• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.33-49
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• 2014

Environmental concern has been an important issue for a few decades, and the extent of consumer demand for eco-friendly consumption has been increased. This study seeks to investigate consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) a premium for eco-friendly cosmetics. This study evaluates how much more a consumer is willing to pay for eco-friendly cosmetics and examines significant factors influencing consumers' WTP for eco-friendly cosmetics. Consumers' WTP is measured using four different ecofriendly cosmetics: low-priced skin care cosmetics, low-priced makeup cosmetics, high-priced skin care cosmetics, and high-priced makeup cosmetics. This study uses the contingent valuation method (CVM) to estimate consumer's WTP for eco-friendly cosmetics. Survey questions were designed using both dichotomous choice and payment card method of CVM. Through face to face interviews and on-line surveys, the data were collected from women between 20 and 49 years old residing in Seoul and Kyeonggi area, Korea, in May 2010. A total of 226 questionnaires (132 from interviews and 94 from on-line) were included for the analytical sample in this study. The data were analyzed using descriptive analysis, T-test and Log-Logit analysis. The findings are as follows: First, the WTP measured by dichotomous choice method was estimated using the Log-Logit analysis. The results showed that the estimated WTP for low-priced skin care cosmetics was 19,152 won, which was 27.7% higher than the reference price, 15,000 won. For low-priced makeup cosmetics, the estimated WTP was 18,524 won, and its green premium was 21.0%. The estimated WTP for high-priced skin care cosmetics was 59,128 won, which was 18.3% higher than the reference price, 50,000 won. For high-priced makeup cosmetics was 57,666 won, and its green premium was 15.3%. Second, the WTP measure by payment card method was estimated using descriptive analysis. The results showed that the respondents were willing to pay 17,955 won for low-priced skin care cosmetics, which was 19.7% higher than the reference price, 15,000 won and 17,595 won for low-priced makeup cosmetics, which was 17.3% higher than the reference price. For high-priced skin care cosmetics, the average WTP was 56,950 won which was 13.9% higher than the reference price, 50,000 won. For high-priced makeup cosmetics, the average WTP was 55,650 won, which was 11.3% higher than the reference price. Overall, the WTP was higher in order of low-priced skin care, low-priced makeup, high-priced skin care, and high-priced makeup. It means that consumers decide degree of premium based on the price and the attributes of eco-friendly products. Third, the findings showed that age, monthly income, and having children or not were statistically significant factors that influenced consumers' willingness to pay for eco-friendly cosmetics. Other explanatory variables such as education, marital status, job, purchase experience of eco-friendly products, and environmental concerns did not show any statistical significance. The major contribution of this study is the investigation of the value of green attributes of the products by using CVM. Unlike most previous researches, this research used two methods of CVM, the dichotomous choice and the payment card, so it enhanced the reliability of research. According to this study, consumers showed price sensitivity when they pay green premium. These findings can be used as useful information to establish marketing strategies for green cosmetics.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.39-72
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• 2009

With the growing importance of accountability, it is getting necessary to test the impact of marketing expenditure on marketing performance. Including recent ROM, we can find a few researches about marketing accountability. But there are a few problems about definitions and metric of marketing expenditure and marketing performance. Therefore, by defining and analyzing the impact of marketing expenditure on marketing performance, we are going to set the classification scheme of marketing expenditure and marketing performance. Based on research findings, new definitions and metrics are proposed as follows. First, we suggest the classification scheme of marketing expenditure. Marketing expenditure is defined as expense accounts in the balance sheet for doing marketing tasks. Marketing expenditures includes many accounts, for example, marketing research, advertising, sales promotion, foreign market development, physical distribution, after services. Among these marketing investment, advertising expenses have a positive effect on marketing performance. Second, we suggest the classification scheme of marketing performance. Already, marketing performance has been defined as financial metrics, customer metrics, market metrics, and corporate social responsibility. But, in this study, we find that the process model is not relevant for explaining association between the performance metrics. The process model is a virtuous cycle: "customer metrics→market metrics→financial metrics→firm valuation metrics." But, in this study, it is not supported or a little significant association between these metrics. Based on these results, we suggest the balance model or flower model as the classification scheme of marketing performance.

• The Journal of Korean Obstetrics and Gynecology
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.40-48
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• 2023

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to investigate safety of postpartum herbal medicine by assessing the effect of taking herbal medicine of postpartum period on liver function. Methods: A retrospective chart review was conducted on 167 mothers who underwent liver function tests (LFT) within 3 months before and after childbirth among mothers who gave birth at ○○ Hospital between January 1, 2016 and May 31, 2018. Mothers with abnormally elevated LFT during pregnancy were excluded. Among 167 women, 6 women are herbal-medicine-group took herbal medicine for 5-6 weeks during postpartum period, and 161 patients are general -group who did not take herbal medicine. LFT Variation of Subjects before and after childbirth were compared between the two groups. And subjects who had elevated liver levels above the normal range after delivery were classified separately, the characteristics and causes of changes in liver levels were analyzed, and the presence or absence of drug-induced liver damage was confirmed. Results: Among a total of 167 subjects, there were 5 women in the herbal-medicine-group and 150 women in the general-group who had changes in liver values within the normal range after childbirth. Aspartate transaminase (AST) change before and after childbirth in the herbal-medicine-group was 3.40±1.82, and AST change in the general-group was 2.92±8.59, showing no significant difference between the two groups (p=0.901). Increase of Alanine transaminase (ALT) before and after childbirth in the herbal-medicine-group was 5.60±3.65, and ALT change in the general-group was 8.01±11.81, showing no significant difference between the two groups (p=0.651). There were 12 subjects who had elevated AST, ALT above the normal range after delivery, including 1 in the herbal-medicine-group and 11 in the normal mothers group. Valuation of 1 Subject of the herbal-medicine-group before and after delivery was 17 IU/L of AST and 52 IU/L of ALT. Because results of AST, ALT is under the standard to diagnose to liver damage, she was observed without any treatment. However the cause of AST, ALT elevation was not found in the chart, she was receiving treatment for diabetes and hyperlipidemia. The general-group had an average increase of AST 35.64±22.67 IU/L and ALT 53.00±26.80 IU/L. As a result of analyzing the cause, there were direct causes such as autoimmune hepatitis, chronic hepatitis B, and acute pyelonephritis. Abnormal elevations in liver levels were also found in mothers with hypothyroidism, diabetes, and fever of unknown cause, although they were not direct causes. Conclusions: To investigate the safety of taking herbal medicines, we assess the variation in AST and ALT within 3 months before and after delivery in the herbal-medicine-group and general-group. There was no significant difference between two groups.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.191-205
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• 2023

Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially in the domain of text-generative services, has witnessed a significant surge, with forecasts indicating the AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS) market reaching a valuation of $55.0 Billion by 2028. This research set out to explore the quality dimensions characterizing synthetic text media software, with a focus on four key players in the industry: ChatGPT, Writesonic, Jasper, and Anyword. Drawing from a comprehensive dataset of over 4,000 reviews sourced from a software evaluation platform, the study employed the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling technique using the Gensim library. This process resulted the data into 11 distinct topics. Subsequent analysis involved comparing these topics against established AI service quality dimensions, specifically AICSQ and AISAQUAL. Notably, the reviews predominantly emphasized dimensions like availability and efficiency, while others, such as anthropomorphism, which have been underscored in prior literature, were absent. This observation is attributed to the inherent nature of the reviews of AI services examined, which lean more towards semantic understanding rather than direct user interaction. The study acknowledges inherent limitations, mainly potential biases stemming from the singular review source and the specific nature of the reviewer demographic. Possible future research includes gauging the real-world implications of these quality dimensions on user satisfaction and to discuss deeper into how individual dimensions might impact overall ratings.

• Animal Bioscience
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.795-806
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• 2024

Objective: Karan Fries (KF), a high-producing composite cattle was developed through crossing indicine Tharparkar cows with taurine bulls (Holstein Friesian, Brown Swiss, and Jersey), to increase the milk yield across India. This composite cattle population must maintain sufficient genetic diversity for long-term development and breed improvement in the coming years. The level of linkage disequilibrium (LD) measures the influence of population genetic forces on the genomic structure and provides insights into the evolutionary history of populations, while the decay of LD is important in understanding the limits of genome-wide association studies for a population. Effective population size (N_e) which is genomically based on LD accumulated over the course of previous generations, is a valuable tool for e valuation of the genetic diversity and level of inbreeding. The present study was undertaken to understand KF population dynamics through the estimation of N_e and LD for the long-term sustainability of these breeds. Methods: The present study included 96 KF samples genotyped using Illumina HDBovine array to estimate the effective population and examine the LD pattern. The genotype data were also obtained for other crossbreds (Santa Gertrudis, Brangus, and Beefmaster) and Holstein Friesian cattle for comparison purposes. Results: The average LD between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) was r² = 0.13 in the present study. LD decay (r² = 0.2) was observed at 40 kb inter-marker distance, indicating a panel with 62,765 SNPs was sufficient for genomic breeding value estimation in KF cattle. The pedigree-based N_e of KF was determined to be 78, while the N_e estimates obtained using LD-based methods were 52 (SNeP) and 219 (genetic optimization for N_e estimation), respectively. Conclusion: KF cattle have an N_e exceeding the FAO's minimum recommended level of 50, which was desirable. The study also revealed significant population dynamics of KF cattle and increased our understanding of devising suitable breeding strategies for long-term sustainable development.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.155-177
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate those factors that are influenced when a user recognizes his/her private information value as an economic asset. The relationship among these factors will also be discussed. This research targets Internet users, and the value of their private information will be converted into economic figures. How economic value changes in relation with individual attributes, dealer's traits, and circumstantial properties will also be studied. The changes in the factors of private information value under different situations will be analyzed from an economic perspective. By using the cost-benefit analysis framework, this work hypothesizes that the user's private information value can be influenced by individual attributes and situational properties. in the business aspect, this study can help users recognize the true value of their personal information and minimize the cost resulting from private information security incidents. This work also highlights the necessity of estimating the scale of investments for protecting private information. Overall, this research will proceed under the hypothesis that the users' recognition of their private information value is influenced by the attributes of the individual, dealers, or situations.

• Journal of the Korean BIBLIA Society for library and Information Science
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.47-71
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• 2024

This study aims to compare the awareness of the social value of public libraries between users and non-users to materialize the abstract concept of social value and, thereby, to present measures that can be applied to the library field. For this purpose, a survey was conducted in person or online for 15 days from May 7, 2023, targeting Paju citizens. Frequency analysis, factor analysis, independent samples t-test, and one-way analysis of variance were conducted on 206 valid response copies using SPSS 25.0. In the results, it is shown that, first, for awareness of the social value of public libraries according to socio-demographic characteristics, there were significant differences depending on age, with in particular, awareness among those in their 10s and 40s being higher than other age groups. For awareness of community development, the awareness of the female group was higher than that of the male group, while, for the awareness according to occupation, it is shown that awareness was highest in the following order: student, others, housewife, self-employed, and office worker. Second, for the awareness of the social value of public libraries, the awareness of the user group was higher than that of the non-user group in all areas. Third, for awareness of the social value of public libraries according to the level of library use, there was no significant difference between groups. In conclusion, it is suggested that measures to encourage non-users to become users, develop new content and services targeting male group and those in their 60s, and 20s, and strengthen community activities are needed to raise awareness of the social value of Paju City public libraries in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.43-57
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• 2024

As coastal areas have a distinct nature with the interaction of the lands and waters, they attract people to enjoy and experience the natural environments physically and intellectually; this generates cultural ecosystem services. Coastal beaches are one of the most common coastal areas for cultural ecosystem services. The purpose of this study was to 1) estimate the economic values of cultural ecosystem services derived from coastal beaches, and 2) expand the estimated values into other beaches across the country using a benefit transfer method. We divided the values of cultural ecosystem services into five different categories based on an extensive literature review: recreation and tourism, landscape and aesthetic, educational, heritage, and inspirational values. The values of tourism and recreation, landscape and aesthetic, and educational services were estimated using the choice experiments. The attributes of the choice experiments consisted of conservation funds, litter, water quality, seascape, landscape, and biodiversity, and the data were collected through online surveys with visitors of 11 representative beaches in Korea. Heritage and inspiration services were estimated using a market goods method based on their expenditures. These values were transferred to 257 beaches across the country. Study results can be used for policy decisions on various restoration and conservation projects caused by coastal erosion and development and on the need and extent of public investments.

• Korean Journal of Plant Taxonomy
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.213-246
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• 2016

Algific talus slopes tend to occur on steep north-facing slopes with bedrock that retains ice and emits cold air throughout the growing season. Algific talus slopes provide a suitable microclimate for disjunct or relict populations of northern plant species at low altitude habitats in temperate zones. The purpose of this study is to suggest a strategy for the comprehensive conservation of the vegetation of algific talus slopes through studies of the floristics and plant species compositions and threat factors at present and in the future of 15 major algific talus slopes in Korea. As a result, the vascular plants surveyed on 15 major algific talus slopes were recorded, with a total of 587 taxa, 109 families, 323 genera, 531 species, 7 subspecies, 47 varieties 1 form and 1 hybrid. Of them, endemic plants numbered 26 taxa, and threatened species according to the IUCN valuation basis numbered 8 taxa. Fourth (IV) and fifth (V) degree indicator species as specified by floristic subregions numbered 31 taxa. Peculiarly, several subalpine-native plant species, in this case Cystopteris fragilis, Gymnocarpium dryopteris, Huperzia selago, Rosa koreana, Vaccinium vitis-idaea and Woodsia hancockii, were distributed on algific talus slopes at 100-600 m above sea level. Numerous and diverse biological resources native to algific talus slopes in Korea have been consistently disturbed or damaged by human activities without some form of protection. An all-taxa biodiversity inventory should be surveyed to provide more information about all biological species living on algific talus slopes. In addition, conservation strategies to ensure biodiversity and effective management of algific talus slopes are discussed in detail.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.1-29
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• 2011

Korean government built "2040 Science and Technology Future Vision" in order to show positive future scenarios and suggest a long-term guideline for a progress in science and technology. The S&T Future Vision was built based on an analysis of global megatrends and a prospect of domestic social change. After building S&T Future Vision, the "Government R&E Strategy"s was established as a follow-up action plan. The Government R&D Strategy consists of lists of future emerging technologies for future leadership, government R&D investment status and investment portfolio plans. Exploring future emerging technologies aggressively and making a governmental R&D strategic policy are requirements for national competitiveness, leadership in the world. Therefore search and selection for future emerging technologies is getting more and more important recently. Generally qualitative methodologies have been used such as expert-panel discussion method and portfolio analysis with expert valuation method in order to explore future technologies. These experts-based qualitative methodologies are well defined but lacking in some objectivity because size of expert-panels has limitations. We suggest a quantitative methodology, science mapping method to compensate this shortcoming in this study. There is another limitation related governmental R&D strategy which is that general R&D portfolios are static until a point of technology realization. We also propose a dynamic R&D investment portfolio which present different portfolios at a intermediate point and a point of technology realization. We expect this try with science mapping method and a dynamic R&D portfolio could strengthen strategic aspect of government R&D policy.