• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.19-35
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• 2001

This study was conducted to investigate the internal changes and the countermeasure for performance improvement by Separation of Prescribing and Dispensing Practice (SPDP) in Health Center. Data were collected from two sources: Performance report before and after SPDP of 25 Health Centers in Kyongsangbuk-do and 6 Health Centers in Daegu-City and self-administerd questionnaire survey of 221 officials at health center. The results of this study were summarized as follows: Twenty-four health centers(77.4%) of 31 health centers took convenience measures for medical treatment of citizens and convenience measures were getting map of pharmacy, improvement of health center interior, introduction of order communication system in order. After the SPDP in health centers, 19.4% of health centers increased doctors and 25.8% decreased pharmacists. 58.1% of health centers showed that number of medical treatments were decreased. 96.4%, 80.6% 80.6% 96.7% of health centers showed that number of prescriptions, total medical treatment expenses, amounts paid by the insureds and the expenses to purchase drugs, respectively, were decreased. More than fifty percent(54.2%) of health centers responded that the relative importance of health works increased compared to medical treatments after the SPDP, and number of patients decreased compared to those in before the SPDP. And there was a drastic reduction in number of prescriptions, total medical treatment expenses, amounts paid by insureds, the expenses to purchase drugs after the SPDP. Above fifty percent(57.6%) of officers at health center responded that the function of medical treatment should be reduced after the SPDP. Fields requested improvement in health centers were 'development of heath works contents'(62.4%), 'rearrangement of health center personnel'(51.6%), 'priority setting for health works'(48.4%), 'restructuring the organization'(36.2%), 'quality impro­vement for medical services'(32.1%), 'replaning the budgets'(23.1%) in order. And to better the image of health centers, health center officers replied that 'health information management'(60.7%), 'public relations for health center'(15.8%), 'kindness of health center officers'(15.3%) were necessary in order. Health center officers suggested that 'vaccination program', 'health promotion', 'maternal and children health', 'communicable disease management', 'community health planning' were relatively important works, in order, performed by health center after SPDP. In the future, medical services in health centers should be cut down with a momentum of the SPDP so that health centers might reestablish their functions and roles as public health organizations, but quality of medical services must be improved. Also health centers should pay attention to residents for improving health through 'vaccination program', 'health promotion', 'mother-children health', 'acute and chronic communicable disease management', 'community health planning', 'oral health', 'chronic degenerative disease management', etc. And there should be a differentiation of relative importance between health promotion services and medical treatment services by character of areas(metropolitan, city, county).

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.49-59
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• 2011

Although the South Korean organic food market is in the infancy compared to other industrialized countries, Korean consumers'interest in organic food and retail stores devoting space to organic products have been rapidly increasing. Despite the fact of organic food popularity, the term "organic" is interpreted differently by individuals. As opposed to the US, Japan and the EU where have operated an integrated organic food labelling system, Korea has adopted complex organic labelling systems regulated by several different government bodies. As a result, complicated food labelling standards make consumers confused when purchasing organic foods. Furthermore, in terms of country of origin (COO), it is argued by a lot of researchers that COO effects vary from product to product and from country to country; moreover, other informational cues such as brand and price can influence COO effects. In modern society, COO labelling has been complicated, due to the sourcing, manufacturing and market locations of merchandise spread over the world. Accordingly, the evaluation of COO effects has become complex. In order to examine these issues, a quantitative research was selected to classify the commonfeatures of organic food consumers and construct statistics such as the extent to which people are aware of organic food and COO labellingvia a questionnaire which took place in two cities in Korea with a cluster sample of 161 organic food purchasers. As for the data analysis, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), T-tests, bivariate crosstatulations with Cramer's V were conducted,depending on the characteristics of variables and the assumptions the research data need to fit. It has been concluded that in general, Korean organic consumers comprehend the term "organic"in a closer way to the general concept rather than technical term, thus people do not appreciate environmentally labels which include organic food labels, although marital status influence the degree of label awareness, regardless of gender, age, education level and so on. Regarding COO effects on organic food, home organic products were Korean consumers'first choice over those from industrialized countries and developing nations. Specifically, in processed organic product category, domestically cultivated and processed organic products were absolutely preferred to leading national brands produced with imported ingredients and international brands. However, due to a lack of checks of ingredients' COO, consumers tend to purchase a leading national organic food brand, believing that it is a pure organic food sourced domestically. As a consequence, this research has suggested some important managerial implications and future research directions. In order to prevent consumer confusion when buying organic foods, it should be noted that consumers do not comprehend the organic food certifications, due to complicated labelling systems for organic produce and processed organic foods. Therefore, government bodies related to organic food distribution have to know consumers' perception of organic food labels and the significance of customer-oriented labels and reestablish labelling standards. Similarly, public advertising should be followed to raise public awareness of the labelling to enable customers to have the correct information. In addition, not only international marketers but also domestic marketers need to understand COO images and also the influence COO of ingredients has on the image of an organic product.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.13-23
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• 1979

A study was carried out from October 1977 to September 1978 in order to develope health care delively system which will meet to rural area in Korea. For the study objective a model of health care delivery system of Myun (township) area was developed which is adopted the net-work of village health voluntary worker who will play the role of bridge for communication related with health and illness between families or village people and health subcenter, and :he model health care delivery system net-work was set in the area of Soodong Myun, Yangju Gun. which is the rural health demonstration area of Ewha Womans University since 1972. The activities and attitude of 22 village health voluntary workers were observed and analized. during the study period. The results are as follows; 1. For the field activities of village health voluntary workers. a guide line which is described with specific behavioral objectives was developed and used for not only training of the workers but also evaluation of their field activities. 2. During the study period, the number of 971 village people were served primary health care service by village health voluntary worker and the service was classified largely into symptomatic medications (92%) and preventive measures (8%). 3. Comparative percentage of the number of 894 symptomatic cases cared by village health voluntary workers to 5,695 cases of patient treated by Soodong Health Subcenter during the same period was 15.7%. 4. Annual utility rate of village health voluntary worker by Myun total people was 16.1% but utility rate by Rie was varied from 38.2% to 2.8% which shown there were considerable differences in each Rie. In order to settle the village health care service, the obstructive factors of utility should be detected and their counter measure must be taken. 5. As the health need of village people increases, it is expected that the supplement of drug excluding present sit basic drugs is inevitable, but considering the ability of village health voluntary worker, the selection of additional drugs and education, plan should be carefully studied. 6. It is desirable that a financial resource for supplementary purchase of first aid kit, drugs and materials whould be alloted from village public fund like Saemaeul Women's Club fund, which has already practiced in a few villages in the study area. 7. As pointed out by village health voluntary workers, in order to improve the village health, village leaders should be in the center of it and the cooperation of whole village people is a core of healthful village development, and it is reasonable that the health subcenter backs up these voluntary health activities by village people in techniques. 8. It seems effective that a supplementary education for village health voluntary worker be accomplished by a planned education through regular meetings like worker's monthly meeting and irregular post guide when Myun Health Workers can handle the problems found during the round trip of villages. 9. It is desirable that village health voluntary workers, who are recommended by a civil voluntary organization like Saemael Woman's Club, are charged by natural villagc unit, are given a function of village health care service and used through basic education at health subcenter. 10. It is advisable that the village health voluntary worker's service is compensated not by a form of money, but by other way such as an exemption of medical fee of worker herself or her families in health subcenter can be one method. 11. Daily health activities of each village health voluntary worker should be reported to health subcenter by biweekly or monthly in order to get not only for basic data of the program but also for evaluation the program. It is recomandable that the report form should be simple and clear enough for village health voluntary worker to fill it effectively. 12. Village health care service should be developed into a Saemaeul Movement in which village people actively participate. For this, the appointed function of village health voluntary worker should be absorbed into those of living Environment Betterment Section or Family Planning Section of Saemaeul Women's Club or it is desirable that establish a new section, Village Health Promoting Section and make it involve the appointed functions of those sections mentioned above.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.110-126
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• 1995

Korean economy has been developed successfully in the course of implementing the five year economic development plans since 1962. The gap of incomes and quality of life between rural and urban area has been widened and it made rural farm laborers drain to urban areas. Therefore the prevailing situation of labor shortage and wage hike in rural area has made farm management deteriorate in recent years. Under the internal and international unfavorable economic conditions, marginal farm land of 66.5 thousand ha has been idled as of end of 1993. The total area outside agricultural development zone with bad farming conditions including irrigation and drainage, and land consolidation for mechanization were estimated at 360.4thousand ha equivalent to 17.5% of the total farm land area in Korea. Considering the topographical conditions of marginal lands, the effective use of marginal lands should be studied from the view point of public interest rather than from the view point of individual economic conditions. Considering the present agricultural economic settings, such as price decrease, unfavourable benefits of farm products, labour shrotage, free trade of farm products and poor physical condition of marginal lands, the institutional and realistical measures for the effective utilization of idle and marginal land should be studied as soon as possible. Detail land use pattern should be surveyed in the areas outside agricultural development zone and have to be classified as orchard farms, grass land, fish culture farms, lawn and ornamental tree farm, sight seeing and leisure farms for urban peoples, special crops production farms and common farms to be developed for farm mechanization. According to the surveyed results, the expected utilization patterns of the idle and marginal lands could be considerd as village common use, farm land base development, leisure farm development, mutual complementary utilization between urban and rural areas, G't purchase and management, credit supply and new extension services, improvement of cropping patterns and sight seeing and leisure farm patterns. For the successful and reasonable management of the marginal lands, the actions such as institutional improvement, prohibition of idle marginal land, enforcement of activities of farm management committee members and land banking system of RDC including development and utilization systems should be included.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2017

'The worstest environment disaster', 'World's first biocide massacre', 'Home-based Sewol ferry disaster' are all phrases attached to the recent humidifier disinfectant disaster. In the spring of 2011, four of 8 pregnant women including 1 adult man passed away at a university hospital in Seoul due to breathing failure. Epidemiologic investigation conducted by the Korean CDC soon revealed the inhalation of humidifier disinfectant, which had been widely used in Korea during the winter, to be responsible for the disease. As well as lung fibrosis hardening of the lungs, other diseases including asthma, rhinitis, skin disease, liver disease, fetal disease or cancers have been researched for their relation with exposure to the products. By February 9, 2017, 5,342 cases had registered for health problems and 1,131 of them were already dead (20.8% mortality rate). Based on studies by government agencies and a telephone survey of the general population by Seoul National University and civic groups, around 20% of the general public of Korea has used these products. Since the market release of the first product by SK Chemical in 1994, over 7.1 million items from around 20 brands were sold up to 2011. Most of the products were manufactured by well-known large conglomerates such as SK, Lotte, Samsung, Shinsegye, LG, and GS, as well as some European companies including UK-based Reckitt Benckiser and TESCO, the German firm Henkel, the Danish firm KeTox, and an Irish company. Even though this disaster was unveiled in 2011 by the Korean government, the issue of the victims was neglected for over five years. In 2016, an unexpected but intensive investigation by prosecutors found that Reckitt Benckiser manipulated and concealed animal tests for its own brand and brought several university experts and company employees to court. The matter was an intense social issue in Korea from May to June with a surge in media coverage. The prosecutor's investigation and a nationwide boycott campaign organized by victims and environmental groups against Reckitt Benckiser, whose product had been used by more than 70% of victims, led to the producer's official apology and a compensation scheme. A legislative investigation organized after the April 2016 national election revealed the producers' faults and the government's responsibility, but failed to meet expectations. A special law for the victims passed the National Assembly in January 2017 and a punitive system together with a massive environmental epidemiology investigation are expected to be the only solutions for this tragedy. Sciences of medicine, toxicology and environmental health have provided decisive evidence so far, but for the remaining problems the perspectives of social sciences such as sociology and jurisprudence are highly necessary, similar to with the Minamata disease and Wonjin Rayon events. It may not be easy to follow this issue using unfamiliar terminology from medical and chemical science and the long, complicated history of the event. For these reasons the author has attempted to write this article in a question and answer format to render it easier to follow. The 17 questions are: Q1 What is humidifier disinfectant? Q2 What kind of health problems are caused by humidifier disinfectant? Q3 How many victims are there? Q4 What is the analysis of the 1,112 cases of death? Q5 What is the problem with the government's diagnostic criteria and the solution? Q6 Who made what brands? Q7 Has there been a recall? What is still on sale? Q8 Was safety not checked by any producers? Q9 What are the government's responsibilities? Q10 Is it true that these products were sold only in Korea? Q11 Why and how was it unveiled only in 2011 after 17 years of sales? Q12 What delayed the resolution of the victim issue? Q13 What is the background of the prosecutor's investigation in early 2016? Q14 Is it possible to report new victim cases without evidence of product purchase? Q15 What is happening with the victim issue? Q16 How does it compare with the cases of Minamata disease and Wonjin Rayon? Q17 Are there prevention measures and lessons?

• Journal of Korean Clinical Health Science
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2014

Purpose. For a more efficient hospital management, this study aims to provide basic data so that the hospital management and staff in charge of hospital administration may systematically classify and collect hospital information, by analyzing the ordinary characters of an upper-level general hospital system and its common-type balance sheet, common-type profit and loss statement and financial ratio. Methods. By using information about an upper-level general hospital in C Province, provided by Alio(www.alio.go.kr), a public organization information provision site, Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service(www.hira.or.kr) and Ministry of Health and Welfare(www.mw.go.kr), this study analyzed 3 year's data from 2010 to 2012 and provided basic data by analyzing the ordinary characters of an upper-level general hospital system, and its common-type balance sheet, common-type profit and loss statement and financial ratio. Results. After analyzing the ordinary characters, common-type balance sheet, common-type proft and loss statement and financial ration of this general hospital, based on the 2010 to 2012 data, this study came to the following conclusions. Firstly, out of all the 1,069 hospital staff, there were 272 doctors working for 24 medical departments, out of whom the majority was 33 physicians. Most of the nurses were third-class ones, and about 2,000 outpatients and 600 inpatients on average were treated per day. Secondly, as a result of analyzing the common-type balance sheet, this study discovered that intangible assets out of fixed assets accounted for 41%, the majority, out of which usable and profitable donation asset buildings were of great importance, and the liquid assets increased more in 2012 than 2011. In the financial structure, the ratio of liquid liabilities was over 50% out of all the liabilities in 2012, and the ratio of purchase payables was high as well. The ratio of fixed liabilities reached up to 40%, out of which the retirement benefit appropriation fund was quite high. The capital was over 80%, but the surplus was in a deficit state. Compared to the capital, the ratio of total liabilities was about 90%, which indicates the financial structure of this general hospital was vulnerable. Thirdly, as a result of analyzing the common-type profit and loss statement, this study found out that the medical profits from inpatients were higher than profits from outpatients. The material cost was related to the medical quality of this general hospital, and it was as high as 30% out of the total costs and was about 45% of the labor cost. This general hospital showed 10% in the ratio of non-medical profits, and it seemed because of government subsidies. The ratios of medical profits and current net income were gradually changing for the better in 2012, compared to 2011. Lastly, as a result of analyzing the financial ratio, it was found that the liquidity ratio kept decreasing, from 110.7% in 2010 and 102.0% in 2011 to 77.2% in 2012. Besides, it was analyzed that the liquidity ratio and the net working capital ratio greatly decreased, while the quick ratio and the liquid ratio kept decreasing. Conclusions. 1. It is necessary to take the risk management into more consideration, and particularly, it is needed to differentiate and manage the levels of risk in detail. 2. By considering the fact that investments into hospital infrastructures were mostly based on liabilities, it is needed to deal with the scale of losses when evaluating risks. 3. By reflecting the character that investments into hospital infrastructures were based on liabilities, it is necessary to consider the ratio of ordinary profits as well as the ratio of operating profits to sales, and it is also important to consider sales productivity factors, such as the sales amount per a sickbed, by comparing them with other hospitals. As for limitations of this study, there may be some problems in terms of data interpretation because of the lack of information about the number of inpatients and the number of outpatients per year, which are needed for the break-even point analysis. Besides, to suggest a direction for the improvement of hospital management through analyses, non-financial factors should be reflected, such as the trend of economy, medical policies, and politic backgrounds. However, this study only focused on the common-type balance sheet, common-type profit and loss statement and financial ratio, so this study is actually limited to generalizing all the factors by analyzing public data only.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.16-28
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• 2016

The study was conducted to compare and analyze the importance and performance of leisure destination selection attributes of persons who use recreational forests and rural tourism villages. This researcher investigated the use patterns of users to identify the ground for connection between recreational forest and rural tourism village, analyzed their recognition differences in physical selection attribute, program selection attribute, and service selection attribute in order for leisure destination selection, and conducted importance-performance analysis(IPA analysis) to draw a plan for connection. The main results and suggestions are presented as follows. First, recreational forests were visited by family users in order for rest and emotional cultivation and provided experience programs using simple public interest function of forest, whereas rural tourism villages were visited by family users, friends and co-workers, groups and club members to experience a variety of annual programs and understand regional cultures. It was found that it was necessary to connect natural forest with rural tourism village in order to meet the leisure needs of the people changed in diversified ways. Secondly, it was found that the connection between rural tourism village and recreational forest visited mainly for simple rest led to positive visit intention of users. It was expected that there will be various kinds of uses, including experience program participation, child education, and safe accommodations security. In other words, the connection between recreational forest and rural tourism village is an alternative to trigger actual demands and recreational forest activities with high quality. Thirdly, in the case of users of recreational forests, their performance of all selection attributes was lower than their importance of them. Therefore, overall improvements were needed. In particular, needed were the diversity, benefit, and promotion of programs, improvements in locality(themes), supply of lodges and convenient facilities, booking system, the purchase system of local special products, and professional skills of operators and managers. On contrary, the performance of program selection attribute of rural tourism village was high. Therefore, it was found that program attribute of rural tourism village was the main connection factor to activate recreational forest use. Fourthly, according to IPA analysis, the proper connections between loges, convenient facilities, and nearby touristattractions, which give high expectations and satisfaction to users, needed to remain. And it was required to make common efforts to accomplish the goal (income creation) of rural tourism village and improve booking system for visitors and performance of local special products sales opportunity. In addition, the essential factors to induce users' leisure destination selection were found to be maintenance of the use fee system of recreational forest, diversity of rural tourism village program, and retention of locality.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.39-70
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• 2017

Data-drive analytics techniques have been recently applied to public surveys. Instead of simply gathering survey results or expert opinions to research the preference for a recently launched product, enterprises need a way to collect and analyze various types of online data and then accurately figure out customer preferences. In the main concept of existing data-based survey methods, the sentiment lexicon for a particular domain is first constructed by domain experts who usually judge the positive, neutral, or negative meanings of the frequently used words from the collected text documents. In order to research the preference for a particular product, the existing approach collects (1) review posts, which are related to the product, from several product review web sites; (2) extracts sentences (or phrases) in the collection after the pre-processing step such as stemming and removal of stop words is performed; (3) classifies the polarity (either positive or negative sense) of each sentence (or phrase) based on the sentiment lexicon; and (4) estimates the positive and negative ratios of the product by dividing the total numbers of the positive and negative sentences (or phrases) by the total number of the sentences (or phrases) in the collection. Furthermore, the existing approach automatically finds important sentences (or phrases) including the positive and negative meaning to/against the product. As a motivated example, given a product like Sonata made by Hyundai Motors, customers often want to see the summary note including what positive points are in the 'car design' aspect as well as what negative points are in thesame aspect. They also want to gain more useful information regarding other aspects such as 'car quality', 'car performance', and 'car service.' Such an information will enable customers to make good choice when they attempt to purchase brand-new vehicles. In addition, automobile makers will be able to figure out the preference and positive/negative points for new models on market. In the near future, the weak points of the models will be improved by the sentiment analysis. For this, the existing approach computes the sentiment score of each sentence (or phrase) and then selects top-k sentences (or phrases) with the highest positive and negative scores. However, the existing approach has several shortcomings and is limited to apply to real applications. The main disadvantages of the existing approach is as follows: (1) The main aspects (e.g., car design, quality, performance, and service) to a product (e.g., Hyundai Sonata) are not considered. Through the sentiment analysis without considering aspects, as a result, the summary note including the positive and negative ratios of the product and top-k sentences (or phrases) with the highest sentiment scores in the entire corpus is just reported to customers and car makers. This approach is not enough and main aspects of the target product need to be considered in the sentiment analysis. (2) In general, since the same word has different meanings across different domains, the sentiment lexicon which is proper to each domain needs to be constructed. The efficient way to construct the sentiment lexicon per domain is required because the sentiment lexicon construction is labor intensive and time consuming. To address the above problems, in this article, we propose a novel product reputation mining algorithm that (1) extracts topics hidden in review documents written by customers; (2) mines main aspects based on the extracted topics; (3) measures the positive and negative ratios of the product using the aspects; and (4) presents the digest in which a few important sentences with the positive and negative meanings are listed in each aspect. Unlike the existing approach, using hidden topics makes experts construct the sentimental lexicon easily and quickly. Furthermore, reinforcing topic semantics, we can improve the accuracy of the product reputation mining algorithms more largely than that of the existing approach. In the experiments, we collected large review documents to the domestic vehicles such as K5, SM5, and Avante; measured the positive and negative ratios of the three cars; showed top-k positive and negative summaries per aspect; and conducted statistical analysis. Our experimental results clearly show the effectiveness of the proposed method, compared with the existing method.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.93-111
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• 2013

As Internet and information technology (IT) continues to develop and evolve, the issue of big data has emerged at the foreground of scholarly and industrial attention. Big data is generally defined as data that exceed the range that can be collected, stored, managed and analyzed by existing conventional information systems and it also refers to the new technologies designed to effectively extract values from such data. With the widespread dissemination of IT systems, continual efforts have been made in various fields of industry such as R&D, manufacturing, and finance to collect and analyze immense quantities of data in order to extract meaningful information and to use this information to solve various problems. Since IT has converged with various industries in many aspects, digital data are now being generated at a remarkably accelerating rate while developments in state-of-the-art technology have led to continual enhancements in system performance. The types of big data that are currently receiving the most attention include information available within companies, such as information on consumer characteristics, information on purchase records, logistics information and log information indicating the usage of products and services by consumers, as well as information accumulated outside companies, such as information on the web search traffic of online users, social network information, and patent information. Among these various types of big data, web searches performed by online users constitute one of the most effective and important sources of information for marketing purposes because consumers search for information on the internet in order to make efficient and rational choices. Recently, Google has provided public access to its information on the web search traffic of online users through a service named Google Trends. Research that uses this web search traffic information to analyze the information search behavior of online users is now receiving much attention in academia and in fields of industry. Studies using web search traffic information can be broadly classified into two fields. The first field consists of empirical demonstrations that show how web search information can be used to forecast social phenomena, the purchasing power of consumers, the outcomes of political elections, etc. The other field focuses on using web search traffic information to observe consumer behavior, identifying the attributes of a product that consumers regard as important or tracking changes on consumers' expectations, for example, but relatively less research has been completed in this field. In particular, to the extent of our knowledge, hardly any studies related to brands have yet attempted to use web search traffic information to analyze the factors that influence consumers' purchasing activities. This study aims to demonstrate that consumers' web search traffic information can be used to derive the relations among brands and the relations between an individual brand and product attributes. When consumers input their search words on the web, they may use a single keyword for the search, but they also often input multiple keywords to seek related information (this is referred to as simultaneous searching). A consumer performs a simultaneous search either to simultaneously compare two product brands to obtain information on their similarities and differences, or to acquire more in-depth information about a specific attribute in a specific brand. Web search traffic information shows that the quantity of simultaneous searches using certain keywords increases when the relation is closer in the consumer's mind and it will be possible to derive the relations between each of the keywords by collecting this relational data and subjecting it to network analysis. Accordingly, this study proposes a method of analyzing how brands are positioned by consumers and what relationships exist between product attributes and an individual brand, using simultaneous search traffic information. It also presents case studies demonstrating the actual application of this method, with a focus on tablets, belonging to innovative product groups.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.119-138
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• 2016

Since the Industrial Revolution, which made the mass production and mass distribution of standardized goods possible, machine-made (manufactured) products have accounted for the majority of the market. However, in recent years, the phenomenon of purchasing even more expensive handmade products has become a noticeable trend as consumers have started to acknowledge the value of handmade products, such as the craftsman's commitment, belief in their quality and scarcity, and the sense of self-esteem from having them,. Consumer interest in these handmade products has shown explosive growth and has been coupled with the recent development of three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies. Etsy.com is the world's largest online handmade platform. It is no different from any other online platform; it provides an online market where buyers and sellers virtually meet to share information and transact business. However, Etsy.com is different in that shops within this platform only deal with handmade products in a variety of categories, ranging from jewelry to toys. Since its establishment in 2005, despite being limited to handmade products, Etsy.com has enjoyed rapid growth in membership, transaction volume, and revenue. Most recently in April 2015, it raised funds through an initial public offering (IPO) of more than 1.8 billion USD, which demonstrates the huge potential of online handmade platforms. After the success of Etsy.com, various types of online handmade platforms such as Handmade at Amazon, ArtFire, DaWanda, and Craft is ART have emerged and are now competing with each other, at the same time, which has increased the size of the market. According to Deloitte's 2015 holiday survey on which types of gifts the respondents plan to buy during the holiday season, about 16% of U.S. consumers chose "homemade or craft items (e.g., Etsy purchase)," which was the same rate as those for the computer game and shoes categories. This indicates that consumer interests in online handmade platforms will continue to rise in the future. However, this high interest in the market for handmade products and their platforms has not yet led to academic research. Most extant studies have only focused on machine-made products and intelligent services for them. This indicates a lack of studies on handmade products and their intelligent services on virtual platforms. Therefore, this study used signaling theory and prior research on the effects of sellers' characteristics on their performance (e.g., total sales and price premiums) in the buyer-seller relationship to identify the key influencing e-Image factors (e.g., reputation, size, information sharing, and length of relationship). Then, their impacts on the performance of shops within the online handmade platform were empirically examined; the dataset was collected from Etsy.com through the application of web harvesting technology. The results from the structural equation modeling revealed that the reputation, size, and information sharing have significant effects on the total sales, while the reputation and length of relationship influence price premiums. This study extended the online platform research into online handmade platform research by identifying key influencing e-Image factors on within-platform shop's total sales and price premiums based on signaling theory and then performed a statistical investigation. These findings are expected to be a stepping stone for future studies on intelligent online handmade services as well as handmade products themselves. Furthermore, the findings of the study provide online handmade platform operators with practical guidelines on how to implement intelligent online handmade services. They should also help shop managers build their marketing strategies in a more specific and effective manner by suggesting key influencing e-Image factors. The results of this study should contribute to the vitalization of intelligent online handmade services by providing clues on how to maximize within-platform shops' total sales and price premiums.