• Title/Summary/Keyword: Knowledge management research

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Effect of Toothbrushing Facilities on PHP Index and Oral Health-Related Behaviors in Middle Schools (양치시설 설치여부에 따른 중학생의 구강환경관리능력 및 구강건강관리 행태 변화)

  • Kim, Soo-Hwa;Hwang, Yoon-Sook;Kim, Kwang-Soo;Jung, Jae-Yeon;Yoo, Young-Jae;Lim, Mi-Hee
    • Journal of dental hygiene science
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    • v.13 no.3
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    • pp.271-280
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    • 2013
  • This study aims to analyze the effects of tooth-brushing facilities (TBF) at middle schools that installed TBF in 2012 as part of the oral health project in Seongdong-gu, Seoul. The subjects were the first graders at A middle school that installed TBF previously and B middle school that installed TBF in 2012. The results are as follows: DMFT, DMFS and CPI didn't show significant difference by schools (p>0.05), but code (0) was higher and code (2) was lower in female students than male students (p<0.05). As to PHP index, the students at A school with TBF indicated better oral hygiene (p<0.01). In the research on before and after installing TBF, the oral hygiene was improved significantly more after the installation than before (p <0.01). In the comparison on the oral health-related behavior, the percentage of not brushing after lunch was higher B school than A school and the frequency of toothbrushing after lunch was higher A school than B school (p<0.01). About the reasons why not to brush after lunch, there was difference in 'lack of the place' as A school showed 2.6% while B school without TBF indicated 14.2% (p<0.01). About the changes of the oral health-related behavior before and after TBF installation, the percentage of not brushing after lunch increased from 78.7% to 83.8% after the installation. The average frequency of tooth-brushing after lunch for one week also decreased from 0.50 to 0.34 (p>0.05). Among the reasons why not to brush after lunch, 'lack of the place' significantly reduced, but 'because other friends don't do it' increased greatly after the installation (p <0.05). Only with the improvement of oral health knowledge, we cannot expect either clinical or behavioral significance. Not only schools but policies of governmental agencies and financial support, cooperation of community-related groups for program development and evaluation will contribute altogether to helping teenagers to habitualize proper oral health management.

A Study on contents related to geography in "Myriad Things"(萬物門) of $Miscellaneous$ $Explanations$ $of$ $Seongho$(星湖僿說) (성호사설 '만물문(萬物門)'의 지리 관련내용 고찰)

  • Sohn, Yong-Taek
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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    • v.47 no.1
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    • pp.60-78
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    • 2012
  • The main objective of this study is to conduct subnational population projections of Korea based on a Myriad Things" (萬物門), which is part of Seongho's representative work entitled $Miscellaneous$ $Explanations$ $of$ $Seongho$ (星湖僿說), has been in this paper in order to understand Seongho's "thinking on geography". To do so, contents related to geography were selected and these were discussed and interpreted in terms of the classification system of today's geographical knowledge. Following is the result of this research. First, information on astronomical geography and natural geography such as uplift, tornado, structure of soil, and the $yut$ board as well as humangeographical topics such as wild $ginseng$, cigarettes, hot pepper, traditional fruits and nuts (chestnuts, jujubes, and persimmons), Goryeo paper (Korean paper), mulberry trees, cotton plants, natural dye, policy about horses, magnetic compass needles, and farming implements for rice transplantation are mentioned in "Myriad Things" in relation to geography. Second, the depth of information described varies from topic to topic, but the topics on tornado and magnetic compass needles, horses, wild ginseng, traditional fruits and nuts, and $yut$ board are described in depth and in detail. Third, authenticity of the contents on these topics are "true" insofar as bibliographical information and citations are provided for support. Fourth, these topics reflect the interests and circumstances that are related to the "economic improvement of common people's livelihood" in those days, such as agriculture, crops, and transportation of goods. Fifth, the bibliography and citations explaining all instances reveal that China (Qing) is a great civilization of the advanced world and that the scholarship of Joseon relied on and accepted it. Sixth, except for horse raising and management, farming implements for rice transplantation, sericulture, and natural dying of cloth, most of the topics are useful even today. In short, theres is a profound aspect to the content that makes it possible to estimate the "geographical thinking". In general, the focus of the content of this book directly linked to the practical agricultural economy of the common people.

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Self-Tour Service Technology based on a Smartphone (스마트 폰 기반 Self-Tour 서비스 기술 연구)

  • Bae, Kyoung-Yul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.16 no.4
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    • pp.147-157
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    • 2010
  • With the immergence of the iPhone, the interest in Smartphones is getting higher as services can be provided directly between service providers and consumers without the network operators. As the number of international tourists increase, individual tourists are also increasing. According to the WTO's (World Tourism Organization) prediction, the number of international tourists will be 1.56 billion in 2020,and the average growth rate will be 4.1% a year. Chinese tourists, in particular, are increasing rapidly and about 100 million will travel the world in 2020. In 2009, about 7.8 million foreign tourists visited Korea and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is trying to attract 12 million foreign tourists in 2014. A research institute carried out a survey targeting foreign tourists and the survey results showed that they felt uncomfortable with communication (about 55.8%) and directional signs (about 21.4%) when they traveled in Korea. To solve this inconvenience for foreign tourists, multilingual servicesfor traffic signs, tour information, shopping information and so forth should be enhanced. The appearance of the Smartphone comes just in time to provide a new service to address these inconveniences. Smartphones are especially useful because every Smartphone has GPS (Global Positioning System) that can provide users' location to the system, making it possible to provide location-based services. For improvement of tourists' convenience, Seoul Metropolitan Government hasinitiated the u-tour service using Kiosks and Smartphones, and several Province Governments have started the u-tourpia project using RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) and an exclusive device. Even though the u-tour or u-tourpia service used the Smartphone and RFID, the tourist should know the location of the Kiosks and have previous information. So, this service did not give the solution yet. In this paper, I developed a new convenient service which can provide location based information for the individual tourists using GPS, WiFi, and 3G. The service was tested at Insa-dong in Seoul, and the service can provide tour information around the tourist using a push service without user selection. This self-tour service is designed for providing a travel guide service for foreign travelers from the airport to their destination and information about tourist attractions. The system reduced information traffic by constraining receipt of information to tourist themes and locations within a 20m or 40m radius of the device. In this case, service providers can provide targeted, just-in-time services to special customers by sending desired information. For evaluating the implemented system, the contents of 40 gift shops and traditional restaurants in Insa-dong are stored in the CMS (Content Management System). The service program shows a map displaying the current location of the tourist and displays a circle which shows the range to get the tourist information. If there is information for the tourist within range, the information viewer is activated. If there is only a single resultto display, the information viewer pops up directly, and if there are several results, the viewer shows a list of the contents and the user can choose content manually. As aresult, the proposed system can provide location-based tourist information to tourists without previous knowledge of the area. Currently, the GPS has a margin of error (about 10~20m) and this leads the location and information errors. However, because our Government is planning to provide DGPS (Differential GPS) information by DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) this error will be reduced to within 1m.

The Content Analysis of the Textbooks of Career Counseling: Focused on competency components for career counseling professionals (진로상담교재에 대한 내용분석: 진로상담전문가 역량 요소를 중심으로)

  • Kang, Hye-Young
    • 대한공업교육학회지
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    • v.39 no.1
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    • pp.23-46
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    • 2014
  • The purpose of this study was to analyze the textbooks of career counseling which are written or translated in Korean so as to understand the usefulness and limitation on the usage of career counseling textbooks. Research questions are as follows: 1) what contents are included in textbooks of career counseling? 2) what are the differences of content rates among textbooks of career counseling? 10 textbooks of career counseling were analysed(6 textbooks: introduction to career counseling, 4 textbooks: focused on career counseling skills and techniques) based on the competency components for career counseling professionals presented by Yoo(2009). Results indicated that 1) 6 textbooks of introduction to career counseling have the most content of 'category1: theories and concepts related to career counseling'. In comparison, 4 textbooks focused on career counseling skills and techniques have the most content of 'category4: career counseling competency'. 2) Based on the unit of analysis chapter, the highest rates are 'category4: career counseling competency(33.33%)' and 'category1: theories and concepts related to career counseling(28.15%)'. 3) It is hard to find the contents related to the knowledge and skills of individual and group counseling(category 2), the competencies of network, problem solving, peer counselor feedback, administration, ethic(category 8,9,10,11,13), the growth and self-management as professionals(category 12,14).

Product Recommender Systems using Multi-Model Ensemble Techniques (다중모형조합기법을 이용한 상품추천시스템)

  • Lee, Yeonjeong;Kim, Kyoung-Jae
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.39-54
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    • 2013
  • Recent explosive increase of electronic commerce provides many advantageous purchase opportunities to customers. In this situation, customers who do not have enough knowledge about their purchases, may accept product recommendations. Product recommender systems automatically reflect user's preference and provide recommendation list to the users. Thus, product recommender system in online shopping store has been known as one of the most popular tools for one-to-one marketing. However, recommender systems which do not properly reflect user's preference cause user's disappointment and waste of time. In this study, we propose a novel recommender system which uses data mining and multi-model ensemble techniques to enhance the recommendation performance through reflecting the precise user's preference. The research data is collected from the real-world online shopping store, which deals products from famous art galleries and museums in Korea. The data initially contain 5759 transaction data, but finally remain 3167 transaction data after deletion of null data. In this study, we transform the categorical variables into dummy variables and exclude outlier data. The proposed model consists of two steps. The first step predicts customers who have high likelihood to purchase products in the online shopping store. In this step, we first use logistic regression, decision trees, and artificial neural networks to predict customers who have high likelihood to purchase products in each product group. We perform above data mining techniques using SAS E-Miner software. In this study, we partition datasets into two sets as modeling and validation sets for the logistic regression and decision trees. We also partition datasets into three sets as training, test, and validation sets for the artificial neural network model. The validation dataset is equal for the all experiments. Then we composite the results of each predictor using the multi-model ensemble techniques such as bagging and bumping. Bagging is the abbreviation of "Bootstrap Aggregation" and it composite outputs from several machine learning techniques for raising the performance and stability of prediction or classification. This technique is special form of the averaging method. Bumping is the abbreviation of "Bootstrap Umbrella of Model Parameter," and it only considers the model which has the lowest error value. The results show that bumping outperforms bagging and the other predictors except for "Poster" product group. For the "Poster" product group, artificial neural network model performs better than the other models. In the second step, we use the market basket analysis to extract association rules for co-purchased products. We can extract thirty one association rules according to values of Lift, Support, and Confidence measure. We set the minimum transaction frequency to support associations as 5%, maximum number of items in an association as 4, and minimum confidence for rule generation as 10%. This study also excludes the extracted association rules below 1 of lift value. We finally get fifteen association rules by excluding duplicate rules. Among the fifteen association rules, eleven rules contain association between products in "Office Supplies" product group, one rules include the association between "Office Supplies" and "Fashion" product groups, and other three rules contain association between "Office Supplies" and "Home Decoration" product groups. Finally, the proposed product recommender systems provides list of recommendations to the proper customers. We test the usability of the proposed system by using prototype and real-world transaction and profile data. For this end, we construct the prototype system by using the ASP, Java Script and Microsoft Access. In addition, we survey about user satisfaction for the recommended product list from the proposed system and the randomly selected product lists. The participants for the survey are 173 persons who use MSN Messenger, Daum Caf$\acute{e}$, and P2P services. We evaluate the user satisfaction using five-scale Likert measure. This study also performs "Paired Sample T-test" for the results of the survey. The results show that the proposed model outperforms the random selection model with 1% statistical significance level. It means that the users satisfied the recommended product list significantly. The results also show that the proposed system may be useful in real-world online shopping store.

A Study of the Golden Royal Seals Made by the Directorate for the Restoration of the Golden Royal Seals(金寶改造都監) in 1705 (1705년 금보개조도감(金寶改造都監) 제작 금보 연구)

  • Je, Ji-Hyeon
    • Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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    • v.50 no.1
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    • pp.42-57
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    • 2017
  • The Joseon Dynasty (1392~1910) had a long tradition of making official seals to commemorate the granting of official royal titles, including posthumous honorary titles, to its kings, queens, crown princes and queen dowagers. These royal seals were typically gold-plated or made of jade. After the death of its holder, each seal would be stored in the royal seal depository in the Royal Ancestral Shrine. Extensive efforts were made to restore the traditions and culture of the royal family of Joseon during the reign of King Sukjong (r. 1674~1720). In 1705, discussions were held about the royal ceremonial objects, including the royal seals, stored in the Royal Ancestral Shrine, resulting in the reproduction of a set of accessories related with the storage of royal seals and ten golden royal seals which had been lost during wars or had yet to be made. With these reproductions, each shrine chamber of the Royal Ancestral Shrine would have had at least one seal. The details of the reproduction project were meticulously recorded in The Royal Protocol by the Directorate for the Restoration of Golden Royal Seals("金寶改造都監儀軌"). Given that the restoration project was the single event that led to the reproduction of all the golden royal seals, it is reasonable to conclude that the directorate had fulfilled a historically significant function. In this study, the main discussion is focused on the establishment of the directorate and the storage and management of the damaged royal seals. The discussion includes the manufacturing process of the golden seals, for which The Royal Protocol is compared with other similar documents in order to gain more detailed knowledge of the measurements of the turtle knob, the lost-wax casting technique, the gold plating with mercury amalgamation technique, and other ornamentation techniques. The discussion also covers the activities of the artisans who made the royal seals, based on a study of the royal protocols; the styles of the artifacts, based on an examination of the remaining examples; and the techniques used by the Directorate for the Restoration of Golden Royal Seals to produce the royal seals in 1705.

A Study on the Meaning Landscape and Environmental Design Techniques of Yoohoedang Garden(Hageowon : 何去園) of Byulup(別業) Type Byulseo(別墅) (별업(別業) '유회당' 원림 하거원(何去園)의 의미경관 해석과 환경설계기법)

  • Shin, Sang-sup;Kim, Hyun-wuk
    • Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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    • v.46 no.2
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    • pp.46-69
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    • 2013
  • The results of study on the meaning landscape and environmental design techniques of the Byulup, Yoohoedang garden(Hageowon) based on the story in the collection of Kwon Yi-jin (Yoohoedangjip, 有懷堂集), are as below. First, Yoohoedang Kwon Yi-jin (有懷堂 權以鎭 : 1668~1734) constructed a Byulup garden consisting of ancestor grave, Byulup, garden, and a school, through 3 steps for 20 years in the back hill area of Moosoo-dong village, south of Mountain Bomun in Daejeon. In other words, he built the Byulup(別業, Yoohoedang) by placing his father's grave in the back hill of the village, and then constructed Yoegeongam(餘慶菴) and Geoupjae(居業齋) for protection of the pond(Napoji, 納汚池), garden(Banhwanwon, 盤桓園), and ancestor graves, and descendants' studying in the middle stage. He built an extension in Yoohoedang and finally completed the large-size garden (Hageowon) by extending the east area. Second, in terms of geomancy sense, Yoohoedang Byulup located in Moosoo-dong village area is the representative example including all space elements such as main living house (the head family house of Andong Kwon family), Byulup (Yoohoedang), ancestor graves, Hagoewon (garden) and Yoegeongam (cemetery management and school) which byulup type Byulseo should be equipped with. Thirdly, there are various meaning landscape elements combining the value system of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism value, including; (1) remembering parents, (2) harmonious family, (3) integrity, (4) virtue, (5) noble personality, (6) good luck, (7) hermit life, (8) family prosperity and learning development, (9) grace from ancestors, (10) fairyland, (11) guarding ancestor graves, and (12) living ever-young. Fourth, after he arranged ancestor graveyard in the back of the village, he used surrounding natural landscapes to construct Hagoewon garden with water garden consisting of 4 mountain streams and 3 ponds for 13 years, and finally completed a beautiful fairyland with 5 platforms, 3 bamboo forests, as well as the Seokgasan(石假山, artificial hill). Fifth, he adopted landscape plantation (28 kinds; pine, maple, royal azalea, azalea, persimmon tree, bamboo, willow, pomegranate tree, rose, chinensis, chaenomeles speciosa, Japanese azalea, peach tree, lotus, chrysanthemum, peony, and Paeonia suffruticosa, etc.) to apply romance from poetic affection, symbol and ideal from personification, as well as plantation plan considering seasonal landscapes. Landscape rocks were used by intact use of natural rocks, connecting with water elements, garden ornament method using Seokyeonji and flower steps, and mountain Seokga method showing the essence of landscape meanings. In addition, waterscape are characterized by active use of water considering natural streams and physio-graphic condition (eastern valley), ecological corridor role that rhythmically connects each space of the garden and waterways following routes, landscape meaning introduction connecting 'gaining knowledge by the study of things' values including Hwalsoodam(活水潭, pond), Mongjeong(蒙井, spring), Hosoo(濠水, stream), and Boksoo(?水, stream), and sensuous experience space construction with auditory and visualization using properties of landscape matters.

An Analysis on the Survey of the Cultural Heritage Committee (문화재위원회 설문조사 분석)

  • Kim, Hong-real
    • Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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    • v.37
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    • pp.405-444
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    • 2004
  • The Cultural Heritage Committee is an advisory committee established under the Cultural Heritage Administration with the aim of carrying out examination and deliberation on preservation, management and use of cultural heritage. The Cultural Heritage Administration is the highest administrative organization in terms of Korean cultural heritage. It was founded to produce and execute policies on cultural heritage, an important task that requires a high level of specialized knowledge, skills and academic expertise. It involves in-depth investigation and consultation of experts in the field of cultural heritage. An organization consisting of distinguished experts, the Cultural Heritage Committee plays an important role in policymaking on cultural heritage of Korea. The Korean government established the Bureau of Cultural Heritage in October 1961, and enacted provisions (as a presidential decree) on the organization on March 27, 1962, according to the Cultural Heritage Act established on January 10 of the same year. The Cultural Heritage Committee was opened as a deliberation committee according to the law, on which currently 90 members serve in 8 subcommittees. The term of office of a committees member is two years. The deliberation of the committee, which covers the entire range of cultural heritage, including their designation and cancellation, is normally concluded by the deliberation and decision of each subcommittee. This study aims to analyze of the survey of the Cultural Heritage Committee as the highest organ for the deliberation of policies on the matters of cultural heritage. The subject of the analysis in this study is a questionnaire survey that was conducted between Oct. 20 and Nov. 29, 2003, of 116 former and current members of the committee.

Information Privacy Concern in Context-Aware Personalized Services: Results of a Delphi Study

  • Lee, Yon-Nim;Kwon, Oh-Byung
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.20 no.2
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    • pp.63-86
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    • 2010
  • Personalized services directly and indirectly acquire personal data, in part, to provide customers with higher-value services that are specifically context-relevant (such as place and time). Information technologies continue to mature and develop, providing greatly improved performance. Sensory networks and intelligent software can now obtain context data, and that is the cornerstone for providing personalized, context-specific services. Yet, the danger of overflowing personal information is increasing because the data retrieved by the sensors usually contains privacy information. Various technical characteristics of context-aware applications have more troubling implications for information privacy. In parallel with increasing use of context for service personalization, information privacy concerns have also increased such as an unrestricted availability of context information. Those privacy concerns are consistently regarded as a critical issue facing context-aware personalized service success. The entire field of information privacy is growing as an important area of research, with many new definitions and terminologies, because of a need for a better understanding of information privacy concepts. Especially, it requires that the factors of information privacy should be revised according to the characteristics of new technologies. However, previous information privacy factors of context-aware applications have at least two shortcomings. First, there has been little overview of the technology characteristics of context-aware computing. Existing studies have only focused on a small subset of the technical characteristics of context-aware computing. Therefore, there has not been a mutually exclusive set of factors that uniquely and completely describe information privacy on context-aware applications. Second, user survey has been widely used to identify factors of information privacy in most studies despite the limitation of users' knowledge and experiences about context-aware computing technology. To date, since context-aware services have not been widely deployed on a commercial scale yet, only very few people have prior experiences with context-aware personalized services. It is difficult to build users' knowledge about context-aware technology even by increasing their understanding in various ways: scenarios, pictures, flash animation, etc. Nevertheless, conducting a survey, assuming that the participants have sufficient experience or understanding about the technologies shown in the survey, may not be absolutely valid. Moreover, some surveys are based solely on simplifying and hence unrealistic assumptions (e.g., they only consider location information as a context data). A better understanding of information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services is highly needed. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to identify a generic set of factors for elemental information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services and to develop a rank-order list of information privacy concern factors. We consider overall technology characteristics to establish a mutually exclusive set of factors. A Delphi survey, a rigorous data collection method, was deployed to obtain a reliable opinion from the experts and to produce a rank-order list. It, therefore, lends itself well to obtaining a set of universal factors of information privacy concern and its priority. An international panel of researchers and practitioners who have the expertise in privacy and context-aware system fields were involved in our research. Delphi rounds formatting will faithfully follow the procedure for the Delphi study proposed by Okoli and Pawlowski. This will involve three general rounds: (1) brainstorming for important factors; (2) narrowing down the original list to the most important ones; and (3) ranking the list of important factors. For this round only, experts were treated as individuals, not panels. Adapted from Okoli and Pawlowski, we outlined the process of administrating the study. We performed three rounds. In the first and second rounds of the Delphi questionnaire, we gathered a set of exclusive factors for information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services. The respondents were asked to provide at least five main factors for the most appropriate understanding of the information privacy concern in the first round. To do so, some of the main factors found in the literature were presented to the participants. The second round of the questionnaire discussed the main factor provided in the first round, fleshed out with relevant sub-factors. Respondents were then requested to evaluate each sub factor's suitability against the corresponding main factors to determine the final sub-factors from the candidate factors. The sub-factors were found from the literature survey. Final factors selected by over 50% of experts. In the third round, a list of factors with corresponding questions was provided, and the respondents were requested to assess the importance of each main factor and its corresponding sub factors. Finally, we calculated the mean rank of each item to make a final result. While analyzing the data, we focused on group consensus rather than individual insistence. To do so, a concordance analysis, which measures the consistency of the experts' responses over successive rounds of the Delphi, was adopted during the survey process. As a result, experts reported that context data collection and high identifiable level of identical data are the most important factor in the main factors and sub factors, respectively. Additional important sub-factors included diverse types of context data collected, tracking and recording functionalities, and embedded and disappeared sensor devices. The average score of each factor is very useful for future context-aware personalized service development in the view of the information privacy. The final factors have the following differences comparing to those proposed in other studies. First, the concern factors differ from existing studies, which are based on privacy issues that may occur during the lifecycle of acquired user information. However, our study helped to clarify these sometimes vague issues by determining which privacy concern issues are viable based on specific technical characteristics in context-aware personalized services. Since a context-aware service differs in its technical characteristics compared to other services, we selected specific characteristics that had a higher potential to increase user's privacy concerns. Secondly, this study considered privacy issues in terms of service delivery and display that were almost overlooked in existing studies by introducing IPOS as the factor division. Lastly, in each factor, it correlated the level of importance with professionals' opinions as to what extent users have privacy concerns. The reason that it did not select the traditional method questionnaire at that time is that context-aware personalized service considered the absolute lack in understanding and experience of users with new technology. For understanding users' privacy concerns, professionals in the Delphi questionnaire process selected context data collection, tracking and recording, and sensory network as the most important factors among technological characteristics of context-aware personalized services. In the creation of a context-aware personalized services, this study demonstrates the importance and relevance of determining an optimal methodology, and which technologies and in what sequence are needed, to acquire what types of users' context information. Most studies focus on which services and systems should be provided and developed by utilizing context information on the supposition, along with the development of context-aware technology. However, the results in this study show that, in terms of users' privacy, it is necessary to pay greater attention to the activities that acquire context information. To inspect the results in the evaluation of sub factor, additional studies would be necessary for approaches on reducing users' privacy concerns toward technological characteristics such as highly identifiable level of identical data, diverse types of context data collected, tracking and recording functionality, embedded and disappearing sensor devices. The factor ranked the next highest level of importance after input is a context-aware service delivery that is related to output. The results show that delivery and display showing services to users in a context-aware personalized services toward the anywhere-anytime-any device concept have been regarded as even more important than in previous computing environment. Considering the concern factors to develop context aware personalized services will help to increase service success rate and hopefully user acceptance for those services. Our future work will be to adopt these factors for qualifying context aware service development projects such as u-city development projects in terms of service quality and hence user acceptance.

Differential Effects of Recovery Efforts on Products Attitudes (제품태도에 대한 회복노력의 차별적 효과)

  • Kim, Cheon-GIl;Choi, Jung-Mi
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.1
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    • pp.33-58
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    • 2008
  • Previous research has presupposed that the evaluation of consumer who received any recovery after experiencing product failure should be better than the evaluation of consumer who did not receive any recovery. The major purposes of this article are to examine impacts of product defect failures rather than service failures, and to explore effects of recovery on postrecovery product attitudes. First, this article deals with the occurrence of severe and unsevere failure and corresponding service recovery toward tangible products rather than intangible services. Contrary to intangible services, purchase and usage are separable for tangible products. This difference makes it clear that executing an recovery strategy toward tangible products is not plausible right after consumers find out product failures. The consumers may think about backgrounds and causes for the unpleasant events during the time gap between product failure and recovery. The deliberation may dilutes positive effects of recovery efforts. The recovery strategies which are provided to consumers experiencing product failures can be classified into three types. A recovery strategy can be implemented to provide consumers with a new product replacing the old defective product, a complimentary product for free, a discount at the time of the failure incident, or a coupon that can be used on the next visit. This strategy is defined as "a rewarding effort." Meanwhile a product failure may arise in exchange for its benefit. Then the product provider can suggest a detail explanation that the defect is hard to escape since it relates highly to the specific advantage to the product. The strategy may be called as "a strengthening effort." Another possible strategy is to recover negative attitude toward own brand by giving prominence to the disadvantages of a competing brand rather than the advantages of its own brand. The strategy is reflected as "a weakening effort." This paper emphasizes that, in order to confirm its effectiveness, a recovery strategy should be compared to being nothing done in response to the product failure. So the three types of recovery efforts is discussed in comparison to the situation involving no recovery effort. The strengthening strategy is to claim high relatedness of the product failure with another advantage, and expects the two-sidedness to ease consumers' complaints. The weakening strategy is to emphasize non-aversiveness of product failure, even if consumers choose another competitive brand. The two strategies can be effective in restoring to the original state, by providing plausible motives to accept the condition of product failure or by informing consumers of non-responsibility in the failure case. However the two may be less effective strategies than the rewarding strategy, since it tries to take care of the rehabilitation needs of consumers. Especially, the relative effect between the strengthening effort and the weakening effort may differ in terms of the severity of the product failure. A consumer who realizes a highly severe failure is likely to attach importance to the property which caused the failure. This implies that the strengthening effort would be less effective under the condition of high product severity. Meanwhile, the failing property is not diagnostic information in the condition of low failure severity. Consumers would not pay attention to non-diagnostic information, and with which they are not likely to change their attitudes. This implies that the strengthening effort would be more effective under the condition of low product severity. A 2 (product failure severity: high or low) X 4 (recovery strategies: rewarding, strengthening, weakening, or doing nothing) between-subjects design was employed. The particular levels of product failure severity and the types of recovery strategies were determined after a series of expert interviews. The dependent variable was product attitude after the recovery effort was provided. Subjects were 284 consumers who had an experience of cosmetics. Subjects were first given a product failure scenario and were asked to rate the comprehensibility of the failure scenario, the probability of raising complaints against the failure, and the subjective severity of the failure. After a recovery scenario was presented, its comprehensibility and overall evaluation were measured. The subjects assigned to the condition of no recovery effort were exposed to a short news article on the cosmetic industry. Next, subjects answered filler questions: 42 items of the need for cognitive closure and 16 items of need-to-evaluate. In the succeeding page a subject's product attitude was measured on an five-item, six-point scale, and a subject's repurchase intention on an three-item, six-point scale. After demographic variables of age and sex were asked, ten items of the subject's objective knowledge was checked. The results showed that the subjects formed more favorable evaluations after receiving rewarding efforts than after receiving either strengthening or weakening efforts. This is consistent with Hoffman, Kelley, and Rotalsky (1995) in that a tangible service recovery could be more effective that intangible efforts. Strengthening and weakening efforts also were effective compared to no recovery effort. So we found that generally any recovery increased products attitudes. The results hint us that a recovery strategy such as strengthening or weakening efforts, although it does not contain a specific reward, may have an effect on consumers experiencing severe unsatisfaction and strong complaint. Meanwhile, strengthening and weakening efforts were not expected to increase product attitudes under the condition of low severity of product failure. We can conclude that only a physical recovery effort may be recognized favorably as a firm's willingness to recover its fault by consumers experiencing low involvements. Results of the present experiment are explained in terms of the attribution theory. This article has a limitation that it utilized fictitious scenarios. Future research deserves to test a realistic effect of recovery for actual consumers. Recovery involves a direct, firsthand experience of ex-users. Recovery does not apply to non-users. The experience of receiving recovery efforts can be relatively more salient and accessible for the ex-users than for non-users. A recovery effort might be more likely to improve product attitude for the ex-users than for non-users. Also the present experiment did not include consumers who did not have an experience of the products and who did not perceive the occurrence of product failure. For the non-users and the ignorant consumers, the recovery efforts might lead to decreased product attitude and purchase intention. This is because the recovery trials may give an opportunity for them to notice the product failure.

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