• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.75-97
• /
• 2007

Less than 3% of India's food basket, consists of processed food, therefore processed food can be viewed as an innovation or new product to Indian consumers. This research investigates the effects of product familiarity and reference groups on Indian consumers' attitudes and purchase behavior of new processed food products. For the study, the model is developed by modifying Cambel and Goodstein's (2001) "Moderate Incongruity Effect" to include important cross-cultural influences on attitudes and purchase decisions among Indian consumers. Empirical analysis was conducted through structural equation modeling (SEM). SEM results indicated that reference group influence has a stronger positive effect on consumers' attitudes and actual purchase behavior of more familiar processed foods than of less familiar processed food. In addition, attitudes have a stronger positive effect on consumers' actual purchase of more familiar than of less familiar processed foods.

• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.326-342
• /
• 2013

Background: Engaging and Involving stakeholders who have different interests in changing health care policies are difficult task. As the literature on the governance in Korean health care field is rare, this study aims to provide empirical evidence of 'governing health policy'-the ways health care policy is made, implemented, and evaluated from a political perspective. Methods: The authors of this study conducted interviews with elites in policy and clinical areas, which was considered to be the most effective approach to gather in-depth information about the background of changing payment policy as well as the barriers or contributors for making the policy sustainable. A total of 14 experts (3 government officials, 2 representatives from medical profession, 3 professors form academic field, and 6 healthcare providers from New DRG pilot program hospitals) participated in 2 hour long interviews. Results: There was a perception gap of the feasibility and substantiality of new payment system among elites. The score was higher in government officers than those in scholars or clinical experts. Next, the interviewees indicated that Korean New DRG might not sustain without significant efforts to improving democratic aspects of the governance. It is also notable that all interviewees except healthcare providers provided negative expectation of the contribution of new payment system to increase administration efficiency. For clinical efficiency, every stakeholders perceived there was no increased efficiency after introduction of New DRG payment. Like general perception, there was a wide gap between the perception of stakeholders in quality change after implementing the new payment system. Finally, interview participants negatively assumed about the likelihood of New DRG to remain a case of successful reforms. Conclusion: This study implied the importance of social consensus and the governance of health policy.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.211-231
• /
• 2005

It is important for marketers to understand both individual resistance and group resistance in order to successfully bring innovations into global markets. We suggest that consumers resist innovations as individuals and as members of a group and that they do this in different ways at different stages of decision-making. The individual resistance begins with forms of initial resistance, develops into emergent resistance and mature or belated resistance at the individual level. In addition, personal moral standards can influence decision making in relation to the adoption of innovations. Individual resistance is sometimes accompanied by or evolves into group resistance. We introduce a framework for thinking about consumer resistance to innovations that sees it as a consequence of social identity, which has functions for the individual, the group to which one belongs, and other individuals and groups. Consumers with membership in a certain group try to increase their self-esteem through the process of social comparison. The more consumers strongly identify with and bond with a certain group, the more in-group solidarity and out-group hostility will occur. Out-group hostility gives group members strong resistance toward products and services related to the out-group. Individual resistance and group resistance are threats to marketers and dampen performance. By considering the existence of resistance to innovations and seeking strategies to overcome it, marketers can transform these threat into new opportunities. A better understanding of consumer resistance can complement research on the adoption of innovations and help in the development of a universal model of consumer behavior.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.821-832
• /
• 2021

Economic deprivation of households remains a significant economic issue in the world. Researchers have shown great concern in identifying crucial factors to enhance poor households' socio-economic performance. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a new conceptual framework to investigate the influence of different microfinance services on households' socioeconomic performance using moderated mediation analysis of various crucial factors. Focus-group interviews with managements of the microfinance institution, i.e. Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM), and a systematic literature review were conducted for this purpose, and a new framework for the future study has been developed. The result from focus-group interviews and systematic literature review propose microfinance financial services, training programs, and business coaching as independent factors, whereas household socioeconomic performance as a dependent factor in the proposed model. Specifically, this study provides the direction to scholars to empirically test the direct relationship between financial services and household socioeconomic performance and the indirect relationship between training programs, business coaching, and household socioeconomic performance. Further, microfinance institutions' service efficiency is also included as a moderator that can strengthen microfinance services' effectiveness. The study also provides useful implications for policymakers, financial institutions, households, micro-enterprises, and researchers to better understand microfinance interventions and household economic mechanisms.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.143-149
• /
• 2024

The role of social networking mobile applications such as WhatsApp in enhancing second language vocabulary learning among English language learners continues to be a subject of interest for many scholars. The current study aimed at examining medical English vocabulary learning among undergraduate students using WhatsApp compared to learning vocabulary via the Blackboard platform during the Covid-19 pandemic. To this end, 108 medical students (51 males, 57 females) enrolled in a first semester English for a specific English course participated in the study. A quasi-experimental design was adopted for two groups. Fifty-three students participated in the WhatsApp group and 55 students formed the Blackboard group. A pretest-posttest design was employed to collect data. Results of t-test scores did not show a significant difference between the WhatsApp and Blackboard groups on a vocabulary test. Results of a survey that measured students' opinion of the use of WhatsApp as a platform for learning new vocabulary showed positive perceptions since participants thought that WhatsApp enhanced their learning experience.

• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
• /
• no.53
• /
• pp.9-33
• /
• 2017

The objective of this thesis is to take review historical awareness of Baek-Moonbo(白文寶, 1303~1374) who lived in late Goryeo. Baek-Moonbo became interested in Confuciaism, the influence of Gwon-bu(權溥) and Baek-ijeong(白?正), and worked hard to reform the old egime by focusing on the Confucian scriptures and trying to reform thepeople of the nation. Instead of returning to the principles of heresy, Baek-Moonbo attempted to reverse the topograpy divination theory, including the Confucian scriptures of the Buddist criptures, and attempted to eradicate the land system, including the Baebulsungyu(排佛崇儒) of the Confucian scriptures. Most important of all, the importance of social change was the significance of social change to the most efficient means of realizing the lives of the people in the society according to the social structure of the Confucian society. Actively speaking for the public in his time and having the same attitude as the Neo-Confucian scholars in the late of Goryeo, he kept criticizing the abuse of the power by powerful families who made the people fall into a state of distress and misery.

• Korea Trade Review
• /
• v.42 no.3
• /
• pp.75-99
• /
• 2017

Quantitatively, there are no problem regarding new doctoral degree holders in the field of international trade, but the quality of the degrees does not meet the level of academic potential expected by recruiters. The purpose of this study is to identify current problems of doctoral education to cultivate future generations of scholars in international trade, and to suggest some alternatives to improve doctoral programs through surveys and focused group Results of this studies show that the major issues are a lack of full-time applicants and a demand for doctoral degree holders, and poor coursework. For doctoral education programs to successfully cultivate next generation academicians in the field of international trade, it is imperative for graduate schools to recruit distinguished full-time students. For this purpose, graduate schools must offer sufficient financial support packages as well as provide their students with good coursework and rigorous procedures on defending their dissertation. In addition, some graduate schools that mainly admit part-time students need to focus more on the quality of their doctoral degrees. Finally, preferential treatment of recruitment procedures might be helpful in expanding employment opportunities for new doctoral degree holders in international trade.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.19-43
• /
• 2007

The Korean Society for Engineering Education (KSEE) was founded in 1994, and the Journal of Engineering Education Research has published since 1998. The purpose of the study was to analyze the research methodologies and contents for all 126 papers which were published from 1998 to 2005. A statistical package SPSS(ver. 15.0) was used to analyze the coding data of all papers. The research contents were as follows: (1) A classification of the number of papers published according to year and researcher features (gender, institution, major field, number of authors, etc) was performed, (2) The analysis of research methodologies and contents of the papers published was performed, (3) Strategies to improve the quality of the journal were suggested by discussion from the analysis results. The results showed that the development research method was used most frequently, most papers were mode by major scholars of electrical and electronic engineering and scholars of Yonsei University made the most papers. In order to use the survey research method, the sampling methods were mainly used by total number, purposive, convenience, stratified sampling method, etc, questionnaire was used of 89.5%, descriptive statistics of frequency/% was used of 50%. To conduct the experimental research method, the models of nonequivalent groups posttest-only design and one-group pretest-posttest design were adopted, respectively. Finally, research strategies and new direction for improving the engineering education journal's papers at the section of discussion and suggestion were suggested.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.277-306
• /
• 2008

Knowledge1 is considered to be a key element of understanding how organizations gain and sustain competitive advantages. But very few firms are capable of creating the requisite knowledge and thus, firms should acquire and exploit new knowledge through knowledge transfer processes. The empirical part of this study involves examining relationships among adaptability of knowledge and knowledge transfer and marketing performance and testing the moderating roles of absorptive capacity, socialization and local marketing knowledge. This study is organized as follows: (1) Previous literature on knowledge, knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity is summarized, followed by the development of hypotheses derived from the knowledge-based view and absorptive capacity. (2) The hypotheses are tested with data collected from MNCs' subsidiaries performing marketing activities in Korea.Thestudyisclosedwithfindings,implications,andconclusions. Following six research hypotheses are drawn from literature review in related areas: H1: Adaptability of knowledge transferred from the MNCs' headquarters and other subsidiaries is positively associated with knowledge inflows into the receiving subsidiary. H2: The level of marketing knowledge transferred from the MNCs' headquarters and other subsidiaries is positively associated with marketing performance of the receiving subsidiary. H3: Increases in potential absorptive capacity will enhance the relationship between adaptability of knowledge and the level of marketing knowledge transfer. H4: Increases in realized absorptive capacity will enhance the relationship between the level of knowledge transfer and marketing performance of the receiving subsidiary. H5: Increases in socialization activity among the headquarters and subsidiaries will enhance the relationship between adaptability of knowledge and the level of marketing knowledge transfer. H6: Increases in the level of locally developed marketing knowledge will enhance the relationship between the level of knowledge transfer and marketing performance of the receiving subsidiary. The research framework that illustrates the proposed hypotheses is presented in figure 1. The unit of analysis for this study is knowledge transfer from the MNCs' headquarters and other subsidiaries to their subsidiaries operating in South Korea. The population for this study consists of subsidiaries established either as joint ventures or as wholly-owned subsidiaries. A group of 603 foreign firms were drawn from diverse industry organizations and business societies. After personal contact, telephone, fax, and e-mail to request that the respondents complete the questionnaire, 282 valid questionnaires from 133 initial sample companies were collected. The results of the empirical analyses significantly support all of the proposed hypotheses except hypothesis 3. Adaptability of external knowledge promotes knowledge transfer and the relationship is moderated by a firm's potential knowledge absorptive capacity. On the other hand, knowledge transfer improves a firm's marketing performance and a firm's realized knowledge absorptive capacity and local marketing knowledge moderate the relationship. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings in this study are as follows: (1) firms must take seeking, transferring, sharing and exploiting of external knowledge into serious consideration, while simultaneously creating knowledge to support the necessary business operations, remain competitive, and achieve superior performance. (2) Firms should continuously seek to develop their knowledge absorptive capacity (both potential and realized capacity) to absorb, learn and utilize valuable external knowledge. (3) Firms should emphasize not only absorptive capacity, but also development of local knowledge. Firms with strong absorptive capability and local knowledge can learn and transfer more external knowledge, which can be translated into greater levels of competence and performance.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.19 no.2
• /
• pp.53-67
• /
• 2009

For the last decades, service quality has been studied as one of the most important tools for a service company to compete with the other companies. Based on these past researches, it has been agreed that the service quality is a basic and powerful tool to create the competitive advantage. Due to similar reason, many service marketing practitioners have been also focused on the service quality to retain the existing consumers and collect the new consumers. However, service quality is subjectively perceived by individual consumers. Consumer evaluation of service quality can be different from each other. Especially consumers with one life-style may evaluate the service quality differently from the consumers with the other life-styles. Therefore we need to know whether there are differences in service quality perception on the categories of life-style. Life-style refers to a distinctive mode of living in its aggregate and broadest sense. It embodies the patterns that were developed and emerged from the dynamics of living in a society. Since the concept of life-style and its relationship to marketing was introduced in 1963 by William Lazer, methods of measuring the life-style and their application have been developed. Life-style has been usually used to segment the marketplace because it offers marketers a unique and important view of the market. When Life-style is combined with clustering methods, life-style segmentation can generate identifiable whole persons rather than isolated fragment. Life-style segmentation begins with people instead of products and classifies them into different life-style types, each characterized by a unique style of living based on a wide range of activities, interests, and opinions(Plummer, 1974). In this study we applies the life-style segmentation based on the AIO(Activities, Interests, and Opinions) to the consumers of the large discount stores. In Korea, the large discount store market has entered into maturity stage so that the market differentiation strategy is becoming a more critical issue to the marketing practitioners. One of the most important tools to differentiate from the competitors in large discount store market is continuously to provide service of better quality than competitors. This study tries to find answers about the following questions: 1) How can we categorize the consumer life-styles in the large discount store? 2) What are the characteristics of the categorized groups? 3) Are there any differences in service quality perception among the consumers with different life-styles 4) Are there any differences in consumer behavior among them in the large discount store? For the purpose, we collected survey data from consumers and analyzed the data with the SPSS package where we had $X^2$-test, factor analysis, ANOVA, MANOVA, and cluster analysis. The survey was made during one month in the April of 2008. Among the collected 306 copies of questionnaires, 281 copies were chosen as the effective samples for empirical analysis except 25 copies with wrong responses. To identify the life-style patterns, we used the measures employed by Kim and Kwon(1999), where 44 items on a seven-point scale were used to measure factors of the life-style patterns. The Principal Component Method was used for factor extraction, and the VARIMAX orthogonal factor rotation was employed. The 7 items showing low factor loading were eliminated. The results of the factor analysis suggested that nine factors of the life-style patterns were identified as follows: 1) the equality-of-sexes and pursuit-of-independence tendency 2) self-management tendency 3) sociable tendency 4) self-display tendency 5) degree of a dilettante life 6) pursuit-of-information tendency 7) bargain hunter tendency 8) TV preference tendency 9) pursuit-of-leisure tendency. Next, after the K-means cluster analysis was performed with nine factors of the life-style patterns, the life-styles of the respondents were classified into four groups which are named as the 'progressive practicality-oriented group', 'positive success-oriented group', 'sociable ostentation-oriented group', 'stable conservation-oriented group'. The analysis results for usage behavior between the market segments showed statistically significant differences in the frequency of usage, duration time in the store, consumer satisfaction, and loyalty. Also, we tried to investigate whether the large discount store consumers differently perceive the quality of service based upon the types of life-style. To measure the service quality of large discount store, we adapted several measurement models measuring the service quality such as SERVPERF, BCP, R-SERVPERF, R-BCP. MANOVA and One-Way ANOVA were performed to confirm the difference in service quality perception based on the market segments. The results have also shown significant differences between life-style types in service quality perception. These findings show that the large discount store marketers should consider consumer life-style as one of the most important market segments for marketing and understand the difference in service quality perception between life-style types. Our findings give important implications to marketers of large discount stores as well as life-style researchers. First, this study showed there were significant differences in consumer's service quality perception and usage behavior between the types of life-style. It provides evidence that the life-style approach can be a important basis in segmenting the large discount store market and will make consumers perceive the service quality high. Second, most previous researches on service quality have been in aggregate level. However, our results imply that the future research on service quality have to focus on segment level.