• Title/Summary/Keyword: Technology Acceptance Models

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Panax ginseng as an adjuvant treatment for Alzheimer's disease

  • Kim, Hyeon-Joong;Jung, Seok-Won;Kim, Seog-Young;Cho, Ik-Hyun;Kim, Hyoung-Chun;Rhim, Hyewhon;Kim, Manho;Nah, Seung-Yeol
    • Journal of Ginseng Research
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    • v.42 no.4
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    • pp.401-411
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    • 2018
  • Longevity in medicine can be defined as a long life without mental or physical deficits. This can be prevented by Alzheimer's disease (AD). Current conventional AD treatments only alleviate the symptoms without reversing AD progression. Recent studies demonstrated that Panax ginseng extract improves AD symptoms in patients with AD, and the two main components of ginseng might contribute to AD amelioration. Ginsenosides show various AD-related neuroprotective effects. Gintonin is a newly identified ginseng constituent that contains lysophosphatidic acids and attenuates AD-related brain neuropathies. Ginsenosides decrease amyloid ${\beta}$-protein ($A{\beta}$) formation by inhibiting ${\beta}$- and ${\gamma}$-secretase activity or by activating the nonamyloidogenic pathway, inhibit acetylcholinesterase activity and $A{\beta}$-induced neurotoxicity, and decrease $A{\beta}$-induced production of reactive oxygen species and neuro-inflammatory reactions. Oral administration of ginsenosides increases the expression levels of enzymes involved in acetylcholine synthesis in the brain and alleviates $A{\beta}$-induced cholinergic deficits in AD models. Similarly, gintonin inhibits $A{\beta}$-induced neurotoxicity and activates the nonamyloidogenic pathway to reduce $A{\beta}$ formation and to increase acetylcholine and choline acetyltransferase expression in the brain through lysophosphatidic acid receptors. Oral administration of gintonin attenuates brain amyloid plaque deposits, boosting hippocampal cholinergic systems and neurogenesis, thereby ameliorating learning and memory impairments. It also improves cognitive functions in patients with AD. Ginsenosides and gintonin attenuate AD-related neuropathology through multiple routes. This review focuses research demonstrating that ginseng constituents could be a candidate as an adjuvant for AD treatment. However, clinical investigations including efficacy and tolerability analyses may be necessary for the clinical acceptance of ginseng components in combination with conventional AD drugs.

Development and Validation of Virtual Training Content Satisfaction Measurement Tool (가상훈련 콘텐츠 만족도 측정도구 개발 및 타당화)

  • Miseok Yang;Woocheol Kim;Ohyoung Kwon
    • Journal of Practical Engineering Education
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    • v.15 no.1
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    • pp.1-11
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    • 2023
  • The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a tool that measures the satisfaction of virtual training learners' use of virtual training content. To this end, 491 copies of the basic questions derived from the satisfaction questions used by the K University Online Lifelong Education Center were used for the final analysis by conducting an online survey of learners who accessed STEP, the K University Online Lifelong Education Center portal. The 491 copies of data finally used were analyzed by methods such as basic question analysis, exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis. First, in the basic question analysis, there were no questions that exceeded the acceptance criteria of an average of 4 points or more, skewness ±2, and kurtosis ±4. Second, the correlation coefficient for each sub-factor of virtual training content satisfaction derived after exploratory factor analysis was good as r=.682 to .822 (p<.01). The reliability coefficient for each sub-factor is content .849, content utilization .922, System and Operations Support .841, Intention to Continue Utilization .920, the overall reliability is. It was very high at .956 Fifth, as a result of confirmatory factor analysis, the compositional conceptual diagram is. It was .842 to .926, higher than the recommended standard of .7, and the average variance extraction degree. It appears to be .640 to .796, higher than the recommended standard of .5, which can be seen as representative of each constituent concept. As a result of verifying the validity of virtual training learners' content satisfaction recruitment, four factor models were derived: content substance, content utilization, system and operation support, and intention to continue use. This study is meaningful in that it empirically developed a tool to measure content satisfaction of virtual training learners and provided a reference frame and criteria.

A Study on the Marketplace Models for Korean Animation Content Foreign Sales (국산 애니메이션 콘텐츠 해외 판매를 위한 마켓플레이스 모델 연구)

  • Han, Sang-Gyun
    • Cartoon and Animation Studies
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    • s.44
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    • pp.333-361
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    • 2016
  • In general, content business companies include animation industry can have benefits, which they have higher incomes when they obtain wider markets. Therefore, they pursue to have diverse windows for content distribution or to reach the foreign markets for dealing their content products with potential customers. It have the greatest value. They can re-invest the incomes to produce their new products, and they can enhance the international competitiveness of their next products. As the results, the companies can have more incomes and wider markets in next business, and it will be the effectiveness of the good cycle of the animation industry. Animation industry has being undergone of its structure changes, more economical chances and viewers' attitudes changes through the all over the industry because of the acceptance of new digital technology. To response the changes or have the new chances from the changes, they should to review the existing system and the law concerned with the animation business as well as having the diverse new plans for supporting the industry like a construction of the online marketplace of Korean animation. It would make the Korean animation companies to meet foreign customers easily by making lower the entrance barrier of the foreign markets. Current Korean government needs to estimate the value of the Korean animation accurately and objectively by concerning its surroundings to support efficiently. However, it is very difficult to estimate the value of the content rightly because of its' intangible and subjective matter. For this, they should analyze the all the data of the information of the Korean animation content by accumulate, open to the public and manage. So if the government makes online marketplace for the Korean animation, which all the Korean animation companies get in, it would be a solution of estimating the value of the Korean animation rightly. In addition, it will be used as the role of archive of the government to lead the industry successfully. As a point of the small size of the Korean animation companies, they are government dependable because of its low budget, so they strongly expect the government to do the right role as the unique knowledge distributor. Therefore, the Korean animation online marketplace would make not only big companies, but also small companies to have the chances to increase the value of their content in the global markets by themselves without economic burdens.

The influence of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of experience store on satisfaction and loyalty (체험매장의 지각된 용이성과 유용성이 만족과 충성도에 미치는 영향)

  • Lee, Ji-Hyun
    • Journal of Distribution Science
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    • v.9 no.3
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    • pp.5-14
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    • 2011
  • One of the new roles of modern retail stores is to supply consumers with a memorable experience. In Korea, enhancing a store's environment so that customers remember a unique shopping experience is recognized as a sound strategy for strengthening the store's competitiveness. Motivated by this incentive, awareness of the experience-store concept is starting to increase in various categories of the retail industry. However, many experience stores, except in a few cases, have yet to derive a significant profit, explaining why Korean consumers are somewhat unfamiliar with, yet fascinated by, the experience stores that now exist in the country. Consumer satisfaction directly, and indirectly, affects a company's future profit and potential financial gain; customer satisfaction also affects loyalty. Therefore, knowing the significant factors that increase satisfaction and loyalty is essential for any company, in any field, to be able to effectively differentiate itself from the competition. Intrigued by increased competition opportunities, most Korean companies have adopted experience-store marketing strategies. When establishing the most effective processes for increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage of a new concept, companies should consider certain factors that influence consumers' ability to accept new concepts and ideas. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is a theory that models how people accept new concepts. TAM proposes the following two factors that influence a person's decisions about how, and when, he or she will use a new product: "perceived usefulness" and "perceived ease of use." Much of the existing research has suggested that a person's character also affects the process for accepting new ideas. Such personal character attributes as individual preferences, self-confidence, and a person's values, traits, and/or skills affect the process for willingly consenting to try something new. It will be meaningful to establish how the TAM theory's components, as well as personal character, affect individuals accepting the experience-store concept. To that end, as it pertains to an experience store, the first goal of the study is to examine the influence of innovative factors (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) on satisfaction and loyalty. The second objective is to define the moderate effect of consumers' personal characteristics on the model. The proposed model was tested on 149 respondents who were engaged in leisure sports activities and bought sports outdoor garments and equipment. According to the study's findings, the satisfaction and loyalty of an experience store can be explained by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, with the study's results demonstrating the stronger of the two factors being "perceived ease of use." The study failed to explain the effects of a person's character on the model. In conclusion, when the companies that operate the experience stores execute their marketing and promotion strategies, they should stress the stores' "ease of use" product components. Additionally, it can be extrapolated from the study data that since the experience-store idea is still relatively unfamiliar to Korean consumers, most customers are not yet able to evaluate, nor take a position regarding, their respective attitudes toward experience stores.

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Understanding User Motivations and Behavioral Process in Creating Video UGC: Focus on Theory of Implementation Intentions (Video UGC 제작 동기와 행위 과정에 관한 이해: 구현의도이론 (Theory of Implementation Intentions)의 적용을 중심으로)

  • Kim, Hyung-Jin;Song, Se-Min;Lee, Ho-Geun
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.19 no.4
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    • pp.125-148
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    • 2009
  • UGC(User Generated Contents) is emerging as the center of e-business in the web 2.0 era. The trend reflects changing roles of users in production and consumption of contents on websites and helps us to understand new strategies of websites such as web portals and social network websites. Nowadays, we consume contents created by other non-professional users for both utilitarian (e.g., knowledge) and hedonic values (e.g., fun). Also, contents produced by ourselves (e.g., photo, video) are posted on websites so that our friends, family, and even the public can consume those contents. This means that non-professionals, who used to be passive audience in the past, are now creating contents and share their UGCs with others in the Web. Accessible media, tools, and applications have also reduced difficulty and complexity in the process of creating contents. Realizing that users create plenty of materials which are very interesting to other people, media companies (i.e., web portals and social networking websites) are adjusting their strategies and business models accordingly. Increased demand of UGC may lead to website visits which are the source of benefits from advertising. Therefore, they put more efforts into making their websites open platforms where UGCs can be created and shared among users without technical and methodological difficulties. Many websites have increasingly adopted new technologies such as RSS and openAPI. Some have even changed the structure of web pages so that UGC can be seen several times to more visitors. This mainstream of UGCs on websites indicates that acquiring more UGCs and supporting participating users have become important things to media companies. Although those companies need to understand why general users have shown increasing interest in creating and posting contents and what is important to them in the process of productions, few research results exist in this area to address these issues. Also, behavioral process in creating video UGCs has not been explored enough for the public to fully understand it. With a solid theoretical background (i.e., theory of implementation intentions), parts of our proposed research model mirror the process of user behaviors in creating video contents, which consist of intention to upload, intention to edit, edit, and upload. In addition, in order to explain how those behavioral intentions are developed, we investigated influences of antecedents from three motivational perspectives (i.e., intrinsic, editing software-oriented, and website's network effect-oriented). First, from the intrinsic motivation perspective, we studied the roles of self-expression, enjoyment, and social attention in forming intention to edit with preferred editing software or in forming intention to upload video contents to preferred websites. Second, we explored the roles of editing software for non-professionals to edit video contents, in terms of how it makes production process easier and how it is useful in the process. Finally, from the website characteristic-oriented perspective, we investigated the role of a website's network externality as an antecedent of users' intention to upload to preferred websites. The rationale is that posting UGCs on websites are basically social-oriented behaviors; thus, users prefer a website with the high level of network externality for contents uploading. This study adopted a longitudinal research design; we emailed recipients twice with different questionnaires. Guided by invitation email including a link to web survey page, respondents answered most of questions except edit and upload at the first survey. They were asked to provide information about UGC editing software they mainly used and preferred website to upload edited contents, and then asked to answer related questions. For example, before answering questions regarding network externality, they individually had to declare the name of the website to which they would be willing to upload. At the end of the first survey, we asked if they agreed to participate in the corresponding survey in a month. During twenty days, 333 complete responses were gathered in the first survey. One month later, we emailed those recipients to ask for participation in the second survey. 185 of the 333 recipients (about 56 percentages) answered in the second survey. Personalized questionnaires were provided for them to remind the names of editing software and website that they reported in the first survey. They answered the degree of editing with the software and the degree of uploading video contents to the website for the past one month. To all recipients of the two surveys, exchange tickets for books (about 5,000~10,000 Korean Won) were provided according to the frequency of participations. PLS analysis shows that user behaviors in creating video contents are well explained by the theory of implementation intentions. In fact, intention to upload significantly influences intention to edit in the process of accomplishing the goal behavior, upload. These relationships show the behavioral process that has been unclear in users' creating video contents for uploading and also highlight important roles of editing in the process. Regarding the intrinsic motivations, the results illustrated that users are likely to edit their own video contents in order to express their own intrinsic traits such as thoughts and feelings. Also, their intention to upload contents in preferred website is formed because they want to attract much attention from others through contents reflecting themselves. This result well corresponds to the roles of the website characteristic, namely, network externality. Based on the PLS results, the network effect of a website has significant influence on users' intention to upload to the preferred website. This indicates that users with social attention motivations are likely to upload their video UGCs to a website whose network size is big enough to realize their motivations easily. Finally, regarding editing software characteristic-oriented motivations, making exclusively-provided editing software more user-friendly (i.e., easy of use, usefulness) plays an important role in leading to users' intention to edit. Our research contributes to both academic scholars and professionals. For researchers, our results show that the theory of implementation intentions is well applied to the video UGC context and very useful to explain the relationship between implementation intentions and goal behaviors. With the theory, this study theoretically and empirically confirmed that editing is a different and important behavior from uploading behavior, and we tested the behavioral process of ordinary users in creating video UGCs, focusing on significant motivational factors in each step. In addition, parts of our research model are also rooted in the solid theoretical background such as the technology acceptance model and the theory of network externality to explain the effects of UGC-related motivations. For practitioners, our results suggest that media companies need to restructure their websites so that users' needs for social interaction through UGC (e.g., self-expression, social attention) are well met. Also, we emphasize strategic importance of the network size of websites in leading non-professionals to upload video contents to the websites. Those websites need to find a way to utilize the network effects for acquiring more UGCs. Finally, we suggest that some ways to improve editing software be considered as a way to increase edit behavior which is a very important process leading to UGC uploading.