• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.830-860
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• 2022

[Introduction] Nowadays, many companies are shifting their businesses online due to the growing trend among customers to buy and shop online, as people prefer online purchasing products. [Problem] Users share a vast amount of information about products, making it difficult and challenging for the end-users to make certain decisions. [Motivation] Therefore, we need a mechanism to automatically analyze end-user opinions, thoughts, or feelings in the social media platform about the products that might be useful for the customers to make or change their decisions about buying or purchasing specific products. [Proposed Solution] For this purpose, we proposed an automated SentiDecpective approach, which classifies end-user reviews into negative, positive, and neutral sentiments and identifies deceptive crowd-users rating information in the social media platform to help the user in decision-making. [Methodology] For this purpose, we first collected 11781 end-users comments from the Amazon store and Flipkart web application covering distant products, such as watches, mobile, shoes, clothes, and perfumes. Next, we develop a coding guideline used as a base for the comments annotation process. We then applied the content analysis approach and existing VADER library to annotate the end-user comments in the data set with the identified codes, which results in a labelled data set used as an input to the machine learning classifiers. Finally, we applied the sentiment analysis approach to identify the end-users opinions and overcome the deceptive rating information in the social media platforms by first preprocessing the input data to remove the irrelevant (stop words, special characters, etc.) data from the dataset, employing two standard resampling approaches to balance the data set, i-e, oversampling, and under-sampling, extract different features (TF-IDF and BOW) from the textual data in the data set and then train & test the machine learning algorithms by applying a standard cross-validation approach (KFold and Shuffle Split). [Results/Outcomes] Furthermore, to support our research study, we developed an automated tool that automatically analyzes each customer feedback and displays the collective sentiments of customers about a specific product with the help of a graph, which helps customers to make certain decisions. In a nutshell, our proposed sentiments approach produces good results when identifying the customer sentiments from the online user feedbacks, i-e, obtained an average 94.01% precision, 93.69% recall, and 93.81% F-measure value for classifying positive sentiments.

• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.37-45
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• 2022

Purpose: During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, we conducted a Delphi survey that included the experts from the field of COVID-19 immunization in children aged 5-11 years. The aim was to organize collective expert opinions on COVID-19 vaccination in young children in the Republic of Korea, and so thus assist the vaccination policy. Methods: The panels included pediatric infectious disease specialists, preventive medicine experts, infectious disease physicians, and COVID-19 vaccine experts consulting the Ministry of Health and Welfare. The Delphi survey was conducted online using a questionnaire from February 14 to February 27, 2022. Results: The Delphi panels agreed that children were vulnerable to COVID-19, and the severity of illness was modest. Furthermore the panels reported that children with chronic illness were more susceptible to a worsening clinical course. There were generally positive opinions on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination in children aged 5-11 years, and experts gathered a slightly positive opinion that the adverse events of pediatric COVID-19 were not numerous. The benefits of COVID-19 vaccination were evaluated at a level similar to the potential risks in children. Currently, the only approved mRNA platform vaccine in children seemed to be sustainable; however, the recombinant protein platform COVID-19 vaccines were evaluated as better options. Conclusions: Due to the surge of the Omicron variant and an increase in pediatric cases, the COVID-19 vaccination in young children may have to be considered. Panels had neutral opinions regarding the COVID-19 vaccination in children aged 5-11 years. Thus monitoring of the epidemiology and the data about the safety of COVID-19 vaccination should be continued.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.11-21
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• 2022

All-solid-state batteries are one of the promising candidates for next-generation batteries and are drawing attention as a key component that will lead the future electric vehicle industry. This study analyzes 10,280 comments on Reddit, which is a global social media, in order to identify policy issues and public interest related to all-solid-state batteries from 2016 to 2021. Text mining such as frequency analysis, association rule analysis, and topic modeling, and sentiment analysis are applied to the collected global data to grasp global trends, compare them with the South Korean government's all-solid-state battery development strategy, and suggest policy directions for its national research and development. As a result, the overall sentiment toward all-solid-state battery issues was positive with 50.5% positive and 39.5% negative comments. In addition, as a result of analyzing detailed emotions, it was found that the public had trust and expectation for all-solid-state batteries. However, feelings of concern about unresolved problems coexisted. This study has an academic and practical contribution in that it presented a text mining analysis method for deriving key issues related to all-solid-state batteries, and a more comprehensive trend analysis by employing both a top-down approach based on government policy analysis and a bottom-up approach that analyzes public perception.

• Journal of International Area Studies (JIAS)
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.53-78
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• 2011

The day of the Dead, so called as 'El día de los muertos' in Mexico is the traditional festival of the mexicans. There is no doubt that the origin of the festival traces back to the times of the people of Azteca before the Invasion of the spanish soldiers into the land of the soldiers of Teotihuacán. The festival rituals of the Azteca are the same as the catholic rituals in converging the actual characteristics and the cultural structure of the Festival. Therefore the hybridity of the Festival has been considered as high value worthy to be conserved and named as a world cultural heritage by the UNESCO. This investigation has been realized through the survey of questionnaire to get some practical informations and data on how the mexicans think of the Festival and enjoy it according to the diversity of the believes, sexes, locations, ages, etc. We could reveal that the absolute majority of the mexicans consider the Festival as very positive. Even though the sexes, educations, ages can't be elements to make the differences in conforming the common think of the day of the Dead, believes and locations where the people do live are the most sensitive elements that influence upon the ways of thinking. The protestants think negatively while the catholics do reflect the average opinion of the mexicans who consider the Festival as a good and positive tradition. The people of the city participate less than the people of the provinces. Conclusively the day of the Dead can be considered as a national symbol of the people of Mexico.

• Design Convergence Study
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-16
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• 2015

As childhood obesity and nutrition imbalance emerge as social issues in South Korea today, the development of education materials on diets and nutrition has become important and has been attempted in diverse ways. The present study was conducted on early elementary school students with the objective of establishing directions for the design of personalized nutrition education materials that can promote a proper, balanced diet for children through application in daily life of knowledge acquired from self-learning linked to nutrition education that is taking place in their schools. For this purpose, a review of previous theoretical literature on nutrition education for early elementary students was performed. Survey questions were formulated based on the advice of field experts in medicine, education, and design and the survey was conducted among 110 children from 1st and 2nd grade in two elementary schools, one in Seoul and the other in Changwon. The results obtained from the user evaluation suggested that the early elementary school students showed positive reaction to nutrition education, had preference for the type of learning using multimedia-based contents and quiz activities, were willing to learn about calorie-adjusted meals, preferred the Gothic typeface and orange and green colors. Furthermore, they showed positive opinion on the use of numerical surveying method and pictorial style similar to actual appearance in connection with nutrition-related information representation. and preferences regarding learning styles and design elements

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.37-48
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• 2009

The standardization of marketing has been one of the most focused research topics in international marketing. The term "global marketing" was often used to mean an internationally standardized marketing strategy based on similarities between foreign markets. Marketing standardization was discussed only within the context of traditional physical marketplaces. Since then, the digital "marketspace" of the Internet had emerged in the 90's, and it became one of the most important drivers of the globalization process opening new opportunities for the standardization of global marketing activities. On the other hand, the opinion that a greater adoption of the Internet by customers may lead to a higher degree of customization and differentiation of products rather than standardization is also quite popular. Considering this disagreement, it is notable that comprehensive studies which focus upon the marketing standardization especially in the context of global e-commerce are missing to a high degree. On this background, the two basic research questions being addressed in this study are: (1) To what extent do companies standardize their marketing in international e-commerce? (2) Is there an impact of marketing standardization on the performance (or success) of these companies? Following research hypotheses were generated based upon literature review: H 1: Internationally engaged e-commerce firms show a growing readiness for marketing standardization. H 2: Marketing standardization exerts positive effects on the success of companies in international e-commerce. H 3: In international e-commerce, marketing mix standardization exerts a stronger positive effect on the economic as well as the non-economic success of companies than marketing process standardization. H 4: The higher the non-economic success in international e-commerce firms, the higher the economic success. The data for this research were obtained from a questionnaire survey conducted from February to April 2005. The international e-commerce companies of various industries in Germany and all subsidiaries or headquarters of foreign e-commerce companies based in Germany were included in the survey. 118 out of 801 companies responded to the questionnaire. For structural equation modelling (SEM), the Partial-Least. Squares (PLS) approach in the version PLS-Graph 3.0 was applied (Chin 1998a; 2001). All of four research hypotheses were supported by result of data analysis. The results show that companies engaged in international e-commerce standardize in particular brand name, web page design, product positioning, and the product program to a high degree. The companies intend to intensify their efforts for marketing mix standardization in the future. In addition they want to standardize their marketing processes also to a higher degree, especially within the range of information systems, corporate language and online marketing control procedures. In this study, marketing standardization exerts a positive overall impact on company performance in international e-commerce. Standardization of marketing mix exerts a stronger positive impact on the non-economic success than standardization of marketing processes, which in turn contributes slightly stronger to the economic success. Furthermore, our findings give clear support to the assumption that the non-economic success is highly relevant to the economic success of the firm in international e-commerce. The empirical findings indicate that marketing standardization is relevant to the companies' success in international e-commerce. But marketing mix and marketing process standardization contribute to the firms' economic and non-economic success in different ways. The findings indicate that companies do standardize numerous elements of their marketing mix on the Internet. This practice is in part contrary to the popular concept of a "differentiated standardization" which argues that some elements of the marketing mix should be adapted locally and others should be standardized internationally. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the overall standardization of marketing -rather than the standardization of one particular marketing mix element - is what brings about a positive overall impact on success.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1-24
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• 2012

Franchises have recently emerged as the most rapidly expanding industry positioned to create a large impact in the domestic economic. The Chinese franchise industry developed rapidly in the period prior and subsequent to WTO accession with more than 50% of new franchises brands emerging since 2000. M&A transactions in the Chinese franchise industry have progressed actively. In the period from 2005-2007, due to the wholesale and retail market opening in accordance with the guidelines laid forth within the MOU by the WTO the Chinese franchise market is now the largest market in the world all despite a short history of only 20 years. The amount of franchise market research on China is disproportional to its current size and development potential. Beginning in the 1990s, market research conducted by the International Franchise Association focused on emerging markets in Eastern Europe and China. While the research dealt with the Chinese investment environment, it insufficiently explained the market region and cultural environment. The purpose of this research is (i) to investigate the determinants of the performance of franchise systems in China and (ii) new contract renewals based on performance factors. This study will complement existing research in terms of the franchisee perspective. This study may also prove of the benefit to the franchise companies entering the Chinese franchise market enabling them to develop an effective strategy. This study shows that support, incentives, and system standardization by franchisor yielded a positive effect on management performance. This is consistent with previous studies by Shin (2000) and Kim (2008) targeting Korean franchises. Therefore, in the Chinese market, the franchisor must focus on support, incentives, and system standardization rather than concentrate only on the recruitment of franchisees in order to improve revenue. Hypotheses regarding franchisor control have been dismissed in existing research, in the opinion of this study, due to their complexity and inability to control the merchant as a one-kind-assessment-standard. Our findings show that the franchisees' financial condition, management ability and entrepreneurial spirit, among franchisee's characteristics, have a positive effect on franchisor's business performance and satisfaction for the franchisee. This is consistent with previous studies on headquarters' management performance of Lussier (1996), Heo and Jang (2008), and franchisees' financial condition, management ability and entrepreneurial spirit effect on franchisor's satisfaction of Weaven and Franzer (2007), Kim (2009), Han (2009), and Yoon etc. (2008). Therefore, when permitting a franchisee, financial condition, management ability, entrepreneurship of the franchisee should be carefully considered. Among relational factors between franchisor and franchisee, trust has the positive influence on the management performance of the franchisor while conflict has a negative effect. However, trust, commitment and conflict factors have been shown not to have any impact on the satisfaction of the franchise headquarters. This result is consistent with the previous studies of Pavlou and Ba (2000), Morrison (1999), Weaven and Frazer (2007), Kim and Park (1994), Sohn (2007) which show that trust between franchisor and the franchisees have a positive effect and that conflict has a negative impact on franchisor's management performance. Other factors causing a negative effective on the franchisor's management performance are a rapid environmental changes and uncertainty in the business. This is consistent with Campbell et al (2007), Kim and Kim (2009), Han and Baek (2008). Finally, the high management performance and satisfaction of the franchise headquarters has a positive effect on the intention of franchise renewal. In the case of large markets such as China, the franchisor's strategy and the role is very important. In this study, we also investigated the characteristics of franchisor and franchisee, relationship, and environmental uncertainty affecting on the management performance and satisfaction of franchisor. Recently, Korean franchises are attempting to enter foreign markets through the rise in popularity of Korean culture and entertainment commonly referred to as the Korean wave. This study provides recommendations for Korean franchises intending on entering the Chinese market. First, in order to achieve stable profits, the franchise corporation needs to support the operation of the individual franchisee through incentives and standardization of services. Second, because trust between the franchisor and franchisee has a positive effect on management performance, on-going discussion and cooperation is necessary to reduce the level of conflict.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.51-84
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• 2008

We investigate the signaling effect of repurchase preceding new equity issue using Korean data. In a short time span, firms announce stock repurchases and equity offerings. The proximity of two events in Korean firms indicates that those are not independent of each other. In this paper, we test the signaling effect of repurchase on equity offerings on the two measures. One is announcement effect, which is measured as CAR(0, +2). The other is the effectiveness which is measured as CAR(0, +30) because the price movement during this window influences on the price of new issues. Previous studies that stock repurchase convey positive signal to equity offerings-Billet and Xue(2004) and Jung(2004)-construct sample without the limit of time interval between two events. This causes the unclear relation between those because of the long time interval. In this study we consider only samples of being within one year each other to reduce this problem and clarify the signal of repurchase on equity offerings. Korean firms are allowed to repurchase own shares with two different method. One is direct repurchase as same as open market repurchase. The other is stock stabilization fund and stock trust fund which trust company or bank buy and sell their shares on the behalf of firms. Generally, the striking different characteristic between direct repurchase and indirect repurchase is following. Direct repurchase is applied by more strict regulation than indirect repurchase. Therefore, the direct repurchase is more informative signal to the equity offering than the indirect repurchase. We construct two sample firms- firms with direct repurchase preceding-equity offerings and indirect repurchase-preceding equity offering, and one control firms-equity offerings only firms-to investigate the announcement effect and the effectiveness of repurchases. Our findings are as follows. Direct repurchase favorably affect the price of new issues favorably. CAR(0, +2) of firms with direct repurchase is not different from that of equity offerings only firms but CAR(0, +30) is higher than that of equity offerings only firms. For firms with indirect repurchase and equity offerings, Both the announcement effect and the effectiveness does not exist. Jung(2004) suggest the possibilities of how indirect stock repurchase can be regarded as one of unfair trading practices on based on the survey results that financial managers of some of KSE listed firms have been asked of their opinion on the likelihood of the stock repurchase being used in unfair trading. This is not objective empirical evidence but opinion of financial managers. To investigate whether firms announce false signal before equity offerings to boost the price of new issues, we calculate the long-run performance following equity offerings. If firms have announced repurchase to boost the price of new issues intentionally, they would undergo the severe underperformance. The empirical results do not show the severer underperformance of both sample firms than equity offerings only firms. The suggestion of false signaling of repurchase preceding equity offerings is not supported by our evidence.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.108-114
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• 2013

To describe the comparative awareness between media and industry, we conducted a survey with a professional group including 28 food safety managers at food corporations and 17 food journalists to find out the differences in perception of 'reporting terms' and 'correspondence terms' when food safety incident occurs. We surveyed by questionnaire methods and did the statistical analysis by SPSS. The results showed that 70.6% of the journalists and 92.9% of the corporation workers answered 'yes indeed' about the question whether the media has a great influence when food safety incident occurs. In the perception that use of the stimulating terms of the media was the cause of company damage, 83% of the corporate workers answered 'yes indeed', and 70.6% of the journalists answered 'yes'. It means that both groups agreed on stimulating terms causing company damage. In the question whether the 'reporting terms' of the media and the 'correspondence terms' of the government and academia made a difference in the consumers' perception and the spread of the incident, 92.9% of the corporate workers and 35.3% of the journalists answered 'yes indeed'. It means that both groups showed a common opinion that the difference in choice of words expanded the perception of consumers, and the spread of the incident. However, the corporate workers agreed with this in a more serious manner than the journalist group. In standardization of 'reporting terms' and restricting use, corporate workers were overall at a positive stand while journalists showed a big difference in opinion within the group. In conclusion, it is necessary to establish a measure to standardize the terms used by corporations, journalists, and professionals in order to decrease the differences of terms and the damage of consumers and the company when food safety incident occurs.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.219-225
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to examine the patients' knowledge and expectation of dental implants and to provide effective consulting and accurate information on implants to them. To that end, between March 23, 2008 and June 5, 2008, patients who were visiting dental clinics (hospitals) in Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, and Incheon areas were surveyed. 84.7% of subjects said that they recognized implants, and the largest number of them (26.7%) of subjects came to know via friends. According to an analysis of subjects' knowledge of the dental implant operation, the maximum value was 4.06, and the minimum value was 3.05. The opinion value on the need to have regular examination after the implant operation was highest at 4.06. Regarding expectation over the implant operation, the maximum value was 4.42, and the minimum value was 1.78. The opinion value on considering the implant operation capability the most important was the highest at 4.42. The relationship between the knowledge of and expectation over implants was significant. By gender, females had a significantly higher level of knowledge than males. Regarding preference, females scored 3.27 points, and males scored 3.23 points. By occupation, professionals earned the highest score of 3.55 in knowledge, and professionals earned the highest score of 3.31 in expectation. According to an analysis of the relation between variables of knowledge of and variables of expectation over implants, the correlation coefficient (r) between the two factors was 0.362, indicating a positive relevancy(+)(p<.01).