• Information Systems Review
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.75-97
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• 2012

Fostering trusting belief in financial transactions is a challenging task in Internet banking services. Authenticated Certificate had been regarded as an effective method to guarantee the trusting belief for online transactions. However, previous research claimed that this method has some loopholes for such abusers as hackers, who intend to attack the financial accounts of innocent transactors in Internet. Two types of methods have been suggested as alternatives for securing user identification and activity in online financial services. Control transparency uses information over the transaction process to verify and to control the transactions. Outcome feedback, which refers to the specific information about exchange outcomes, provides information over final transaction results. By using these two methods, financial service providers can send signals to involved parties about the robustness of their security mechanisms. These two methods-control transparency and outcome feedback-have been widely used in the IS field to enhance the quality of IS services. In this research, we intend to verify that these two methods can also be used to reduce risks and to increase the security protections in online banking services. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the effects of the control transparency and the outcome feedback on the risk perceptions in Internet banking services. Our assumption is that these two methods-control transparency and outcome feedback-can reduce perceived risks involved with online financial transactions, while increasing perceived trust over financial service providers. These changes in user attitudes can increase the level of user satisfactions, which may lead to the increased user loyalty as well as users' willingness to pay for the financial transactions. Previous research in IS suggested that the increased level of transparency on the process and the result of transactions can enhance the information quality and decision quality of IS users. Transparency helps IS users to acquire the information needed to control the transaction counterpart and thus to complete transaction successfully. It is also argued that transparency can reduce the perceived transaction risks in IS usage. Many IS researchers also argued that the trust can be generated by the institutional mechanisms. Trusting belief refers to the truster's belief for the trustee to have attributes for being beneficial to the truster. Institution-based trust plays an important role to enhance the probability of achieving a successful outcome. When a transactor regards the conditions crucial for the transaction success, he or she considers the condition providers as trustful, and thus eventually trust the others involved with such condition providers. In this process, transparency helps the transactor complete the transaction successfully. Through the investigation of these studies, we expect that the control transparency and outcome feedback can reduce the risk perception on transaction and enhance the trust with the service provider. Based on a theoretical framework of transparency and institution-based trust, we propose and test a research model by evaluating research hypotheses. We have conducted a laboratory experiment in order to validate our research model. Since the transparency artifact(control transparency and outcome feedback) is not yet adopted in online banking services, the general survey method could not be employed to verify our research model. We collected data from 138 experiment subjects who had experiences with online banking services. PLS is used to analyze the experiment data. The measurement model confirms that our data set has appropriate convergent and discriminant validity. The results of testing the structural model indicate that control transparency significantly enhances the trust and significantly reduces the risk perception of online banking users. The result also suggested that the outcome feedback significantly enhances the trust of users. We have found that the reduced risk and the increased trust level significantly improve the level of service satisfaction. The increased satisfaction finally leads to the increased loyalty and willingness to pay for the financial services.

• The Journal of Korean society of community based occupational therapy
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.23-34
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• 2017

Objective : The purpose of this study was to investigate establishment status of the mandatory courses designated by Ministry of Health & Welfare for qualification of sensory developmental rehabilitation specialist(SDRS), within curriculum of baccalaureate occupational therapy(BOT) programs in Korea Methods : This is a narrative study to investigate and analyze certain courses established in curriculums of all 4-years occupational therapy(OT) programs, which is 32 schools. Results : 1) The shared mandatory subject, 'Understanding Children with Disabilities(UDC)', has been established at 9 schools. For the branch mandatory subjects, 'Neuroscience(NS) or Neuroanatomy' has been established at all 32 schools, 'Sensory Processing Dysfunctions and Intervention(SPDI)' or 'Sensory Integration' has been established at 31 schools, and each of 'Assessment & Evaluation for Children(AEC)' and 'Practicum of Sensory Rehabilitation(PSR)' has been established 7 schools for same. 2) For the mandatory courses, all 32 schools were offering designated- and alternative courses of NS, SPDI, AEC, but there was no change in the number of schools offering the practicum course since there was no case of alterative for it. 3) In terms of general provision score, there were 4 schools for score 7, 4 schools for score 6, 2 schools for score 5, 1 schools for score 4, 2 schools for score 3, and 19 schools for score 2. Conclusion : Establishment of the mandatory courses required to the qualification of SDRS among the BOT programs in nation were investigated. Including alternative courses, all the branch mandatory courses except practicum course are established in all the 32 schools. However, the shared mandatory subject, UDC and the practicum subject were established in only few schools. In the provision level evaluation of BOT programs for the SDRS qualification, it is shown that many schools has been started the provision already but still many schools' curriculum did not reflect the willingness and accuracy well. For the schools planning successful accreditation in near future, it is recommended that they prioritize the establishment of the shared mandatory course and the practicum course since these two subjects are recognized as critical factors for that. In addition, it is also needed of comparative inspections for course title and syllabi based on the guideline provided by Ministry of Health & Welfare.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.10-19
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• 2020

The park program can adeptly cope with the diversification of leisure needs in accordance with the changing times. The program also makes the relationship between the users and the park itself closer. For this reason, the Seoul Metropolitan Government has operated a variety of programs, beginning with the Botanical Class Program at the Namsan Outdoor Botanical Garden in 1997. The government additionally began to organize park programs by establishing the Park and Leisure Department and three Park Greenery Offices. However, research on park programs is mainly focused on park users. Therefore, this study intends to reveal the structure of the programs by studying the program operation. The specific purposes of this study are '1. Review the institutional characteristics that underlie the operation of the Park Program in Seoul by examining the relevant laws, the operation organizations, and the personnel composition, 2. Analyze the operation methods, such as procurement and the execution of the program, operation costs, and public-private cooperation methods, etc. 3. Analyze the composition and contents of the program from 2015 to 2017, and process and identify the relationship between the structure of the program operation and the program itself.' Summarizing the results obtained from the study, as far as the structure of the first program operation, the support laws were not systematic, but the operating organization was working to establish a system. The second characteristic of the operation is that most of the budget was funded by local governments, but the level of citizen involvement was low. Third, when we looked at the characteristics of the program, the number of programs increased, but they were focused on a specific theme and few programs actively used the park facilities. Based on the results, three tasks can be proposed. The first is that the 'Act on Parks and Green Spaces' should include the concepts and support for park programs. Second, there is a need to change from the ideas of the quantitative increase of programs to qualitative improvements. Lastly, it is necessary to reorganize the Green Seoul Bureau of the Seoul Metropolitan Government into a citizen-led and leisure-oriented organization to promote the park leisure culture. This study has significance, as it was conducted with a service provider, not a program user, unlike many previous park program-related studies. The results of this study will be able to contribute not only to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, but also to other local governments to suggest the direction of the management and the operation of the park for the consumer, and consequently, it will help prepare the long-term vision of parks as the closest leisure location for most citizens.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.158-175
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• 2005

Statement of problem. Every effort has been continually made to obtain objectivity in measuring the longevity of fixed restorations, such as by establishing unified judgement standard for deciding success and adopting statistical method that analyzes the data of successful and failed cases at the same time. In Korea, however desired level of development has not to be made in this field yet. Purpose. This study, adopting California Dental Association (CDA) quality evaluation system, established objective standard for deciding success, and inferred the longevity of fixed restorations and their failure analysis through adopting Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. Material and method. In order to assess the longevity of flxed restorations serviced in Korea and causes of failure, a total of 1109 individuals (aged 15-74, 716 women and 393 men loaded with 2551 unit fixed restorations, and 1934 abutments) who lived in Kyung-In Province were examined and the findings were as follows : Results. 1. Length of service of fixed restorations serviced in Korea was 6.86$\pm$0.15 yr (mean), 5.5 yr (median), and the rate of success was 65.82% in 5 year survival, and 21.15% in 10 year survival. 2. When there was patient's need for replacing old prosthetics, longevity of fixed restorations was 7.51$\pm$0.27 yr (mean), 7 yr (median), and the rate of success was 61.08% in 5 year survival, and 17.57% in 10 year survival. 3. Longevity of fixed restorations was longest in the over-sixty age group(9.21$\pm$0.66) and that of the teen age group(3.39$\pm$0.28) was shortest (p<0.05). 4. Longevity of fixed restorations of women (7.38$\pm$0.18 years) was longer than that of men (6.00$\pm$0.26) (p<0.05). 5. As for the provider factor (such as unlicensed performers, university hospitals, and private clinic), there was no statistically significant difference in longevity of fixed restorations. 6. Defective margin (34.78%). periodontal disease (12.15%), periapical involvement (11.73%), was the most frequent causes of failure and poor esthetics group showed the longest life above all (p<0.05). Actual frequent causes of failure after removing old prosthetics were defective margin, periapical involvement, periodontal disease and uncemented restoration. In 75.67% of the cases, abutment state after removing old prosthetics was good enough for loading another prosthetics. 7. There was found to have statistically significant influence between longevity of single crown (6.35$\pm$0.20 yr) and that of 3 unit fixed restorations (7.60$\pm$0.30 y) (p<0.05). In each case the most frequent cause of failure was defective margin. 8. The number of cantilever pontic, pontic/abutment ratio, oral hygiene status were found to have no statistically significant influence on longevity of fixed restorations in all groups (p>0.05). 9. Longevity of fixed restorations made of non precious metal was longest (9.60$\pm$0.40 yr) semi precious and precious trailing behind(p<0.05). 10. Group function group (37.04%) and partial group function group (44.62%) were predominant in frequency but showed no correlation between them and among different types of occlusal plane and different types of occlusal surface (p>0.05). 11. Longevity of fixed restorations was longest in the centric interference group(9.35$\pm$0.62) (p<0.05) among different types of occlusal interference. Conclusion. We found that longevity of fixed restorations serviced in Korea is affected by age, gender and type of material, and that most frequent cause of failure is defective margin. In order to assess the accurate longevity of axed restorations, unified research design. overcoming inter-observer difference and establishing the objective research items are needed. Furthermore, it is thought that prospective approach through thorough study and regular follow-ups is needed just from the start of research. Nationwide detailed studies on length of service of fixed restorations manufactured in Korea are hoped to be conducted hereafter.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.163-177
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• 2024

Background: This study aims to examine changes in fraudulent claim counts and total reimbursements before and after enhancements in counterfeit claim controls and monitoring of provider claim patterns under the "Proactive self-audit pilot program of fraudulent claims." Methods: This study used the claims data and hospital information (July 2021-February 2022) of the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service. The data was collected from 1,129 hospitals assigned to the pilot program, selected from the providers who filed a claim for reimbursement for intravenous injections. Paired and independent t-tests, along with regression analysis, were utilized to analyze changing patterns and factors influencing claim behaviors. Results: This program led to a reduction in the number of fraudulent claims and the total amount of reimbursements across all levels of hospitals in the experimental groups (except for physicians below 40 years old). In the control group, general hospitals and hospitals demonstrated some significant decreases based on the duration since opening, while clinics showed significant reductions in specified subjects. Additionally, a notable increase was observed among male physicians over the age of 50 years. Overall, claims and reimbursements significantly declined after the intervention. Furthermore, a positive correlation was found between hospital opening duration and claim numbers, suggesting longer-established hospitals were more likely to file claims. Conclusion: The results indicate that the pilot program successfully encouraged providers to autonomously minimize fraudulent claims. Therefore, it is advised to extend further support, including promotional activities, training, seminars, and continuous monitoring, to nonparticipating hospitals to facilitate independent improvements in their claim practices.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.33-58
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• 2008

Previous research has presupposed that the evaluation of consumer who received any recovery after experiencing product failure should be better than the evaluation of consumer who did not receive any recovery. The major purposes of this article are to examine impacts of product defect failures rather than service failures, and to explore effects of recovery on postrecovery product attitudes. First, this article deals with the occurrence of severe and unsevere failure and corresponding service recovery toward tangible products rather than intangible services. Contrary to intangible services, purchase and usage are separable for tangible products. This difference makes it clear that executing an recovery strategy toward tangible products is not plausible right after consumers find out product failures. The consumers may think about backgrounds and causes for the unpleasant events during the time gap between product failure and recovery. The deliberation may dilutes positive effects of recovery efforts. The recovery strategies which are provided to consumers experiencing product failures can be classified into three types. A recovery strategy can be implemented to provide consumers with a new product replacing the old defective product, a complimentary product for free, a discount at the time of the failure incident, or a coupon that can be used on the next visit. This strategy is defined as "a rewarding effort." Meanwhile a product failure may arise in exchange for its benefit. Then the product provider can suggest a detail explanation that the defect is hard to escape since it relates highly to the specific advantage to the product. The strategy may be called as "a strengthening effort." Another possible strategy is to recover negative attitude toward own brand by giving prominence to the disadvantages of a competing brand rather than the advantages of its own brand. The strategy is reflected as "a weakening effort." This paper emphasizes that, in order to confirm its effectiveness, a recovery strategy should be compared to being nothing done in response to the product failure. So the three types of recovery efforts is discussed in comparison to the situation involving no recovery effort. The strengthening strategy is to claim high relatedness of the product failure with another advantage, and expects the two-sidedness to ease consumers' complaints. The weakening strategy is to emphasize non-aversiveness of product failure, even if consumers choose another competitive brand. The two strategies can be effective in restoring to the original state, by providing plausible motives to accept the condition of product failure or by informing consumers of non-responsibility in the failure case. However the two may be less effective strategies than the rewarding strategy, since it tries to take care of the rehabilitation needs of consumers. Especially, the relative effect between the strengthening effort and the weakening effort may differ in terms of the severity of the product failure. A consumer who realizes a highly severe failure is likely to attach importance to the property which caused the failure. This implies that the strengthening effort would be less effective under the condition of high product severity. Meanwhile, the failing property is not diagnostic information in the condition of low failure severity. Consumers would not pay attention to non-diagnostic information, and with which they are not likely to change their attitudes. This implies that the strengthening effort would be more effective under the condition of low product severity. A 2 (product failure severity: high or low) X 4 (recovery strategies: rewarding, strengthening, weakening, or doing nothing) between-subjects design was employed. The particular levels of product failure severity and the types of recovery strategies were determined after a series of expert interviews. The dependent variable was product attitude after the recovery effort was provided. Subjects were 284 consumers who had an experience of cosmetics. Subjects were first given a product failure scenario and were asked to rate the comprehensibility of the failure scenario, the probability of raising complaints against the failure, and the subjective severity of the failure. After a recovery scenario was presented, its comprehensibility and overall evaluation were measured. The subjects assigned to the condition of no recovery effort were exposed to a short news article on the cosmetic industry. Next, subjects answered filler questions: 42 items of the need for cognitive closure and 16 items of need-to-evaluate. In the succeeding page a subject's product attitude was measured on an five-item, six-point scale, and a subject's repurchase intention on an three-item, six-point scale. After demographic variables of age and sex were asked, ten items of the subject's objective knowledge was checked. The results showed that the subjects formed more favorable evaluations after receiving rewarding efforts than after receiving either strengthening or weakening efforts. This is consistent with Hoffman, Kelley, and Rotalsky (1995) in that a tangible service recovery could be more effective that intangible efforts. Strengthening and weakening efforts also were effective compared to no recovery effort. So we found that generally any recovery increased products attitudes. The results hint us that a recovery strategy such as strengthening or weakening efforts, although it does not contain a specific reward, may have an effect on consumers experiencing severe unsatisfaction and strong complaint. Meanwhile, strengthening and weakening efforts were not expected to increase product attitudes under the condition of low severity of product failure. We can conclude that only a physical recovery effort may be recognized favorably as a firm's willingness to recover its fault by consumers experiencing low involvements. Results of the present experiment are explained in terms of the attribution theory. This article has a limitation that it utilized fictitious scenarios. Future research deserves to test a realistic effect of recovery for actual consumers. Recovery involves a direct, firsthand experience of ex-users. Recovery does not apply to non-users. The experience of receiving recovery efforts can be relatively more salient and accessible for the ex-users than for non-users. A recovery effort might be more likely to improve product attitude for the ex-users than for non-users. Also the present experiment did not include consumers who did not have an experience of the products and who did not perceive the occurrence of product failure. For the non-users and the ignorant consumers, the recovery efforts might lead to decreased product attitude and purchase intention. This is because the recovery trials may give an opportunity for them to notice the product failure.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.83-110
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• 2010

Dissatisfied customers may express their dissatisfaction behaviorally. These behavioral responses may impact the firms' profitability. How do we model the impact of self regulatory orientation on emotions and subsequent customer behaviors? Obviously, the positive and negative emotions experienced in these situations will influence the overall degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the service(Zeelenberg and Pieters 1999). Most likely, these specific emotions will also partly determine the subsequent behavior in relation to the service and service provider, such as the likelihood of complaining, the degree to which customers will switch or repurchase, and the extent of word of mouth communication they will engage in(Zeelenberg and Pieters 2004). This study investigates the antecedents, consequences of negative consumption emotion and the moderate effect of attribution processing in an integrated model(self regulatory mode → specific emotions → behavioral responses). We focused on the fact that regret and disappointment have effects on consumer behavior. Especially, There are essentially two approaches in this research: the valence based approach and the specific emotions approach. The authors indicate theoretically and show empirically that it matters to distinguish these approaches in services research. and The present studies examined the influence of two regulatory mode concerns(Locomotion orientation and Assessment orientation) with making comparisons on experiencing post decisional regret and disappointment(Pierro, Kruglanski, and Higgins 2006; Pierro et al. 2008). When contemplating a decision with a negative outcome, it was predicted that high (vs low) locomotion would induce more disappointment than regret, whereas high (vs low) assessment would induce more regret than disappointment. The validity of the measurement scales was also confirmed by evaluations provided by the participating respondents and an independent advisory panel; samples provided recommendations throughout the primary, exploratory phases of the study. The resulting goodness of fit statistics were RMR or RMSEA of 0.05, GFI and AGFI greater than 0.9, and a chi-square with a 175.11. The indicators of the each constructs were very good measures of variables and had high convergent validity as evidenced by the reliability with a more than 0.9. Some items were deleted leaving those that reflected the cognitive dimension of importance rather than the dimension. The indicators were very good measures and had convergent validity as evidenced by the reliability of 0.9. These results for all constructs indicate the measurement fits the sample data well and is adequate for use. The scale for each factor was set by fixing the factor loading to one of its indicator variables and then applying the maximum likelihood estimation method. The results of the analysis showed that directions of the effects in the model are ultimately supported by the theory underpinning the causal linkages of the model. This research proposed 6 hypotheses on 6 latent variables and tested through structural equation modeling. 6 alternative measurements were compared through statistical significance test of the paths of research model and the overall fitting level of structural equation model and the result was successful. Also, Locomotion orientation more positively influences disappointment when internal attribution is high than low and Assessment orientation more positively influences regret when external attribution is high than low. In sum, The results of our studies suggest that assessment and locomotion concerns, both as chronic individual predispositions and as situationally induced states, influence the amount of people's experienced regret and disappointment. These findings contribute to our understanding of regulatory mode, regret, and disappointment. In previous studies of regulatory mode, relatively little attention has been paid to the post actional evaluative phase of self regulation. The present findings indicate that assessment concerns and locomotion concerns are clearly distinct in this phase, with individuals higher in assessment delving more into possible alternatives to past actions and individuals higher in locomotion engaging less in such reflective thought. What this suggests is that, separate from decreasing the amount of counterfactual thinking per se, individuals with locomotion concerns want to move on, to get on with it. Regret is about the past and not the future. Thus, individuals with locomotion concerns are less likely to experience regret. The results supported our predictions. We discuss the implications of these findings for the nature of regret and disappointment from the perspective of their relation to regulatory mode. Also, self regulatory mode and the specific emotions(disappointment and regret) were assessed and their influence on customers' behavioral responses(inaction, word of mouth) was examined, using a sample of 275 customers. It was found that emotions have a direct impact on behavior over and above the effects of negative emotions and customer behavior. Hence, We argue against incorporating emotions such as regret and disappointment into a specific response measure and in favor of a specific emotions approach on self regulation. Implications for services marketing practice and theory are discussed.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.79-90
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• 2014

User authentication based on ID and PW has been widely used. As the Internet has become a growing part of people' lives, input times of ID/PW have been increased for a variety of services. People have already learned enough to perform the authentication procedure and have entered ID/PW while ones are unconscious. This is referred to as the adaptive unconscious, a set of mental processes incoming information and producing judgements and behaviors without our conscious awareness and within a second. Most people have joined up for various websites with a small number of IDs/PWs, because they relied on their memory for managing IDs/PWs. Human memory decays with the passing of time and knowledges in human memory tend to interfere with each other. For that reason, there is the potential for people to enter an invalid ID/PW. Therefore, these characteristics above mentioned regarding of user authentication with ID/PW can lead to human vulnerabilities: people use a few PWs for various websites, manage IDs/PWs depending on their memory, and enter ID/PW unconsciously. Based on the vulnerability of human factors, a variety of information leakage attacks such as phishing and pharming attacks have been increasing exponentially. In the past, information leakage attacks exploited vulnerabilities of hardware, operating system, software and so on. However, most of current attacks tend to exploit the vulnerabilities of the human factors. These attacks based on the vulnerability of the human factor are called social-engineering attacks. Recently, malicious social-engineering technique such as phishing and pharming attacks is one of the biggest security problems. Phishing is an attack of attempting to obtain valuable information such as ID/PW and pharming is an attack intended to steal personal data by redirecting a website's traffic to a fraudulent copy of a legitimate website. Screens of fraudulent copies used for both phishing and pharming attacks are almost identical to those of legitimate websites, and even the pharming can include the deceptive URL address. Therefore, without the supports of prevention and detection techniques such as vaccines and reputation system, it is difficult for users to determine intuitively whether the site is the phishing and pharming sites or legitimate site. The previous researches in terms of phishing and pharming attacks have mainly studied on technical solutions. In this paper, we focus on human behaviour when users are confronted by phishing and pharming attacks without knowing them. We conducted an attack experiment in order to find out how many IDs/PWs are leaked from pharming and phishing attack. We firstly configured the experimental settings in the same condition of phishing and pharming attacks and build a phishing site for the experiment. We then recruited 64 voluntary participants and asked them to log in our experimental site. For each participant, we conducted a questionnaire survey with regard to the experiment. Through the attack experiment and survey, we observed whether their password are leaked out when logging in the experimental phishing site, and how many different passwords are leaked among the total number of passwords of each participant. Consequently, we found out that most participants unconsciously logged in the site and the ID/PW management dependent on human memory caused the leakage of multiple passwords. The user should actively utilize repudiation systems and the service provider with online site should support prevention techniques that the user can intuitively determined whether the site is phishing.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.43-61
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• 2011

In this research, we propose a dynamic decision making using social context based on ontology. Dynamic adaptation is adopted for the high qualified decision making, which is defined as creation of proper information using contexts depending on decision maker's state of affairs in ubiquitous computing environment. Thereby, the context for the dynamic adaptation is classified as a static, dynamic and social context. Static context contains personal explicit information like demographic data. Dynamic context like weather or traffic information is provided by external information service provider. Finally, social context implies much more implicit knowledge such as social relationship than the other two-type context, but it is not easy to extract any implied tacit knowledge as well as generalized rules from the information. So, it was not easy for the social context to apply into dynamic adaptation. In this light, we tried the social context into the dynamic adaptation to generate context-appropriate personalized information. It is necessary to build modeling methodology to adopt dynamic adaptation using the context. The proposed context modeling used ontology and cases which are best to represent tacit and unstructured knowledge such as social context. Case-based reasoning and constraint satisfaction problem is applied into the dynamic decision making system for the dynamic adaption. Case-based reasoning is used case to represent the context including social, dynamic and static and to extract personalized knowledge from the personalized case-base. Constraint satisfaction problem is used when the selected case through the case-based reasoning needs dynamic adaptation, since it is usual to adapt the selected case because context can be changed timely according to environment status. The case-base reasoning adopts problem context for effective representation of static, dynamic and social context, which use a case structure with index and solution and problem ontology of decision maker. The case is stored in case-base as a repository of a decision maker's personal experience and knowledge. The constraint satisfaction problem use solution ontology which is extracted from collective intelligence which is generalized from solutions of decision makers. The solution ontology is retrieved to find proper solution depending on the decision maker's context when it is necessary. At the same time, dynamic adaptation is applied to adapt the selected case using solution ontology. The decision making process is comprised of following steps. First, whenever the system aware new context, the system converses the context into problem context ontology with case structure. Any context is defined by a case with a formal knowledge representation structure. Thereby, social context as implicit knowledge is also represented a formal form like a case. In addition, for the context modeling, ontology is also adopted. Second, we select a proper case as a decision making solution from decision maker's personal case-base. We convince that the selected case should be the best case depending on context related to decision maker's current status as well as decision maker's requirements. However, it is possible to change the environment and context around the decision maker and it is necessary to adapt the selected case. Third, if the selected case is not available or the decision maker doesn't satisfy according to the newly arrived context, then constraint satisfaction problem and solution ontology is applied to derive new solution for the decision maker. The constraint satisfaction problem uses to the previously selected case to adopt and solution ontology. The verification of the proposed methodology is processed by searching a meeting place according to the decision maker's requirements and context, the extracted solution shows the satisfaction depending on meeting purpose.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.173-178
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• 2010

A privately held, third generation family owned company, Boom Technologies, Inc. (BTI), a provider of products and services to the electric utility, telecommunications and contractor markets, continues to make progress in exporting. Although export sales only equaled 5% of total revenue in 2008, BTI has an entire export division. Their export division's Managing Director reveals the trial and errors of a privately held company and their quest for success overseas. From its inception, BTI has always believed its greatest asset is its employees. When export sales struggled due to lack of strategy and direction, BTI hired a Managing Director for its export division. With leadership and guidance from BTI's president and from the Managing Director, they utilized the department's skills and knowledge. Structural changes were made to expand their market presence abroad and increase export sales. As a result, export sales increased four-fold, area managers in new countries were added and distribution networks were successfully cultivated. At times, revenue generation was difficult to determine due to the structure of the company. Therefore, in 1996, the export division was restructured as a limited liability company. This allowed the company to improve the tracking of revenue and expenses. Originally, 80% of BTI's export sales came from two countries; therefore, the initial approach to selling overseas was not reaching their anticipated goals of expanding their foreign market presence. However, changes were made and now the company manages the details of selling to over 80 countries. There were three major export expansion challenges noted by the Managing Director: 1. Product and Shipping - The major obstacle for BTI was product assembly. Originally, the majority of the product was assembled in the United States, which increased shipping and packaging costs. With so many parts specified in the order, many times the order would arrive with parts missing. The missing parts could equate to tens of thousands of dollars. Shipping these missing parts separately in another shipment also cost tens of thousands of dollar, plus a delivery delay time of six to eight weeks; all of which came out of the BTI's pockets. 2. Product Adaptation - Safety and product standards varied widely for each of the 80 countries to which BTI exported. Weights, special licenses, product specification requirements, measurement systems, and truck stability can all differ from country to country and can serve as a type of barrier to entry, making it difficult to adapt products accordingly. Technical and safety standards are barriers that serve as a type of protection for the local industry and can stand in the way of successfully pursuing foreign markets. 3. Marketing Challenges - The importance of distribution creates many challenges for BTI as they attempt to determine how each country prefers to operate with regard to their distribution systems. Some countries have competition from a small competitor that only produces one competing product; whereas BTI manufactures over 100 products. Marketing material is another concern for BTI as they attempt to push marketing costs to the distributors. Adapting the marketing material can be costly in terms of translation and cultural differences. In addition, the size of paper in the United States differs from those in some countries, causing many problems when attempting to copy the same layout and With distribution being one of several challenges for BTI, the company claims their distribution network is one of their competitive advantages, as the location and names of their distributors are not revealed. In addition, BTI rotates two offerings yearly: training to their distributors one year and then the next is a distributor's meeting. With a focus on product and shipping, product adaptation, and marketing challenges, the intricacies of selling overseas takes time and patience. Another competitive advantage noted is BTI's cradle to grave strategy, where they follow the product from sale to its final resting place, whether the truck is leased or purchased new or used. They also offer service and maintenance plans with a detailed cost analysis provided to the company prior to purchasing or leasing the product. Expanding abroad will always create challenges for a company. As the Managing Director stated, "If you don't have patience (in the export business), you better do something else." Knowing how to adapt quickly provides BTI with the skills necessary to adjust to the changing needs of each country and its own unique challenges, allowing them to remain competitive.