• Journal of the Korean Society of School Health
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.57-71
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• 1994

I investigated actual conditions of smoking of teenagers who were randomly chosen middle and high school students. 1. Juvenile smoking 1) Parents' opinions of juvenile smoking Most parents do not want their children to smoke after growth : 88.6% of fathers (middle school students: 88.9%, high school students: 88.4%) and 95.1% of mothers (middle school students: 93.4%, high school students :95.5%). 2) Teenagers' opinions of smoking after growth The rate of students who will smoke after growth is 10.8% (middle school students: 12.0%, high school students: 9.9%): students in agricultural areas show the higher rate than those in cities. 3) Parents' opinions of their children's smoking now 1.5% of fathers want their children to smoke now (middle school students: 1.3%, high school students: 1.6%) and 1.1% of mothers do (middle school students: 0.6%, high school students: 1.5%). This shows that most parents do not want their children to smoke now. 4) Students' opinions of their friends' smoking now Students who want their friends smoke now cover 7.8% (middle school students: 7.1%, high school students: 8.4%). This rates are higher than those of parents shown in (3). And more high school students and more girl students gave the positive reponse than middle school boy and girl students, respectively. 5) Students' views of smoking "Look like an adult" covers the rate of 4.0% (boy: 7.8%, girl:3.6%) 6.7% of middle school students have this view, while 3.7% of high school students have. 16.1% of students had an experience of smoking during the last one year (boy: 29.9%, girl: 8.6%): this shows that the rate of the boy students is more than 3 times greater than that of the girl students and high students who experienced smoking last year covers 20.2%, while middle school students shows 10.9%. 6) Actual conditions of students' smoking The present rate of students' smoking is 22.4% (boy:38.3%, girl:13.8%): the rate of boy students is greater than that of girl students. Students who smoke more than pack of cigarettes a day cover 8.2% (boy: 17.5%, girl: 3.2%): 5.2% of middle school students (boy:11.4%, girl: 2.1%) smoke more than one pack while 10.7% of high school students do (boy:21.5%, girl: 4.2%). This shows that the rate of boy students' smoking is greater than that of girl students' smoking. 7) The rate of smoking of students' parents 75.4% of fathers (city: 74.5%, agricultural area:75.9%) smoke: and more than a half (62.4%) smoke more than a pack cigarettes a day. On the other hand, the rate of smoking mothers is 5.2%(city: 4.3%, agricultural area: 7.3%): the rate is higher in agricultural areas. 8) Opinions of smoking population in the future 61.4% of students answered that smoking population will increase, while 27.0% have the opinion that smoking population will decrease. 2. Opinions of the effects of smoking on health 1) Have you heard that smokers are likely to suffer from tuberclosis? 78.3% of students said yes (boy: 80.8%, girl: 76.4%): it is shown that the rate of boys is greater than that of girls. 2) Have you heard that smokers are likely to get out of endurance? 76.6% of students (boy: 69.3%, girl: 49.7%) answered yes: it is shown that the rate of boys is greater than that of girls. 3) Have you heard that heart-beats get fast when one smokes? 32.5% of students (boy: 35.5%, girl: 30.9%) answered yes: 32.2% in cities(boy: 33.0%, girl: 31.8%) and 33.5% in agricultural areas(boy: 41.8%, girl: 28.8%): and 28.7% middle students and 35.5% of high school students answered yes. 4) Have you heard that smokers are likely to have heart-diseases? 35.1% of students (boy: 34.0%, girl: 34.1%) answered yes: 35.3% in cities (boy: 37.2%, girl: 34.2%) and 36.7% in agricultural areas (boy: 39.0%, girl: 33.9%): 34.8% of middle school students and 35.4% of high school students. 5) Have you heard that smokers are likely to have a lung cancer? 91.4% of students (boy: 93.2%, girl: 89.9%) answered yes: 90.35% in cities and 94.2% in agricultural areas. 6) Have you heard that the life of smokers gets shorter? 94.3% of students (boy:94.6%, girl: 92.2%) answered yes. 7) Have you heard that pregnant smokers will deliver a baby with low birth weight? 29.6% of students (boy: 29.8%, girl: 29.4%) answered yes: the rates of boys and girls almost the same. 8) Have you heard that one feels calm when one smokes? 80.1% of students (boy: 81.8%, girl: 79.2%) answered yes: boys and girls showed almost the same rate. 3. Preventive measures Smoking people continued to increase all over the world because smoking not only mitigated emotional uneasiness such as loneliness, nervousness and so on, but also could be very helpful from the social perspective. This was so because they did not consider harmful effects of smoking on health, and victims. However, because any -one can have physical disorders caused by smoking, people should always keep in mind the following preventive measures. 1) Doctors or teachers should set an example of giving up smoking. Informing patients or students of harmful effects of smoking to persuade their family and relatives not to smoke. 2) Through mass media like newspapers, periodicals or broadcasting, to make people know harmful effects of smoking and not smoke. 3) To prohibit selling teenagers cigarette by law. 4) To prohibit smoking in public places like work places, offices, lecture rooms, recreation rooms, buses, trains and so on. 5) To decrease the rate of life insurance for non-smokers as in foreign countries and to give a warming of the harmful effects on cigarette packets or ads.

• Child Health Nursing Research
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.70-83
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• 1999

The birth of a premature infant is distressing for its parents. The parents of a premature infant experience stress according to the infant's physical appearance and behavior, the environment of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) , and the alteration in the parental role. Especially, a mother of a premature infant feels distressed even after the discharge of the infant : therefore, she has difficulties in maternal role performance. The main purpose of this study is to identify the effects of the planned infant care information program in order to lower the stress level for mothers of premature infants caused by the birth and hospitalization in NICU of premature infants, to reduce the maternal role strain, and to promote the maternal role performance after the infants' discharge. This study employed two methods of research at the same time : quasi -experimental non-equivalent pre and post test to compare : non-equivalent post test to compare. The total number of subjects was 19 who were assigned to the research program : 12 mothers of premature infants at the NICU at the Ch university hospital and 7 at the NICU at the Y general hospital located in Chounju city. The data were collected for 79 days from August 18 to November 5, 1998. The questionnaire method was applied for the data collection, and the measures used in this study were Parental Stressor Scale : NICU(Miles, 1993), the Maternal Role Strain Measures ( Hobbs, 1968 ; Steffensmeier, 1982) , and Self Confidence Scale (Pharis, 1978). Research procedure is as follows : after preliminary examination, the experimental subjects, the mothers of premature infants at the Nl CU at Ch university hospital were provided with slide films and information developed by the researcher based on existing documents and data. It took two 60-minute sessions a week for two weeks, and the mothers' stress level was measured using the same instrument twice one week and two week after the infants' hospitalization. The stress level of the contrast subjects, the mothers at Y general hospital was measured during the same period. The experimental subjects were provided with booklets on matters that require attention after the infants' discharge and on developmental project, and they were educated to play the maternal role in person for 2-3 hours a week : breast-feeding, burping a baby, and changing diapers. One week after the infants' discharge, the maternal role strain and the maternal role performance were examined in two groups of the subjects. The analysis of collected data was done using descriptive statistics including real numbers, percentages, averages, and standard deviations. Mann-Whitney test ; x² test ; Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance ; ANCOVA Spearman's rho correlation coefficients. The results on this study were as follows. (1) The examination of the same quality showed that there were no differences in the general and obstetrical characters between the two groups. However, in terms of the characters of premature infants. just right after their birth, the infants at the contrast group weighed more than those at the experimental group(U=16.5, p=.02), and the former was in mother's womb longer than the latter(U=15.5, p=.02). (2) The stress level of the mothers provided with the plannned nursing intervention program became lower as time passed compared to the others'(F=16.61, p=.00) Even when the influence of weight at birth and the length of gestation was removed among the premature infants' characters, the mothers' stress levels made a statistical difference 2 weeks after the infants' hospitalization depending on treatment (F=8.00, p=.01) (3) The maternal role strain of the mothers provided with the planned nursing intervention program was lower than the others'(U=2.0, p=.00). Even when the influence of weight at birth and the length of gestation was removed among the premature infants' characters, the maternal role strain levels made a statistical difference 2 weeks after the infants' hospitalization, depending on treatment(F=14.72, p=.00). (4) The maternal role performance level of the mothers provided with the planned nursing program was higher than the others'(U=.0, p=.00). Even when the influence of weight at birth and the length of gestation was removed among the premature infants' characters, the mothers' stress levels made a statistical difference 2 weeks after the infants' hospitalization, depending on treatment(F=8.00, p=.01). (5) The correlation between a mother's stress level 2 weeks after her infant's hospitalization, the maternal role strain and the maternal role performance were compared : the stress and the maternal role strain were statistically irrelevant to each other(r=.33, p=.12) : the stress was found to be in inverse proportion to the maternal role performance(r=-.53, p=.02). The maternal role strain was in inverse proportion to the maternal role performance as well(r=-.50, p=.00). In conclusion, for the mothers provided with the planned nursing intervention program, their stress level was getting lower as time passed during the infants' hospitalization, their maternal role strain reduced when they took care of their infants after their discharge, and their maternal role performance level was high compared to the other mothers. Besides, the lower the stress level of mothers of premature infants was during the infants' hospitalization, the higher the maternal role performance after their discharge was. The lower maternal role strain was, the higher the maternal role performance was as well. These results of the study suggested that the nursing intervention program for the mothers of premature infants developed by the researcher would be effectively applied to nursing practice, and it would be a foundation for the development of this kind of program.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.245-276
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• 2008

Brand equity is one of the most important concepts in business practice as well as in academic research. Successful brands can allow marketers to gain competitive advantage (Lassar et al.,1995), including the opportunity for successful extensions, resilience against competitors' promotional pressures, and the ability to create barriers to competitive entry (Farquhar, 1989). Branding plays a special role in service firms because strong brands increase trust in intangible products (Berry, 2000), enabling customers to better visualize and understand them. They reduce customers' perceived monetary, social, and safety risks in buying services, which are obstacles to evaluating a service correctly before purchase. Also, a high level of brand equity increases consumer satisfaction, repurchasing intent, and degree of loyalty. Brand equity can be considered as a mixture that includes both financial assets and relationships. Actually, brand equity can be viewed as the value added to the product (Keller, 1993), or the perceived value of the product in consumers' minds. Mahajan et al. (1990) claim that customer-based brand equity can be measured by the level of consumers' perceptions. Several researchers discuss brand equity based on two dimensions: consumer perception and consumer behavior. Aaker (1991) suggests measuring brand equity through price premium, loyalty, perceived quality, and brand associations. Viewing brand equity as the consumer's behavior toward a brand, Keller (1993) proposes similar dimensions: brand awareness and brand knowledge. Thus, past studies tend to identify brand equity as a multidimensional construct consisted of brand loyalty, brand awareness, brand knowledge, customer satisfaction, perceived equity, brand associations, and other proprietary assets (Aaker, 1991, 1996; Blackston, 1995; Cobb-Walgren et al., 1995; Na, 1995). Other studies tend to regard brand equity and other brand assets, such as brand knowledge, brand awareness, brand image, brand loyalty, perceived quality, and so on, as independent but related constructs (Keller, 1993; Kirmani and Zeithaml, 1993). Walters(1978) defined information search as, "A psychological or physical action a consumer takes in order to acquire information about a product or store." But, each consumer has different methods for informationsearch. There are two methods of information search, internal and external search. Internal search is, "Search of information already saved in the memory of the individual consumer"(Engel, Blackwell, 1982) which is, "memory of a previous purchase experience or information from a previous search."(Beales, Mazis, Salop, and Staelin, 1981). External search is "A completely voluntary decision made in order to obtain new information"(Engel & Blackwell, 1982) which is, "Actions of a consumer to acquire necessary information by such methods as intentionally exposing oneself to advertisements, taking to friends or family or visiting a store."(Beales, Mazis, Salop, and Staelin, 1981). There are many sources for consumers' information search including advertisement sources such as the internet, radio, television, newspapers and magazines, information supplied by businesses such as sales people, packaging and in-store information, consumer sources such as family, friends and colleagues, and mass media sources such as consumer protection agencies, government agencies and mass media sources. Understanding consumers' purchasing behavior is a key factor of a firm to attract and retain customers and improving the firm's prospects for survival and growth, and enhancing shareholder's value. Therefore, marketers should understand consumer as individual and market segment. One theory of consumer behavior supports the belief that individuals are rational. Individuals think and move through stages when making a purchase decision. This means that rational thinkers have led to the identification of a consumer buying decision process. This decision process with its different levels of involvement and influencing factors has been widely accepted and is fundamental to the understanding purchase intention represent to what consumers think they will buy. Brand equity is not only companies but also very important asset more than product itself. This paper studies brand equity model and influencing factors including information process such as information searching and information resources in the fashion market in Asia and Europe. Information searching and information resources are influencing brand knowledge that influences consumers purchase decision. Nine research hypotheses are drawn to test the relationships among antecedents of brand equity and purchase intention and relationships among brand knowledge, brand value, brand attitude, and brand loyalty. H1. Information searching influences brand knowledge positively. H2. Information sources influence brand knowledge positively. H3. Brand knowledge influences brand attitude. H4. Brand knowledge influences brand value. H5. Brand attitude influences brand loyalty. H6. Brand attitude influences brand value. H7. Brand loyalty influences purchase intention. H8. Brand value influence purchase intention. H9. There will be the same research model in Asia and Europe. We performed structural equation model analysis in order to test hypotheses suggested in this study. The model fitting index of the research model in Asia was $X^2$=195.19(p=0.0), NFI=0.90, NNFI=0.87, CFI=0.90, GFI=0.90, RMR=0.083, AGFI=0.85, which means the model fitting of the model is good enough. In Europe, it was $X^2$=133.25(p=0.0), NFI=0.81, NNFI=0.85, CFI=0.89, GFI=0.90, RMR=0.073, AGFI=0.85, which means the model fitting of the model is good enough. From the test results, hypotheses were accepted. All of these hypotheses except one are supported. In Europe, information search is not an antecedent of brand knowledge. This means that sales of global fashion brands like jeans in Europe are not expanding as rapidly as in Asian markets such as China, Japan, and South Korea. Young consumers in European countries are not more brand and fashion conscious than their counter partners in Asia. The results have theoretical, practical meaning and contributions. In the fashion jeans industry, relatively few studies examining the viability of cross-national brand equity has been studied. This study provides insight on building global brand equity and suggests information process elements like information search and information resources are working differently in Asia and Europe for fashion jean market.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.149-161
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• 2014

The export of domestic public services to overseas markets contains many potential obstacles, stemming from different export procedures, the target services, and socio-economic environments. In order to alleviate these problems, the business incubation platform as an open business ecosystem can be a powerful instrument to support the decisions taken by participants and stakeholders. In this paper, we propose an ontology model and its implementation processes for the business incubation platform with an open and pervasive architecture to support public service exports. For the conceptual model of platform ontology, export case studies are used for requirements analysis. The conceptual model shows the basic structure, with vocabulary and its meaning, the relationship between ontologies, and key attributes. For the implementation and test of the ontology model, the logical structure is edited using Prot$\acute{e}$g$\acute{e}$ editor. The core engine of the business incubation platform is the simulator module, where the various contexts of export businesses should be captured, defined, and shared with other modules through ontologies. It is well-known that an ontology, with which concepts and their relationships are represented using a shared vocabulary, is an efficient and effective tool for organizing meta-information to develop structural frameworks in a particular domain. The proposed model consists of five ontologies derived from a requirements survey of major stakeholders and their operational scenarios: service, requirements, environment, enterprise, and county. The service ontology contains several components that can find and categorize public services through a case analysis of the public service export. Key attributes of the service ontology are composed of categories including objective, requirements, activity, and service. The objective category, which has sub-attributes including operational body (organization) and user, acts as a reference to search and classify public services. The requirements category relates to the functional needs at a particular phase of system (service) design or operation. Sub-attributes of requirements are user, application, platform, architecture, and social overhead. The activity category represents business processes during the operation and maintenance phase. The activity category also has sub-attributes including facility, software, and project unit. The service category, with sub-attributes such as target, time, and place, acts as a reference to sort and classify the public services. The requirements ontology is derived from the basic and common components of public services and target countries. The key attributes of the requirements ontology are business, technology, and constraints. Business requirements represent the needs of processes and activities for public service export; technology represents the technological requirements for the operation of public services; and constraints represent the business law, regulations, or cultural characteristics of the target country. The environment ontology is derived from case studies of target countries for public service operation. Key attributes of the environment ontology are user, requirements, and activity. A user includes stakeholders in public services, from citizens to operators and managers; the requirements attribute represents the managerial and physical needs during operation; the activity attribute represents business processes in detail. The enterprise ontology is introduced from a previous study, and its attributes are activity, organization, strategy, marketing, and time. The country ontology is derived from the demographic and geopolitical analysis of the target country, and its key attributes are economy, social infrastructure, law, regulation, customs, population, location, and development strategies. The priority list for target services for a certain country and/or the priority list for target countries for a certain public services are generated by a matching algorithm. These lists are used as input seeds to simulate the consortium partners, and government's policies and programs. In the simulation, the environmental differences between Korea and the target country can be customized through a gap analysis and work-flow optimization process. When the process gap between Korea and the target country is too large for a single corporation to cover, a consortium is considered an alternative choice, and various alternatives are derived from the capability index of enterprises. For financial packages, a mix of various foreign aid funds can be simulated during this stage. It is expected that the proposed ontology model and the business incubation platform can be used by various participants in the public service export market. It could be especially beneficial to small and medium businesses that have relatively fewer resources and experience with public service export. We also expect that the open and pervasive service architecture in a digital business ecosystem will help stakeholders find new opportunities through information sharing and collaboration on business processes.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.65-93
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• 2011

As relationship between buyer and seller has been brought closer and long-term relationship has been more important in B2B markets, the importance of service and service convenience increases as well as product. In homogeneous markets, where service offerings are similar and therefore not key competitive differentiator, providing greater convenience may enable a competitive advantage. Service convenience, as conceptualized by Berry et al. (2002), is defined as the consumers' time and effort perceptions related to buying or using a service. For this reason, B2B customers are interested in how fast the service is provided and how much save non-monetary cost like time or effort by the service convenience along with service quality. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impact of service convenience on relationship factors such as relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The purpose of this study is to find out whether service convenience can be a new antecedent of relationship quality and relationship performance. In addition, this study tries to examine how five-dimensional service convenience constructs (decision convenience, access convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affect customers' relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The service convenience comprises five fundamental components - decision convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with service purchase or use decisions), access convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with initiating service delivery), transaction convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with finalizing the transaction), benefit convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with experiencing the core benefits of the offering) and post-benefit convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with reestablishing subsequent contact with the firm). Earlier studies of perceived service convenience in the industrial market are none. The conventional studies that have dealt with service convenience have usually been made in the consumer market, or they have dealt with convenience aspects in the service process. This service convenience measure for consumer market can be useful tool to estimate service quality in B2B market. The conceptualization developed by Berry et al. (2002) reflects a multistage, experiential consumption process in which evaluations of convenience vary at each stage. For this reason, the service convenience measure is good for B2B service environment which has complex processes and various types. Especially when categorizing B2B service as sequential stage of service delivery like Kumar and Kumar (2004), the Berry's service convenience measure which reflect sequential flow of service deliveries suitable to establish B2B service convenience. For this study, data were gathered from respondents who often buy business service and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The sample size in the present study is 119. Composite reliability values and average variance extracted values were examined for each variable to have reliability. We determine whether the measurement model supports the convergent validity by CFA, and discriminant validity was assessed by examining the correlation matrix of the constructs. For each pair of constructs, the square root of the average variance extracted exceeded their correlations, thus supporting the discriminant validity of the constructs. Hypotheses were tested using the Smart PLS 2.0 and we calculated the PLS path values and followed with a bootstrap re-sampling method to test the hypotheses. Among the five dimensional service convenience constructs, four constructs (decision convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affected customers' positive relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. This result means that service convenience is important cue to improve relationship between buyer and seller. One of the five service convenience dimensions, access convenience, does not affect relationship quality and performance, which implies that the dimension of service convenience is not important factor of cumulative satisfaction. The Cumulative satisfaction can be distinguished from transaction-specific customer satisfaction, which is an immediate post-purchase evaluative judgment or an affective reaction to the most recent transactional experience with the firm. Because access convenience minimizes the physical effort associated with initiating an exchange, the effect on relationship satisfaction similar to cumulative satisfaction may be relatively low in terms of importance than transaction-specific customer satisfaction. Also, B2B firms focus on service quality, price, benefit, follow-up service and so on than convenience of time or place in service because it is relatively difficult to change existing transaction partners in B2B market compared to consumer market. In addition, this study using partial least squares methods reveals that customers' satisfaction and commitment toward relationship has mediating role between the service convenience and relationship performance. The result shows that management and investment to improve service convenience make customers' positive relationship satisfaction, and then the positive relationship satisfaction can enhance the relationship commitment and relationship performance. And to conclude, service convenience management is an important part of successful relationship performance management, and the service convenience is an important antecedent of relationship between buyer and seller such as the relationship commitment and relationship performance. Therefore, it has more important to improve relationship performance that service providers enhance service convenience although competitive service development or service quality improvement is important. Given the pressure to provide increased convenience, it is not surprising that organizations have made significant investments in enhancing the convenience aspect of their product and service offering.