Objectives: This study aimed to explore whether there are differences in smoking status between two regions of Wonju-City and Chuncheon-City, Gangwon State, and to determine whether the experience of smoking cessation programs in the region affects quit attempts. Methods: The study design was a cross-sectional study in which adults aged 19 and older living in two cities were surveyed using a pre-developed mobile app to investigate social capital for smoking cessation, and a total of 600 citizens were participated, including 310 in Wonju-City and 290 in Chuncheon-City. The statistical analysis was conducted using chi-square test and logistic regression analysis. Results: Wonju-City had a higher prevalence of current smoking than Chuncheon-City. Among smoking cessation programs operated by local public health centers, Wonju-City had a lower odds ratio for experience with smoking cessation education than Chuncheon-City (OR=0.52, 95% CI=0.33 to 0.81). When examining the effect of smoking cessation program experience on quit attempts, in Wonju-City, citizens who had completed smoking cessation education and used a smoking cessation clinic were more likely to attempt to quit than those who had not (OR=2.31 and OR=2.29, respectively). In Chuncheon-City, citizens who were aware of smoking cessation support services were 2.26 times more likely to attempt to quit smoking than those who were not, but statistical significance was not reached due to the small sample size. Conclusion: Therefore, healthcare organizations in both regions should develop more practical intervention strategies to increase smokers' quit attempts, reduce smoking rates in the community, and address regional disparities.
A smart phone has been widely spread around world and makes people enjoy online shopping in any time and any place. Recently it also changes the distribution environment. O2O (Online-to-Offline) service becomes new normal due to its convenience of ease shopping of product and services. O2O service market shows steady and steep growth, It is reported that, however, 80% of the businesses has been discontinued within the first year because of unstable business models, customer dissatisfaction and distrust of service. Therefore, it is very important research issue to find out influential factors promoting continuous usage intention of O2O service. Previous study shows that it only considers online characteristics and lack of analysis about offline characteristics and social impact factors. The purpose of this paper is to find out continuous usage intention factors of O2O services by literature review, case analysis, and empirical test. A comprehensive research model and related hypothesis are developed and tested by using a structural equation, Survey was carried out among users who have used O2O service including payment service for at least once. Finally 611 samples are selected out of total 813 surveys. The result shows that the model is theoretically proved and 12 out of 17 hypotheses are accepted. The contribution of this paper is that it provides a new theoretical research model about continuous usage intention factors as well as practical guidelines about promoting continuous usage and growth strategies of O2O service.
The study examines how the environmental factors of store influence service brand personality and repurchase intention in the service environment. The service industry has been experiencing the intensified competition with the industry's continuous growth and the influence from rapid technological advancement. Under the circumstances, it has become ever more important for the brand competitiveness to be distinctively recognized against competition. A brand needs to be distinguished and differentiated from competing companies because they are all engaged in the similar environment of the service industry. The differentiation of brand achievement has become increasingly important to highlight certain brand functions to include emotional, self-expressive, and symbolic functions since the importance of such functions has been further emphasized in promoting consumption activities. That is the recent role of brand personality that has been emphasized in the service industry. In other words, customers now freely and actively express their personalities or egos in consumption activities, taking an important role in construction of a brand asset. Hence, the study suggests that it is necessary to disperse the recognition and acknowledgement that the maintenance of the existing customers contributes more to boost repurchase intention when it is compared to the efforts to create new customers, particularly in the service industry. Meanwhile, the store itself can offer a unique environment that may influence the consumer's purchase decision. Consumers interact with store environments in the process of,virtually, all household purchase they make (Sarel 1981). Thus, store environments may encourage customers to purchase. The roles that store environments play are to provide informational cues to customers about the store and goods and communicate messages to stimulate consumers' emotions. The store environments differentiate the store from competing stores and build a unique service brand personality. However, the existing studies related to brand in the service industry mostly concentrated on the relationship between the quality of service and customer satisfaction, and they are mostly generalized while the connective studies focused on brand personality. Such approaches show limitations and are insufficient to investigate on the relationship between store environment and brand personality in the service industry. Accordingly, the study intends to identify the level of contribution to the establishment of brand personality made by the store's physical environments that influence on the specific brand characteristics depending on the type of service. The study also intends to identify what kind of relationships with brand personality exists with brand personality while being influenced by store environments. In addition, the study intends to make meaningful suggestions to better direct marketing efforts by identifying whether a brand personality makes a positive influence to induce an intention for repurchase. For this study, the service industry is classified into four categories based on to the characteristics of service: experimental-emotional service, emotional -credible service, credible-functional service, and functional-experimental service. The type of business with the most frequent customer contact is determined for each service type and the enterprise with the highest brand value in each service sector based on the report made by the Korea Management Association. They are designated as the representative of each category. The selected representatives are a fast-food store (experimental-emotional service), a cinema house (emotional-credible service), a bank (credible-functional service), and discount store (functional-experimental service). The survey was conducted for the four selected brands to represent each service category among consumers who are experienced users of the designated stores in Seoul Metropolitan City and Gyeonggi province via written questionnaires in order to verify the suggested assumptions in the study. In particular, the survey adopted 15 scales, which represent each characteristic factor, among the 42 unique characteristics developed by Jennifer Aaker(1997) to assess the brand personality of each service brand. SPSS for Windows Release 12.0 and LISREL were used in the analysis of data verification. The methodology of the structural equation model was used for the study and the pivotal findings are as follows. 1) The environmental factors ware classified as design factors, ambient factors, and social factors. Therefore, the validity of measurement scale of Baker et al. (1994) was proved. 2) The service brand personalities were subdivided as sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness, which makes the use of the brand personality scales by Jennifer Aaker(1997) appropriate in the service industry as well. 3) One-way ANOVA analysis on the scales of store environment and service brand personality showed that there exist statistically significant differences in each service category. For example, the social factors were highest in discount stores, while the ambient factors and design factors were highest in fast-food stores. The discount stores were highest in the sincerity and excitement, while the highest point for banks was in the competence and ruggedness, and the highest point for fast-food stores was in the sophistication, The consumers will make a different respond to the physical environment of stores and service brand personality that are inherent to the corresponding service interface. Hence, the customers will make a different decision-making when dealing with different service categories. In this aspect, the relationships of variables in the proposed hypothesis appear to work in a different way depending on the exposed service category. 4) The store environment factors influenced on service brand personalities differently by category of service. The factors of store's physical environment are transferred to a brand and were verified to strengthen service brand personalities. In particular, the level of influence on the service brand personality by physical environment differs depending on service category or dimension, which indicates that there is a need to apply a different style of management to a different service category or dimension. It signifies that there needs to be a brand strategy established in order to positively influence the relationship with consumers by utilizing an appropriate brand personality factor depending on different characteristics by service category or dimension. 5) The service brand personalities influenced on the repurchase intention. Especially, the largest influence was made in the sophistication dimension of service brand personality scale; the unique and characteristically appropriate arrangement of physical environment will make customers stay in the service environment for a long time and will lead to give a positive influence on the repurchase intention. 6) The store environment factors influenced on the repurchase intention. Particularly, the largest influence was made on the social factors of store environment. The most intriguing finding is that the service factor among all other environment factors gives the biggest influence to the repurchase intention in most of all service types except fast-food stores. Such result indicates that the customers pay attention to how much the employees try to provide a quality service when they make an evaluation on the service brand. At the same time, it also indicates that the personal factor is directly transmitted to the construction of brand personality. The employees' attitude and behavior are the determinants to establish a service brand personality in the process of enhancing service interface. Hence, there should be a reinforced search for a method to efficiently manage the service staff who has a direct contact with customers in order to make an affirmative improvement of the customers' brand evaluation at the service interface. The findings suggest several managerial implications. 1) Results from the empirical study indicated that store environment factors have a strong positive impact on a service brand personality. To increase customers' repurchase intention of a service brand, the management is required to effectively manage store environment factors and create a friendly brand personality based on the corresponding service environment. 2) Mangers and researchers must understand and recognize that the store environment elements are important marketing tools, and that brand personality influences on consumers' repurchase intention. Based on such result of the study, a service brand could be utilized as an efficient measure to achieve a differentiation by enforcing the elements that are most influential among all other store environments for each service category. Therefore, brand personality established involving various store environments will further reinforce the relationship with customers through the elevated brand identification of which utilization to induce repurchase decision can be used as an entry barrier. 3) The study identified the store environment as a component of service brand personality for the store's effective communication with consumers. For this, all communication channels should be maintained with consistency and an integrated marketing communication should be executed to efficiently approach to a larger number of customers. Mangers and researchers must find strategies for aligning decisions about store environment elements with the retailers' marketing and store personality objectives. All ambient, design, and social factors need to be orchestrated so that consumers can take an appropriate store personality. In this study, the induced results from the previous studies were extended to the service industry so as to identify the customers' decision making process that leads to repurchase intention and a result similar to those of the previous studies. The findings suggested several theoretical and managerial implications. However, the situation that only one service brand served as the subject of analysis for each service category, and the situation that correlations among store environment elements were not identified, as well as the problem of representation in selection of samples should be considered and supplemented in the future when further studies are conducted. In addition, various antecedents and consequences of brand personality must be looked at in the aspect of the service environment for further research.
Recently, sentiment analysis using open Internet data is actively performed for various purposes. As online Internet communication channels become popular, companies try to capture public sentiment of them from online open information sources. This research is conducted for the purpose of analyzing pulbic sentiment of Korean Top-10 companies using a multi-categorical sentiment lexicon. Whereas existing researches related to public sentiment measurement based on big data approach classify sentiment into dimensions, this research classifies public sentiment into multiple categories. Dimensional sentiment structure has been commonly applied in sentiment analysis of various applications, because it is academically proven, and has a clear advantage of capturing degree of sentiment and interrelation of each dimension. However, the dimensional structure is not effective when measuring public sentiment because human sentiment is too complex to be divided into few dimensions. In addition, special training is needed for ordinary people to express their feeling into dimensional structure. People do not divide their sentiment into dimensions, nor do they need psychological training when they feel. People would not express their feeling in the way of dimensional structure like positive/negative or active/passive; rather they express theirs in the way of categorical sentiment like sadness, rage, happiness and so on. That is, categorial approach of sentiment analysis is more natural than dimensional approach. Accordingly, this research suggests multi-categorical sentiment structure as an alternative way to measure social sentiment from the point of the public. Multi-categorical sentiment structure classifies sentiments following the way that ordinary people do although there are possibility to contain some subjectiveness. In this research, nine categories: 'Sadness', 'Anger', 'Happiness', 'Disgust', 'Surprise', 'Fear', 'Interest', 'Boredom' and 'Pain' are used as multi-categorical sentiment structure. To capture public sentiment of Korean Top-10 companies, Internet news data of the companies are collected over the past 25 months from a representative Korean portal site. Based on the sentiment words extracted from previous researches, we have created a sentiment lexicon, and analyzed the frequency of the words coming up within the news data. The frequency of each sentiment category was calculated as a ratio out of the total sentiment words to make ranks of distributions. Sentiment comparison among top-4 companies, which are 'Samsung', 'Hyundai', 'SK', and 'LG', were separately visualized. As a next step, the research tested hypothesis to prove the usefulness of the multi-categorical sentiment lexicon. It tested how effective categorial sentiment can be used as relative comparison index in cross sectional and time series analysis. To test the effectiveness of the sentiment lexicon as cross sectional comparison index, pair-wise t-test and Duncan test were conducted. Two pairs of companies, 'Samsung' and 'Hanjin', 'SK' and 'Hanjin' were chosen to compare whether each categorical sentiment is significantly different in pair-wise t-test. Since category 'Sadness' has the largest vocabularies, it is chosen to figure out whether the subgroups of the companies are significantly different in Duncan test. It is proved that five sentiment categories of Samsung and Hanjin and four sentiment categories of SK and Hanjin are different significantly. In category 'Sadness', it has been figured out that there were six subgroups that are significantly different. To test the effectiveness of the sentiment lexicon as time series comparison index, 'nut rage' incident of Hanjin is selected as an example case. Term frequency of sentiment words of the month when the incident happened and term frequency of the one month before the event are compared. Sentiment categories was redivided into positive/negative sentiment, and it is tried to figure out whether the event actually has some negative impact on public sentiment of the company. The difference in each category was visualized, moreover the variation of word list of sentiment 'Rage' was shown to be more concrete. As a result, there was huge before-and-after difference of sentiment that ordinary people feel to the company. Both hypotheses have turned out to be statistically significant, and therefore sentiment analysis in business area using multi-categorical sentiment lexicons has persuasive power. This research implies that categorical sentiment analysis can be used as an alternative method to supplement dimensional sentiment analysis when figuring out public sentiment in business environment.
With the growth of social networks, various forms of SNS have emerged. Based on various motivations for use such as interactivity, information exchange, and entertainment, SNS users are also on the fast-growing trend. Facebook is the main SNS channel, and companies have started using Facebook pages as a public relations channel. To this end, in the early stages of operation, companies began to secure a number of fans, and as a result, the number of corporate Facebook fans has recently increased to as many as millions. from a corporate perspective, Facebook is attracting attention because it makes it easier for you to meet the customers you want. Facebook provides an efficient advertising platform based on the numerous data it has. Advertising targeting can be conducted using their demographic characteristics, behavior, or contact information. It is optimized for advertisements that can expose information to a desired target, so that results can be obtained more effectively. it rethink and communicate corporate brand image to customers through contents. The study was conducted through Facebook advertising data, and could be of great help to business people working in the online advertising industry. For this reason, the independent variables used in the research were selected based on the characteristics of the content that the actual business is concerned with. Recently, the company's Facebook page operation goal is to go beyond securing the number of fan pages, branding to promote its brand, and further aiming to communicate with major customers. the main figures for this assessment are Facebook's 'OK', 'Attachment', 'Share', and 'Number of Click' which are the dependent variables of this study. in order to measure the outcome of the target, the consumer's response is set as a key measurable key performance indicator (KPI), and a strategy is set and executed to achieve this. Here, KPI uses Facebook's ad numbers 'reach', 'exposure', 'like', 'share', 'comment', 'clicks', and 'CPC' depending on the situation. in order to achieve the corresponding figures, the consideration of content production must be prior, and in this study, the independent variables were organized by dividing into three considerations for content production into three. The effects of content material, content structure, and message styles on Facebook's user behavior were analyzed using regression analysis. Content materials are related to the content's difficulty, company relevance, and daily involvement. According to existing research, it was very important how the content would attract users' interest. Content could be divided into informative content and interesting content. Informational content is content related to the brand, and information exchange with users is important. Interesting content is defined as posts that are not related to brands related to interesting movies or anecdotes. Based on this, this study started with the assumption that the difficulty, company relevance, and daily involvement have an effect on the dependent variable. In addition, previous studies have found that content types affect Facebook user activity. I think it depends on the combination of photos and text used in the content. Based on this study, the actual photos were used and the hashtag and independent variables were also examined. Finally, we focused on the advertising message. In the previous studies, the effect of advertising messages on users was different depending on whether they were narrative or non-narrative, and furthermore, the influence on message intimacy was different. In this study, we conducted research on the behavior that Facebook users' behavior would be different depending on the language and formality. For dependent variables, 'OK' and 'Full Click Count' are set by every user's action on the content. In this study, we defined each independent variable in the existing study literature and analyzed the effect on the dependent variable, and found that 'good' factors such as 'self association', 'actual use', and 'hidden' are important. Could. Material difficulties', 'actual participation' and 'large scale * difficulties'. In addition, variables such as 'Self Connect', 'Actual Engagement' and 'Sexual Sexual Attention' have been shown to have a significant impact on 'Full Click'. It is expected that through research results, it is possible to contribute to the operation and production strategy of company Facebook operators and content creators by presenting a content strategy optimized for the purpose of the content. In this study, we defined each independent variable in the existing research literature and analyzed its effect on the dependent variable, and we could see that factors on 'good' were significant such as 'self-association', 'reality use', 'concernal material difficulty', 'real-life involvement' and 'massive*difficulty'. In addition, variables such as 'self-connection', 'real-life involvement' and 'formative*attention' were shown to have significant effects for 'full-click'. Through the research results, it is expected that by presenting an optimized content strategy for content purposes, it can contribute to the operation and production strategy of corporate Facebook operators and content producers.
The scarcity is pervasive aspect of human life and is a fundamental precondition of economic behavior of consumers. Also, the effect of scarcity message is a power social influence principle used by marketers to increase the subjective desirability of products. Because valuable objects are often scare, consumers tend to infer the scarce objects are valuable. Marketers often do base promotional appeals on the principle of scarcity to increase the subjective desirability their products among consumers. Specially, advertisers and retailers often promote their products using restrictions. These restriction act to constraint consumers' ability th take advantage of the promotion and can assume several forms. For example, some promotions are advertised as limited time offers, while others limit the quantity that can be bought at the deal price by employing the statements such as 'limit one per consumer,' 'limit 5 per customer,' 'limited products for special commemoration celebration,' Some retailers use statements extensively. A recent weekly flyer by a prominent retailer limited purchase quantities on 50% of the specials advertised on front page. When consumers saw these phrase, they often infer value from the product that has limited availability or is promoted as being scarce. But, the past researchers explored a direct relationship between the purchase quantity and time limit on deal purchase intention. They also don't explored that all restriction message are not created equal. Namely, we thought that different restrictions signal deal value in different ways or different mechanism. Consumers appear to perceive that time limits are used to attract consumers to the brand, while quantity limits are necessary to reduce stockpiling. This suggests other possible differences across restrictions. For example, quantity limits could imply product quality (i.e., this product at this price is so good that purchases must be limited). In contrast, purchase preconditions force the consumer to spend a certain amount to qualify for the deal, which suggests that inferences about the absolute quality of the promoted item would decline from purchase limits (highest quality) to time limits to purchase preconditions (lowest quality). This might be expected to be particularly true for unfamiliar brands. However, a critical but elusive issue in scarcity message research is the impacts of a inferred motives on the promoted scarcity message. The past researchers not explored possibility of inferred motives on the scarcity message context. Despite various type to the quantity limits message, they didn't separated scarcity message among the quantity limits. Therefore, we apply a stricter definition of scarcity message(i.e. quantity limits) and consider scarcity message type(general scarcity message vs. special scarcity message), scarcity depth(high vs. low). The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the scarcity message on the consumer's purchase intension. Specifically, we investigate the effect of general versus special scarcity messages on the consumer's purchase intention using the level of the scarcity depth as moderators. In other words, we postulates that the scarcity message type and scarcity depth play an essential moderating role in the relationship between the inferred motives and purchase intention. In other worlds, different from the past studies, we examine the interplay between the perceived motives and scarcity type, and between the perceived motives and scarcity depth. Both of these constructs have been examined in isolation, but a key question is whether they interact to produce an effect in reaction to the scarcity message type or scarcity depth increase. The perceived motive Inference behind the scarcity message will have important impact on consumers' reactions to the degree of scarcity depth increase. In relation ti this general question, we investigate the following specific issues. First, does consumers' inferred motives weaken the positive relationship between the scarcity depth decrease and the consumers' purchase intention, and if so, how much does it attenuate this relationship? Second, we examine the interplay between the scarcity message type and the consumers' purchase intention in the context of the scarcity depth decrease. Third, we study whether scarcity message type and scarcity depth directly affect the consumers' purchase intention. For the answer of these questions, this research is composed of 2(intention inference: existence vs. nonexistence)
Today, the rapid advance of scientific technologies has brought about fundamental changes to the types and levels of terrorism while the war against the world more than one thousand small and big terrorists and crime organizations has already begun. A method highly likely to be employed by terrorist groups that are using 21st Century state of the art technology is cyber terrorism. In many instances, things that you could only imagine in reality could be made possible in the cyber space. An easy example would be to randomly alter a letter in the blood type of a terrorism subject in the health care data system, which could inflict harm to subjects and impact the overturning of the opponent's system or regime. The CIH Virus Crisis which occurred on April 26, 1999 had significant implications in various aspects. A virus program made of just a few lines by Taiwanese college students without any specific objective ended up spreading widely throughout the Internet, causing damage to 30,000 PCs in Korea and over 2 billion won in monetary damages in repairs and data recovery. Despite of such risks of cyber terrorism, a great number of Korean sites are employing loose security measures. In fact, there are many cases where a company with millions of subscribers has very slackened security systems. A nationwide preparation for cyber terrorism is called for. In this context, this research will analyze the current status of Korea's cyber security systems and its laws from a policy perspective, and move on to propose improvement strategies. This research suggests the following solutions. First, the National Cyber Security Management Act should be passed to have its effectiveness as the national cyber security management regulation. With the Act's establishment, a more efficient and proactive response to cyber security management will be made possible within a nationwide cyber security framework, and define its relationship with other related laws. The newly passed National Cyber Security Management Act will eliminate inefficiencies that are caused by functional redundancies dispersed across individual sectors in current legislation. Second, to ensure efficient nationwide cyber security management, national cyber security standards and models should be proposed; while at the same time a national cyber security management organizational structure should be established to implement national cyber security policies at each government-agencies and social-components. The National Cyber Security Center must serve as the comprehensive collection, analysis and processing point for national cyber crisis related information, oversee each government agency, and build collaborative relations with the private sector. Also, national and comprehensive response system in which both the private and public sectors participate should be set up, for advance detection and prevention of cyber crisis risks and for a consolidated and timely response using national resources in times of crisis.
Because of differences in thoughts and ideology, our country, Korea has been deprived of national unity for some thirty years of time and tide. To achieve peaceful unification, the cultivation of national strength is of paramount importance. This national strength is also essential if Korea is to take rightful place in the international societies and to have the confidence of these societies. However, national strength can never be achieved in a short time. The fundamental elements in economic development that are directly conducive to the cultivation of national strength can be said to lie in -a stable political system, -exertion of powerful leadership, -cultivation of a spirit of diligence, self-help and cooperation, -modernization of human brain power, and -establishment of a scientific and well planned economic policy and strong enforcement of this policy. Our country, Korea, has attained brilliant economic development in the past 15 years under the strong leadership of president Park Chung Hee. However, there are still many problems to be solved. A few of them are: -housing and home problems, -increasing demand for employment, -increasing demand for staple food and -the need to improve international balance of payment. Solution of the above mentioned problems requires step by step scientific development of each sector and region of our contry. As a spearhead project in regional development, the Saemaul Campaign or new village movement can be cited. The campaign is now spreading throughout the country like a grass fire. However, such campaigns need considerable encouragement and support and the means for the desired development must be provided if the regional and sectoral development program is to sucdceed. The construction of large multipurpose dams in major river basin plays significant role in all aspects of national, regional and sectoral development. It ensures that the water resource, for which there is no substitute, is retained and utilized for irrigation of agricultural areas, production of power for industry, provision of water for domestic and industrial uses and control of river water. Water is the very essence of life and we must conserve and utilize what we have for the betterment of our peoples and their heir. The regional and social impact of construction of a large dam is enormous. It is intended to, and does, dras tically improve the "without-project" socio-economic conditions. A good example of this is the Soyanggang multipurpose dam. This project will significantly contribute to our national strength by utilizing the stored water for the benefit of human life and relief of flood and drought damages. Annual average precipitation in Korea is 1160mm, a comparatively abundant amount. The catchment areas of the Han River, Keum River, and Youngsan River are
The anthropomorphism of brands, defined as seeing human beings in brands (Puzakova, Kwak, and Rosereto, 2008) is the focus of this study. Specifically, the research objective is to understand the ways in which brands are rendered humanlike. By analyzing consumer readings of stories found on food product packages we intend to show how marketers and consumers humanize a spectrum of brands and create meanings. Our research question considers the possibility that a single brand may host multiple or single meanings, associations, and personalities for different consumers. We start by highlighting the theoretical and practical significance of our research, explain why we turn our attention to packages as vehicles of brand meaning transfer, then describe our qualitative methodology, discuss findings, and conclude with a discussion of managerial implications and directions for future studies. The study was designed to directly expose consumers to potential vehicles of brand meaning transfer and then engage these consumers in free verbal reflections on their perceived meanings. Specifically, we asked participants to read non-nutritional stories on selected branded food packages, in order to elicit data about received meanings. Packaging has yet to receive due attention in consumer research (Hine, 1995). Until now, attention has focused solely on its utilitarian function and has generated a body of research that has explored the impact of nutritional information and claims on consumer perceptions of products (e.g., Loureiro, McCluskey and Mittelhammer, 2002; Mazis and Raymond, 1997; Nayga, Lipinski and Savur, 1998; Wansik, 2003). An exception is a recent study that turns its attention to non-nutritional packaging narratives and treats them as cultural productions and vehicles for mythologizing the brand (Kniazeva and Belk, 2007). The next step in this stream of research is to explore how such mythologizing activity affects brand personality perception and how these perceptions relate to consumers. These are the questions that our study aimed to address. We used in-depth interviews to help overcome the limitations of quantitative studies. Our convenience sample was formed with the objective of providing demographic and psychographic diversity in order to elicit variations in consumer reflections to food packaging stories. Our informants represent middle-class residents of the US and do not exhibit extreme alternative lifestyles described by Thompson as "cultural creatives" (2004). Nine people were individually interviewed on their food consumption preferences and behavior. Participants were asked to have a look at the twelve displayed food product packages and read all the textual information on the package, after which we continued with questions that focused on the consumer interpretations of the reading material (Scott and Batra, 2003). On average, each participant reflected on 4-5 packages. Our in-depth interviews lasted one to one and a half hours each. The interviews were tape recorded and transcribed, providing 140 pages of text. The products came from local grocery stores on the West Coast of the US and represented a basic range of food product categories, including snacks, canned foods, cereals, baby foods, and tea. The data were analyzed using procedures for developing grounded theory delineated by Strauss and Corbin (1998). As a result, our study does not support the notion of one brand/one personality as assumed by prior work. Thus, we reveal multiple brand personalities peacefully cohabiting in the same brand as seen by different consumers, despite marketer attempts to create more singular brand personalities. We extend Fournier's (1998) proposition, that one's life projects shape the intensity and nature of brand relationships. We find that these life projects also affect perceived brand personifications and meanings. While Fournier provides a conceptual framework that links together consumers’ life themes (Mick and Buhl, 1992) and relational roles assigned to anthropomorphized brands, we find that consumer life projects mold both the ways in which brands are rendered humanlike and the ways in which brands connect to consumers' existential concerns. We find two modes through which brands are anthropomorphized by our participants. First, brand personalities are created by seeing them through perceived demographic, psychographic, and social characteristics that are to some degree shared by consumers. Second, brands in our study further relate to consumers' existential concerns by either being blended with consumer personalities in order to connect to them (the brand as a friend, a family member, a next door neighbor) or by distancing themselves from the brand personalities and estranging them (the brand as a used car salesman, a "bunch of executives.") By focusing on food product packages, we illuminate a very specific, widely-used, but little-researched vehicle of marketing communication: brand storytelling. Recent work that has approached packages as mythmakers, finds it increasingly challenging for marketers to produce textual stories that link the personalities of products to the personalities of those consuming them, and suggests that "a multiplicity of building material for creating desired consumer myths is what a postmodern consumer arguably needs" (Kniazeva and Belk, 2007). Used as vehicles for storytelling, food packages can exploit both rational and emotional approaches, offering consumers either a "lecture" or "drama" (Randazzo, 2006), myths (Kniazeva and Belk, 2007; Holt, 2004; Thompson, 2004), or meanings (McCracken, 2005) as necessary building blocks for anthropomorphizing their brands. The craft of giving birth to brand personalities is in the hands of writers/marketers and in the minds of readers/consumers who individually and sometimes idiosyncratically put a meaningful human face on a brand.
According to the 2013 construction market outlook report, the liquidation of construction companies is expected to continue due to the ongoing residential construction recession. Bankruptcies of construction companies have a greater social impact compared to other industries. However, due to the different nature of the capital structure and debt-to-equity ratio, it is more difficult to forecast construction companies' bankruptcies than that of companies in other industries. The construction industry operates on greater leverage, with high debt-to-equity ratios, and project cash flow focused on the second half. The economic cycle greatly influences construction companies. Therefore, downturns tend to rapidly increase the bankruptcy rates of construction companies. High leverage, coupled with increased bankruptcy rates, could lead to greater burdens on banks providing loans to construction companies. Nevertheless, the bankruptcy prediction model concentrated mainly on financial institutions, with rare construction-specific studies. The bankruptcy prediction model based on corporate finance data has been studied for some time in various ways. However, the model is intended for all companies in general, and it may not be appropriate for forecasting bankruptcies of construction companies, who typically have high liquidity risks. The construction industry is capital-intensive, operates on long timelines with large-scale investment projects, and has comparatively longer payback periods than in other industries. With its unique capital structure, it can be difficult to apply a model used to judge the financial risk of companies in general to those in the construction industry. Diverse studies of bankruptcy forecasting models based on a company's financial statements have been conducted for many years. The subjects of the model, however, were general firms, and the models may not be proper for accurately forecasting companies with disproportionately large liquidity risks, such as construction companies. The construction industry is capital-intensive, requiring significant investments in long-term projects, therefore to realize returns from the investment. The unique capital structure means that the same criteria used for other industries cannot be applied to effectively evaluate financial risk for construction firms. Altman Z-score was first published in 1968, and is commonly used as a bankruptcy forecasting model. It forecasts the likelihood of a company going bankrupt by using a simple formula, classifying the results into three categories, and evaluating the corporate status as dangerous, moderate, or safe. When a company falls into the "dangerous" category, it has a high likelihood of bankruptcy within two years, while those in the "safe" category have a low likelihood of bankruptcy. For companies in the "moderate" category, it is difficult to forecast the risk. Many of the construction firm cases in this study fell in the "moderate" category, which made it difficult to forecast their risk. Along with the development of machine learning using computers, recent studies of corporate bankruptcy forecasting have used this technology. Pattern recognition, a representative application area in machine learning, is applied to forecasting corporate bankruptcy, with patterns analyzed based on a company's financial information, and then judged as to whether the pattern belongs to the bankruptcy risk group or the safe group. The representative machine learning models previously used in bankruptcy forecasting are Artificial Neural Networks, Adaptive Boosting (AdaBoost) and, the Support Vector Machine (SVM). There are also many hybrid studies combining these models. Existing studies using the traditional Z-Score technique or bankruptcy prediction using machine learning focus on companies in non-specific industries. Therefore, the industry-specific characteristics of companies are not considered. In this paper, we confirm that adaptive boosting (AdaBoost) is the most appropriate forecasting model for construction companies by based on company size. We classified construction companies into three groups - large, medium, and small based on the company's capital. We analyzed the predictive ability of AdaBoost for each group of companies. The experimental results showed that AdaBoost has more predictive ability than the other models, especially for the group of large companies with capital of more than 50 billion won.