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Smoking Adolescents' Acquisition of Cigarettes and Status of Proof of Age (흡연을 하는 청소년의 담배 구입 경로 및 신분 확인의 유무)

  • Kim, Hee Ra;Kim, Ji Young;Lee, Gee Hyung;Choung, Ji Tae;Park, Sang Hee
    • Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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    • v.48 no.4
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    • pp.363-368
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    • 2005
  • Purpose : The aim of this study is to identify where and how adolescents acquire cigarettes and how many were asked for identification while purchasing cigarettes. Methods : This study was conducted in 2003; participants were 2,200 students in middle and high schools, aged from 13 to 18 years old(males 1,098; females 1,102) in Ansan, Korea. The questionnaire assured them of anonymity, and self-administered in school. The data was analyzed with chisquare test for trends. Results : The prevalence of smoking was about 20 percent among respondents, was higher in males than in females, and in older students than in younger students(P<0.001). The most frequent source of cigarettes was purchased from a store(36.3 percent). About 29.2 percent of the students borrowed from friends or family members. By sex, the main sources of cigarettes were purchase from a store and borrowing. Younger students were borrowed more cigarettes; older students purchased more cigarettes from stores. Only 48.8 percent were asked for proof of age during their purchase. Of those asked for proof of age, about 73.3 percent answered that this made it difficult to buy cigarettes(P<0.001), and they thought that it was more difficult when asked for a photo ID than simply being asked their age(P=0.019). Conclusion : So far, there has been no systemic prevention of adolescents' smoking. It is difficult for minors to purchase cigarettes if asked for proof of age, but most minors go to stores to purchase cigarettes. Therefore, prevention efforts should include educating retailers not to sell cigarettes to minors and enforcing existing laws requiring youth to provide proof of age when attempting to buy cigarettes.

Analysis of Microbiological Contamination in Cultivation and Distribution Stage of Melon

  • Park, Kyeong-Hun;Yun, Hye-Jeong;Kim, Won-Il;Kang, Jun-Won;Millner, Patricia D.;Micallef, Shirley A.;Kim, Byeong-Seok
    • Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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    • v.46 no.6
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    • pp.615-622
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    • 2013
  • The purpose of this study was to evaluate microbial contamination of melons in Korea. A total of 123 samples including melon fruits, leaves, seeds, soils, and irrigation water were collected from farms and markets to detect total aerobic bacteria, coliform, Escherichia coli, and pathogenic bacteria such as Bacillus cereus, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella spp., and Staphylococcus aureus. Samples were collected from Iksan and Nonsan farms to monitor bacterial levels on pre-market melons. The total aerobic and coliform bacteria on melon cultivation were between 0.43 and 6.65 log CFU $g^{-1}$, and 0.67 and 2.91 log CFU $g^{-1}$, respectively. Bacillus cereus, a fecal coliform, was detected in soils and melon leaves from Iksan farm at 2.95, 0.73 log CFU $g^{-1}$, respectively, and in soils from Nonsan farm at 3.16 log CFU $g^{-1}$. Market melon samples were collected to assay bacterial load on melon being sold to consumers. The contamination levels of total aerobic bacteria in agricultural markets, big-box retailers, and traditional markets were 4.82, 3.94, 3.99 log CFU $g^{-1}$, respectively. The numbers of coliform in melon on the markets ranged from 0.09 to 0.49 log CFU $g^{-1}$. Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella spp., and Staphylococcus aureus were not detected in any samples. The count of total aerobic bacteria on melon seeds ranged from 0.33 to 3.34 log CFU $g^{-1}$. This study found that irrigation water, soil, manure and various farm work activities including post-harvest processes were latent sources of microbial contamination. These results suggest that hygienic management and monitoring of soil, water, and agricultural material should be performed to reduce microbial contamination in melon production.

A Study on the Cooperative Marketing of Fishery Products in Korea (수협 마아케팅에 관한 연구)

  • 안세원
    • The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
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    • v.17 no.1
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    • pp.77-106
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    • 1986
  • In the field of fisheries, there is at the apex Central Federation of Fishery Cooperatives, established under the Fishery Cooperatives Law(1962), It is a multipurpose organization with a membership of 105 cooperatives, 87 regional cooperatives, 15 business-type cooperatives and 3 manufactures' cooperatives. Accordingly, this thesis examines the marketing of fishery cooperatives in Korea, and in particular considers the marketing channel strategy of fisheries products. No company can perform by itself all the activities involved in the production and distribution of its products and services to its final markets. It must work with other firms to get the job done. Thus marketing channel firms of the fisheries products include primarily the fishery cooperatives, the licensed In the field of fisheries, there is at the apex Central Federation of Fishery Cooperatives, established under the Fishery Cooperatives Law (1962). It is a multipurpose organization with a membership of 105 cooperatives, 87 regional cooperatives, 15 business-type cooperatives and 3 manufactures' cooperatives. Accordingly, this thesis examines the marketing of fishery cooperatives in Korea, and in particular considers the marketing channel strategy of fisheries products. No company can perform by itself all the activities involved in the production and distribution of its products and services to its final markets. It must work with other firms to get the job done. Thus marketing channel firms of the fisheries products include primarily the fishery cooperatives, the licensed dealers and the merchant middlemen. The goal of marketing is in matching of segments of supply and demand. Every producer seeks to the link the marketing channel firms that will help it accomplish its objective best. This thesis tries to attempt to improve the present Korean Fishery Cooperatives marketing activities. The purpose of the operation of fishery cooperatives is to guarantee the profits of fisherman as well as the interests of general consumers by eliminating the inordinate profits of middlemen and by narrowing other market margins. Fishery cooperatives marketing activity functions forming a self-helf organization for economic protection of producers themselves, and acting as a market reformational institution through its transaction by group. The following are the characteristics of fishery cooperatives marketing. \circled1 Fishery cooperatives is organized with an economic factor and a personnel factor. \circled2 Fishery cooperatives is non-profit organization. \circled3 The members of fishery cooperatives is independent constitution of economy, but they are closely connected with the cooperative. \circled4 Fishery cooperatives is a mutual aid organization. The objective of an efficient marketing strategy may be well described by the common saying provides the right product at the right time, the right place, and the right price. But it is quite true that the Korean Fishermen's Cooperative can be said to owe its development to the successful implementation of the marketing system. The use of the marketing system has resulted in the following marketing strategy. 1. The direct marketing system. \circled1 The cooperation between the fishery cooperatives and the other cooperative through the collection and delivery center. \circled2 The selling between the fishery cooperatives and the large scale retailers through the process industry. 2. The vertical marketing system. \circled1The fishermen's cooperative to be nominated by wholesaler in the terminal market. \circled2 Contracted vertical marketing system. \circled3 Abolition of selling by double auction in the landing and the terminal market. 3. The physical distribution system. \circled1 The need for adoption of cold chain system to connect production directly to consumption. \circled2 The need for more expansion of landing markets and terminal market facilities. Solutions to the problems of the Korean fishery are made possible through effective functioning of cooperative marketing activities of fishery products. The marketing concept of fishermen's cooperative lies in the satisfaction of consumer needs. According to the marketing concept fishermen's cooperative should try to satisfy customer's needs through a coodinated set of activities that allows the organization to achieve its goal. Providing satisfaction to customers is the major trust of the marketing concept. To do this, a business must find out what will satisfy customers. With this information the cooperative sells to the greatest possible number of customers through the most efficient sales and marketing channels. Economic rationality of fishermen's cooperative marketing lies in reduction of marketing cost and elimination of intermediate institutions. Cooperative marketing and direct marketing are both indispensable marketing factors for a new cooperative organization among the manu ways. The cooperation between the fishermen's cooperative and the others cooperative, and vertical marketing system are the most necessary ones. Propulsion of cooperative marketing system could not be successful without the support of the marketing instituion's help. Consequently, successful cooperative marketing ought to lead to the necessity not only for the improvement of marketing organization, but for the application of a new marketing concept in the fishermen's cooperative.

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A Study on the Actual Conditions of Smoking in Middle and High School Students in One Region (일 지역 중·고등학생의 흡연실태)

  • Kim, Hyeon-Ok
    • Journal of the Korean Society of School Health
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.149-167
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    • 1999
  • To investigate the actual conditions of smoking in middle and high school students in Chinan County, I used a sturctured questionnaire for 1,579 students attending twelve middle-high schools from December 1, 1998 to December 20, 1998. I collected and data correlated the using an $SPSS-PC^+$ 1. The smoking rate of middle-high schoo1 students in Chinan County was 17.9%, relatively high. This smoking rate was different according to the gender, grade, religion, and economic situation. In mals, high school students, non-religious, students low income family students, the smoking rate was higher. The smoking rate of high school students was almost the same as the smoking rate of adults, generally higher than that of foreign teenagers. Because the smoking rat of studinets in the third grade of middle school and in the first grade of high School was six times higher, increased education should be conducted during this time in an attempt to curb the sudden increase of the smoking rate. The smoking rate of girl students was 5.0%; this has increased mor than three times from ten years ago. Consequently, counter measures should be taken against the smoking of female students as well as juvenile smoking in general. In addition, the smoking rate of middle-high school students showed interesting differences when correnated with enviornmental factors. Students with low grades, who are not satisfied with school life, who don't have both parents, who have uncaring parents who nare too strict or too arbitary, who have smoking parents, or who have experienced smoking commonly smoked. Therefore, to lower the smoking rate we should improve the school environment, improve a student's interest in school life. And parents or siblings should lead by example and quit smoking at home. Schools should educate students more effectively concerning the harmful effects of smoking and create an accurate understanding of its dancers. From the beginning, we should teach students never ever to touch cigaretts. 2. The surve discovered that most students started out of curiosity, or solicitantion from friends or elders at middle school, and had been smoking one to five cigarettes for more than a year. They obtained cigarettes at stores and most of them have friends who smoke. As a result anti-smoking education should be conducted at elementary schools prior to middle school. More than 95% of the teenagers who smoke had friends who smote and smoked out of curiosity or the recommendation of elders. Thus, we must focus on teenagers who smoke in group, rather than individually. Fuyrthermore, the strict application of the regulation of tobacco sales as well as tobacco cooperation from retailers are needed. While students did not show any mood or academic achievement difference after beginning smoking, 58.1% of the students a health situdation that was worse. Juvenile smoking is more harmful to the juvenile than adult smoking is to the adult. This should be focused on in an anti-smoking campaign. 3. Students who smoke hada more positive attitude toward smoking than students who don't smoke. Students who smoke had a tendency to have a nuetral position and are not concerned about smoking compared to non-smoking students. The survey showed that the great number of students had a nuetral position. Because this nuetrality may increase Juvenile smoking, education that provides an exact understanding of smoking should be performed to build the correct attidude toward smoking. 4. Middle school students smoke when angry, gloomy, anxious, a lone and when they have some problems to solve, on when they feel inconveniened in other wores, they smoke to reliver stress. They also smok due to addiction. Because smoking is not a praetical method to relieve stress, a program which helps to acquire positive relief stress should be provided to help reduce smoking. 5. About 65% of students who smoke want to quit smoking because of health problem, 78% of them have tried mor than once to quit but failed due to weak will power and peer pressure from friends who smoke. Juvenile smoking is group, oriented. Thus, the program that advances less smoking will be the one that focuseds on groups. 6. As for advice to students who want to quit smoking, "persuasion" was used most commonly, followed by a "presentation on how to quit smoking". Another method were severe punishment. About 70% of the students wanted the anti-smoking guide at school. 7. Most students (73.5%) had a position that more anti-smoking education at school is needed. Obriously, then, anti-smoking education at middle-high schools should be reinfoced. Although the education which explains the harmful influence of tobacco is known as an efficient way prevent smoking; it does not influence students who already smoke. Therefore, for students who smoke, multi-dimensional approaches must be attempted that include physical training, phychokogical approache, consultation and discussion, medical chek-ups, audio-visual education technigues, and professonal instructors, in addition, because smoking students have more negative on lukewarm attitude to anti-smoking education anti-smoking education should be conducted through a communicative style by dedicated teachers who care about students. In order to increase the effectiveness of this program.

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Chemical Compositions of the Highway Side Fogwater in Shingal, Kyunggi-Province (경기도 신갈지역 고속도로변 안개의 화학적 조성)

  • 김홍률;주영특;정동준
    • Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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    • v.5 no.1
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    • pp.11-17
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    • 2003
  • pH value of sampled fogwater at source regions (above highway and road) in Yongin sites showed the lowest value and was increased after passing the forest stands. Changes of ion concentrations through the forest stands showed a lowering tendency at sampling sites. The fogwater passing the forest stands (Quercus mangolica and Pinus rigida) surrendered acid pollutants to crown and stem from the atmosphere. It was concluded that environmental moisture in the atmosphere is acidified in fogwater. The influence was extended to the pure zone, and the frequency of acid rain has increased. The forests are assumed to remove air pollutants because ion concentrations in fogwater decreased after passing the forests. The fogwater which functions as a local sink for pollutants (H$_2$SO$_4$, HNO$_3$, etc.) falling on plant surfaces is considered to effectively remove acid pollutants. But if the deposition of pollutants exceeds the capacity of purification, it would damage the forest ecosystem. Further investigation is necessary to identify tree species tolerant to acid pollutants.

A Research on Private apparel Brand's Product Strategy in Discounted Stores. (할인점의 의류PB 상품전략에 관한 연구)

  • Choi, Sung-Sik;Kim, Pan-Jin;Lee, Sang-Youn
    • The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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    • v.2 no.2
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    • pp.25-38
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    • 2011
  • After the financial crisis, what has been the rapidly growth of large supermarkets, stores, and restaurants linked to concerns that have already reached saturation point, but the new opening large supermarkets is expected to continue into the future. The major supermarkets are continue to grow outward but growth slowed. And that is expected to continue differentiation of the product, acceptance the customer needs, acquiring high margin of sales products. Then the ongoing development of PB brand is to be positioned effective marketing strategy for overcoming the period of slow growth. In addition, big three local supermarkets continue to launch a clothing PB brand, expansion and operation strategy for the situation and based on this study and the success of the domestic large-Mart's PB and PB identifying problem and the need for differentiation and profit for the successful strategy is to discuss in this study. This research looks at the concept of major market's private brand, the strategy, the success example and the prospects, and views the globally rapid-growing private brands, not only having the limited role of distributing the products as retailers, but also having a control of the distribution channel as a manufacturing company. World's major advanced distribution companies, to differentiate their companies' products and increase the profitability, are putting a lot of efforts into private brand products, and there are many good examples that are globalizing, externally expanding, and creating high financial results. In this research, we presented three major domestic discount stores as examples to show that there is a need for a differentiated private brand management strategy in the saturated discount store industry in Korea. Also, we aim to provide a new product strategy for the future that has been saturated with discount stores to the limit, by providing suggestions that private brand products can be used as weapons with the strongest competiveness in the retail industry through pursuing store differentiations from thorough market analysis and product researches, meeting the customers' needs, and obtaining high margins. PB products, particularly clothing design, a thorough market analysis and product development trends and customer needs to reflect the acquisition of High margin differentiated powerful products and sustainable growth through the stores, large supermarkets, congested, a new breakthrough that can give a good opportunity to provide implications discount stores, new product strategy based on ways to limit proposed. This study discount the major three companies studied, the less strain is a generalization. In the future, domestic and local discount store brand PB, SPA brand that the multinational comparative analysis of the value of the PB expansion strategy centered on clothing, additional studies will be needed.

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A Study on the Competition Strategy for Private Super Market against Super Super Market (슈퍼슈퍼마켓(SSM)에 대한 개인 슈퍼마켓의 경쟁전략에 관한 연구)

  • Yoo, Seung-Woo;Lee, Sang-Youn
    • The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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    • v.2 no.2
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    • pp.39-45
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    • 2011
  • The Korean distribution industry is gearing up for an endless competition. Greeting low growth era, less competitive parties will be challanged seriously for their survival. But for large discount stores, they have shown steady annual growth for years. However, because of the saturation for numbers of stores, the difficulty of gaining new sites, and the changes in the consumer's consumption behavior caused by the recession, now they are seeking for a new customers-based business formats. Accordingly, a large corporate comopanies made supermarkets which are belonged to affiliated companies of large corporate comopanies. They based on the strong buying power, focused on SSM(Super Super Market) ave been aggressively develop nationwide multi-stores. The point is that these stores are threatening at small and medium-sized, community-based private supermarkets. Private supermarkets and retailers, who are using existing old operation systems and their dilapidated facilities, are losing a competitive edge in business. Recent the social effects of large series of corporate supermarkets for traditional markets has been very controversial, and commercial media, academia, and industry associated with it have been held many seminars and public hearings. This may slow down the speed in accordance with the regulations, but will not be the crucial alternative. The reason for this recent surge of enterprise-class SSM up, one of the reasons is a stagnation in their offline discount mart, so they are finding new growth areas. Already in the form of large supermarkets across the country got most of the geographical centre point and is saturated with stages. Targeting small businesses that do not cover discount Mart, in order to expand business in the form of SSM is urgent. By contrast, private supermarkets are going to lose their competitiveness. The vulnerability of individual supermarkets, one of the vulnerabilities is price which economies of scale can not be realized so they are purchasing a small amount of products and difficult to get a quantity discount. The lack of organization and collaboration, and education which is not practical, caused the absencer of service-oriented situations. As a first solution, making specialty shops which are handling agricultures, fruits and vegetables and manufactured goods is recommended. Second, private supermarkets franchisees join the organization for the organization and collaboration is recomaned. It can be meet the scale of economy and can be formed a alternative business formats to a government. Third, the education is needed as a good service will get consumer's awareness. In addition, a psychological stores operating is also one way to stimulate consumer sentiment as SSM can't operate. Japan already has a better conditions of their lives through small chain expression. This study includes the vulnerabilities of private supermarkets, and suggests a competitiveness reinforcement strategies.

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Effects of Patriotism on Product Evaluation: Focused on the Mediating Effects of Consumer Ethnocentrism (애국심이 제품평가에 미치는 영향: 소비자 자민족중심주의의 매개효과를 중심으로)

  • Hong, Sung-Tai;Kang, Dong-Kyoon
    • Journal of Distribution Research
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    • v.15 no.2
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    • pp.71-99
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    • 2010
  • Most of studies on patriotism in the marketing area have focused on ethnocentric tendencies observed in consumption behaviors. On the contrary, there have been few empirical studies on how patriotism in the general sense, indicating affection for, attachment to, and pride in the country, influences consumers' evaluation of domestic and foreign products. Given the current situation that marketing activities appealing to people's patriotism is increasing, this is somewhat surprising. Thus, this study examined empirically how patriotism influences people's evaluation of domestic and foreign products. In addition, we tested whether consumer ethnocentrism works as an intervening variable in the relation between patriotism and product evaluation. The empirical analysis was conducted through a questionnaire survey of undergraduate and graduate students at universities in Seoul. The survey asked about the respondents' patriotism, consumer ethnocentrism, domestic product evaluation, foreign product evaluation, and demographical characteristics. In foreign product evaluation, the respondents were requested to evaluate Chinese and Japanese products. Email was used to send and recover the questionnaires, and 135 replies were used in the analysis. Major findings from the empirical analysis are as follows. First, a significant relationship was observed between patriotism and domestic product evaluation. That is, patriotic participants evaluated domestic products more favorably. On the other hand, no significant relationship was observed between patriotism and foreign product evaluation(See Table 1-1 and 1-2). Next, the effect of patriotism on domestic product evaluation was mediated by consumer ethnocentrism. However, whether the effect of patriotism on domestic product evaluation is mediated by consumer ethnocentrism partially or fully was different according to product(See Table 2-1 and 2-2). Lastly, we tried to analyze the relation between consumer ethnocentrism and product evaluation and comparing the results with findings of previous researches. According to the results, a significant relationship was observed between consumer ethnocentrism and domestic product evaluation but not between consumer ethnocentrism and foreign product evaluation. The meanings of this study are as follows. First, there have been few marketing studies that investigated the relation between patriotism and product evaluation. Thus, this study is meaningful in that it supplemented the limitation of previous research. Second, consumer ethnocentrism was found to mediate the relation between patriotism and domestic product evaluation. Considering the absence of previous research that examined the role of consumer ethnocentrism as an intervening variable, this study is significant in that it expanded the scope of research on consumer ethnocentrism. Third, from the practical aspect, the results of this study suggest that marketing appealing to patriotism is effective in stimulating consumers' purchase and consumption of domestic products. Accordingly, such a marketing strategy is expected to be effective in protecting domestic markets from imported goods and overseas brands and to increase demands for domestic products and brands. However, there is the question of whether the effect of patriotism based marketing strategies in promoting demand for domestic products would persist. That is, this study could not find a significant relation between patriotism and foreign product evaluation, and this means that the increase in patriotism for the home country does not damage people's view to the quality of foreign products negatively. Accordingly, without change in people's perception of foreign products, it is highly likely that the increase in demand for domestic products or brands induced by patriotism elevated at a specific time or situation may not last long. Fourth, the results of this study suggest that the patriotism level may influence consumers' choice behavior toward retailers strongly connected to a specific country or region. That is, consumers with high level patriotism may hesitate or avoid using a retailer associated with some foreign country. Fifth, according to the results of this study, when people's patriotism is stimulated by a specific social situation or event, it can be an opportunity for domestic franchise brands to increase their market performance such as sales and market share and, at the same time, for foreign franchise brands to experience adversities. Therefore, during a period like the Olympic Games or the World Cup when people's sense of belonging or attachment to their country is heightened, domestic franchise brands need to make marketing activities that may lead market opportunities to substantial results and foreign franchise brands to cope with such adversities. Sixth, consumers' brand choice is often made in retail stores. It has been demonstrated by numerous studies that in store stimuli such as point of purchase display can affect consumers' behavior. Considering this, domestic brands facing competition with foreign brands should make continuous efforts to enhance the market performance of their products through developing in store stimuli that can stimulate consumers' patriotism. Finally, based on the major findings of this study, both academic and practical issues were discussed. Suggestions for future studies were provided.

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The Roles of Shop Owners in Boosting Conventional Markets (상권활성화에 있어서 상업자의 역할에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Seung-Je
    • Journal of Distribution Science
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    • v.9 no.4
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    • pp.93-102
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    • 2011
  • With the increasing interest in boosting conventional markets, many authors have paid considerable attention to the roles of shop owners, store image improvement, and how to attract or maintain customers. Nevertheless, it is not easy to find papers related to the relationship between shop owners and their contribution to trading areas, directly or indirectly, in the academic world. Accordingly, research for answering the following question has been initiated: what kind of roles do shopkeepers should play in revitalizing poor conventional markets? Based on the previous studies focusing on enhancing traditional markets, this research was approached from the new insights that have been obtained concerning how to boost conventional markets, that is, from the perspectives of a shop owner and a trader. Therefore, this research aims at identifying some resolutions associated with the roles of shop owners to enhance a shopping district in a specific area, classifying their business roles into a few categories, depending on the degree of their participation in improving the shopping environment. Compared with previous studies focusing on emphasizing the importance of improving customer services from a shopkeeper's perspective, this research provides a new insight as far as how to boost conventional markets. It is, furthermore, necessary to note how market participants, particularly shop owners as they are the key players, can contribute to rebuilding their business area together with their customers. As a research technique for effectively achieving the research goal, the authors adopted a documentation methodology based on a large amount of the existing literature for studying how to rebuild traditional markets. Concerned about the ways to revitalize conventional markets, many authors have proposed a variety of strategies, and have suggested more detailed action plans from a practitioner's perspective. By analyzing these research results, the authors will have accomplished the research aim. Rather than simply identifying the roles of shop owners, the author found that they had to understand their social contribution for enhancing their trading areas, as well as their functional roles, in forming a regional society. The conventional market should be, thus, regarded as the place to share regional culture. Consequently, the authors draw some conclusions from the research results. In order to answer the above question, it was found that the roles of shop owners have been considered as one of the most important ways for revitalizing traditional markets. With respect to their roles, it is evident that their business activities are closely related to the improvement of the trading area in terms of sociality, regional development, and market revitalization, by selling products or services to the customers visiting that area. In a word, this implies that shop owners have to actively take part in boosting conventional markets as a core player. Although the authors have properly achieved the research aim, this study has a limitation, like most other research, in adopting a documentation method. Because the research is based on existing data results provided by the prior research conducted a long time ago, whether the research findings are applicable in a contemporary market should be re-examined in future research from a practitioner's perspective, rather than from an academic's perspective.

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Social Network Analysis for the Effective Adoption of Recommender Systems (추천시스템의 효과적 도입을 위한 소셜네트워크 분석)

  • Park, Jong-Hak;Cho, Yoon-Ho
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.305-316
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    • 2011
  • Recommender system is the system which, by using automated information filtering technology, recommends products or services to the customers who are likely to be interested in. Those systems are widely used in many different Web retailers such as Amazon.com, Netfix.com, and CDNow.com. Various recommender systems have been developed. Among them, Collaborative Filtering (CF) has been known as the most successful and commonly used approach. CF identifies customers whose tastes are similar to those of a given customer, and recommends items those customers have liked in the past. Numerous CF algorithms have been developed to increase the performance of recommender systems. However, the relative performances of CF algorithms are known to be domain and data dependent. It is very time-consuming and expensive to implement and launce a CF recommender system, and also the system unsuited for the given domain provides customers with poor quality recommendations that make them easily annoyed. Therefore, predicting in advance whether the performance of CF recommender system is acceptable or not is practically important and needed. In this study, we propose a decision making guideline which helps decide whether CF is adoptable for a given application with certain transaction data characteristics. Several previous studies reported that sparsity, gray sheep, cold-start, coverage, and serendipity could affect the performance of CF, but the theoretical and empirical justification of such factors is lacking. Recently there are many studies paying attention to Social Network Analysis (SNA) as a method to analyze social relationships among people. SNA is a method to measure and visualize the linkage structure and status focusing on interaction among objects within communication group. CF analyzes the similarity among previous ratings or purchases of each customer, finds the relationships among the customers who have similarities, and then uses the relationships for recommendations. Thus CF can be modeled as a social network in which customers are nodes and purchase relationships between customers are links. Under the assumption that SNA could facilitate an exploration of the topological properties of the network structure that are implicit in transaction data for CF recommendations, we focus on density, clustering coefficient, and centralization which are ones of the most commonly used measures to capture topological properties of the social network structure. While network density, expressed as a proportion of the maximum possible number of links, captures the density of the whole network, the clustering coefficient captures the degree to which the overall network contains localized pockets of dense connectivity. Centralization reflects the extent to which connections are concentrated in a small number of nodes rather than distributed equally among all nodes. We explore how these SNA measures affect the performance of CF performance and how they interact to each other. Our experiments used sales transaction data from H department store, one of the well?known department stores in Korea. Total 396 data set were sampled to construct various types of social networks. The dependant variable measuring process consists of three steps; analysis of customer similarities, construction of a social network, and analysis of social network patterns. We used UCINET 6.0 for SNA. The experiments conducted the 3-way ANOVA which employs three SNA measures as dependant variables, and the recommendation accuracy measured by F1-measure as an independent variable. The experiments report that 1) each of three SNA measures affects the recommendation accuracy, 2) the density's effect to the performance overrides those of clustering coefficient and centralization (i.e., CF adoption is not a good decision if the density is low), and 3) however though the density is low, the performance of CF is comparatively good when the clustering coefficient is low. We expect that these experiment results help firms decide whether CF recommender system is adoptable for their business domain with certain transaction data characteristics.