• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1-32
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• 2008

Brown and Dacin (1997) have investigated the relationship between corporate associations and product evaluations. Their study focused on the effects of associations with a company's corporate ability (CA) and its corporate social responsibility (CSR) on consumers' product evaluations. Their study has found that both of CA and CSR influenced product evaluation but CA association has a stronger effect than CSR associations. Brown and Dacin (1997) have, however, claimed that there are few researches on how corporate association impacts product responses. Accordingly, some of researchers have found the variables to moderate or to mediate the relationship between the corporate association and the product responses. In particular, there has been existed a few of studies that tested the influence of the reputation on the product-relevant perceived risk, but the effects of two types of the corporate association on the product-relevant perceived risk were not identified so far. The primary goal of this article is to identify and empirically examine some variables to moderate the effects of CA association and CSR association on the perceived risk of the product. In this articles, we take the concept of the corporate associations that Brown and Dacin (1997) had proposed. CA association is those association related to the company's expertise in producing and delivering its outputs and CSR association reflected the organization's status and activities with respect to its perceived societal obligations. Also, this study defines the risk, which is the uncertainty or loss of the product and corporate that consumers have taken in a particular purchase decision or after having purchased. The risk is classified into product-relevant performance risk and financial risk. Performance risk is the possibility or the consequence of a product not functioning at some expected level and financial risk is the monetary loss one perceives to be incurring if a product does not function at some expected level. In relation to consumer's knowledge, expert consumers have much of the experiences or knowledge of the product in consumer position and novice consumers does not. The model tested in this article are shown in Figure 1. The model indicates that both of CA association and CSR association influence on performance risk and financial risk. In addition, the effects of CA and CSR are moderated by product category knowledge (product knowledge) and product category involvement (product involvement). In this study, the relationships between the corporate association and product-relevant perceived risk are hypothesized as the following form. For example, Hypothesis 1a($H_{1a}$) is represented that CA association has a positive influence on the performance risk of consumer. Also, the hypotheses that identified some variables to moderate the effects of two types of corporate association on the perceived risk of the product are laid down. One of the hypotheses of the interaction effect is Hypothesis 3a($H_{3a}$), it is described that consumer's knowledges of the product moderates the negative relationship between CA association and product-relevant performance risk. A field experiment was conducted in order to examine our model. The company tested was not real but imagined to meet the internal validity. Water purifiers were used for our study. Four scenarios have been developed and described as the imaginary company: Type A with both of superior CA and CSR, Type B with superior CSR and inferior CA, Type C with superior CA and inferior CSR, and Type D with both inferior of CA and CSR. The respondents of this study were classified into four groups. One type of four scenarios (Type A, B, C, or D) in its questionnaire was given to the respondent who filled out questions. Data were collected by means of a self-administered questionnaire to the respondents, chosen in convenience. A total of 300 respondents filled out the questionnaire but 207 were used for further analysis. Table 1 indicates that the scales in this study are reliable because the range of coefficients of Cronbach's $\alpha$ are from 0.85 to 0.92. The composite reliability is in the range of 0,85 to 0,92 and average variance extracted is in 0.72-0.98 range that is higher than the base level of 0.6. As shown in Table 2, the values for CFI, NNFI, root-mean-square error approximation (RMSEA), and standardized root-mean-square residual (SRMR) are acceptably close to the standards suggested by Hu and Bentler (1999):.95 for CFI and NNFI,.06 for RMSEA, and.08 for SRMR. We also tested discriminant validity provided by Fornell and Larcker (1981). As shown in Table 2, we found strong evidence for discriminant validity between each possible pair of latent constructs in all samples. Given that these batteries of overall goodness-of-fit indices were accurate and that the model was developed on theoretical bases, and given the high level of consistency across samples, this enables us to proceed the previously defined scales. We used the moderated hierarchical regression analysis to test the influence of the corporate association(CA and CSR associations) on product-relevant perceived risk(performance and financial risks) and to identify the variables moderating the relationship between the corporate association and product-relevant performance risk. In this study, dependent variables are performance and financial risk. CA and CSR associations are described the independent variables. The moderating variables are product category knowledge and product category involvement. The results are, as expected, found that CA association has statistically a significant influence on the perceived risk of the product, but CSR association does not. Product category knowledge and involvement moderate the relationship between the CA association and the perceived risk of the product. However, the effect of CSR association on the perceived risk of the product is not moderated by the consumers' knowledge and involvement. For this result, it is necessary for a corporate to inform its customers CA association more than CSR association so that they could be felt to be the reduction of the perceived risk. The important theoretical contribution of this research is the meanings that two types of corporate association that Brown and Dacin(1997), and Brown(1998) have proposed replicated the difference of the effects on product evaluation. According to Hunter(2001), it was an important affair to accomplish the validity of a particular study and we had to take about ten studies to deduce a strict study. Next, there is the contribution of the this study to find that the effects of corporate association on the perceived risk of the product are varied by the moderator variables. In particular, the moderating effect of knowledge on the relationship between corporate association and product-relevant perceived risk has not been tested in Korea. In the managerial implications of this research, we suggest the necessity to stress the ability that corporate manufactures the product well(CA association) than the accomplishment of corporate's social obligation(CSR association). This study suffers from various limitations that imply future research directions. The moderating effects of product category knowledge and involvement on the relationship between corporate association and perceived risk need to be replicated. Next, future research could explore whether the mediated effects of the perceived risk has the relationship between corporate association and consumer's product purchase. In addition, to ensure the external validity of the study will be needed to use realistic company, not artificial.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.603-612
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• 1999

Background : It has been documented that brief repetitive periods of ischemia and reperfusion (ischemic preconditioning, IP) enhances the recovery of post-ischemic contractile function and reduces infarct size after a longer period of ischemia. Many mechanisms have been proposed to explain this process. Recent studies have suggested that transient increase in the intracellular calcium may have triggered the activation of protein kinase C(PKC); however, there are still many controversies. Accordingly, the author performed the present study to test the hypothesis that preconditioning with high concentration of calcium before sustained subsequent ischemia(calcium preconditioning) mimics IP by PKC activation. Material and Method : The isolated hearts from the New Zealand White rabbits(1.5∼2.0 kg body weight) Method: The isolated hearts from the New Zealand White rabbits(1.5∼2.0 kg body weight) were perfused with Tyrode solution by Langendorff technique. After stabilization of baseline hemodynamics, the hearts were subjected to 45-minute global ischemia followed by a 120-minute reperfusion with IP(IP group, n=13) or without IP(ischemic control, n=10). IP was induced by single episode of 5-minute global ischemia and 10-minute reperfusion. In the Ca2+ preconditioned group, perfusate containing 10(n=10) or 20 mM(n=11) CaCl2 was perfused for 10 minutes after 5-minute ischemia followed by a 45-minute global ischemia and a 120-minute reperfusion. Baseline PKC was measured after 50-minute perfusion without any treatment(n=5). Left ventricular function including developed pressure(LVDP), dP/dt, heart rate, left ventricular end-diastolic pressure(LVEDP) and coronary flow(CF) was measured. Myo car ial cytosolic and membrane PKC activities were measured by 32P-${\gamma}$-ATP incorporation into PKC-specific pepetide. The infarct size was determined using the TTC (tetrazolium salt) staining and planimetry. Data were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance(ANOVA) variance(ANOVA) and Tukey's post-hoc test. Result: IP increased the functional recovery including LVDP, dP/dt and CF(p<0.05) and lowered the ascending range of LVEDP(p<0.05); it also reduced the infarct size from 38% to 20%(p<0.05). In both of the Ca2+ preconditioned group, functional recovery was not significantly different in comparison with the ischemic control, however, the infarct size was reduced to 19∼23%(p<0.05). In comparison with the baseline(7.31 0.31 nmol/g tissue), the activities of the cytosolic PKC tended to decrease in both the IP and Ca2+ preconditioned groups, particularly in the 10 mM Ca2+ preconditioned group(4.19 0.39 nmol/g tissue, p<0.01); the activity of membrane PKC was significantly increased in both IP and 10 mM Ca2+ preconditioned group (p<0.05; 1.84 0.21, 4.00 0.14, and 4.02 0.70 nmol/g tissue in the baseline, IP, and 10 mM Ca2+ preconditioned group, respectively). However, the activity of both PKC fractions were not significantly different between the baseline and the ischemic control. Conclusion: These results indicate that in isolated Langendorff-perfused rabbit heart model, calcium preconditioning with high concentration of calcium does not improve post-ischemic functional recovery. However, it does have an effect of limiting(reducing) the infart size by ischemic preconditioning, and this cardioprotective effect, at least in part, may have resulted from the activation of PKC by calcium which acts as a messenger(or trigger) to activate membrane PKC.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.135-148
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• 2010

Arab boycotts of Danish products, Australian boycotts of French products and Chinese consumer aversion toward Japanese products are all examples of how adverse actions at the country level might impact consumers' behavior. The animosity literature has examined how consumers react to the adverse actions of other countries, and how such animosity impacts consumers' attitudes and preferences for products from the transgressing country. For example, Chinese consumers are less likely to buy Japanese products because of Japanese atrocities during World War II and the unjust economic dealings of the Japanese (Klein, Ettenson and Morris 1998). The marketing literature, however, has not examined how consumers react to adverse actions committed by their own country against other countries, and whether such actions affect their attitudes towards purchasing products that originated from the adversely affected country. The social psychology literature argues that consumers will experience a feeling called collective guilt, in response to such adverse actions. Collective guilt stems from the distress experienced by group members when they accept that their group is responsible for actions that have harmed another group (Branscombe, Slugoski, and Kappenn 2004). Examples include Americans feeling guilty about the atrocities committed by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison (Iyer, Schamder and Lickel 2007), and the Dutch about their occupation of Indonesia in the past (Doosje et al. 1998). The primary aim of this study is to examine consumers' perceptions of adverse actions by members of one's own country against another country and whether such perceptions affected their attitudes towards products originating from the country transgressed against. More specifically, one objective of this study is to examine the perceptual antecedents of collective guilt, an emotional reaction to adverse actions performed by members of one's country against another country. Another objective is to examine the impact of collective guilt on consumers' perceptions of, and preference for, products originating from the country transgressed against by the consumers' own country. If collective guilt emerges as a significant predictor, companies originating from countries that have been transgressed against might be able to capitalize on such unfortunate events. This research utilizes the animosity model introduced by Klein, Ettenson and Morris (1998) and later expanded on by Klein (2002). Klein finds that U.S. consumers harbor animosity toward the Japanese. This animosity is experienced in response to events that occurred during World War II (i.e., the bombing of Pearl Harbor) and more recently the perceived economic threat from Japan. Thus this study argues that the events of Word War II (i.e., bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) might lead U.S. consumers to experience collective guilt. A series of three hypotheses were introduced. The first hypothesis deals with the antecedents of collective guilt. Previous research argues that collective guilt is experienced when consumers perceive that the harm following a transgression is illegitimate and that the country from which the transgressors originate should be responsible for the adverse actions. (Wohl, Branscombe, and Klar 2006). Therefore the following hypothesis was offered: H1a. Higher levels of perceived illegitimacy for the harm committed will result in higher levels of collective guilt. H1b. Higher levels of responsibility will be positively associated with higher levels of collective guilt. The second and third hypotheses deal with the impact of collective guilt on the preferences for Japanese products. Klein (2002) found that higher levels of animosity toward Japan resulted in a lower preference for a Japanese product relative to a South Korean product but not a lower preference for a Japanese product relative to a U.S. product. These results therefore indicate that the experience of collective guilt will lead to a higher preference for a Japanese product if consumers are contemplating a choice that inv olves a decision to buy Japanese versus South Korean product but not if the choice involves a decision to buy a Japanese versus a U.S. product. H2. Collective guilt will be positively related to the preference for a Japanese product over a South Korean product, but will not be related to the preference for a Japanese product over a U.S. product. H3. Collective guilt will be positively related to the preference for a Japanese product over a South Korean product, holding constant product judgments and animosity. An experiment was conducted to test the hypotheses. The illegitimacy of the harm and responsibility were manipulated by exposing respondents to a description of adverse events occurring during World War II. Data were collected using an online consumer panel in the United States. Subjects were randomly assigned to either the low levels of responsibility and illegitimacy condition (n=259) or the high levels of responsibility and illigitemacy (n=268) condition. Latent Variable Structural Equation Modeling (LVSEM) was used to test the hypothesized relationships. The first hypothesis is supported as both the illegitimacy of the harm and responsibility assigned to the Americans for the harm committed against the Japanese during WWII have a positive impact on collective guilt. The second hypothesis is also supported as collective guilt is positively related to preference for a Japanese product over a South Korean product but is not related to preference for a Japanese product over a U.S. product. Finally there is support for the third hypothesis, since collective guilt is positively related to the preference for a Japanese product over a South Korean product while controlling for the effect of product judgments about Japanese products and animosity. The results of these studies lead to several conclusions. First, the illegitimacy of harm and responsibility can be manipulated and that they are antecedents of collective guilt. Second, collective guilt has an impact on a consumers' decision when they face a choice set that includes a product from the country that was the target of the adverse action and a product from another foreign country. This impact however disappears from a consumers' decision when they face a choice set that includes a product from the country that was the target of the adverse action and a domestic product. This result suggests that collective guilt might be a viable factor for company originating from the country transgressed against if its competitors are foreign but not if they are local.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.89-111
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• 2008

Due to the development of digital technology, studies regarding smart wear integrating daily life have rapidly increased. However, consumer research about perception and attitude toward smart clothing hardly could find. The purpose of this study was to identify innovative characteristics and perceived risk of smart clothing and to analyze the influences of theses factors on product attitudes and intention to adopt. Specifically, five hypotheses were established. H1: Perceived attributes of smart clothing except for complexity would have positive relations to product attitude or purchase intention, while complexity would be opposite. H2: Product attitude would have positive relation to purchase intention. H3: Product attitude would have a mediating effect between perceived attributes and purchase intention. H4: Perceived risks of smart clothing would have negative relations to perceived attributes except for complexity, and positive relations to complexity. H5: Product attitude would have a mediating effect between perceived risks and purchase intention. A self-administered questionnaire was developed based on previous studies. After pretest, the data were collected during September, 2006, from university students in Korea who were relatively sensitive to innovative products. A total of 300 final useful questionnaire were analyzed by SPSS 13.0 program. About 60.3% were male with the mean age of 21.3 years old. About 59.3% reported that they were aware of smart clothing, but only 9 respondents purchased it. The mean of attitudes toward smart clothing and purchase intention was 2.96 (SD=.56) and 2.63 (SD=.65) respectively. Factor analysis using principal components with varimax rotation was conducted to identify perceived attribute and perceived risk dimensions. Perceived attributes of smart wear were categorized into relative advantage (including compatibility), observability (including triability), and complexity. Perceived risks were identified into physical/performance risk, social psychological risk, time loss risk, and economic risk. Regression analysis was conducted to test five hypotheses. Relative advantage and observability were significant predictors of product attitude (adj $R^2$=.223) and purchase intention (adj $R^2$=.221). Complexity showed negative influence on product attitude. Product attitude presented significant relation to purchase intention (adj $R^2$=.692) and partial mediating effect between perceived attributes and purchase intention (adj $R^2$=.698). Therefore hypothesis one to three were accepted. In order to test hypothesis four, four dimensions of perceived risk and demographic variables (age, gender, monthly household income, awareness of smart clothing, and purchase experience) were entered as independent variables in the regression models. Social psychological risk, economic risk, and gender (female) were significant to predict relative advantage (adj $R^2$=.276). When perceived observability was a dependent variable, social psychological risk, time loss risk, physical/performance risk, and age (younger) were significant in order (adj $R^2$=.144). However, physical/performance risk was positively related to observability. The more Koreans seemed to be observable of smart clothing, the more increased the probability of physical harm or performance problems received. Complexity was predicted by product awareness, social psychological risk, economic risk, and purchase experience in order (adj $R^2$=.114). Product awareness was negatively related to complexity, meaning high level of product awareness would reduce complexity of smart clothing. However, purchase experience presented positive relation with complexity. It appears that consumers can perceive high level of complexity when they are actually consuming smart clothing in real life. Risk variables were positively related with complexity. That is, in order to decrease complexity, it is also necessary to consider minimizing anxiety factors about social psychological wound or loss of money. Thus, hypothesis 4 was partially accepted. Finally, in testing hypothesis 5, social psychological risk and economic risk were significant predictors for product attitude (adj $R^2$=.122) and purchase intention (adj $R^2$=.099) respectively. When attitude variable was included with risk variables as independent variables in the regression model to predict purchase intention, only attitude variable was significant (adj $R^2$=.691). Thus attitude variable presented full mediating effect between perceived risks and purchase intention, and hypothesis 5 was accepted. Findings would provide guidelines for fashion and electronic businesses who aim to create and strengthen positive attitude toward smart clothing. Marketers need to consider not only functional feature of smart clothing, but also practical and aesthetic attributes, since appropriateness for social norm or self image would reduce uncertainty of psychological or social risk, which increase relative advantage of smart clothing. Actually social psychological risk was significantly associated to relative advantage. Economic risk is negatively associated with product attitudes as well as purchase intention, suggesting that smart-wear developers have to reflect on price ranges of potential adopters. It will be effective to utilize the findings associated with complexity when marketers in US plan communication strategy.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.85-109
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• 2018

Recommender system recommends the items expected to be purchased by a customer in the future according to his or her previous purchase behaviors. It has been served as a tool for realizing one-to-one personalization for an e-commerce service company. Traditional recommender systems, especially the recommender systems based on collaborative filtering (CF), which is the most popular recommendation algorithm in both academy and industry, are designed to generate the items list for recommendation by using 'overall rating' - a single criterion. However, it has critical limitations in understanding the customers' preferences in detail. Recently, to mitigate these limitations, some leading e-commerce companies have begun to get feedback from their customers in a form of 'multicritera ratings'. Multicriteria ratings enable the companies to understand their customers' preferences from the multidimensional viewpoints. Moreover, it is easy to handle and analyze the multidimensional ratings because they are quantitative. But, the recommendation using multicritera ratings also has limitation that it may omit detail information on a user's preference because it only considers three-to-five predetermined criteria in most cases. Under this background, this study proposes a novel hybrid recommendation system, which selectively uses the results from 'traditional CF' and 'CF using multicriteria ratings'. Our proposed system is based on the premise that some people have holistic preference scheme, whereas others have composite preference scheme. Thus, our system is designed to use traditional CF using overall rating for the users with holistic preference, and to use CF using multicriteria ratings for the users with composite preference. To validate the usefulness of the proposed system, we applied it to a real-world dataset regarding the recommendation for POI (point-of-interests). Providing personalized POI recommendation is getting more attentions as the popularity of the location-based services such as Yelp and Foursquare increases. The dataset was collected from university students via a Web-based online survey system. Using the survey system, we collected the overall ratings as well as the ratings for each criterion for 48 POIs that are located near K university in Seoul, South Korea. The criteria include 'food or taste', 'price' and 'service or mood'. As a result, we obtain 2,878 valid ratings from 112 users. Among 48 items, 38 items (80%) are used as training dataset, and the remaining 10 items (20%) are used as validation dataset. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed system (i.e. hybrid selective model), we compared its performance to the performances of two comparison models - the traditional CF and the CF with multicriteria ratings. The performances of recommender systems were evaluated by using two metrics - average MAE(mean absolute error) and precision-in-top-N. Precision-in-top-N represents the percentage of truly high overall ratings among those that the model predicted would be the N most relevant items for each user. The experimental system was developed using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). The experimental results showed that our proposed system (avg. MAE = 0.584) outperformed traditional CF (avg. MAE = 0.591) as well as multicriteria CF (avg. AVE = 0.608). We also found that multicriteria CF showed worse performance compared to traditional CF in our data set, which is contradictory to the results in the most previous studies. This result supports the premise of our study that people have two different types of preference schemes - holistic and composite. Besides MAE, the proposed system outperformed all the comparison models in precision-in-top-3, precision-in-top-5, and precision-in-top-7. The results from the paired samples t-test presented that our proposed system outperformed traditional CF with 10% statistical significance level, and multicriteria CF with 1% statistical significance level from the perspective of average MAE. The proposed system sheds light on how to understand and utilize user's preference schemes in recommender systems domain.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.65-86
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• 2012

The $20^{th}$ century was the era of manufacturer brands which built higher brand equity for consumers. Consumers moved from generic products of inconsistent quality produced by local factories in the $19^{th}$ century to branded products from global manufacturers and manufacturer brands reached consumers through distributors and retailers. Retailers were relatively small compared to their largest suppliers. However, sometime in the 1970s, things began to slowly change as retailers started to develop their own national chains and began international expansion, and consolidation of the retail industry from mom-and-pop stores to global players was well under way (Kumar and Steenkamp 2007, p.2) In South Korea, since the middle of the 1990s, the bulking up of retailers that started then has changed the balance of power between manufacturers and retailers. Retailer private labels, generally referred to as own labels, store brands, distributors own private-label, home brand or own label brand have also been performing strongly in every single local market (Bushman 1993; De Wulf et al. 2005). Private labels now account for one out of every five items sold every day in U.S. supermarkets, drug chains, and mass merchandisers (Kumar and Steenkamp 2007), and the market share in Western Europe is even larger (Euromonitor 2007). In the UK, grocery market share of private labels grew from 39% of sales in 2008 to 41% in 2010 (Marian 2010). Planet Retail (2007, p.1) recently concluded that "[PLs] are set for accelerated growth, with the majority of the world's leading grocers increasing their own label penetration." Private labels have gained wide attention both in the academic literature and popular business press and there is a glowing academic research to the perspective of manufacturers and retailers. Empirical research on private labels has mainly studies the factors explaining private labels market shares across product categories and/or retail chains (Dahr and Hoch 1997; Hoch and Banerji, 1993), factors influencing the private labels proneness of consumers (Baltas and Doyle 1998; Burton et al. 1998; Richardson et al. 1996) and factors how to react brand manufacturers towards PLs (Dunne and Narasimhan 1999; Hoch 1996; Quelch and Harding 1996; Verhoef et al. 2000). Nevertheless, empirical research on factors influencing the production in terms of a manufacturer-retailer is rather anecdotal than theory-based. The objective of this paper is to bridge the gap in these two types of research and explore the factors which influence on manufacturer's private label production based on two competing theories: S-C-P (Structure - Conduct - Performance) paradigm and resource-based theory. In order to do so, the authors used in-depth interview with marketing managers, reviewed retail press and research and presents the conceptual framework that integrates the major determinants of private labels production. From a manufacturer's perspective, supplying private labels often starts on a strategic basis. When a manufacturer engages in private labels, the manufacturer does not have to spend on advertising, retailer promotions or maintain a dedicated sales force. Moreover, if a manufacturer has weak marketing capabilities, the manufacturer can make use of retailer's marketing capability to produce private labels and lessen its marketing cost and increases its profit margin. Figure 1. is the theoretical framework based on a strategic market management perspective, integrated concept of both S-C-P paradigm and resource-based theory. The model includes one mediate variable, marketing capabilities, and the other moderate variable, competitive intensity. Manufacturer's national brand reputation, firm's marketing investment, and product portfolio, which are hypothesized to positively affected manufacturer's marketing capabilities. Then, marketing capabilities has negatively effected on private label production. Moderating effects of competitive intensity are hypothesized on the relationship between marketing capabilities and private label production. To verify the proposed research model and hypotheses, data were collected from 192 manufacturers (212 responses) who are producing private labels in South Korea. Cronbach's alpha test, explanatory / comfirmatory factor analysis, and correlation analysis were employed to validate hypotheses. The following results were drawing using structural equation modeling and all hypotheses are supported. Findings indicate that manufacturer's private label production is strongly related to its marketing capabilities. Consumer marketing capabilities, in turn, is directly connected with the 3 strategic factors (e.g., marketing investment, manufacturer's national brand reputation, and product portfolio). It is moderated by competitive intensity between marketing capabilities and private label production. In conclusion, this research may be the first study to investigate the reasons manufacturers engage in private labels based on two competing theoretic views, S-C-P paradigm and resource-based theory. The private label phenomenon has received growing attention by marketing scholars. In many industries, private labels represent formidable competition to manufacturer brands and manufacturers have a dilemma with selling to as well as competing with their retailers. The current study suggests key factors when manufacturers consider engaging in private label production.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.29-44
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• 2017

In Internet commerce, consumers are heavily influenced by product reviews written by other users who have already purchased the product. However, as the product reviews accumulate, it takes a lot of time and effort for consumers to individually check the massive number of product reviews. Moreover, product reviews that are written carelessly actually inconvenience consumers. Thus many online vendors provide mechanisms to identify reviews that customers perceive as most helpful (Cao et al. 2011; Mudambi and Schuff 2010). For example, some online retailers, such as Amazon.com and TripAdvisor, allow users to rate the helpfulness of each review, and use this feedback information to rank and re-order them. However, many reviews have only a few feedbacks or no feedback at all, thus making it hard to identify their helpfulness. Also, it takes time to accumulate feedbacks, thus the newly authored reviews do not have enough ones. For example, only 20% of the reviews in Amazon Review Dataset (Mcauley and Leskovec, 2013) have more than 5 reviews (Yan et al, 2014). The purpose of this study is to analyze the factors affecting the usefulness of online product reviews and to derive a forecasting model that selectively provides product reviews that can be helpful to consumers. In order to do this, we extracted the various linguistic, psychological, and perceptual elements included in product reviews by using text-mining techniques and identifying the determinants among these elements that affect the usability of product reviews. In particular, considering that the characteristics of the product reviews and determinants of usability for apparel products (which are experiential products) and electronic products (which are search goods) can differ, the characteristics of the product reviews were compared within each product group and the determinants were established for each. This study used 7,498 apparel product reviews and 106,962 electronic product reviews from Amazon.com. In order to understand a review text, we first extract linguistic and psychological characteristics from review texts such as a word count, the level of emotional tone and analytical thinking embedded in review text using widely adopted text analysis software LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count). After then, we explore the descriptive statistics of review text for each category and statistically compare their differences using t-test. Lastly, we regression analysis using the data mining software RapidMiner to find out determinant factors. As a result of comparing and analyzing product review characteristics of electronic products and apparel products, it was found that reviewers used more words as well as longer sentences when writing product reviews for electronic products. As for the content characteristics of the product reviews, it was found that these reviews included many analytic words, carried more clout, and related to the cognitive processes (CogProc) more so than the apparel product reviews, in addition to including many words expressing negative emotions (NegEmo). On the other hand, the apparel product reviews included more personal, authentic, positive emotions (PosEmo) and perceptual processes (Percept) compared to the electronic product reviews. Next, we analyzed the determinants toward the usefulness of the product reviews between the two product groups. As a result, it was found that product reviews with high product ratings from reviewers in both product groups that were perceived as being useful contained a larger number of total words, many expressions involving perceptual processes, and fewer negative emotions. In addition, apparel product reviews with a large number of comparative expressions, a low expertise index, and concise content with fewer words in each sentence were perceived to be useful. In the case of electronic product reviews, those that were analytical with a high expertise index, along with containing many authentic expressions, cognitive processes, and positive emotions (PosEmo) were perceived to be useful. These findings are expected to help consumers effectively identify useful product reviews in the future.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.71-89
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• 2016

Sentiment analysis is used for identifying emotions or sentiments embedded in the user generated data such as customer reviews from blogs, social network services, and so on. Various research fields such as computer science and business management can take advantage of this feature to analyze customer-generated opinions. In previous studies, the star rating of a review is regarded as the same as sentiment embedded in the text. However, it does not always correspond to the sentiment polarity. Due to this supposition, previous studies have some limitations in their accuracy. To solve this issue, the present study uses a supervised sentiment classification model to measure a more accurate sentiment polarity. This study aims to propose an advanced sentiment classifier and to discover the correlation between movie reviews and box-office success. The advanced sentiment classifier is based on two supervised machine learning techniques, the Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Feedforward Neural Network (FNN). The sentiment scores of the movie reviews are measured by the sentiment classifier and are analyzed by statistical correlations between movie reviews and box-office success. Movie reviews are collected along with a star-rate. The dataset used in this study consists of 1,258,538 reviews from 175 films gathered from Naver Movie website (movie.naver.com). The results show that the proposed sentiment classifier outperforms Naive Bayes (NB) classifier as its accuracy is about 6% higher than NB. Furthermore, the results indicate that there are positive correlations between the star-rate and the number of audiences, which can be regarded as the box-office success of a movie. The study also shows that there is the mild, positive correlation between the sentiment scores estimated by the classifier and the number of audiences. To verify the applicability of the sentiment scores, an independent sample t-test was conducted. For this, the movies were divided into two groups using the average of sentiment scores. The two groups are significantly different in terms of the star-rated scores.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.105-124
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• 2011

To achieve this objective, practical problem-teaching lesson plans and instructor-led teaching and learning plans were developed and integrated into the Technology Home Economics, and Human Development curricula at both academic and vocational high schools. The impact of these plans was examined, as were connections between the teaching methods and types of schools. As part of this study, a survey was conducted on 1,263 students in 46 classes at 6 randomly selected high schools: 4 academic and 2 vocational. A total of 9 teachers conducted classes for both experimental and comparative groups between October 2009 and November 2010. Pre- and post-tests were used to study the impact of the lessons on the experimental and comparative groups. In terms of data analysis and statistics processing, this study implemented mean and standard deviations, t-test, and analysis of covariance using the SPSS 12.0 program. The results of this study are as follows. The practical problem-teaching lessons produced more positive results in the students than the instructor-led lessons, in terms of their image of the elderly, their level of knowledge about them, their understanding of their need for welfare services, and preparation for Successful aging. When comparing the results by type of school, the experimental groups at academic high schools appeared to have a more positive image and better understanding of the elderly and their need for welfare services, and were better prepared for Successful aging than during their previous lessons. They also showed an increase in independence from their children in aging. As for the comparative groups, students at academic high schools showed an increase in preparation for Successful aging compared to the previous lessons. Finally, as for future research on preparation for aging in high schools, more schools should include this subject in their regular curriculum for Technology Home Economics, Human Development and Home Economics in order to generalize the results, and they need to evaluate the content. Additionally, this study suggests that new high school curricula should include lessons on preparation for aging so that students can deal successfully with our aging society.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.33-42
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• 2012

This study is focused on traditional market's competitiveness in Korea. Ever since the Korean retail industry had been opened to the big conglomerates, the traditional markets have faced very serious competition from various types of distribution channels. In particular, this study has been conducted to find another way to help the Korean traditional market from the perspective of college students who are consumers of the future. This study examines the relationships among store choice attributions, consumption emotion, consumer's value, and relationship quality from the perspective of college students. In order to verify the relationship, and moderating and mediating effects, data were collected from 126 college students in Whasung, Gyeonggi Province to test the theoretical model and its hypotheses. The results of this study are as follows: First, service (= .263, p < .01) and advertising (= .188, p < .05) are significantly positively related to relationship quality. However, store atmosphere (= .176, p = .052) is not statistically significantly related to relationship quality. The result that students have stereotypes about the atmosphere of traditional markets and are therefore excluded from their store choice attributions can be expected. Second, college students selected service division (= .230, p < .05) as the most important factor among the traditional market's store choice attributions. This result reflected that enhancing service strategy would strengthen the traditional market against discount stores. The process of product selection by customers in discount stores is based on the concept of self-service. However, traditional market traders can make various contacts with their customers. If traditional market traders can enhance various service factors just like in the process of product selection, it will effect strong competitive advantages. Third, it is also revealed that consumer's value exhibit complete mediation effect in the relationships between service and advertising. These results showed that traditional markets must be considered for consumer value. Because previous studies showed that values refer to "enduring belief that … specific mode of conduct or end-stat of existence … personally or socially preferable to an opposite of converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence" (Rokeach, 1973; George and Jones, 1996). Furthermore, Schwartz (1994) defined values as desirable trans-situational goals, varying in importance, that serve as guiding principles in the life of a person or other social entity. As conceptions of desirable end-states of existence or modes of conduct, values help people choose, evaluate, and give meaning to their experiences (Rokeach, 1973). Efforts (e.g. promote the consumers value) of the traditional market traders will improve the preferences for the traditional market of consumers and college students. Implications and future research directions are also discussed.