• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.37-45
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• 2012

The popularity of courier services in Korea has made it an essential part of the country's domestic logistics industry, bolstering the growth not only of the national economy, but also the quality of people's daily lives. An effective strategy for courier companies in Korea would be to provide high-quality services to their existing target markets with the goal of maximizing customer loyalty. This study investigates structural relationships between customer loyalty and service quality as a set of factors and between customer trust and customer satisfaction. These antecedent relationships will be used to understand the "performance formation model" through service quality. In this study, service quality, as a set of factors, is considered to be the independent variable, while customer satisfaction and customer trust are both treated as intervening variables. Finally, customer loyalty is the dependent variable. Following a review of the literature, this paper's proffered hypothesis will be investigated in terms of whether the independent and intervening variables significantly affect customer loyalty. A statistical analysis of the empirical research was carried out using both SPSS 18.0 and AMOS 18.0 The results of this study's empirical analysis show three conclusions. First, among the intervening variables (customer satisfaction and customer trust), customer satisfaction is significantly correlated with customer loyalty. Customer trust, however, was shown to have little or no relationship to customer loyalty. Second, the quality of service variable seems to influence customer satisfaction, customer trust, and customer loyalty. Third, with respect to the relationship of intervening variables, customer trust affects customer satisfaction. Thus, the companies that have a competitive advantage in Korea have successfully maximized customer loyalty for their existing customers. Courier companies will need to research and study customer needs. Therefore, this research suggests that effective courier service management can be better understood through the application of the service quality performance formation model, which can enhance the quality of service provided by domestic courier services. This research is limited to investigating qualitative variables, such as the service quality factors, customer satisfaction, and customer trust. It would be helpful for future research on courier services to consider quantitative variables, such as price and weight.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.61 no.3
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• pp.378-387
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• 2023

Petrochemical is an energy consuming industry that consumes about 30% of total industrial energy consumption and is a representative carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission source. Among them, the Naphtha Cracking Center (NCC), which produces ethylene, propylene, propane and mixed C4, consumes large amounts of energy and emits significant amounts of CO₂. For this reason, an integrated techno economic- environmental impact assessment aimed at reducing energy consumption and environmental impact factors is necessary to ensure efficiency in terms of economics and environment. This study aims to analyze the efficiency of the heat exchanger network used in the existing NCC base on the pinch analysis and select an improvement plan that can reduced energy consumption. In order to reduces the utility consumption in the process, an optimal heat exchanger network considering the high-temperature and low-temperature stream was derived, and the economic evaluation was conducted by considering the trade-off between the reduction in utility consumption and the increase in heat exchanger installation cost. In addition, an environmental impact assessment was conducted on the reduced CO₂ emission in consideration of the environmental aspect, and the economic environmental impact assessment used the payback period to recover the invested funds to come up with an energy saving plan that can be applied based on the actual process. As a result of considering the economic-environmental impact assessment, when the environmental impact assessment was not considered, it was 4.29 months, 3.21 months, and 3.39 months for each case, and when considering the environmental impact assessment, it was 4.24 months, 3.17 months, and 3.35 months for each case. These results appeared equally both when the environmental impact assessment was not include and when it was include. In addition, a sensitivity analysis was conducted for each case to determine how important factors affect the payback period. As a result of the sensitivity analysis, the cost of the heat exchanger was identified as a major factor influencing the overall cost.