A study of the plan dosimetic evaluation on the rectal cancer treatment (직장암 치료 시 치료계획에 따른 선량평가 연구)
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- The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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- v.28 no.2
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- pp.171-178
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- 2016
Purpose : In order to minimize the dose of femoral head as an appropriate treatment plan for rectal cancer radiation therapy, we compare and evaluate the usefulness of 3-field 3D conformal radiation therapy(below 3fCRT), which is a universal treatment method, and 5-field 3D conformal radiation therapy(below 5fCRT), and Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT). Materials and Methods : The 10 cases of rectal cancer that treated with 21EX were enrolled. Those cases were planned by Eclipse(Ver. 10.0.42, Varian, USA), PRO3(Progressive Resolution Optimizer 10.0.28) and AAA(Anisotropic Analytic Algorithm Ver. 10.0.28). 3fCRT and 5fCRT plan has
A franchise system develops competitive products for a franchise store through the system established by the franchise head office. Therefore, it has advantages of expanding the marketing effect since the risk of failure is reduced for a founder and the franchise head office supports the overall sales, advertisement and promotional activities. Also, a franchise store has advantages of fulfilling necessary facilities and tools on advantageous terms, reducing expenses by purchasing in bulk, and getting a supply of products with stable qualities. However, aside from such advantages, franchise head offices are forcing franchise stores to make unnecessary investments in equipments and remodel the interior. Also, franchise business operators are being made to share the cost of marketing and multiple franchise stores are being approved within the same business district, and franchise business operators are suffering damages. Therefore, cases of shutting down a franchise store or not renewing the contract are frequent. From the position of a franchise head office, profits that are generated from franchise fees, interior remodeling fees and supplying facilities and materials will increase as the number of new franchise stores increases. However, franchise stores are faced with difficulties due to excessive competitions between similar types of businesses and the overlapping of business districts that come from increases in the number of stores, and they eventually end up shutting down. Therefore, in order for a franchise business operator and franchise head office to grow and develop continuously, opening new stores is important, but successfully renewing the contract by maintaining a relationship with an existing franchise business operator is desirable. In this aspect, a study that examines the elements that can affect the relationship between a franchise business operator and franchise head office is believed to be important for the development of the franchise industry and creating safe jobs for the public. With an emphasis on the relationship between a franchise head office and franchise store, this study attempted to examine the effect of characteristics of a franchise head office and franchise business operator on the bilateral relationship such as the faith and immersion, and wished to review the effects of such faith and immersion on the satisfaction of a franchise store, including an intention of renewing the contract. In particular, in the current situation of great uncertainties in the market, this study also wished to examine how uncertain market elements will affect the relationship between the characteristics of a franchise head office and franchise business operator, and the faith and immersion. The study revealed that among the characteristics of a franchise head office, the standardization management of a franchise head office hinders a franchise store's faith and immersion in a franchise head office. Also, a franchise head office's support was shown to increase a franchise store's faith and immersion. However, it was revealed that a franchise head office's regulation and incentive policies for a franchise store do not affect a franchise store's faith and immersion. Among characteristics of a franchise business operator, a franchise store's healthy financial status and entrepreneur spirits were shown to enhance the faith and immersion in a franchise head office. However, it was shown that excellent business abilities of a franchise business operator actually reduce the immersion for a franchise head office. Also, the faith and immersion in a franchise head office were shown to enhance the intention of renewing the contract by increasing the satisfaction for a franchise head office. In addition, it was originally believed that the effects of a franchise business operator's characteristics on the faith and immersion in a franchise head office will vary depending on the market uncertainty, but the effect of a franchise business operator's characteristics depending on the recognition of uncertainties was shown to be insignificant. Such findings show that instead of making a franchise store pay for equipment investments and marketing and obtaining profits by force, a franchise head office should actively support a franchise store so that a franchise store's business activities can be conducted well, which will bring profits to a franchise store and ultimately to a franchise head office. This is a more desirable direction for the development of both parties. Implications of such findings are summarized as follows. First, it was shown that a franchise head office's standardization management actually reduces a franchise store's faith and immersion. Therefore, it is believed that instead of conducting standardization managements for regulating and managing franchise stores, measures should be developed so that franchise stores can actually participate voluntarily. For this, a head office should put in efforts to develop and provide standardized manuals, and make sure that a self-review system takes root. Second, a franchise head office's incentives did not have significant effects on the faith and immersion, but the support was shown to be effective. Therefore, it can be seen that instead of taking post-measures for a franchise store, taking pre-measures of actively supporting is more effective in maintaining a franchise store. Third, among characteristics of a franchise head office, it was shown that a franchise store's healthy financial status increased the faith and immersion in a franchise head office. Therefore, when selecting a franchise business operator, instead of thoughtlessly opening up franchise stores for the profit of a head office, it is believed that reviewing a franchise business operator's financial firepower and credit status is necessary. As for academic implications, previous studies examined the relationship by focusing on the characteristics of a franchise head office and franchise store, but this study focused on the characteristics of a franchise business operator. Therefore, this study dealt with the importance of a franchise business operator's competence, and is significant because it revealed the fact that a franchise business operator's excellent commercialization ability can become an element that hinders the immersion in a franchise head office. It was originally believed that a franchise store's characteristics will have different effects on the faith and immersion depending on the market uncertainty, but it was shown that the effect of a franchise store's characteristics depending on the recognition of uncertainties was insignificant, and that is the limitation of this study.
This study investigated consumer intention to use a location-based mobile shopping service (LBMSS) that integrates cognitive and affective responses. Information relevancy was integrated into pleasure-arousal-dominance (PAD) emotional state model in the present study as a conceptual framework. The results of an online survey of 335 mobile phone users in the U.S. indicated the positive effects of arousal and information relevancy on pleasure. In addition, there was a significant relationship between pleasure and intention to use a LBMSS. However, the relationship between dominance and pleasure was not statistically significant. The results of the present study provides insight to retailers and marketers as to what factors they need to consider to implement location-based mobile shopping services to improve their business performance. Extended Abstract : Location aware technology has expanded the marketer's reach by reducing space and time between a consumer's receipt of advertising and purchase, offering real-time information and coupons to consumers in purchasing situations (Dickenger and Kleijnen, 2008; Malhotra and Malhotra, 2009). LBMSS increases the relevancy of SMS marketing by linking advertisements to a user's location (Bamba and Barnes, 2007; Malhotra and Malhotra, 2009). This study investigated consumer intention to use a location-based mobile shopping service (LBMSS) that integrates cognitive and affective response. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship among information relevancy and affective variables and their effects on intention to use LBMSS. Thus, information relevancy was integrated into pleasure-arousal-dominance (PAD) model and generated the following hypotheses. Hypothesis 1. There will be a positive influence of arousal concerning LBMSS on pleasure in regard to LBMSS. Hypothesis 2. There will be a positive influence of dominance in LBMSS on pleasure in regard to LBMSS. Hypothesis 3. There will be a positive influence of information relevancy on pleasure in regard to LBMSS. Hypothesis 4. There will be a positive influence of pleasure about LBMSS on intention to use LBMSS. E-mail invitations were sent out to a randomly selected sample of three thousand consumers who are older than 18 years old and mobile phone owners, acquired from an independent marketing research company. An online survey technique was employed utilizing Dillman's (2000) online survey method and follow-ups. A total of 335 valid responses were used for the data analysis in the present study. Before the respondents answer any of the questions, they were told to read a document describing LBMSS. The document included definitions and examples of LBMSS provided by various service providers. After that, they were exposed to a scenario describing the participant as taking a saturday shopping trip to a mall and then receiving a short message from the mall. The short message included new product information and coupons for same day use at participating stores. They then completed a questionnaire containing various questions. To assess arousal, dominance, and pleasure, we adapted and modified scales used in the previous studies in the context of location-based mobile shopping service, each of the five items from Mehrabian and Russell (1974). A total of 15 items were measured on a seven-point bipolar scale. To measure information relevancy, four items were borrowed from Mason et al. (1995). Intention to use LBMSS was captured using two items developed by Blackwell, and Miniard (1995) and one items developed by the authors. Data analyses were conducted using SPSS 19.0 and LISREL 8.72. A total of usable 335 data were obtained after deleting the incomplete responses, which results in a response rate of 11.20%. A little over half of the respondents were male (53.9%) and approximately 60% of respondents were married (57.4%). The mean age of the sample was 29.44 years with a range from 19 to 60 years. In terms of the ethnicity there were European Americans (54.5%), Hispanic American (5.3%), African-American (3.6%), and Asian American (2.9%), respectively. The respondents were highly educated; close to 62.5% of participants in the study reported holding a college degree or its equivalent and 14.5% of the participants had graduate degree. The sample represents all income categories: less than $24,999 (10.8%), $25,000-$49,999 (28.34%), $50,000-$74,999 (13.8%), and $75,000 or more (10.23%). The respondents of the study indicated that they were employed in many occupations. Responses came from all 42 states in the U.S. To identify the dimensions of research constructs, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) using a varimax rotation was conducted. As indicated in table 1, these dimensions: arousal, dominance, relevancy, pleasure, and intention to use, suggested by the EFA, explained 82.29% of the total variance with factor loadings ranged from .74 to .89. As a next step, CFA was conducted to validate the dimensions that were identified from the exploratory factor analysis and to further refine the scale. Table 1 exhibits the results of measurement model analysis and revealed a chi-square of 202.13 with degree-of-freedom of 89 (p =.002), GFI of .93, AGFI = .89, CFI of .99, NFI of .98, which indicates of the evidence of a good model fit to the data (Bagozzi and Yi, 1998; Hair et al., 1998). As table 1 shows, reliability was estimated with Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability (CR) for all multi-item scales. All the values met evidence of satisfactory reliability in multi-item measure for alpha (>.91) and CR (>.80). In addition, we tested the convergent validity of the measure using average variance extracted (AVE) by following recommendations from Fornell and Larcker (1981). The AVE values for the model constructs ranged from .74 through .85, which are higher than the threshold suggested by Fornell and Larcker (1981). To examine discriminant validity of the measure, we again followed the recommendations from Fornell and Larcker (1981). The shared variances between constructs were smaller than the AVE of the research constructs and confirm discriminant validity of the measure. The causal model testing was conducted using LISREL 8.72 with a maximum-likelihood estimation method. Table 2 shows the results of the hypotheses testing. The results for the conceptual model revealed good overall fit for the proposed model. Chi-square was 342.00 (df = 92, p =.000), NFI was .97, NNFI was .97, GFI was .89, AGFI was .83, and RMSEA was .08. All paths in the proposed model received significant statistical support except H2. The paths from arousal to pleasure (H1:
This experiment was conducted to determine the influence of weed competition in sesame and the periods for weed control. Competition periods (days), for which sesame was seeded under transparent polyethylene film at May 15, were 10, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, and full growth season of sesame. Weed control periods (days), for which sesame was seeded under black polyethylene film at June 15, were 10, 15, 30, 45, 60, and full growth season of sesame. Dominant weeds were Ponulaca oleracea, Digitaria sanguinalis, Acalypha australis, L. Cyperus arnuricus, Arenaria aesrphllifolia, Cardamine flexucosa, Mollugo Stricta and Digitaria eschaemum. The number of weeds was maximum at the 30 days after planting. Broad leaf weeds were dominant than grass weeds, and then decreased the total number of weeds by the reason of major decrease of broad leaf weeds. However, the weight of weeds increased continuously. No weeds appeared until the 15 days after planting and the weight of broad leaf weeds was heavier than that of grass weeds until 45 days after planting. However, grass weeds were heavier than broad leaf weeds after 60 days after planting. The hazards of weeds on the growth and development appeared seriously from the 60 to 75 days after planting, but main yield reduction appeared from 30 days after planting. Therefore once more hand weeding should be practiced within 30 days after planting to minimize yield decrease. Serious hazards by weed growing appeared by removing black PE film after 15 to 30 days after planting in growth characteristics and 30 days later in grain yield. Leaf growth showed maximum from 45 to 60 days after planting and then decreased as compared with the continuous increase of stem and root in optimum planting, transparent PE film mulch and hand weeding. Leaf growth didn't show reducing in PE film mulch and weedy check but total weight of weeds increased and growth of sesame decreased as compared to PE film mulch and hand weeding. Leaf, stem and root growth of sesame, and weed weight under black PE film mulch showed same tendancy and lower growth of sesame as compared with optimum planting, transparent PE film mulch. Correlation between sesame yield and weeds weight were r =
In recent years, one of the major reasons for the fierce competition amongst firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares and customer acquisition rate in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Because of this change in recent marketing environment, the differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important to gain competitive advantage. Price promotion is the favorite strategy that most retailers use to achieve short-term sales increase, induce consumer's brand switch, in troduce new product into market, and so forth. However, if marketers apply or copy an identical price promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in product and consumer preference, it will cause serious problems because discounted price itself could make people skeptical about product quality, and the changes of perceived value might appear differently depending on other factors such as consumer involvement or brand attitude. Previous studies showed that price promotion would certainly increase sales, and the discounted price compared to regular price would enhance the consumer's perceived values. On the other hand, discounted price itself could make people depreciate or skeptical about product quality, and reduce the consumers' positivity bias because consumers might be unsure whether the current price promotion is the retailer's best price offer. Moreover, we cannot say that discounted price absolutely enhances the consumer's perceived values regardless of product category and purchase situations. That is, the factors that affect consumers' value perceptions and buying behavior are so diverse in reality that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what variable was used or how experiment conditions were designed. Majority of previous researches on the effect of price-comparison advertising have used consumers' buying behavior as dependent variable. In order to figure out consumers' buying behavior theoretically, analysis of value perceptions which influence buying intentions is needed. In addition, they did not combined the independent variables such as brand loyalty and price discount rate together. For this reason, this paper tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception. And we provided with theoretical and managerial implications that marketers need to consider such variables as product attributes, brand loyalty, and consumer involvement at the same time, and then establish a differentiated pricing strategy case by case in order to enhance consumer's perceived values properl. Three research concepts were used in our study and each concept based on past researches was defined. The perceived acquisition value in this study was defined as the perceived net gains associated with the products or services acquired. That is, the perceived acquisition value of the product will be positively influenced by the benefits buyers believe they are getting by acquiring and using the product, and negatively influenced by the money given up to acquire the product. And the perceived transaction value was defined as the perception of psychological satisfaction or pleasure obtained from taking advantage of the financial terms of the price deal. Lastly, the brand loyalty was defined as favorable attitude towards a purchased product. Thus, a consumer loyal to a brand has an emotional attachment to the brand or firm. Repeat purchasers continue to buy the same brand even though they do not have an emotional attachment to it. We assumed that if the degree of brand loyalty is high, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value will increase when higher discount rate is provided. But we found that there are no significant differences in values between two different discount rates as a result of empirical analysis. It means that price reduction did not affect consumer's brand choice significantly because the perceived sacrifice decreased only a little, and customers are satisfied with product's benefits when brand loyalty is high. From the result, we confirmed that consumers with high degree of brand loyalty to a specific product are less sensitive to price change. Thus, using price promotion strategy to merely expect sale increase is not recommendable. Instead of discounting price, marketers need to strengthen consumers' brand loyalty and maintain the skimming strategy. On the contrary, when the degree of brand loyalty is low, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value decreased significantly when higher discount rate is provided. Generally brands that are considered inferior might be able to draw attention away from the quality of the product by making consumers focus more on the sacrifice component of price. But considering the fact that consumers with low degree of brand loyalty are known to be unsatisfied with product's benefits and have relatively negative brand attitude, bigger price reduction offered in experiment condition of this paper made consumers depreciate product's quality and benefit more and more, and consumer's psychological perceived sacrifice increased while perceived values decreased accordingly. We infer that, in the case of inferior brand, a drastic price-cut or frequent price promotion may increase consumers' uncertainty about overall components of product. Therefore, it appears that reinforcing the augmented product such as after-sale service, delivery and giving credit which is one of the levels consisting of product would be more effective in reality. This will be better rather than competing with product that holds high brand loyalty by reducing sale price. Although this study tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception, there are several limitations. This study was conducted in controlled conditions where the high involvement product and two different levels of discount rate were applied. Given the presence of low involvement product, when both pieces of information are available, it is likely that the results we have reported here may have been different. Thus, this research results explain only the specific situation. Second, the sample selected in this study was university students in their twenties, so we cannot say that the results are firmly effective to all generations. Future research that manipulates the level of discount along with the consumer involvement might lead to a more robust understanding of the effects various discount rate. And, we used a cellular phone as a product stimulus, so it would be very interesting to analyze the result when the product stimulus is an intangible product such as service. It could be also valuable to analyze whether the change of perceived value affects consumers' final buying behavior positively or negatively.
Under the full consideration of the growing need and importance of population education in the field of home economics in Korea, the study was carried out to verify and assess the following facts on the current issues of population education of home economists who are presently engaging in teaching professions as the teachers of middle and high school and professors of college and universities by setting its primary objectives of the study as followings; 1) to assess the degree of general knowledge and attitudes of home economists toward population education in the field of home economics, 2) to verify the problems encountered in implementing population education by home economists in its field, 3) to find an existing status of previous trainings received and other activities of population education of home economists aimed at utilizing these findings as a part of reference materials when the population education is conducted in the field of home economics. In order to attain these objectives described above, the questionnaire was carefully designed to house a total of 40 questions with good combination of multiple-choice and the simple answer questions. The mail questionnaire survey was conducted by establishing teachers of home economics at middle/high schools and college/universities as Senior Home Economists(SHE) who are from public, private liberal arts and vocational schools. The rate of response observed during the survey was 45.6 percent and the findings of the survey research are as follows: 1) Examining the status of the respondents by residence and religion, it was found that 45 percent of middle & high school teachers ar.d 59. 1 percent of college professors are residing in Seoul city area and that the largest percent of them are christian in their religion. Analyzing respondents by their ages, 56 percent of middle/high school teachers are in their 30s, 45 percent of college professors are in their 40s, and 37 percent of college teachers are in their 30s. In addition, 13 percent of the total respondents are found to be unmarried. The study also revealed that 71 percent of the college professors finished Master Degree course and 82 percent of middle/high school teachers are graduated from college level lasting 4 years. Looking over the status cf major fields of respondents, 68.4 percent of middle/high school teachers are specialized in home economic education and the college professors, on the other hand, show relatively even prortion by specializing in the order of food & nutrition science, clothes & textile science and home managerial science. As far as the length of teaching experience is concerned, a relatively longer period of teaching experience is observed in the college professors in comparison with that of middle/high school teachers. In other words, 33.3 percent of middle/high school teachers are experienced in teaching from 6 to 10 years on average while 43.9 percent of college professors show more than 16 years of experience. 2) Examining the status of existing number of children cf the respondents, one boy and one daughter pattern is predominant, showing 28.5 percent in middle/high school teachers and 21.1 percent in college professors. As for the desired number of children of unmarried respondents, it is observed that 43.8 percent of middle/high school teachers desire to have one boy and one girl, and 31.3 percent of college professors want to have one child regardless of the sex. By assessing the degree of awareness of the population education through their students, it is observed that 53 percent of middle/high school teachers and 50 percent of college professors are aware of population education in some extent and that a majority of respondents took the positive attitudes toward an inclusion of family planning components into the formal school education. Another noteworthy to observe is that a total of 84.8 percent out of middle/high school teachers pointed that the population education currently conducted at schools as a part of home economics are less sufficient than it should be. 3) Analyzing the tendency as to whether the respondents were experienced in receiving population education during the time when they were students, 75 percent of college professors and 59 percent of middle/high school teachers responded negative answers in the survey. In the mean time, a total of 50 percent of the respondents replied that they began to acknowledge the importance of population education mainly through the participation of some sort of population-education orientend seminars, experienced by 40 percent of college professors and 80 percent of middle/high school teachers. 4) What it calls attention in this study was to find that 96.5 percent of middle/high school teachers and 72 percent of college professors conduct population education to some extent during their lecture hours and that more than 80 percent of them are never experienced in teaching population and family planning contents in their regular classes. It is, on the other hand, found that no more than once was the response of those who believe themselves that they are experienced in teaching these relevant components to their students. Analyzing the contents of the subjects being taught in the class, a large percent of them are found to be consisted of population and family planning contents. According to this study, the current population education through the formal school is quite inactive. Analyzing the facts, 44.9 percent of the college professors responded that the population and family planning components are quite apart from their specialization which eventually generates lack of interest in the field. 5) It is also noticed through the study that the degree of frequency of commenting on population and family planning contents during the classes was depending significantly on their specializations which means that the degree of frequency varies from a major to another. Those who majored in home managerial science was the first one, as compared to others who majored in different specializations. Glancing over the status of correlations between ages of the respondents and numbers of seminar paticipation, it is quite clear that the aged group participated more than the younger group did, and that the most highest number of participations made by college professors were those who are in 50s. In addition, it is also found that those who are aged 20s and 60s of the respondents were the group who comments least on the contents of population and family planning at their classes. The suggestions and recommendation made through this survey research are as follows. 1) No one denies that the rapid increase of population, as compared to the limited size of land and resources, will certainly affect adversly to an enhancement of individual life quality which will, eventually, bring forth the poverty of the nation. This is the reasson why we are insisting that the world population be controlled up to an optimum level with a matter of global concerns. It is our understading that the primary aim for reducing number of population is believed to be attained only by conducting the systematic and comprehensive population education through the formal schools. Therefore, the role of home economists in the field of population/family planning education is considered very importment due to the fact that an ultimate goal of population education is placed in elevating the quality of family life by having optimum number of children through family planning program. 2) It is quite clear that home economists as teachers of formal school in all level are invited to pay their attention on redefining the ultimate goal of education and that of population education. We also understant that the primary objective of population education is to change the norm and value of the clients by replenishing the students with pertinent knowledge and attitudes on population and its related problems through a sort of education in order to attain the ultimate goal for enhancing the quality of life. There is no exception in the theory of home economics. An altimate goal of home economics is to elevate the general quality of life through an establishment of value existed in daily life. Considering the relations between population education and home economics, it is quite indespensable to bandle population components as an integral part in the field of home economics. We believe, therefore, that the senior home economists positive participation in the effort population control is more needed than it has been. 3) It is also strongly urged that population education should be a part of instructor training course for home economics. In other words, the teacher of home economics should be well aware of population and its problems by teaching interrelationship between population education and home economics, needs, contents and methods of population education during the instructor training courese for home economics. In addition, the senior home economists should be encouraged through positive participation on the short term training by types of domestic and international seminar, workshop, etc. 4) We certainly believe that the population education can not sustain itself without any backing-up of information and findings' of various and comprehensive researches of natural and social sciences. Accordingly, every senior home economist is invited to exert their maximum effort to conduct systematic study with an aim to utilize these findings and information at best in population education in the field of home economics. Therefore, we consider that the development of training material is imminent in order to provide effective and efficient population education through the for training of home economies. It should be noted that these training materials must be carefully designed, tailored and developed to meet the different classes of trainees under the considerations as to whether it is easily adaptable and infusable into the curricula of every field of home economics, and it is acceptable in the degree of difficulty and quality in its contents. 5) It is true that there are many domestic and international research rapers, reports and findings in the field of population education and family planning. However, there is a tendency that the most of research papers are heavily relying on the authors intension and preferences in its expression and publication. Under these circumstances, it is urged that the home economists should aware of the growing need of the technical training in order to keep these available information and research findings reprocessed and redesigned to insure the practical application into the population education in the field of home economics in Korea.
Purpose In nuclear medicine examination,
This study is to empirically examine the primary dimensions of visual merchandising (VMD) of internet shopping mall, namely store design, merchandise, and merchandising cues, to be a attractive virtual store to the shoppers. The authors reviewed the literature related to the major components of VMD from the perspective of the AIDA model, which has been mainly applied to the offline store settings. The major purposes of the study are as follows; first, tries to derive the variables related with the components of visual merchandising through reviewing the existing literatures, establish the hypotheses, and test it empirically. Second, examines the relationships between the components of VMD and the attitude toward the VMD, however, putting more emphasis on finding out the component structure of the VMD. VMD needs to be examined with the perspective that an online shopping mall is a virtual self-service or clerkless store, which could reduce the number of employees, help the shoppers search, evaluate and purchase for themselves, and to be explored in terms of the in-store persuasion processes of customers. This study reviewed the literatures related to store design, merchandise, and merchandising cues which might be relevant to the store, product, and promotion respectively. VMD is a total communication tool, and AIDA model could explain the in-store consumer behavior of online shopping. Store design has to do with triggering a consumer attention to the online mall, merchandise with a product related interest, and merchandising cues with promotions such as recommendation and links that induce the desire to pruchase. These three steps might be seen as the processes for purchase actions. The theoretical rationale for the relationship between VMD and AIDA could be found in Tyagi(2005) that the three steps of consumer-oriented merchandising are a store, a product assortment, and placement, in Omar(1999) that three types of interior display are a architectural design display, commodity display, and point-of-sales(POS) display, and in Davies and Ward(2005) that the retail store interior image is related to an atmosphere, merchandise, and in-store promotion. Lee et al(2000) suggested as the web merchandising components a merchandising cues, a shopping metaphor which is an assistant tool for search, a store design, a layout(web design), and a product assortment. The store design which includes differentiation, simplicity and navigation is supposed to be related to the attention to the virtual store. Second, the merchandise dimensions comprising product assortments, visual information and product reputation have to do with the interest in the product offerings. Finally, the merchandising cues that refer to merchandiser(MD)'s recommendation of products and providing the hyperlinks to relevant goods for the shopper is concerned with attempt to induce the desire to purchase. The questionnaire survey was carried out to collect the data about the consumers who would shop at internet shopping malls frequently. To select the subject malls, the mall ranking data announced by a mall rating agency was used to differentiate the most popular and least popular five mall each. The subjects was instructed to answer the questions after navigating the designated mall for five minutes. The 300 questionnaire was distributed to the consumers, 166 samples were used in the final analysis. The empirical testing focused on identifying and confirming the dimensionality of VMD and its subdimensions using a structural equation modeling method. The confirmatory factor analysis for the endogeneous and exogeneous variables was carried out in four parts. The second-order factor analysis was done for a store design, a merchandise, and a merchandising cues, and first-order confirmatory factor analysis for the attitude toward the VMD. The model test results shows that the chi-square value of structural equation is 144.39(d.f 49), significant at 0.01 level which means the proposed model was rejected. But, judging from the ratio of chi-square value vs. degree of freedom, the ratio was 2.94 which smaller than an acceptable level of 3.0, RMR is 0.087 which is higher than a generally acceptable level of 0.08. GFI and AGFI is turned out to be 0.90 and 0.84 respectively. Both NFI and NNFI is 0.94, and CFI 0.95. The major test results are as follows; first, the second-order factor analysis and structural equational modeling reveals that the differentiation, simplicity and ease of identifying current status of the transaction are confirmed to be subdimensions of store design and to be a significant predictors of the dependent variable. This result implies that when designing an online shopping mall, it is necessary to differentiate visually from other malls to improve the effectiveness of the communications of store design. That is, the differentiated store design raise the contrast stimulus to sensory organs to promote the memory of the store and to have a favorable attitude toward the VMD of a store. The results that navigation which means the easiness of identifying current status of shopping affects the attitude to VMD could be interpreted that the navigating processes via the hyperlinks which is characteristics of an internet shopping is a complex and cognitive process and shoppers are likely to lack the sense of overall structure of the store. Consequently, shoppers are likely to be alost amid shopping not knowing where to go. The orientation tool enhance the accessibility of information to raise the perceptive power about the store environment.(Titus & Everett 1995) Second, the primary dimension of merchandise and its subdimensions was confirmed to be unidimensional respectively, have a construct validity, and nomological validity which the VMD dimensions supposed to have a positive correlation with the dependent variable. The subdimensions of product assortment, brand fame and information provision proved to have a positive effect on the attitude toward the VMD. It could be interpreted that the more plentiful the product and brand assortment of the mall is, the more likely the shoppers to favor it. Brand fame and information provision as well affect the VMD attitude, which means that the more famous the brand, the more likely the shoppers would trust and feel familiar with the mall, and the plentifully and visually presented information could have the shopper have a favorable attitude toward the store VMD. Third, it turned out to be that merchandising cue of product recommendation and hyperlinks affect the VMD attitude. This could be interpreted that recommended products could reduce the uncertainty related with the purchase decision, and the hyperlinks to relevant products would help the shopper save the cognitive effort exerted into the information search and gathering, which could lead to a favorable attitude to the VMD. This study tried to sheds some new light on the VMD of online store by reviewing the variables mentioned to be relevant with offline VMD in the existing literatures, and tried to link the VMD components from the perspective of AIDA model. The effect size of the VMD dimensions on the attitude was in the order of the merchandise, the store design and the merchandising cues.It is said that an internet has an unlimited place for display, however, the virtual store is not unlimited since the consumer has a limited amount of cognitive ability to process the external information and internal memory. Particularly, the shoppers are likely to face some difficulties in decision making on account of too many alternative and information overloads. Therefore, the internet shopping mall manager should take into consideration the cost of information search on the part of the consumer, to establish the optimal product placements and search routes. An efficient store composition would be possible by reducing the psychological burdens and cognitive efforts exerted to information search and alternatives evaluation. The store image is in most part determined by the product category and its brand it deals in. The results of this study support this proposition that the merchandise is most important to the VMD attitude than other components, the manager is required to take a strategic approach to VMD. The internet users are getting more accustomed and more knowledgeable about the internet media and more likely to accept the internet as a shopping channel as the period of time during which they use the internet to shop become longer. The web merchandiser should be aware that the product introduction using a moving pictures and a bulletin board become more important in order to present the interactive product information visually and communicate with customers more actively, therefore leading to making the quantity and quality of product information more rich.
The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.
Citrus fruits of ten varieties grown in Chaeju island and a few other fruits for the comparison were analyzed to determined the contents of crude fat, crude fiber, total carbohydrates, macroelements and ash. Acids and sugars in fruit juices were also determined and the characteristic of neutralization of fruit juices were investigated. 1. The per cent of edible part of citrus fruits having the range of 48.5(Daingwoochi) to 72(Onju) were lower than that of other fruits. It was lower by about 8 per cent than that of the same variety produced in U.S.A. It was shown that the amount of rind per fruit might be increased in the citrus fruit grown in the low annual temperature. 2. The content of crude protein were around 1% and higher than other's. The contents of crude fat were below 0.1% in three varieties and over 0.1 in others. The contents of crude fiber were between 0.3 to 0.8% and the fruits with the high content of crude protein were inclined to have the high content of crude fiber and it was also shown that the low annual temperature was inclined to increase the amount of crude fiber per fruit. 3. The amount of total acid were from 19.5 m.e per 100 g of fresh fruit in Byongkyul to 44.2 m.e in Daingwoochi. The high percentage of titrable acid was over 90 in two sour varieties, Daingwoochi and Hakyul having pH below 3 and the high content of total acid. These two varieties were above 10 in the ratio of total acid in the edible part to the total acid in the rind(total acid in edible part/total acid in the rind). The content of combined acid was lower than that of titrable acid in the edible part and vice versa in the rind. 4. Navel was highest as 12.82% in the total sugar content and the lowest content was 4.9% of Hakyul. The contents of reducing sugar in the citrus fruits were about half of that in other fruits. The ratio of total sugar to titrable acid (sugar/acid: the grade of sweet taste) were lower than foreign products . 5. From the titration curves of fruit juices the characteristic of neutralization of juices could be grouped in three types, and other values, that is, pH, the content of total acid, the percentage of combined acid, the ratio of total acids in edible part and rind, the content of sugar, and the grade of sweet taste were also devided into the same three categories. 6. The contents of macroelements were different along to the each part of fruit. The content, in the seed were high and the ones in the rind were low. The contents of each element were in the order of