• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.239-245
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• 2005

Purpose: Hypereosinophilic syndrome (HES) is an infiltrative disease of eosinophils affecting multiple organs including the iung. F-18 2-fluoro-2-deoxyglucose (F-18 FDG) may accumulate at sites of inflammation or injection, making interpretation of whole body PET scan difficult in patients with cancer. This study was to evaluate the PET findings of HES with lung involvement and to find out differential PET features between lung malignancy and HES with lung involvement. Material and Methods: F-18 FDG PET and low dose chest CT scan was performed for screening of lung cancer. light patients who showed ground-glass attenuation (GGA) and consolidation on chest CT scan with peripheral blood eosinophilia werr included in this study. The patients with history of parasite infection, allergy and collagen vascular disease were excluded. CT features and FDG PET findings were meticulously evaluated for the distribution of GGA and consolidation and nodules on CT scan and mean and maximal SUV of abnormalities depicted on F-18 FDG PET scan. In eight patients, follow-up chest CT scan and FDG PET scan were done one or two weeks after initial study. Results: F-18 FDG PET scan identified metabolically active lesions in seven out of eight patients. Maximal SUV was ranged from 2.8 to 10.6 and mean SUV was ranged from 2.2 to 7.2. Remaining one patient had maximal SUV of 1.3. On follow-up FDG PET scan taken on from one to four weeks later showed decreased degree of initially noted FDG uptakes or migration of previously noted abnormal FDG uptakes. Conclusions: Lung involvement in the HES might be identified as abnormal uptake foci on FDG PET scan mimicking lung cancer. Follow-up FDG PET and CT scan for the identification of migration or resolution of abnormalities and decrement of SUV would be of help for the differentiation between lung cancer and HES with lung involvement.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.89-105
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• 2014

After emergence of Internet, social media with highly interactive Web 2.0 applications has provided very user friendly means for consumers and companies to communicate with each other. Users have routinely published contents involving their opinions and interests in social media such as blogs, forums, chatting rooms, and discussion boards, and the contents are released real-time in the Internet. For that reason, many researchers and marketers regard social media contents as the source of information for business analytics to develop business insights, and many studies have reported results on mining business intelligence from Social media content. In particular, opinion mining and sentiment analysis, as a technique to extract, classify, understand, and assess the opinions implicit in text contents, are frequently applied into social media content analysis because it emphasizes determining sentiment polarity and extracting authors' opinions. A number of frameworks, methods, techniques and tools have been presented by these researchers. However, we have found some weaknesses from their methods which are often technically complicated and are not sufficiently user-friendly for helping business decisions and planning. In this study, we attempted to formulate a more comprehensive and practical approach to conduct opinion mining with visual deliverables. First, we described the entire cycle of practical opinion mining using Social media content from the initial data gathering stage to the final presentation session. Our proposed approach to opinion mining consists of four phases: collecting, qualifying, analyzing, and visualizing. In the first phase, analysts have to choose target social media. Each target media requires different ways for analysts to gain access. There are open-API, searching tools, DB2DB interface, purchasing contents, and so son. Second phase is pre-processing to generate useful materials for meaningful analysis. If we do not remove garbage data, results of social media analysis will not provide meaningful and useful business insights. To clean social media data, natural language processing techniques should be applied. The next step is the opinion mining phase where the cleansed social media content set is to be analyzed. The qualified data set includes not only user-generated contents but also content identification information such as creation date, author name, user id, content id, hit counts, review or reply, favorite, etc. Depending on the purpose of the analysis, researchers or data analysts can select a suitable mining tool. Topic extraction and buzz analysis are usually related to market trends analysis, while sentiment analysis is utilized to conduct reputation analysis. There are also various applications, such as stock prediction, product recommendation, sales forecasting, and so on. The last phase is visualization and presentation of analysis results. The major focus and purpose of this phase are to explain results of analysis and help users to comprehend its meaning. Therefore, to the extent possible, deliverables from this phase should be made simple, clear and easy to understand, rather than complex and flashy. To illustrate our approach, we conducted a case study on a leading Korean instant noodle company. We targeted the leading company, NS Food, with 66.5% of market share; the firm has kept No. 1 position in the Korean "Ramen" business for several decades. We collected a total of 11,869 pieces of contents including blogs, forum contents and news articles. After collecting social media content data, we generated instant noodle business specific language resources for data manipulation and analysis using natural language processing. In addition, we tried to classify contents in more detail categories such as marketing features, environment, reputation, etc. In those phase, we used free ware software programs such as TM, KoNLP, ggplot2 and plyr packages in R project. As the result, we presented several useful visualization outputs like domain specific lexicons, volume and sentiment graphs, topic word cloud, heat maps, valence tree map, and other visualized images to provide vivid, full-colored examples using open library software packages of the R project. Business actors can quickly detect areas by a swift glance that are weak, strong, positive, negative, quiet or loud. Heat map is able to explain movement of sentiment or volume in categories and time matrix which shows density of color on time periods. Valence tree map, one of the most comprehensive and holistic visualization models, should be very helpful for analysts and decision makers to quickly understand the "big picture" business situation with a hierarchical structure since tree-map can present buzz volume and sentiment with a visualized result in a certain period. This case study offers real-world business insights from market sensing which would demonstrate to practical-minded business users how they can use these types of results for timely decision making in response to on-going changes in the market. We believe our approach can provide practical and reliable guide to opinion mining with visualized results that are immediately useful, not just in food industry but in other industries as well.

• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.84-105
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• 2007

Cerebral palsy is a collection of motor disorders resulting from damage to the central nervous system that arise in multiple handicaps including cognitive disorders, speech disorders, epilepsy, perception disorders, and emotion disorders. Today spastic cerebral palsy has become more prevalent because intensive care for newborns has resulted in higher survival rates for very small premature babies. Since the children grow the fastest in order for a development during one year after birth, the therapeutic intervention is provided as early as possible to the children with cerebral palsy. After seven year old, there is no effect of intervention. So, the necessity of early intervention to spastic cerebral palsied infants is increasing. The purpose of this study is to develop the music therapy activity program using the techniques of neurological music therapy(NMT), the therapeutic application of music to dysfunctions due to neurologic disease of the human nervous system, for rudimentary movement phase of spastic cerebral palsied infant. This music therapy activity program was developed on the basis of the major developmental tasks of the rudimentary movement phase, the period that children can acquire the most basic movement function at the 0 to 2. Then the developmental characteristics of spastic cerebral palsy were applied to this music therapy activity program. This music therapy activity program was classified to three domains, those are stability, locomotion, and manipulation. This study has been consisted of three steps, those are the development of the activities, the evaluation of the activities by th panels, and the adjustment and complement of the activities. Reviewing literatures and interviews were done for the development of the activities, and the evaluation the activities was done by seven music therapists. In the evaluation steps, the questionnaire was used for estimating the content validity and application efficiency. The adjustment and complement of the activities were evaluated by the panels who were participating in the music therapy for cerebral palsied children in the clinical setting, and the results of the adjustment and complement were confirmed by the panels. The evaluation was presented in a mean value with the comment of the panels. In conclusion, the music therapy activity program for the spastic cerebral palsied infants using the techniques of NMT was developed on the basis of the major developmental tasks of the rudimentary movement phase. The program is comprised of 38 activities, those are 14 activities for developing the stability, 10 activities for developing the locomotion, and 14 activities for developing the manipulation. The programed activities would bring out the answers in the affirmative for the conformance with infants' development phase, the harmony between the objective and the activity, the conformance with the cerebral palsied infants, the properness of the music and the instruments, and the utility in the clinic field. This results mean that this developed music activity program is appropriate to help spastic cerebral palsied infants progress their movement development by stages.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.57-95
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• 1972

This study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of service by maternity aids concerning maternal and child health in improving simultaneously infant mortality, contraception and vital registration among expectant mothers in rural Korea, where there is less apportunity for maternal and child health care. It is unrealistic to expect to solve this problem in rural Korea through professional persons considering the situation of medical facilities and the socioeconomic condition of residents. So, we intended to adopt a system of services by maternity aids who were educated formally among indigenous women. After the women were trained in maternal and child health, contraception, and registration for a short period, they were assigned as a maternity aids to each village to help with various activities concerning maternal and child health, for example, registration of pregnant women, home visiting to check for complications, supplying of delivery kits, attendance at delivery, persuasion of contraception, and invitation for registration and so on. Mean-while, four researchers called on the maternity aids to collect materials concerning vital events, maternal child health, contraception and registration, and to give further instruction and supervision as the program proceeded. A. Changes of women's attitude by services of maternity aid. Now, we examined to what extent' such a service system to expectant mothers affected a change in attitude of women residing in the study area as compared to women of the control area. 1) In the birth and death places, there were no changes between last and present infants, in study or control area. 2) In regard to attendants at delivery, there were no changes except for a small percentage of attendance (8%) by maternity aid in study area. But, I expect that more maternity sids could be used as attendants at delivery if they would be trained further and if there was more explanation to the residents about such a service. 3) Considering the rate of utilization of sterilized delivery kit, I am sure that more than 90 percent would be used if the delivery kit were supplied in the proper time. There were significant differences in rates between the study and the control areas. 4) Taking into consideration the utilization rate of the clinic for prenatal care and well baby care, if suck facilities were installed, it would probably be well utilized. 5) In the contraception, the rate of approval was as high as 89 percent in study area as compared to 82 percent in the control area. 6) Considering the rate of pre-and post-partum acceptance on contraception were as much as 70 percent or more, if motivation to use contraception was given to them adequately, the government could reach the goals for family planning as planned. 7) In the vital registration, the rate of birth registration in the study area was some what improved compared to that of the control area, while the rate of death registration was not changed at all. Taking into account the fact that the rate of confirmation of vital events by maternity aids was remarkably high, if the registration system changed to a 'notification' system instead of formal registration ststem, it would be improved significantly compared to present system. B. Effect of the project Thus, with changes in the residents' attitude, was there a reduction in the infant death rate? 1) It is very difficult problem to compare the mortality of infants between last and present infants, because many women don't want to answer accurately about their dead children especially the infants that died within a few days after birth. In this study the data of present death comes from the maternity aides who followed up every pregnancy they had recorded to see what had happened. They seem to have very reliable information on what happened in first few weeks with follow up visitits to check out later changes. From these calculaton, when we compared the rate of infant death between last and present infant, there was remarkable reduction of death rate for present infant compare to that of last children, namely, the former was 30, while the latter 42. The figure is the lowest rate that I have ever heard. As the quality of data we could assess by comparing the causes of death. In the current death rate by communicable disease was much lower compare to the last child especially, tetanus cases and pneumonia. 2) Next, how many respondents used contraception after birth because of frequent contact with the maternity aid. In the registered cases, the respondents showed a tendency to practice contraception at an earlier age and with a small number of children. In a comparison of the rate of contraception between the study and the control area, the rate in the former was significantly higher than that of the latter. What is more, the proportion favoring smaller numbers of children and younger women rose in the study area as compared to the control area. 3) Regarding vital registration, though the rate of registration was gradually improved by efforts of maternity aid, it would be better to change the registration system. 4) In the crude birth rate, the rate in the study area was 22.2 while in the control area was 26.5. Natural increase rate showed 15.4 in the study area, while control area was 19.1. 5) In assessment of the efficiency of the maternity aids judging by the cost-effect viewpoint, the workers in the Medium area seemed to be more efficiency than those of other areas.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.95-106
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• 2012

Purpose: The objective of this study was to investigate the usefulness of an IMRT treatment plan according to whether there was a shell-type pseudo target during radiation therapy for patients in Stage III or IV of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Materials and Methods: After setting an IMRT (Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy, IMRT) plan for when there was a shell-type pseudo target (SPT) and when there was none (WSPT) with 22 patients in Stage III or IV of NSCLC, the investigator analyzed dose-volume histograms (DVHs) and made assessment with dosimetric comparisons such as homogeneity index (HI) inside the tumor target, conformity index (CI) of the tumor target, spinal cord maximum dose, Esophagus $V_{50%}$, mean lung dose (MLD), and $V_{40%}$, $V_{30%}$, $V_{20%}$, $V_{10%}$, $V_{5%}$. Results: The mean CI of WSPT and SPT was $1.22{\pm}0.04$ and $1.16{\pm}0.032$ ($.000^*$), respectively, and the mean HI of WSPT and SPT was $1.06{\pm}0.015$ and $1.07{\pm}0.014$ ($.000^*$), respectively. In SPT, the mean of each CI difference decreased by $-5.16{\pm}2.54%$, while HI increased by average $0.81{\pm}0.47%$. Esophagus $V_{50%}$ recorded $14.54{\pm}12.01%$ (WSPT) and $12.14{\pm}11.09%$ ($.000^*$, SPT) with the mean of SPT differences dropping by $-26.37{\pm}25.05%$. Mean spinal cord maximum dose was $3,898.44{\pm}1,075.0$ cGy (WSPT) and $3,810.8{\pm}1,134.9$ cGy ($.004^*$, SPT) with SPT dropping by average $-3.36{\pm}5.81%$. As for lung $V_{X%}$, the mean of $V_{5%}$ and $V_{10%}$ differences was $-1.62{\pm}2.29%$ ($.006^*$) and $-1.98{\pm}5.02%$ ($.005^*$), respectively with SPT making a decrease. The mean of V20%, V30%, and V40% differences was $-3.51{\pm}3.07%$ ($.000^*$), $-4.84{\pm}6.01%$ ($.000^*$), and $-6.16{\pm}8.46%$ ($.001^*$), respectively, with SPT making a decrease with statistical significance. In MLD assessment, SPT also dropped by average $-2.83{\pm}2.41%$ ($.000^*$). Those results show that SPT allows for mean 169 cGy (Max: 547 cGy, Min: 6.4 cGy) prescription dose. Conclusion: An IMRT treatment plan with SPT during radiation therapy for patients in Stage III or IV of NSCLC will help to reduce the risk of lung toxicity and radiation-induced pneumonia by cutting down radiation doses entering the normal lung, reduce the local control failure rate during radiation therapy due to increasing prescription doses to a certain degree, and increase treatment effects.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.191-204
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• 2015

According to the '2013 Performance Assessment Report on the Financial Program' from the National Assembly Budget Office, the unfilled recruitment ratio of Software(SW) Developers in South Korea was 25% in the 2012 fiscal year. Moreover, the unfilled recruitment ratio of highly-qualified SW developers reaches almost 80%. This phenomenon is intensified in small and medium enterprises consisting of less than 300 employees. Young job-seekers in South Korea are increasingly avoiding becoming a SW developer and even the current SW developers want to change careers, which hinders the national development of IT industries. The Korean government has recently realized the problem and implemented policies to foster young SW developers. Due to this effort, it has become easier to find young SW developers at the beginning-level. However, it is still hard to recruit highly-qualified SW developers for many IT companies. This is because in order to become a SW developing expert, having a long term experiences are important. Thus, improving job continuity intentions of current SW developers is more important than fostering new SW developers. Therefore, this study surveyed the job continuity intentions of SW developers and analyzed the factors associated with them. As a method, we carried out a survey from September 2014 to October 2014, which was targeted on 130 SW developers who were working in IT industries in South Korea. We gathered the demographic information and characteristics of the respondents, work environments of a SW industry, and social positions for SW developers. Afterward, a regression analysis and a decision tree method were performed to analyze the data. These two methods are widely used data mining techniques, which have explanation ability and are mutually complementary. We first performed a linear regression method to find the important factors assaociated with a job continuity intension of SW developers. The result showed that an 'expected age' to work as a SW developer were the most significant factor associated with the job continuity intention. We supposed that the major cause of this phenomenon is the structural problem of IT industries in South Korea, which requires SW developers to change the work field from developing area to management as they are promoted. Also, a 'motivation' to become a SW developer and a 'personality (introverted tendency)' of a SW developer are highly importantly factors associated with the job continuity intention. Next, the decision tree method was performed to extract the characteristics of highly motivated developers and the low motivated ones. We used well-known C4.5 algorithm for decision tree analysis. The results showed that 'motivation', 'personality', and 'expected age' were also important factors influencing the job continuity intentions, which was similar to the results of the regression analysis. In addition to that, the 'ability to learn' new technology was a crucial factor for the decision rules of job continuity. In other words, a person with high ability to learn new technology tends to work as a SW developer for a longer period of time. The decision rule also showed that a 'social position' of SW developers and a 'prospect' of SW industry were minor factors influencing job continuity intensions. On the other hand, 'type of an employment (regular position/ non-regular position)' and 'type of company (ordering company/ service providing company)' did not affect the job continuity intension in both methods. In this research, we demonstrated the job continuity intentions of SW developers, who were actually working at IT companies in South Korea, and we analyzed the factors associated with them. These results can be used for human resource management in many IT companies when recruiting or fostering highly-qualified SW experts. It can also help to build SW developer fostering policy and to solve the problem of unfilled recruitment of SW Developers in South Korea.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.143-155
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• 2011

Lately electronic tagging policy for the sexual offenders was introduced in order to reduce and prevent sexual offences. However, most sexual offences against children happening these days are committed by the tagged offenders whose identities have been released. So, for the crime prevention, we need measures with which we could minimize the suffers more promptly and actively. This paper suggests a new system to relieve the sexual abuse related anxiety of the children and solve the problems that electronic bracelet has. Existing bracelets are only worn by serious criminals, and it's only for risk management and positioning, there is no way to protect the children who are the potential victims of sexual abuse and there actually happened some cases. So we suggest also letting the students(children) wear the LBS(Location Based Service) and USN(Ubiquitous Sensor Network) technology based electronic bracelets to monitor and figure out dangerous situations intelligently, so that we could prevent sexual offences against children beforehand, and while a crime is happening, we could judge the situation of the crime intelligently and take swift action to minimize the suffer. And by checking students' attendance and position, guardians could know where their children are in real time and could protect the children from not only sexual offences but also violent crimes against children like kidnapping. The overall system is like follows : RFID Tag for children monitors the approach of offenders. While an offender's RFID tag is approaching, it will transmit the situation and position as the first warning message to the control center and the guardians. When the offender is going far away, it turns to monitoring mode, and if the tag of the child or the offender is taken off or the child and offender stay at one position for 3~5 minutes or longer, then it will consider this as a dangerous situation, then transmit the emergency situations and position as the second warning message to the control center and the guardians, and ask for the dispatch of police to prevent the crime at the initial stage. The RFID module of criminals' electronic bracelets is RFID TAG, and the RFID module for the children is RFID receiver(reader), so wherever the offenders are, if an offender is at a place within 20m from a child, RFID module for children will transmit the situation every certain periods to the control center by the automatic response of the receiver. As for the positioning module, outdoors GPS or mobile communications module(CELL module)is used and UWB, WI-FI based module is used indoors. The sensor is set under the purpose of making it possible to measure the position coordinates even indoors, so that one could send his real time situation and position to the server of central control center. By using the RFID electronic roll book system of educational institutions and safety system installed at home, children's position and situation can be checked. When the child leaves for school, attendance can be checked through the electronic roll book, and when school is over the information is sent to the guardians. And using RFID access control turnstiles installed at the apartment or entrance of the house, the arrival of the children could be checked and the information is transmitted to the guardians. If the student is absent or didn't arrive at home, the information of the child is sent to the central control center from the electronic roll book or access control turnstiles, and look for the position of the child's electronic bracelet using GPS or mobile communications module, then send the information to the guardians and teacher so that they could report to the police immediately if necessary. Central management and control system is built under the purpose of monitoring dangerous situations and guardians' checking. It saves the warning and pattern data to figure out the areas with dangerous situation, and could help introduce crime prevention systems like CCTV with the highest priority. And by DB establishment personal data could be saved, the frequency of first and second warnings made, the terminal ID of the specific child and offender, warning made position, situation (like approaching, taken off of the electronic bracelet, same position for a certain time) and so on could be recorded, and the data is going to be used for preventing crimes. Even though we've already introduced electronic tagging to prevent recurrence of child sexual offences, but the crimes continuously occur. So I suggest this system to prevent crimes beforehand concerning the children's safety. If we make electronic bracelets easy to use and carry, and set the price reasonably so that many children can use, then lots of criminals could be prevented and we can protect the children easily. By preventing criminals before happening, it is going to be a helpful system for our safe life.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.75-95
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• 2020

With the growth of social networks, various forms of SNS have emerged. Based on various motivations for use such as interactivity, information exchange, and entertainment, SNS users are also on the fast-growing trend. Facebook is the main SNS channel, and companies have started using Facebook pages as a public relations channel. To this end, in the early stages of operation, companies began to secure a number of fans, and as a result, the number of corporate Facebook fans has recently increased to as many as millions. from a corporate perspective, Facebook is attracting attention because it makes it easier for you to meet the customers you want. Facebook provides an efficient advertising platform based on the numerous data it has. Advertising targeting can be conducted using their demographic characteristics, behavior, or contact information. It is optimized for advertisements that can expose information to a desired target, so that results can be obtained more effectively. it rethink and communicate corporate brand image to customers through contents. The study was conducted through Facebook advertising data, and could be of great help to business people working in the online advertising industry. For this reason, the independent variables used in the research were selected based on the characteristics of the content that the actual business is concerned with. Recently, the company's Facebook page operation goal is to go beyond securing the number of fan pages, branding to promote its brand, and further aiming to communicate with major customers. the main figures for this assessment are Facebook's 'OK', 'Attachment', 'Share', and 'Number of Click' which are the dependent variables of this study. in order to measure the outcome of the target, the consumer's response is set as a key measurable key performance indicator (KPI), and a strategy is set and executed to achieve this. Here, KPI uses Facebook's ad numbers 'reach', 'exposure', 'like', 'share', 'comment', 'clicks', and 'CPC' depending on the situation. in order to achieve the corresponding figures, the consideration of content production must be prior, and in this study, the independent variables were organized by dividing into three considerations for content production into three. The effects of content material, content structure, and message styles on Facebook's user behavior were analyzed using regression analysis. Content materials are related to the content's difficulty, company relevance, and daily involvement. According to existing research, it was very important how the content would attract users' interest. Content could be divided into informative content and interesting content. Informational content is content related to the brand, and information exchange with users is important. Interesting content is defined as posts that are not related to brands related to interesting movies or anecdotes. Based on this, this study started with the assumption that the difficulty, company relevance, and daily involvement have an effect on the dependent variable. In addition, previous studies have found that content types affect Facebook user activity. I think it depends on the combination of photos and text used in the content. Based on this study, the actual photos were used and the hashtag and independent variables were also examined. Finally, we focused on the advertising message. In the previous studies, the effect of advertising messages on users was different depending on whether they were narrative or non-narrative, and furthermore, the influence on message intimacy was different. In this study, we conducted research on the behavior that Facebook users' behavior would be different depending on the language and formality. For dependent variables, 'OK' and 'Full Click Count' are set by every user's action on the content. In this study, we defined each independent variable in the existing study literature and analyzed the effect on the dependent variable, and found that 'good' factors such as 'self association', 'actual use', and 'hidden' are important. Could. Material difficulties', 'actual participation' and 'large scale * difficulties'. In addition, variables such as 'Self Connect', 'Actual Engagement' and 'Sexual Sexual Attention' have been shown to have a significant impact on 'Full Click'. It is expected that through research results, it is possible to contribute to the operation and production strategy of company Facebook operators and content creators by presenting a content strategy optimized for the purpose of the content. In this study, we defined each independent variable in the existing research literature and analyzed its effect on the dependent variable, and we could see that factors on 'good' were significant such as 'self-association', 'reality use', 'concernal material difficulty', 'real-life involvement' and 'massive*difficulty'. In addition, variables such as 'self-connection', 'real-life involvement' and 'formative*attention' were shown to have significant effects for 'full-click'. Through the research results, it is expected that by presenting an optimized content strategy for content purposes, it can contribute to the operation and production strategy of corporate Facebook operators and content producers.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.199-207
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• 2010

For us, there is virtually no distinction between being a responsible citizen and a successful business... they are one and the same for Wal-Mart today." ~ Lee Scott, al-Mart CEO after the 2005 Katrina disaster; cited in Green to Gold (Esty and Winston 2006). Lee Scott's statement signaled a new era in sustainability as manufacturers and retailers around the globe watched the world's largest mass merchandiser confirm its intentions with respect to sustainability. For decades, the environmental movement has grown, slowly bleeding over into the corporate world. Companies have been born, products have been created, academic journals have been launched, and government initiatives have been undertaken - all in the pursuit of sustainability (Peattie and Crane 2005). While progress has been admittedly slower than some may desire, the emergence and entrance of environmentally concerned mass merchandisers has done much to help with sustainable efforts. To better understand this movement, we incorporate the perspectives of both executives and consumers involved in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. This research relies on three underlying themes: (1) Conceptual and anecdotal evidence suggests that companies undertake sustainability initiatives for a plethora of reasons, (2) The number of sustainability initiatives continues to increase in the consumer packaged goods industries, and (3) That it is, therefore, necessary to explore the role that sustainability plays in the minds of consumers. In light of these themes, surveys were administered to and completed by 143 college students and 101 business executives to assess a number of variables in regards to sustainability including willingness-to-pay, behavioral intentions, attitudes, willingness-to-pay, and preferences. Survey results indicate that the top three reasons why executives believe sustainability to be important include (1) the opportunity for profitability, (2) the fulfillment of an obligation to the environment, and (3) a responsibility to customers and shareholders. College students identified the top three reasons as (1) a responsibility to the environment, (2) an indebtedness to future generations, and (3) an effective management of resources. While the rationale for supporting sustainability efforts differed between college students and executives, the executives and consumers reported similar responses for the majority of the remaining sustainability issues. Furthermore, when we asked consumers to assess the importance of six key issues (healthcare, economy, education, crime, government spending, and environment) previously identified as important to consumers by Gallup Poll, protecting the environment only ranked fourth out of the six (Carlson 2005). While all six of these issues were identified as important, the top three that emerged as most important were (1) improvements in education, (2) the economy, and (3) health care. As the pursuit and incorporation of sustainability continues to evolve, so too will the expected outcomes. New definitions of performance that reflect the social/business benefits as well as the lengthened implementation period are relevant and warranted (Ehrenfeld 2005; Hitchcock and Willard 2006). We identified three primary categories of outcomes based on a literature review of both anecdotal and conceptual expectations of sustainability: (1) improvements in constituent satisfaction, (2) differentiation opportunities, and (3) financial rewards. Within each of these categories, several specific outcomes were identified resulting in eleven different outcomes arising from sustainability initiatives. Our survey results indicate that the top five most likely outcomes for companies that pursue sustainability are: (1) green consumers will be more satisfied, (2) company image will be better, (3) corporate responsibility will be enhanced, (4) energy costs will be reduced, and (5) products will be more innovative. Additionally, to better understand the interesting intersection between the environmental "identity" of a consumer and the willingness to manifest that identity with marketplace purchases, we extended prior research developed by Experian Research (2008). Accordingly, respondents were categorized as one of four types of green consumers (Behavioral Greens, Think Greens, Potential Greens, or True Browns) to garner a better understanding of the green consumer in addition to assisting with a more effective interpretation of results. We assessed these consumers' willingness to engage in eco-friendly behavior by evaluating three options: (1) shopping at retailers that support environmental initiatives, (2) paying more for products that protect the environment, and (3) paying higher taxes so the government can support environmental initiatives. Think Greens expressed the greatest willingness to change, followed by Behavioral Greens, Potential Greens, and True Browns. These differences were all significant at p<.01. Further Conclusions and Implications We have undertaken a descriptive study which seeks to enhance our understanding of the strategic domain of sustainability. Specifically, this research fills a gap in the literature by comparing and contrasting the sustainability views of business executives and consumers with specific regard to preferences, intentions, willingness-to-pay, behavior, and attitudes. For practitioners, much can be gained from a strategic standpoint. In addition to the many results already reported, respondents also reported than willing to pay more for products that protect the environment. Other specific results indicate that female respondents consistently communicate a stronger willingness than males to pay more for these products and to shop at eco-friendly retailers. Knowing this additional information, practitioners can now have a more specific market in which to target and communicate their sustainability efforts. While this research is only an initial step towards understanding similarities and differences among practitioners and consumers regarding sustainability, it presents original findings that contribute to both practice and research. Future research should be directed toward examining other variables affecting this relationship, as well as other specific industries.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.219-230
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• 2010

Digital content makes big changes to our daily lives while bringing opportunities and challenges for companies. Creative firms integrate pictures, texts, videos, audios, and data by digitalization to develop new products or services and create digital experiences to promote their brands. Most articles on digital content contribute to the basic concept or development of marketing it in literature. Actually, compared with traditional value chains for common products or services, the digital content industry seems to have more potential value. Because quite a bit of digital content is free to the consumer, price is not necessarily perceived as an indicator of the quality or value of information (Rowley 2008). It becomes evident that a current theme in digital content is the issue of "value," and research on customers' perceived value of digital content is a necessity. This article argues that experiential value has an advantage in customers' evaluations of digital content. Two different but related contributions to the understanding of "value" of digital content are made here. First, based on the comparison of digital content with products and services, the article proposes two key characteristics that make experiential strategy available for digital content: intangibility and near-zero reproduction cost. On top of that, based on the discussion of the gap between company's idealized value and customer's perceived value, this article emphasizes that digital content prices and pricing of digital content is different from products and services. As a result of intangibility, prices may not reflect customer value. Moreover, the cost of digital content in the development stage may be very high while reproduction costs shrink dramatically. Moreover, because of the value gap mentioned before, the pricing polices vary for different digital contents. For example, flat price policy is generally used for movies and music (Magiera 2001; Netherby 2002), while for continuous demand, digital content such as online games and anti-virus programs involves a more complicated matter of utility and competitive price levels. Digital content companies have to explore various kinds of strategies to overcome this gap. Rethinking marketing solutions such as advertisements, images, and word-of-mouth and their effect on customers' perceived value becomes essential. China's digital content industry is becoming more and more globalized and drawing special attention from different countries and regions that have respective competitive advantages. The 2008-2009 Annual Report on the Development of China's Digital Content Industry (CCIDConsulting 2009) indicates that, with the driven power of domestic demand and governmental policy support, the country's digital content industry maintained a fast growth of some 30 percent in 2008, obviously indicating the initial stage of industry expansion. In China, anti-virus programs and other software programs which need to be updated use a quarter-based pricing policy. Customers can download a trial version for free and use it for six months or a year. If they want to use it longer, continuous payment is needed. They examine the excellence of the digital content during this trial period and decide whether to pay for continued usage. For China’s music and movie industries, as a result of initial development, experiential strategy has not been much applied, even though firms in other countries find the trial experience and explore important strategies(such as customers listening to music for several seconds for free before downloading it). For the above reasons, anti-virus program may be a representative for digital content industry in China and an exploratory study of the advantage of experiential value in customer's perceived value of digital content is done in the anti-virus market of China. In order to enhance the reliability of the survey data, this study focused on people who were experienced users of anti-virus programs. The empirical results revealed that experiential value has a positive effect on customers' perceived value of digital content. In other words, because digital content is intangible and the reproduction costs are nearly zero, customers' evaluations are based heavily on their experience. Moreover, image and word-of-mouth do not have a positive effect on perceived value, only on experiential value. That is to say, a digital content value chain is different from that of a general product or service. Experiential value has a notable advantage and mediates the effect of image and word-of-mouth on perceived value. The results of this study help provide an understanding of why free digital content downloads exist in developing countries. Customers can perceive the value of digital content only by using and experiencing it. This is also why such governments support the development of digital content. Other developing countries whose digital content business is also in the beginning stage can make use of the suggestions here. Moreover, based on the advantage of experiential strategy, companies should make more of an effort to invest in customers' experience. As a result of the characteristics and value gap of digital content, customers perceive more value in the intangible digital content only by experiencing what they really want. Moreover, because of the near-zero reproduction costs, companies can perhaps use experiential strategy to enhance customer understanding of digital content.