different service category or dimension. It signifies that there needs to be a brand strategy established in order to positively influence the relationship with consumers by utilizing an appropriate brand personality factor depending on different characteristics by service category or dimension. 5) The service brand personalities influenced on the repurchase intention. Especially, the largest influence was made in the sophistication dimension of service brand personality scale; the unique and characteristically appropriate arrangement of physical environment will make customers stay in the service environment for a long time and will lead to give a positive influence on the repurchase intention. 6) The store environment factors influenced on the repurchase intention. Particularly, the largest influence was made on the social factors of store environment. The most intriguing finding is that the service factor among all other environment factors gives the biggest influence to the repurchase intention in most of all service types except fast-food stores. Such result indicates that the customers pay attention to how much the employees try to provide a quality service when they make an evaluation on the service brand. At the same time, it also indicates that the personal factor is directly transmitted to the construction of brand personality. The employees' attitude and behavior are the determinants to establish a service brand personality in the process of enhancing service interface. Hence, there should be a reinforced search for a method to efficiently manage the service staff who has a direct contact with customers in order to make an affirmative improvement of the customers' brand evaluation at the service interface. The findings suggest several managerial implications. 1) Results from the empirical study indicated that store environment factors have a strong positive impact on a service brand personality. To increase customers' repurchase intention of a service brand, the management is required to effectively manage store environment factors and create a friendly brand personality based on the corresponding service environment. 2) Mangers and researchers must understand and recognize that the store environment elements are important marketing tools, and that brand personality influences on consumers' repurchase intention. Based on such result of the study, a service brand could be utilized as an efficient measure to achieve a differentiation by enforcing the elements that are most influential among all other store environments for each service category. Therefore, brand personality established involving various store environments will further reinforce the relationship with customers through the elevated brand identification of which utilization to induce repurchase decision can be used as an entry barrier. 3) The study identified the store environment as a component of service brand personality for the store's effective communication with consumers. For this, all communication channels should be maintained with consistency and an integrated marketing communication should be executed to efficiently approach to a larger number of customers. Mangers and researchers must find strategies for aligning decisions about store environment elements with the retailers' marketing and store personality objectives. All ambient, design, and social factors need to be orchestrated so that consumers can take an appropriate store personality. In this study, the induced results from the previous studies were extended to the service industry so as to identify the customers' decision making process that leads to repurchase intention and a result similar to those of the previous studies. The findings suggested several theoretical and managerial implications. However, the situation that only one service brand served as the subject of analysis for each service category, and the situation that correlations among store environment elements were not identified, as well as the problem of representation in selection of samples should be considered and supplemented in the future when further studies are conducted. In addition, various antecedents and consequences of brand personality must be looked at in the aspect of the service environment for further research.

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