• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.30 no.8 s.114
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• pp.669-674
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the factors on the usage level of e-business in the shipping companies. In order to do empirical analysis, firstly, this study carried out reliability analysis and factor analysis. Secondly, this study examined the effects of the factors on the usage level of e-business in the shipping companies by multiple regression analysis. In conclusion, the analysis result revealed that 5 factors effect on the service business usage's level and 4 factors effect on the real transaction usage's level of e-business.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.35-54
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• 2017

Researchers in marketing, sociology, and economics have been interested in the role of social interactions in consumer choice and consumption behaviors. Social interactions, labeled variously as peer effects, social contagion, and neighborhood effects, have important implications for firms' allocation of marketing efforts. In this research, we test and provide empirical evidence for peer effects in consumers' service usage in the context of gym-going behaviors. Using a detailed individual-level membership and attendance data at one of the largest health club chains in the U.S., we document that a focal member's gym-going behavior is influenced by the behaviors and characteristics of the peers at the same branch

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.312-319
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• 2003

In late 90s, organizations recognized the information technology as an key enabler of the business strategic accomplishment which lead them heavy increment on IT investment. These organizations tried to hold the competitive advantage by focusing on their core competency. And these acts raise their interests on IT outsourcing. Recent trends of the organizations concern on evaluating the effectiveness of the previous IT investment and the reasonable selection on IT investment type. Also, the objective evaluation of the service level and continuous improvement are major concern of the outsourcer. Consequently, interests on Service Level Agreement (SLA), an immanence operating tool for managing the level of the information system service objectively and qualitatively, were raised among IT outsourcing service providers, outsourcers, and operating departments. Yet, only a few domestic conglomerates adopted the SLA, and exact usage of the SLA is currently unknown. Because of the importance of the SLA between a service provider and an outsourcer, the agreement is treated with high confidentiality. This raised the problems to both the private and public organizations, are considering the SLA, with absence of concrete guide line to internalize SLA management process. This study provides the organizational and environmental factors of the adopting and applying the Service Level Agreement (SLA) by conducting multiple case research. The sampled companies are currently implementing the SLA over 1 year of usage period. Factors were used to provide the operational contribution for implementing the SLA. The study also provides the effects on IT performance through the SLA. For this, in depth interview was conducted for each sampled company. As a result, if SLA between outsourcer and service provider can be used as an immanence operation tool and actively implemented, SLA will be an strategic tool for various decision making in IT management practice with long term relationship, better shared partnership, and continuous service improvement.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.8
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• pp.25-34
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• 2012

Understanding customer' lifestyles important for banks because it will guide in determining marketing policies, such as services, pricing, service delivery and promotion decisions. From the customer' lifestyle, banks will know what kind of customers' attitudes, interests and opinions, so they also will understand what the costumer' needs and what services needed by them. For Islamic banks, customers understanding are important because, nowadays, the competition of the banks is not only with other Islamic banks but also with the well-established conventional banks offering Islamic products or services The aims of this research paper are to describe what factors underline the customer's lifestyle of both Islamic and conventional bank, to segment the bank customers based on their lifestyles and investigate the profile of each segments, to compare the characteristics of the segments, and to identify marketing policies based on the characteristics. The population of the study is banking customers in Indonesia, in which the researchers have used judgment sampling as sample selection. There were 186 customers of Islamic banks and 244 customers of conventional bank as respondents in this study. Statistical methods employed were exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis. The finding of the study shows that there are twelve factor underlining the customers' lifestyle, namely: factor of fashion conscious, internet usage, sports spectator, financial and technology optimism, price sensitivity, independent, compulsive housekeeper, new brand tryer community activities, opinion leader, credit usage, and homebody. In addition, for Islamic banking, there are two market segments, namely fashionable-independent and innovative-social segment. Based on the lifestyle characteristics, the first segment has higher level in factor of fashion conscious, homebody, independent, optimism and price conscious, which is therefore called fashionable-independent segment. On the other hand, the second cluster has higher level in factor of new brand tryer, community minded, sport spectator, credit user, internet usage, opinion leader, and compulsive housekeeper, which is therefore called the innovative-social segment. Furthermore, for conventional banking, there are also two segments, namely persuasive-optimistic and sensitive-independent segment. The first segment has higher level on some factors, namely: opinion leader, optimism, internet usage rate, credit usage level, sport spectator, and new brand tryer. On the other hand, the second cluster is characterized by higher level in factor of price conscious, confidence, community minded, homebody, fashion conscious, and compulsive housekeeper. Managerial implications for the management of Islamic banks could be identified in this study as follows. Firstly, the twelve lifestyle factors of this study could be an alternative view in observe Islamic banking customers. The domination of both the fashionable conscious and the internet usage factor show that the aspects are quite instrumental in perceiving the customer' lifestyles, in which reflects the importance of these two aspects to customers. Secondly, in serving their customers, Islamic banks need to understand the customer lifestyle, in which the lifestyle segments found in this study provide a guide of how their needs were reflected. Finally, by understanding the segments and the characteristics each segment of the conventional banks, Islamic banks could adjust their marketing strategies differently from the conventional banks.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.127-139
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• 2005

This research is in the same line of the research that was carried out in 1999 and 2001, Studies in 1999 and 2001 showed that there are significant differences in the usage levels of Internet in business between countries with longer history of using internet and those with shorter history. The 1999 and 2001 studies also suggested the model on development stages of Internet usage in business, This study is the continuation of the 1999 and 2001 research and used the previous data to compare and analyze the trend of the Internet development stages in leading 100 corporations in Korea, U,S.A., China and Japan in 2002. This study found that there have been significant developments in the ability to use Internet in business in three countries. The differences in Internet usage level in each stage among different countries are compared and analyzed in this study.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2009.04a
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• pp.1307-1310
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• 2009

Web services provide the possibility of dynamically integrating distributed service components scattered over the Internet to fulfill sophisticated business demands. However due to today's wide variety of services offered to perform a specific task, it's essential that users are supported in the eventual selection of appropriate services. An example of web services for which selection of appropriate services will be crucial is Auto Repair Services. Selecting proper service from a variety of Auto Part Shops would be result of delivering high-quality service and minimizing Auto Repair Service customer's waiting time. Therefore, in this research to assist selecting proper service, we present Functional-Level Mediator and illustrate its usage in matching customer's and web service's goals. Five matching cases have been analyzed and results from experiment have been shown. Also, taking advantage of implementing multithreaded web services which reflects concurrent activity in the real world more naturally, we have significantly minimized customer's waiting time at Auto Repair Service.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.611-635
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• 2014

Information systems (IS) have become ubiquitous and changed every aspect of how people live their lives. While some IS have been successfully adopted and widely used, others have failed to be adopted and crowded out in spite of remarkable progress in technologies. Both the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the IS Success Model (ISSM), among many others, have contributed to explain the reasons of success as well as failure in IS adoption and usage. While the TAM suggests that intention to use and perceived usefulness lead to actual IS usage, the ISSM indicates that information quality, system quality, and service quality affect IS usage and user satisfaction. Upon literature review, however, we found a significant void in theoretical development and its applications that employ either of the two models, and we raise research questions. First of all, in spite of the causal relationship between intention to use and actual usage, in most previous studies, only intention to use was employed as a dependent variable without overt explaining its relationship with actual usage. Moreover, even in a few studies that employed actual IS usage as a dependent variable, the degree of actual usage was measured based on users' perceptual responses to survey questionnaires. However, the measurement of actual usage based on survey responses might not be 'actual' usage in a strict sense that responders' perception may be distorted due to their selective perceptions or stereotypes. By the same token, the degree of system quality that IS users perceive might not be 'real' quality as well. This study seeks to fill this void by measuring the variables of actual usage and system quality using 'fact' data such as system logs and specifications of users' information and communications technology (ICT) devices. More specifically, we propose an integrated research model that bring together the TAM and the ISSM. The integrated model is composed of both the variables that are to be measured using fact as well as survey data. By employing the integrated model, we expect to reveal the difference between real and perceived degree of system quality, and to investigate the relationship between the perception-based measure of intention to use and the fact-based measure of actual usage. Furthermore, we also aim to add empirical findings on the general research question: what factors influence actual IS usage and how? In order to address the research question and to examine the research model, we selected a mobile campus application (MCA). We collected both fact data and survey data. For fact data, we retrieved them from the system logs such information as menu usage counts, user's device performance, display size, and operating system revision version number. At the same time, we conducted a survey among university students who use an MCA, and collected 180 valid responses. A partial least square (PLS) method was employed to validate our research model. Among nine hypotheses developed, we found five were supported while four were not. In detail, the relationships between (1) perceived system quality and perceived usefulness, (2) perceived system quality and perceived intention to use, (3) perceived usefulness and perceived intention to use, (4) quality of device platform and actual IS usage, and (5) perceived intention to use and actual IS usage were found to be significant. In comparison, the relationships between (1) quality of device platform and perceived system quality, (2) quality of device platform and perceived usefulness, (3) quality of device platform and perceived intention to use, and (4) perceived system quality and actual IS usage were not significant. The results of the study reveal notable differences from those of previous studies. First, although perceived intention to use shows a positive effect on actual IS usage, its explanatory power is very weak ($R^2$=0.064). Second, fact-based system quality (quality of user's device platform) shows a direct impact on actual IS usage without the mediating role of intention to use. Lastly, the relationships between perceived system quality (perception-based system quality) and other constructs show completely different results from those between quality of device platform (fact-based system quality) and other constructs. In the post-hoc analysis, IS users' past behavior was additionally included in the research model to further investigate the cause of such a low explanatory power of actual IS usage. The results show that past IS usage has a strong positive effect on current IS usage while intention to use does not have, implying that IS usage has already become a habitual behavior. This study provides the following several implications. First, we verify that fact-based data (i.e., system logs of real usage records) are more likely to reflect IS users' actual usage than perception-based data. In addition, by identifying the direct impact of quality of device platform on actual IS usage (without any mediating roles of attitude or intention), this study triggers further research on other potential factors that may directly influence actual IS usage. Furthermore, the results of the study provide practical strategic implications that organizations equipped with high-quality systems may directly expect high level of system usage.

• Informatization Policy
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.22-41
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• 2011

Current socioeconomic condition in South Korea is characterized by growing country with highly unemployment rate. Enhancing service industry, therefore, is one of the important government policy issues. In addition to quantitative growth of service industries, OECD comparisons between countries as shown in the competitiveness of the domestic service industry, followed by a very low-level, enhancing the competitiveness of service industries are also important issues of national policy. In particular, finance, education, insurance industry, such as relatively large enterprises have entered the service industry to remain competitive and comparable, but the case of small service industries, has shown a very low level of competitiveness. Thus, the world's leading technology and IT infrastructure can be applied to small and medium-sized service industry in order to improve productivity, customer satisfaction, and service infrastructure, resulting in improving competitiveness. The purpose of this study is to develop government supporting policy issues by analyzing the current usage of IT, problems and requirement analysis, and critical success factors for applying IT to small and medium-sized service industries. For a survey 2,000 samples are collected from service companies. The results show that IT usage is very important to improve competitiveness in small and medium sized service industry. In addition, customized it solutions are needed to satisfy different characteristics of service industry depends on types of business. Finally, government supporting programs of IT has to be improved. The results would be able to provide directions and guide lines of IT utilization in service industries.

• Proceedings of the CALSEC Conference
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• 2005.03a
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• pp.130-134
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• 2005

This research describes the comparison broker's role and its effectiveness measurement using a developed logical framework of comparison shopping service. And verifies that seller-led comparison challenge method provide comparison information of products to buyers more efficiently. In electronic commerce, buyer's satisfaction of purchase (S) can be defined as an interactive function between seller's competitiveness vector (P) of products that supplied to the market, and buyer's informed level vector (B) of products that is known from a lot of sources. Then the buyer's informed level can be changed through the information analysis among products by transformation process using comparison matrix (C). So the role of comparison shopping is to construct a comparison matrix and to serve it to the buyers, and to change the buyer's informed level. The changed informed level influences a buyer's satisfaction, that improved satisfaction of purchase is defined as the effectiveness of comparison shopping. As a perfect provision and usage of comparison matrix is impossible cause of cognitive limit, the most efficient method for improving the comparison effectiveness is the comparison challenge that detects the comparison elements of the largest buyer's information efficiency, and then to be compared between elementary products selectively. This research verifies the substantial superiority of comparison challenge through television market data experiments.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.25-51
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• 2012

Researches about the relationship between SST(Self Service Technology) and TRI(Technology Readiness Index) have been carried out after TRI was developed by Parasuraman and his colleagues(2000). We hypothesize Consumer Readiness can also influence consumer's motivation, attitude, and intent to use SST. Currently, there has been no research on this subject. In this study, we investigated the relationship between TR, Consumer Readiness and SST Core Attitudinal Model which Dabholkar & Bagozzi(1994) proposed. The researchers also investigated moderating effects of consumer traits and situational factors to verify the acceptance of such forms of service delivery by all kinds of consumers and under different situational contexts. Self consciousness, the need for interaction with an employee, and the technology anxiety were used as consumer trait variables. Perceived waiting time and perceived crowding were used as situational variables. 380 questionnaires were distributed to a sample group of people in their 20's and 30's, and the data were analyzed with structural equation model using AMOS 18.0 program. All of Cronbach's alpha values representing reliabilities were satisfactory. The values of Composite Reliability(CR) and Average Variance Extracted(AVE) also showed the above criteria, thus providing evidence of convergent validity. To confirm discriminant validity among the constructs, confirmatory factor analysis and correlations among all the variables were examined. The results were satisfactory. The results of this study are summarized as follows. 1. Optimism and innovativeness of TR partially influenced the motivation to use SST. People who tend to be optimistic use SST because of ease of use and fun. The innovative however, usually use SST due to its performance. However, consumer readiness of role clarity, ability and self-efficacy influence all the components of motivation to use SST, ease of use, performance and fun. The relative effect of consumer readiness on the motivation to use SST was much stronger and more significant than that of TR. No other previous studies have examined the effects of Consumer Readiness on SST usage motivation, attitude and intention. It is academically meaningful that the researchers verified that Consumer Readiness is the important precedent construct influencing the self service technology core Attitudinal Model. Our findings suggest that marketers should consider fun and ease of use attributes to promote the use of self service technology. In addition, the SST usage frequency will rise rapidly when role clarity, ability, and self-efficacy which anybody can easily handle SST is assured. If the SST usage rate is increased, waiting times for customers could be decreased. Shorter waiting time could lead to higher customer satisfaction. It may also result in making a long-term profit owing to the reduced number of employees. Thus, presentation of using SST by employees or videos showing how to use it will promote the usage attitude and intent. 2. In SST core attitudinal model, performance and fun factors among SST usage motivation affected attitudes of using SST. The attitude of using SST highly influenced intent to use SST. This result is consistent with previous researches that dealt with the relationship between motivation, attitude and intention. Expectation of using SST could result in good performance just like the effect of ordering menu to service employees and to have fun since fun during its use could promote more SST usage rate. 3. In the relationship among motivation, attitude and intent in SST core attitudinal model, the moderating effect of consumer traits(self-consciousness, need for interaction with service employees and technology anxiety) and situational factors(perceived crowding and perceived waiting time) were tested. The results also supported the hypothesized moderating effects except perceived crowding. The highly self-conscious tended to form attitudes to use SST because of its fun compared to those who were less self-conscious because of its performance. People who had a high need for interaction with service employees tended to use SST for its performance. This result indicates that if ordering results are assured, SST is easily accessible to even consumers who have a high need for interaction with a service employee. When SST is easy to use, attitudes strengthen intent among people who had a high level of anxiety of technology. People who had low technology anxiety formed attitudes to use SST because of its performance. Service firms must ensure their self service technology is designed to be easy to use for those who have a high level of technology anxiety. Shorter perceived waiting times strengthened the attitude to use self service technology because of its fun. If the fun aspect is assured, people willing to use self service technology even perceive waiting time to be shorter than it actually is. Greater perceived waiting times form higher level of intent to use self service technology than those of shorter perceived waiting times. This implies that people view self service technology as a faster alternative to ordering service employees. The fun aspect of self service technology will attract a higher rate of usage for self service technology. 4. It has been proven that ease of use, performance and fun aspects are very important factors in motivation to form attitudes and intent to use self service technology regardless of the amount of perceived waiting time, self-consciousness, need for interaction with service employees, and technology anxiety. Service firms must consider these motivation aspects(ease of use, performance and fun)strongly in their promotion to use self service technology. Ease of use, assuring absolute performance compared to interaction with service employees', and adding a fun aspect will positively strengthen consumers' attitudes and intent to use self service technology. Summarizing the moderating effects, fun is the most valuable factor triggering SST usage attitude and intention. Therefore, designing self service technology to be fun will be the key to its success. This study focused on the touch screen self service technology in fast food restaurant. Although it has its limits due to the fact that it is hard to generalize the results to any other self service technology, the conceptual framework of this study can be applied to future research of any other service site.