• Journal of the East Asian Society of Dietary Life
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.25-38
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• 2003

This study was conducted to establish the microbiological quality standards applying the HACCP system on sushi items of Japanese restaurant in Korea. The study evaluated hygienic conditions of kitchen and workers, pH time-temperature relationship, and microbial assessments during whole process of sushi making in 2001. Overall hygienic conditions were normal for both kitchen and for workers by 3 point scale, but hygienic controls against the cross-contamination were still needed. Each process of sushi making was performed under the risk of microbial contamination, since pH value of most of ingredients was over pH 4.6 and also production time(3.5~6 hrs) were long enough to cause problems. Microorganisms were high enough to cause foodborne illness ranged 8.0$\times$10$^2$~3.3$\times$10$^{6}$ CFU/g of TPC and 1.0$\times$10$^1$~1.6$\times$10$^3$CFU/g of coliforms, although TPC, coliforms and Staphylcoccus aureus were within the standard limits (TPC 10$^2$~10$^{6}$ CFU/g, coliforms 10$^3$CFU/g). However, Salmonella and Vibrio parahaemolyticus were not detected. High populations TPC and coliforms were also found in the cooks' hands and cooking utensils(TPC 10$^2$~10$^{6}$ CFU/100cm$^2$and Coliforms 10$^1$~10$^3$CFU/100cm$^2$). Based on the CCP decision tree analysis, the CCPs were the holding steps far six sushi production line except the tuna and the thawing step for tuna sushi. In conclusion, overall state of sushi production was fairly good but much improvement was still needed.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.90-97
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• 2013

Purpose: Ten years have passed since the Korean government announced its plan to institutionally support hospice and palliative care in 2002. In line with that, this study aims to suggest future directions for Korea's hospice and palliative care policy. Methods: We conducted a survey on people's perception and acceptance of well-dying. Data were collected from 1,000 participants aged 19~69 years between June 1 and June 11, 2012 via computer-assisted telephone interviews. Results: The most important factor for well-dying was placing no burden of care on others (36.7%) and the second most important factor was staying with their family and loved ones (19.1%). Among nine suggestions of policy support for well-dying, the most popular was the promotion of voluntary care sharing (88.3%), followed by the palliative care training support for healthcare providers (83.7%) and the support for palliative care facilities instead of funeral halls (81.7%). The idea of formulating a five-year national plan for end-of-life care drew strong support (91%). According to the survey, the plan should be implemented by the central government (47.5%), the National Assembly (20.2%) or civic groups (10%). Conclusion: This study demonstrated the public consensus and their consistent direction toward policy support for well-dying. Results of this study may serve as a foundation for the establishment of policy support for people's well-dying and palliative care at the national-level.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.208-218
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• 2010

Internet has grown fast and become one of the most important retail channels now. Various types of Internet retailers, hereafter etailers, have been introduced so far and as one type of Internet shopping mall, 'surrogate Internet shopping mall' has been prosperous and attracting consumers in the domestic market. Surrogate Internet shopping mall is a unique type of etailer that globally purchases well-known brand goods that are not imported in the market, completes delivery in the favor of individual buyers, and collects fees for these specific services. The consumers, who are usually interested in purchasing high-end and unique but not eligible brands, have difficulties to purchase these items overseas directly from the retailers or brands in other countries due to worries of payment failure and no address available for their usually domestic only delivery. In Korea, both numbers of surrogate Internet shopping malls and the magnitude of sales have been growing rapidly up to more than 430 active malls and 500 billion Korean won in 2008 since the population of consumers who want this agent shopping service is also expending. This etail business concept is originated from 'surrogate-mediated purchase' and this type of shopping agent has existed in many different forms and also in wide ranges of context level for quite a long time. As marketers face their individual buyers' representatives instead of a direct contact with them in many occasions, the impact of surrogate shoppers on consumer's decision making has been enormously important and many scholars have explored various range of agent's impact on consumer's purchase decisions in marketing and psychology field. However, not much rigorous research in the Internet commerce has been conveyed yet. Moreover, since as one of the shopping agent surrogate Internet shopping malls specifically connect overseas brands or retailers to domestic consumers, one specific character of the mall's, image of surrogate buying country, where surrogate purchases are conducted in, may play an important role to form consumers' attitude and purchase intention toward products. Furthermore it also possibly affects various dimensions of perceived risk in consumer's information processing. However, though tremendous researches have been carried exploring the effects of diverse dimensions of country of origin, related studies in Internet context has been rarely executed. There have been some studies that prove the positive impact of country of origin on consumer's evaluations as one of information clues in product manufacture descriptions, yet studies detecting the relationship between country image of surrogate buying origin and product evaluations rarely undertaken regarding this specific mall type. Thus, the authors have found it well-worth investigating in this specific retail channel and explored systematic relationships among focal constructs and elaborated their different paths. The authors have proven that country image of surrogate buying origin in the mall, where surrogate malls purchase products in and brings them from for buyers, not only has a positive effect on consumers' product evaluations including attitude and purchase intention but also has a negative effect on all three dimensions of perceived risk: product-related risk, shipping-related risk, and post-purchase risk. Specifically among all the perceived risk, product-related risk which is arisen from high uncertainty of product performance is most affected (${\beta}$= -.30) by negative country image of surrogate buying origin, and also shipping-related risk (${\beta}$= -.18) and post-purchase risk (${\beta}$= -.15) get influenced in order. Its direct effects on product attitude (${\beta}$= .10) and purchase intention (${\beta}$= .14) are also secured. Each of perceived risk dimension is proven to have a negative effect on purchase intention through product attitude as a mediator (${\beta}$= -.57: product-related risk ${\rightarrow}$ product attitude; ${\beta}$= -.24: shipping-related risk ${\rightarrow}$ product attitude; ${\beta}$= -.44: post-purchase risk ${\rightarrow}$ product attitude) as well. From the additional analysis, the paths of consumers' information processing are shown to be different based on their levels of product knowledge. While novice consumers with low level of knowledge consider only perceived risk important, expert consumers with high level of knowledge take both the country image, where surrogate services are conducted in, and perceived risk seriously to build their attitudes and formulate decisions toward products more delicately and systematically, which is in line with previous studies. This study suggests several pieces of academic and practical advice. Precisely, country image of surrogate buying origin does affect on consumer's risk perceptions and behavioral consequences. Therefore a careful selection of surrogate buying origin is recommended. Furthermore, reducing consumers' risk level is required to blossom this new type of retail business whether its consumer are novices or experts. Additionally, since consumer take different paths of elaborating information based on their knowledge levels, sophisticated marketing approaches to each group of consumers are required. For novice buyers strong devices for risk mitigation are needed to induce them to form better attitudes and for experts selections of better and advanced countries as surrogate buying origins are advised while endorsement strategy for the site might work as a reliable information clue to all consumers to mitigate the barriers to purchase goods online. The authors have also explained that the study suffers from some limitations, including generalizability. In future studies, tests of and comparisons among different types of etailers with relevant constructs are recommended to broaden the findings.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2008

Statement of problem: Over the past decade, increased demand for esthetically pleasing restorations has led to the development of all-ceramic systems. Recent reports suggest that the all-ceramic crowns have excellent physical properties, wear resistance, and color stability. In addition, numerous ceramics have excellent biocompatibility, a natural appearance, and improved physical bonding with resin composite luting agents. However, the brittle nature of ceramics has been a major factor in their restriction for universal usage. Functional occlusal loading can generate stress in the luting agent, and the stress distribution may be affected by the marginal geometry at the finish line. Tooth preparation for fixed prosthodontics requires a decision regarding the marginal configuration. The design dictates the shape and bulk of the all ceramic crowns and influences the fit at the margin. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the stress distribution within marginal configurations of all- ceramic crowns (90-degree shoulder, 110-degree shoulder, 135-degree shoulder). Material and methods: The force is applied from a direction of 45 degrees to the vertical tooth axis. Three-dimensional finite element analysis was selected to determine stress levels and distributions. Results and conclusion: The result of stress level for the shoulder marginal configuration was more effective on stress distribution at 135-degree shoulder margin. But the stresses concentrated around at 135-degree shoulder margin. The stress decreased apically at the surface between cements and alumina core, and increased apically at the surface between alumina core and veneering porcelain.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.59 no.3
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• pp.369-374
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• 2014

The rice stem borer (Chilo suppressalis Walker) was one of the most destructive pest of rice for the 1960s and 1970s in Korea. Recently, it is newly recognized as a potential risk factor to the biomass yield of bioenergy crops. The current research was firstly conducted to investigate overwintering larvae population density and pattern of rice stem borer attacking Miscanthus sacchariflorus cv. Geodae 1 which is referred to as an ideal lignocellulosic bioenergy crop in Korea. Population density of larvae per $1m^2$ in stems and rhizomes at the Miscanthus experimental plots and rates of damage (wormhole, abscission) of M. sacchariflorus cv. Goedae 1 were investigated from October 2012 to March 2013. The population of larvae per $1m^2$ in stems of Miscanthus were 23, 4, 1, and 1 in October, November, December 2012, and January 2013, respectively. Over the same period, the population of larvae in basal stem rots and rhizomes were increased, whereas decreased in stems. Interestingly, the positions of larvae for overwintering in Miscanthus were confirmed to 5~10 cm below the soil surface such as basal stem rot and rhizome, whereas the most common overwintering position known in rice is a part of stem on the ground such as rice straw and rice stubble. It would suggest that the larvae gradually moved to bottom of stems and rhizomes in soil in line with decline in temperature. Moreover, the damage rates of stems per $1m^2$ were up to more than 50% in some places. In conclusion, this might be the first report that rice stem borer could affect the productivity of biomass of Miscanthus in case of mass cultivation. Moreover, it should be necessary to make a decision in insect control management for this bioenergy feedstock and other related crops.

• Journal of Korean Orthopaedic Sports Medicine
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.168-175
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• 2003

Fracture about proximal humerus may be classified as the articular segment or the anatomical neck, the greater tuberosity, the lesser tuberosity, and the shaft or surgical neck. Now, usually used, Neer's classification is based on the number of segments displaced, over 1cm of displaced or more than 45 degrees of angulation , rather than the number of fracture line . Absolute indication of a operative treatment a open fracture, the fracture with vascular injury or nerve injury , and unreductable fracture-dislocation . Inversely, the case that are severe osteoporosis, and eldly patient who can't be operated by strong internal fixation is better than arthroplasty used by primary prosthetic replacement and early rehabilitation program than open reduction and internal fixation. The operator make a decision for the patient who should be taken the open reduction and internal fixation, because it's different that anatomical morphology, bone density, condition of patient. The operator decide operation procedure. For example, percutaneous pinning, open reduction, plate & screws, wire tension bands combined with some intramedullary device are operation procedure that operator can decide . The poor health condition for other health problem, fracture with unstable vital sign and severe osteoporosis , are the relative contraindication. The stable fracture without dislocation is not the operative indication . The radiologic film of the prokimal humerus before the operation can not predict for fracture evaluation. It's necessary to good radiologic film for evaluation of fracture form. The trauma serise is better than the other radiologic film for evaluation. The accessary radiologic exam is able to help for evaluation of bone fragment and anatomy. The CT can be helpful in evaluating these injury, especially if the extract fracture type cannot be determined from plain roenterogram of the proximal humerus, bone of humerus head. If the dislocation is severe anatomically , we could consider to do three dimentional remodelling. The MRI doing for observing of bony morphology before the operation is not better than CT If we were suspicious of vascular injury, we could consider the angiography.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.12
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• pp.269-327
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• 1985

This study was undertaken to meet more fully the demands for improved training of library personnel, occasioned by the rapidly changing roles and functions of libraries as they try to adapt to the vast social, economic and technological changes currently in progress in the Korean society. The specific purpose of this research is to develop a standard curriculum at the batchelor's level that will properly equip the professional personnel in Korean libraries for the changes confronting them. This study started with the premise that to establish a sound base for curriculum development, it was necessary first to determine what concepts, knowledge, and techniques are required for professional library personnel to perform it at an optimal level of efficiency. Explicitly, it was felt that for the development of useful curricula and courses at the batchelor's level, a prime source of knowledge should be functional behaviours that are necessary in the job situation. To determine specifically what these terminal performance behaviours should be so that learning experience provided could be rooted in reality, the decision was reached to use a systems approach to curriculum development, which is an attempt to break the mold of traditional concepts and to approach interaction from an open, innovative, and product-oriented perspective. This study was designed to: (1) identify what knowledge and techniques are required for professional library personnel to perform the job activities in which they are actually engaged, (2) to evaluate the educational needs of the knowledge and techniques that the professional librarian respondents indicate, and (3) to categorise the knowledge and techniques into teaching subjects to present the teaching subjects by their educational importance. The main data-gathering instrument for the study, a questionnaire containing 254 items, was sent to a randomly selected sample of library school graduates working in libraries and related institutions in Korea. Eighty-three librarians completed and returned the questionnaire. After analysing the returned questionnaire, the following conclusions have been reached: (A) To develop a rational curriculum rooted in the real situation of the Korean libraries, compulsory subjects should be properly chosen from those which were ranked highest in importance by the respondents. Characters and educational policies of, and other teaching subjects offered by, the individual educational institution to which a given library school belongs should also be taken into account in determining compulsory subjects. (B) It is traditionally assumed that education in librarianship should be more concerned with theoretical foundations on which any solution can be developed than with professional needs with particulars and techniques as they are used in existing library environments. However, the respondents gave the former a surprisingly lower rating. The traditional assumption must be reviewed. (C) It is universally accepted in developing library school curricula that compulsory subjects are concerned with the area of knowledge students generally need to learn and optional subjects are concerned with the area to be needed to only those who need it. Now that there is no such clear demarcation line provided in librarianship, it may be a realistic approach to designate subjects in the area rated high by the respondents as compulsory and to designate those in the area rated low as optional. (D) Optional subjects that were ranked considerably higher in importance by the respondents should be given more credits than others, and those ranked lower might be given less credits or offered infrequently or combined. (E) A standard list of compulsory and optional subjects with weekly teaching hours for a Korean library school is presented in the fourth chapter of this report.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.111-137
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• 2010

The basic purpose of this study is to investigate perceived quality and service personal value affecting the result of long-term relationship between service buyers and suppliers. This research presented a constructive model(perceived quality affecting the service personal value and the moderate effect of NFC) in the on off line and then propose the research model base on prior researches and studies about relationships among components of service. Data were gathered from respondents who visit at the education service market. For this study, Data were analyzed by AMOS 7.0. We integrate the literature on services marketing with researches on personal values and perceived quality. The SERPVAL scale presented here allows for the creation of a common ground for assessing service personal values, giving a clear understanding of the key value dimensions behind service choice and usage. It will lead to a focus of future research in services marketing, extending knowledge in the field and stimulating further empirical research on service personal values. At the managerial level, as a tool the SERPVAL scale should allow practitioners to evaluate and improve the value of a service, and consequently, to define strategies and actions to address services for customers based on their fundamental personal values. Through qualitative and empirical research, we find that the service quality construct conforms to the structure of a second-order factor model that ties service quality perceptions to distinct and actionable dimensions: outcome, interaction, and environmental quality. In turn, each has two subdimensions that define the basis of service quality perceptions. The authors further suggest that for each of these subdimensions to contribute to improved service quality perceptions, the quality received by consumers must be perceived to be reliable, responsive, and empathetic. Although the service personal value may be found in researches that explore individual values and their consequences for consumer behavior, there is no established operationalization of a SERPVAL scale. The inexistence of an established scale, duly adapted in order to understand and analyze personal values behind services usage, exposes the need of a measurement scale with such a purpose. This need has to be rooted, however, in a conceptualization of the construct being scaled. Service personal values can be defined as a customer's overall assessment of the use of a service based on the perception of what is achieved in terms of his own personal values. As consumer behaviors serve to show an individual's values, the use of a service can also be a way to fulfill and demonstrate consumers'personal values. In this sense, a service can provide more to the customer than its concrete and abstract attributes at both the attribute and the quality levels, and more than its functional consequences at the value level. Both values and services literatures agree, that personal value is the highest-level concept, followed by instrumental values, attitudes and finally by product attributes. Purchasing behaviors are agreed to be the end result of these concepts' interaction, with personal values taking a major role in the final decision process. From both consumers' and practitioners' perspectives, values are extremely relevant, as they are desirable goals that serve as guiding principles in people's lives. While building on previous research, we propose to assess service personal values through three broad groups of individual dimensions; at the self-oriented level, we use (1) service value to peaceful life (SVPL) and, at the social-oriented level, we use (2) service value to social recognition (SVSR), and (3) service value to social integration (SVSI). Service value to peaceful life is our first dimension. This dimension emerged as a combination of values coming from the RVS scale, a scale built specifically to assess general individual values. If a service promotes a pleasurable life, brings or improves tranquility, safety and harmony, then its user recognizes the value of this service. Generally, this service can improve the user's pleasure of life, since it protects or defends the consumer from threats to life or pressures on it. While building upon both the LOV scale, a scale built specifically to assess consumer values, and the RVS scale for individual values, we develop the other two dimensions: SVSR and SVSI. The roles of social recognition and social integration to improve service personal value have been seriously neglected. Social recognition derives its outcome utility from its predictive utility. When applying this underlying belief to our second dimension, SVSR, we assume that people use a service while taking into consideration the content of what is delivered. Individuals consider whether the service aids in gaining respect from others, social recognition and status, as well as whether it allows achieving a more fulfilled and stimulating life, which might then be revealed to others. People also tend to engage in behavior that receives social recognition and to avoid behavior that leads to social disapproval, and this contributes to an individual's social integration. This leads us to the third dimension, SVSI, which is based on the fact that if the consumer perceives that a service strengthens friendships, provides the possibility of becoming more integrated in the group, or promotes better relationships at the social, professional or family levels, then the service will contribute to social integration, and naturally the individual will recognize personal value in the service. Most of the research in business values deals with individual values. However, to our knowledge, no study has dealt with assessing overall personal values as well as their dimensions in a service context. Our final results show that the scales adapted from the Schwartz list were excluded. A possible explanation is that although Schwartz builds on Rokeach work in order to explore individual values, its dimensions might be especially focused on analyzing societal values. As we are looking for individual dimensions, this might explain why the values inspired by the Schwartz list were excluded from the model. The hierarchical structure of the final scale presented in this paper also presents theoretical implications. Although we cannot claim to definitively capture the dimensions of service personal values, we believe that we come close to capturing these overall evaluations because the second-order factor extracts the underlying commonality among dimensions. In addition to obtaining respondents' evaluations of the dimensions, the second-order factor model captures the common variance among these dimensions, reflecting the respondents' overall assessment of service personal values. Towards this fact, we expect that the service personal values conceptualization and measurement scale presented here contributes to both business values literature and the service marketing field, allowing for the delineation of strategies for adding value to services. This new scale also presents managerial implications. The SERPVAL dimensions give some guidance on how to better pursue a highly service-oriented business strategy. Indeed, the SERPVAL scale can be used for benchmarking purposes, as this scale can be used to identify whether or not a firms' marketing strategies are consistent with consumers' expectations. Managerial assessment of the personal values of a service might be extremely important because it allows managers to better understand what customers want or value. Thus, this scale allows us to identify what services are really valuable to the final consumer; providing knowledge for making choices regarding which services to include. Traditional approaches have focused their attention on service attributes (as quality) and service consequences(as service value), but personal values may be an important set of variables to be considered in understanding what attracts consumers to a certain service. By using the SERPVAL scale to assess the personal values associated with a services usage, managers may better understand the reasons behind services' usage, so that they may handle them more efficiently. While testing nomological validity, our empirical findings demonstrate that the three SERPVAL dimensions are positively and significantly associated with satisfaction. Additionally, while service value to social integration is related only with loyalty, service value to peaceful life is associated with both loyalty and repurchase intent. It is also interesting and surprising that service value to social recognition appears not to be significantly linked with loyalty and repurchase intent. A possible explanation is that no mobile service provider has yet emerged in the market as a luxury provider. All of the Portuguese providers are still trying to capture market share by means of low-end pricing. This research has implications for consumers as well. As more companies seek to build relationships with their customers, consumers are easily able to examine whether these relationships provide real value or not to their own lives. The selection of a strategy for a particular service depends on its customers' personal values. Being highly customer-oriented means having a strong commitment to customers, trying to create customer value and understanding customer needs. Enhancing service distinctiveness in order to provide a peaceful life, increase social recognition and gain a better social integration are all possible strategies that companies may pursue, but the one to pursue depends on the outstanding personal values held by the service customers. Data were gathered from 284 respondents in the korean discount store and online shopping mall market. This research proposed 3 hypotheses on 6 latent variables and tested through structural equation modeling. 6 alternative measurements were compared through statistical significance test of the 6 paths of research model and the overall fitting level of structural equation model. and the result was successful. and Perceived quality more positively influences service personal value when NFC is high than when no NFC is low in the off-line market. The results of the study indicate that service quality is properly modeled as an antecedent of service personal value. We consider the research and managerial implications of the study and its limitations. In sum, by knowing the dimensions a consumer takes into account when choosing a service, a better understanding of purchasing behaviors may be realized, guiding managers toward customers expectations. By defining strategies and actions that address potential problems with the service personal values, managers might ultimately influence their firm's performance. we expect to contribute to both business values and service marketing literatures through the development of the service personal value. At a time when marketing researchers are challenged to provide research with practical implications, it is also believed that this framework may be used by managers to pursue service-oriented business strategies while taking into consideration what customers value.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.151-171
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• 2014

Firms today have sought management effectiveness and efficiency utilizing information technologies (IT). Numerous firms are outsourcing specific information systems functions to cope with their short of information resources or IT experts, or to reduce their capital cost. Recently, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as a new type of information system has become one of the powerful outsourcing alternatives. SaaS is software deployed as a hosted and accessed over the internet. It is regarded as the idea of on-demand, pay-per-use, and utility computing and is now being applied to support the core competencies of clients in areas ranging from the individual productivity area to the vertical industry and e-commerce area. In this study, therefore, we seek to quantify the value that SaaS has on business performance by examining the relationships among firm strategies, SaaS technology maturity, and business performance of SaaS providers. We begin by drawing from prior literature on SaaS, technology maturity and firm strategy. SaaS technology maturity is classified into three different phases such as application service providing (ASP), Web-native application, and Web-service application. Firm strategies are manipulated by the low-cost strategy and differentiation strategy. Finally, we considered customer acquisition as a business performance. In this sense, specific objectives of this study are as follows. First, we examine the relationships between customer acquisition performance and both low-cost strategy and differentiation strategy of SaaS providers. Secondly, we investigate the mediating and moderating effects of SaaS technology maturity on those relationships. For this purpose, study collects data from the SaaS providers, and their line of applications registered in the database in CNK (Commerce net Korea) in Korea using a questionnaire method by the professional research institution. The unit of analysis in this study is the SBUs (strategic business unit) in the software provider. A total of 199 SBUs is used for analyzing and testing our hypotheses. With regards to the measurement of firm strategy, we take three measurement items for differentiation strategy such as the application uniqueness (referring an application aims to differentiate within just one or a small number of target industry), supply channel diversification (regarding whether SaaS vendor had diversified supply chain) as well as the number of specialized expertise and take two items for low cost strategy like subscription fee and initial set-up fee. We employ a hierarchical regression analysis technique for testing moderation effects of SaaS technology maturity and follow the Baron and Kenny's procedure for determining if firm strategies affect customer acquisition through technology maturity. Empirical results revealed that, firstly, when differentiation strategy is applied to attain business performance like customer acquisition, the effects of the strategy is moderated by the technology maturity level of SaaS providers. In other words, securing higher level of SaaS technology maturity is essential for higher business performance. For instance, given that firms implement application uniqueness or a distribution channel diversification as a differentiation strategy, they can acquire more customers when their level of SaaS technology maturity is higher rather than lower. Secondly, results indicate that pursuing differentiation strategy or low cost strategy effectively works for SaaS providers' obtaining customer, which means that continuously differentiating their service from others or making their service fee (subscription fee or initial set-up fee) lower are helpful for their business success in terms of acquiring their customers. Lastly, results show that the level of SaaS technology maturity mediates the relationships between low cost strategy and customer acquisition. That is, based on our research design, customers usually perceive the real value of the low subscription fee or initial set-up fee only through the SaaS service provide by vender and, in turn, this will affect their decision making whether subscribe or not.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.1-27
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• 2017

It is known that the economic sentiment index and macroeconomic indicators are closely related because economic agent's judgment and forecast of the business conditions affect economic fluctuations. For this reason, consumer sentiment or confidence provides steady fodder for business and is treated as an important piece of economic information. In Korea, private consumption accounts and consumer sentiment index highly relevant for both, which is a very important economic indicator for evaluating and forecasting the domestic economic situation. However, despite offering relevant insights into private consumption and GDP, the traditional approach to measuring the consumer confidence based on the survey has several limits. One possible weakness is that it takes considerable time to research, collect, and aggregate the data. If certain urgent issues arise, timely information will not be announced until the end of each month. In addition, the survey only contains information derived from questionnaire items, which means it can be difficult to catch up to the direct effects of newly arising issues. The survey also faces potential declines in response rates and erroneous responses. Therefore, it is necessary to find a way to complement it. For this purpose, we construct and assess an index designed to measure consumer economic sentiment index using sentiment analysis. Unlike the survey-based measures, our index relies on textual analysis to extract sentiment from economic and financial news articles. In particular, text data such as news articles and SNS are timely and cover a wide range of issues; because such sources can quickly capture the economic impact of specific economic issues, they have great potential as economic indicators. There exist two main approaches to the automatic extraction of sentiment from a text, we apply the lexicon-based approach, using sentiment lexicon dictionaries of words annotated with the semantic orientations. In creating the sentiment lexicon dictionaries, we enter the semantic orientation of individual words manually, though we do not attempt a full linguistic analysis (one that involves analysis of word senses or argument structure); this is the limitation of our research and further work in that direction remains possible. In this study, we generate a time series index of economic sentiment in the news. The construction of the index consists of three broad steps: (1) Collecting a large corpus of economic news articles on the web, (2) Applying lexicon-based methods for sentiment analysis of each article to score the article in terms of sentiment orientation (positive, negative and neutral), and (3) Constructing an economic sentiment index of consumers by aggregating monthly time series for each sentiment word. In line with existing scholarly assessments of the relationship between the consumer confidence index and macroeconomic indicators, any new index should be assessed for its usefulness. We examine the new index's usefulness by comparing other economic indicators to the CSI. To check the usefulness of the newly index based on sentiment analysis, trend and cross - correlation analysis are carried out to analyze the relations and lagged structure. Finally, we analyze the forecasting power using the one step ahead of out of sample prediction. As a result, the news sentiment index correlates strongly with related contemporaneous key indicators in almost all experiments. We also find that news sentiment shocks predict future economic activity in most cases. In almost all experiments, the news sentiment index strongly correlates with related contemporaneous key indicators. Furthermore, in most cases, news sentiment shocks predict future economic activity; in head-to-head comparisons, the news sentiment measures outperform survey-based sentiment index as CSI. Policy makers want to understand consumer or public opinions about existing or proposed policies. Such opinions enable relevant government decision-makers to respond quickly to monitor various web media, SNS, or news articles. Textual data, such as news articles and social networks (Twitter, Facebook and blogs) are generated at high-speeds and cover a wide range of issues; because such sources can quickly capture the economic impact of specific economic issues, they have great potential as economic indicators. Although research using unstructured data in economic analysis is in its early stages, but the utilization of data is expected to greatly increase once its usefulness is confirmed.