• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.183-203
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• 2018

News articles are the most suitable medium for examining the events occurring at home and abroad. Especially, as the development of information and communication technology has brought various kinds of online news media, the news about the events occurring in society has increased greatly. So automatically summarizing key events from massive amounts of news data will help users to look at many of the events at a glance. In addition, if we build and provide an event network based on the relevance of events, it will be able to greatly help the reader in understanding the current events. In this study, we propose a method for extracting event networks from large news text data. To this end, we first collected Korean political and social articles from March 2016 to March 2017, and integrated the synonyms by leaving only meaningful words through preprocessing using NPMI and Word2Vec. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling was used to calculate the subject distribution by date and to find the peak of the subject distribution and to detect the event. A total of 32 topics were extracted from the topic modeling, and the point of occurrence of the event was deduced by looking at the point at which each subject distribution surged. As a result, a total of 85 events were detected, but the final 16 events were filtered and presented using the Gaussian smoothing technique. We also calculated the relevance score between events detected to construct the event network. Using the cosine coefficient between the co-occurred events, we calculated the relevance between the events and connected the events to construct the event network. Finally, we set up the event network by setting each event to each vertex and the relevance score between events to the vertices connecting the vertices. The event network constructed in our methods helped us to sort out major events in the political and social fields in Korea that occurred in the last one year in chronological order and at the same time identify which events are related to certain events. Our approach differs from existing event detection methods in that LDA topic modeling makes it possible to easily analyze large amounts of data and to identify the relevance of events that were difficult to detect in existing event detection. We applied various text mining techniques and Word2vec technique in the text preprocessing to improve the accuracy of the extraction of proper nouns and synthetic nouns, which have been difficult in analyzing existing Korean texts, can be found. In this study, the detection and network configuration techniques of the event have the following advantages in practical application. First, LDA topic modeling, which is unsupervised learning, can easily analyze subject and topic words and distribution from huge amount of data. Also, by using the date information of the collected news articles, it is possible to express the distribution by topic in a time series. Second, we can find out the connection of events in the form of present and summarized form by calculating relevance score and constructing event network by using simultaneous occurrence of topics that are difficult to grasp in existing event detection. It can be seen from the fact that the inter-event relevance-based event network proposed in this study was actually constructed in order of occurrence time. It is also possible to identify what happened as a starting point for a series of events through the event network. The limitation of this study is that the characteristics of LDA topic modeling have different results according to the initial parameters and the number of subjects, and the subject and event name of the analysis result should be given by the subjective judgment of the researcher. Also, since each topic is assumed to be exclusive and independent, it does not take into account the relevance between themes. Subsequent studies need to calculate the relevance between events that are not covered in this study or those that belong to the same subject.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.89-97
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• 2010

This study researches the effects of common features on a no-choice option with respect to regulatory focus theory. The primary interest is in three factors and their interrelationship: common features, no-choice option, and regulatory focus. Prior studies have compiled vast body of research in these areas. First, the "common features effect" has been observed bymany noted marketing researchers. Tversky (1972) proposed the seminal theory, the EBA model: elimination by aspect. According to this theory, consumers are prone to focus only on unique features during comparison processing, thereby dismissing any common features as redundant information. Recently, however, more provocative ideas have attacked the EBA model by asserting that common features really do affect consumer judgment. Chernev (1997) first reported that adding common features mitigates the choice gap because of the increasing perception of similarity among alternatives. Later, however, Chernev (2001) published a critically developed study against his prior perspective with the proposition that common features may be a cognitive load to consumers, and thus consumers are possible that they are prone to prefer the heuristic processing to the systematic processing. This tends to bring one question to the forefront: Do "common features" affect consumer choice? If so, what are the concrete effects? This study tries to answer the question with respect to the "no-choice" option and regulatory focus. Second, some researchers hold that the no-choice option is another best alternative of consumers, who are likely to avoid having to choose in the context of knotty trade-off settings or mental conflicts. Hope for the future also may increase the no-choice option in the context of optimism or the expectancy of a more satisfactory alternative appearing later. Other issues reported in this domain are time pressure, consumer confidence, and alternative numbers (Dhar and Nowlis 1999; Lin and Wu 2005; Zakay and Tsal 1993). This study casts the no-choice option in yet another perspective: the interactive effects between common features and regulatory focus. Third, "regulatory focus theory" is a very popular theme in recent marketing research. It suggests that consumers have two focal goals facing each other: promotion vs. prevention. A promotion focus deals with the concepts of hope, inspiration, achievement, or gain, whereas prevention focus involves duty, responsibility, safety, or loss-aversion. Thus, while consumers with a promotion focus tend to take risks for gain, the same does not hold true for a prevention focus. Regulatory focus theory predicts consumers' emotions, creativity, attitudes, memory, performance, and judgment, as documented in a vast field of marketing and psychology articles. The perspective of the current study in exploring consumer choice and common features is a somewhat creative viewpoint in the area of regulatory focus. These reviews inspire this study of the interaction possibility between regulatory focus and common features with a no-choice option. Specifically, adding common features rather than omitting them may increase the no-choice option ratio in the choice setting only to prevention-focused consumers, but vice versa to promotion-focused consumers. The reasoning is that when prevention-focused consumers come in contact with common features, they may perceive higher similarity among the alternatives. This conflict among similar options would increase the no-choice ratio. Promotion-focused consumers, however, are possible that they perceive common features as a cue of confirmation bias. And thus their confirmation processing would make their prior preference more robust, then the no-choice ratio may shrink. This logic is verified in two experiments. The first is a $2{\times}2$ between-subject design (whether common features or not X regulatory focus) using a digital cameras as the relevant stimulus-a product very familiar to young subjects. Specifically, the regulatory focus variable is median split through a measure of eleven items. Common features included zoom, weight, memory, and battery, whereas the other two attributes (pixel and price) were unique features. Results supported our hypothesis that adding common features enhanced the no-choice ratio only to prevention-focus consumers, not to those with a promotion focus. These results confirm our hypothesis - the interactive effects between a regulatory focus and the common features. Prior research had suggested that including common features had a effect on consumer choice, but this study shows that common features affect choice by consumer segmentation. The second experiment was used to replicate the results of the first experiment. This experimental study is equal to the prior except only two - priming manipulation and another stimulus. For the promotion focus condition, subjects had to write an essay using words such as profit, inspiration, pleasure, achievement, development, hedonic, change, pursuit, etc. For prevention, however, they had to use the words persistence, safety, protection, aversion, loss, responsibility, stability etc. The room for rent had common features (sunshine, facility, ventilation) and unique features (distance time and building state). These attributes implied various levels and valence for replication of the prior experiment. Our hypothesis was supported repeatedly in the results, and the interaction effects were significant between regulatory focus and common features. Thus, these studies showed the dual effects of common features on consumer choice for a no-choice option. Adding common features may enhance or mitigate no-choice, contradictory as it may sound. Under a prevention focus, adding common features is likely to enhance the no-choice ratio because of increasing mental conflict; under the promotion focus, it is prone to shrink the ratio perhaps because of a "confirmation bias." The research has practical and theoretical implications for marketers, who may need to consider common features carefully in a practical display context according to consumer segmentation (i.e., promotion vs. prevention focus.) Theoretically, the results suggest some meaningful moderator variable between common features and no-choice in that the effect on no-choice option is partly dependent on a regulatory focus. This variable corresponds not only to a chronic perspective but also a situational perspective in our hypothesis domain. Finally, in light of some shortcomings in the research, such as overlooked attribute importance, low ratio of no-choice, or the external validity issue, we hope it influences future studies to explore the little-known world of the "no-choice option."

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.219-230
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• 2010

Digital content makes big changes to our daily lives while bringing opportunities and challenges for companies. Creative firms integrate pictures, texts, videos, audios, and data by digitalization to develop new products or services and create digital experiences to promote their brands. Most articles on digital content contribute to the basic concept or development of marketing it in literature. Actually, compared with traditional value chains for common products or services, the digital content industry seems to have more potential value. Because quite a bit of digital content is free to the consumer, price is not necessarily perceived as an indicator of the quality or value of information (Rowley 2008). It becomes evident that a current theme in digital content is the issue of "value," and research on customers' perceived value of digital content is a necessity. This article argues that experiential value has an advantage in customers' evaluations of digital content. Two different but related contributions to the understanding of "value" of digital content are made here. First, based on the comparison of digital content with products and services, the article proposes two key characteristics that make experiential strategy available for digital content: intangibility and near-zero reproduction cost. On top of that, based on the discussion of the gap between company's idealized value and customer's perceived value, this article emphasizes that digital content prices and pricing of digital content is different from products and services. As a result of intangibility, prices may not reflect customer value. Moreover, the cost of digital content in the development stage may be very high while reproduction costs shrink dramatically. Moreover, because of the value gap mentioned before, the pricing polices vary for different digital contents. For example, flat price policy is generally used for movies and music (Magiera 2001; Netherby 2002), while for continuous demand, digital content such as online games and anti-virus programs involves a more complicated matter of utility and competitive price levels. Digital content companies have to explore various kinds of strategies to overcome this gap. Rethinking marketing solutions such as advertisements, images, and word-of-mouth and their effect on customers' perceived value becomes essential. China's digital content industry is becoming more and more globalized and drawing special attention from different countries and regions that have respective competitive advantages. The 2008-2009 Annual Report on the Development of China's Digital Content Industry (CCIDConsulting 2009) indicates that, with the driven power of domestic demand and governmental policy support, the country's digital content industry maintained a fast growth of some 30 percent in 2008, obviously indicating the initial stage of industry expansion. In China, anti-virus programs and other software programs which need to be updated use a quarter-based pricing policy. Customers can download a trial version for free and use it for six months or a year. If they want to use it longer, continuous payment is needed. They examine the excellence of the digital content during this trial period and decide whether to pay for continued usage. For China’s music and movie industries, as a result of initial development, experiential strategy has not been much applied, even though firms in other countries find the trial experience and explore important strategies(such as customers listening to music for several seconds for free before downloading it). For the above reasons, anti-virus program may be a representative for digital content industry in China and an exploratory study of the advantage of experiential value in customer's perceived value of digital content is done in the anti-virus market of China. In order to enhance the reliability of the survey data, this study focused on people who were experienced users of anti-virus programs. The empirical results revealed that experiential value has a positive effect on customers' perceived value of digital content. In other words, because digital content is intangible and the reproduction costs are nearly zero, customers' evaluations are based heavily on their experience. Moreover, image and word-of-mouth do not have a positive effect on perceived value, only on experiential value. That is to say, a digital content value chain is different from that of a general product or service. Experiential value has a notable advantage and mediates the effect of image and word-of-mouth on perceived value. The results of this study help provide an understanding of why free digital content downloads exist in developing countries. Customers can perceive the value of digital content only by using and experiencing it. This is also why such governments support the development of digital content. Other developing countries whose digital content business is also in the beginning stage can make use of the suggestions here. Moreover, based on the advantage of experiential strategy, companies should make more of an effort to invest in customers' experience. As a result of the characteristics and value gap of digital content, customers perceive more value in the intangible digital content only by experiencing what they really want. Moreover, because of the near-zero reproduction costs, companies can perhaps use experiential strategy to enhance customer understanding of digital content.

• Journal of Korean Medical classics
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.91-117
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• 2007

Through a simple study of the medical classics in the '$\bar{A}yurveda$', we have summarized them as follows. 1) Traditional Indian medicine started in the Ganges river area at about 1500 B. C. E. and traces of medical science can be found in the "Rigveda" and "Atharvaveda". 2) The "Charaka" and "$Su\acute{s}hruta$(妙聞集)", ancient texts from India, are not the work of one person, but the result of the work and errors of different doctors and philosophers. Due to the lack of historical records, the time of Charaka or $Su\acute{s}hruta$(妙聞)s' lives are not exactly known. So the completion of the "Charaka" is estimated at 1st${\sim}$2nd century C. E. in northwestern India, and the "$Su\acute{s}hruta$" is estimated to have been completed in 3rd${\sim}$4th century C. E. in central India. Also, the "Charaka" contains details on internal medicine, while the "$Su\acute{s}hruta$" contains more details on surgery by comparison. 3) '$V\bar{a}gbhata$', one of the revered Vriddha Trayi(triad of the ancients, 三醫聖) of the '$\bar{A}yurveda$', lived and worked in about the 7th century and wrote the "$A\d{s}\d{t}\bar{a}nga$ $A\d{s}\d{t}\bar{a}nga$ $h\d{r}daya$ $sa\d{m}hit\bar{a}$ $samhit\bar{a}$(八支集)" and "$A\d{s}\d{t}\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$(八心集)", where he tried to compromise and unify the "Charaka" and "$Su\acute{s}hruta$". The "$A\d{s}\d{t}\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$" was translated into Tibetan and Arabic at about the 8th${\sim}$9th century, and if we generalize the medicinal plants recorded in each the "Charaka", "$Su\acute{s}hruta$" and the "$A\d{s}\d{t}\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$", there are 240, 370, 240 types each. 4) The 'Madhava' focused on one of the subjects of Indian medicine, '$Nid\bar{a}na$' ie meaning "the cause of diseases(病因論)", and in one of the copies found by Bower in 4th century C. E. we can see that it uses prescriptions from the "BuHaLaJi(布哈拉集)", "Charaka", "$Su\acute{s}hruta$". 5) According to the "Charaka", there were 8 branches of ancient medicine in India : treatment of the body(kayacikitsa), special surgery(salakya), removal of alien substances(salyapahartka), treatment of poison or mis-combined medicines(visagaravairodhikaprasamana), the study of ghosts(bhutavidya), pediatrics(kaumarabhrtya), perennial youth and long life(rasayana), and the strengthening of the essence of the body(vajikarana). 6) The '$\bar{A}yurveda$', which originated from ancient experience, was recorded in Sanskrit, which was a theorization of knowledge, and also was written in verses to make memorizing easy, and made medicine the exclusive possession of the Brahmin. The first annotations were 1060 for the "Charaka", 1200 for the "$Su\acute{s}hruta$", 1150 for the "$A\d{s}\d{t}\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$", and 1100 for the "$Nid\bar{a}na$", The use of various mineral medicines in the "Charaka" or the use of mercury as internal medicine in the "$A\d{s}\d{t}\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$", and the palpation of the pulse for diagnosing in the '$\bar{A}yurveda$' and 'XiZhang(西藏)' medicine are similar to TCM's pulse diagnostics. The coexistence with Arabian 'Unani' medicine, compromise with western medicine and the reactionism trend restored the '$\bar{A}yurveda$' today. 7) The "Charaka" is a book inclined to internal medicine that investigates the origin of human disease which used the dualism of the 'Samkhya', the natural philosophy of the 'Vaisesika' and the logic of the 'Nyaya' in medical theories, and its structure has 16 syllables per line, 2 lines per poem and is recorded in poetry and prose. Also, the "Charaka" can be summarized into the introduction, cause, judgement, body, sensory organs, treatment, pharmaceuticals, and end, and can be seen as a work that strongly reflects the moral code of Brahmin and Aryans. 8) In extracting bloody pus, the "Charaka" introduces a 'sharp tool' bloodletting treatment, while the "$Su\scute{s}hruta$" introduces many surgical methods such as the use of gourd dippers, horns, sucking the blood with leeches. Also the "$Su\acute{s}hruta$" has 19 chapters specializing in ophthalmology, and shows 76 types of eye diseases and their treatments. 9) Since anatomy did not develop in Indian medicine, the inner structure of the human body was not well known. The only exception is 'GuXiangXue(骨相學)' which developed from 'Atharvaveda' times and the "$A\d{s}\d{t}\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$". In the "$A\d{s}\d{t}\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$"'s 'ShenTiLun(身體論)' there is a thorough listing of the development of a child from pregnancy to birth. The '$\bar{A}yurveda$' is not just an ancient traditional medical system but is being called alternative medicine in the west because of its ability to supplement western medicine and, as its effects are being proved scientifically it is gaining attention worldwide. We would like to say that what we have researched is just a small fragment and a limited view, and would like to correct and supplement any insufficient parts through more research of new records.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.195-215
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• 2008

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)${\times}2$(scarcity type: special vs. general)${\times}2$(scarcity depth: high vs. low) between subject designs. The results are summarized as follows. First, intention inference(inferred motive) is not significant on scarcity effect in case of special scarcity message. However, nonexistence of intention inference is more effective than existence of intention inference on purchase intention in case of general scarcity. Second, intention inference(inferred motive) is not significant on scarcity effect in case of low scarcity. However, nonexistence of intention inference is more effective than existence of intention inference on purchase intention in case of high scarcity. The results of this study will help managers to understand the relative importance among the type of the scarcity message and to make decisions in using their scarcity message. Finally, this article have several contribution. First, we have shown that restrictions server to activates a mental resource that is used to render a judgment regarding a promoted product. In the absence of other information, this resource appears to read to an inference of value. In the presence of other value related cue, however, either database(i.e., scarcity depth: high vs. low) or conceptual base(i.e.,, scarcity type special vs. general), the resource is used in conjunction with the other cues as a basis for judgment, leading to different effects across levels of these other value-related cues. Second, our results suggest that a restriction can affect consumer behavior through four possible routes: 1) the affective route, through making consumers feel irritated, 2) the cognitive making route, through making consumers infer motivation or attribution about promoted scarcity message, and 3) the economic route, through making the consumer lose an opportunity to stockpile at a low scarcity depth, or forcing him her to making additional purchases, lastly 4) informative route, through changing what consumer believe about the transaction. Third, as a note already, this results suggest that we should consider consumers' inferences of motives or attributions for the scarcity dept level and cognitive resources available in order to have a complete understanding the effects of quantity restriction message.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.29-52
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• 2012

Consumers differ in the way they make a purchase. An audio mania would willingly make a bold, yet serious, decision to buy a top-of-the-line home theater system, while he is not interested in replacing his two-decade-old shabby car. On the contrary, an automobile enthusiast wouldn't mind spending forty thousand dollars to buy a new Jaguar convertible, yet cares little about his junky component system. It is product involvement that helps us explain such differences among individuals in the purchase style. Product involvement refers to the extent to which a product is perceived to be important to a consumer (Zaichkowsky, 2001). Product involvement is an important factor that strongly influences consumer's purchase decision-making process, and thus has been of prime interest to consumer behavior researchers. Furthermore, researchers found that involvement is closely related to perceived risk (Dholakia, 2001). While abundant research exists addressing how product involvement relates to overall perceived risk, little attention has been paid to the relationship between involvement and different types of perceived risk in an electronic commerce setting. Given that perceived risk can be a substantial barrier to the online purchase (Jarvenpaa, 2000), research addressing such an issue will offer useful implications on what specific types of perceived risk an online firm should focus on mitigating if it is to increase sales to a fullest potential. Meanwhile, past research has focused on such consumer responses as information search and dissemination as a consequence of involvement, neglecting other behavioral responses like online merchant selection. For one example, will a consumer seriously considering the purchase of a pricey Guzzi bag perceive a great degree of risk associated with online buying and therefore choose to buy it from a digital storefront rather than from an online marketplace to mitigate risk? Will a consumer require greater trust on the part of the online merchant when the perceived risk of online buying is rather high? We intend to find answers to these research questions through an empirical study. This paper explores the impact of enduring product involvement and perceived risks on required trust level, and further on online merchant choice. For the purpose of the research, five types or components of perceived risk are taken into consideration, including financial, performance, delivery, psychological, and social risks. A research model has been built around the constructs under consideration, and 12 hypotheses have been developed based on the research model to examine the relationships between enduring involvement and five components of perceived risk, between five components of perceived risk and required trust level, between enduring involvement and required trust level, and finally between required trust level and preference toward an e-tailer. To attain our research objectives, we conducted an empirical analysis consisting of two phases of data collection: a pilot test and main survey. The pilot test was conducted using 25 college students to ensure that the questionnaire items are clear and straightforward. Then the main survey was conducted using 295 college students at a major university for nine days between December 13, 2010 and December 21, 2010. The measures employed to test the model included eight constructs: (1) enduring involvement, (2) financial risk, (3) performance risk, (4) delivery risk, (5) psychological risk, (6) social risk, (7) required trust level, (8) preference toward an e-tailer. The statistical package, SPSS 17.0, was used to test the internal consistency among the items within the individual measures. Based on the Cronbach's ${\alpha}$ coefficients of the individual measure, the reliability of all the variables is supported. Meanwhile, the Amos 18.0 package was employed to perform a confirmatory factor analysis designed to assess the unidimensionality of the measures. The goodness of fit for the measurement model was satisfied. Unidimensionality was tested using convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. The statistical evidences proved that the three types of validity were all satisfied. Now the structured equation modeling technique was used to analyze the individual paths along the relationships among the research constructs. The results indicated that enduring involvement has significant positive relationships with all the five components of perceived risk, while only performance risk is significantly related to trust level required by consumers for purchase. It can be inferred from the findings that product performance problems are mostly likely to occur when a merchant behaves in an opportunistic manner. Positive relationships were also found between involvement and required trust level and between required trust level and online merchant choice. Enduring involvement is concerned with the pleasure a consumer derives from a product class and/or with the desire for knowledge for the product class, and thus is likely to motivate the consumer to look for ways of mitigating perceived risk by requiring a higher level of trust on the part of the online merchant. Likewise, a consumer requiring a high level of trust on the merchant will choose a digital storefront rather than an e-marketplace, since a digital storefront is believed to be trustworthier than an e-marketplace, as it fulfills orders by itself rather than acting as an intermediary. The findings of the present research provide both academic and practical implications. The first academic implication is that enduring product involvement is a strong motivator of consumer responses, especially the selection of a merchant, in the context of electronic shopping. Secondly, academicians are advised to pay attention to the finding that an individual component or type of perceived risk can be used as an important research construct, since it would allow one to pinpoint the specific types of risk that are influenced by antecedents or that influence consequents. Meanwhile, our research provides implications useful for online merchants (both online storefronts and e-marketplaces). Merchants may develop strategies to attract consumers by managing perceived performance risk involved in purchase decisions, since it was found to have significant positive relationship with the level of trust required by a consumer on the part of the merchant. One way to manage performance risk would be to thoroughly examine the product before shipping to ensure that it has no deficiencies or flaws. Secondly, digital storefronts are advised to focus on symbolic goods (e.g., cars, cell phones, fashion outfits, and handbags) in which consumers are relatively more involved than others, whereas e- marketplaces should put their emphasis on non-symbolic goods (e.g., drinks, books, MP3 players, and bike accessories).

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.89-116
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• 2011

In collaborative tagging systems such as Delicious.com and Flickr.com, users assign keywords or tags to their uploaded resources, such as bookmarks and pictures, for their future use or sharing purposes. The collection of resources and tags generated by a user is called a personomy, and the collection of all personomies constitutes the folksonomy. The most significant need of the folksonomy users Is to efficiently find useful resources or experts on specific topics. An excellent ranking algorithm would assign higher ranking to more useful resources or experts. What resources are considered useful In a folksonomic system? Does a standard superior to frequency or freshness exist? The resource recommended by more users with mere expertise should be worthy of attention. This ranking paradigm can be implemented through a graph-based ranking algorithm. Two well-known representatives of such a paradigm are Page Rank by Google and HITS(Hypertext Induced Topic Selection) by Kleinberg. Both Page Rank and HITS assign a higher evaluation score to pages linked to more higher-scored pages. HITS differs from PageRank in that it utilizes two kinds of scores: authority and hub scores. The ranking objects of these pages are limited to Web pages, whereas the ranking objects of a folksonomic system are somewhat heterogeneous(i.e., users, resources, and tags). Therefore, uniform application of the voting notion of PageRank and HITS based on the links to a folksonomy would be unreasonable, In a folksonomic system, each link corresponding to a property can have an opposite direction, depending on whether the property is an active or a passive voice. The current research stems from the Idea that a graph-based ranking algorithm could be applied to the folksonomic system using the concept of mutual Interactions between entitles, rather than the voting notion of PageRank or HITS. The concept of mutual interactions, proposed for ranking the Semantic Web resources, enables the calculation of importance scores of various resources unaffected by link directions. The weights of a property representing the mutual interaction between classes are assigned depending on the relative significance of the property to the resource importance of each class. This class-oriented approach is based on the fact that, in the Semantic Web, there are many heterogeneous classes; thus, applying a different appraisal standard for each class is more reasonable. This is similar to the evaluation method of humans, where different items are assigned specific weights, which are then summed up to determine the weighted average. We can check for missing properties more easily with this approach than with other predicate-oriented approaches. A user of a tagging system usually assigns more than one tags to the same resource, and there can be more than one tags with the same subjectivity and objectivity. In the case that many users assign similar tags to the same resource, grading the users differently depending on the assignment order becomes necessary. This idea comes from the studies in psychology wherein expertise involves the ability to select the most relevant information for achieving a goal. An expert should be someone who not only has a large collection of documents annotated with a particular tag, but also tends to add documents of high quality to his/her collections. Such documents are identified by the number, as well as the expertise, of users who have the same documents in their collections. In other words, there is a relationship of mutual reinforcement between the expertise of a user and the quality of a document. In addition, there is a need to rank entities related more closely to a certain entity. Considering the property of social media that ensures the popularity of a topic is temporary, recent data should have more weight than old data. We propose a comprehensive folksonomy ranking framework in which all these considerations are dealt with and that can be easily customized to each folksonomy site for ranking purposes. To examine the validity of our ranking algorithm and show the mechanism of adjusting property, time, and expertise weights, we first use a dataset designed for analyzing the effect of each ranking factor independently. We then show the ranking results of a real folksonomy site, with the ranking factors combined. Because the ground truth of a given dataset is not known when it comes to ranking, we inject simulated data whose ranking results can be predicted into the real dataset and compare the ranking results of our algorithm with that of a previous HITS-based algorithm. Our semantic ranking algorithm based on the concept of mutual interaction seems to be preferable to the HITS-based algorithm as a flexible folksonomy ranking framework. Some concrete points of difference are as follows. First, with the time concept applied to the property weights, our algorithm shows superior performance in lowering the scores of older data and raising the scores of newer data. Second, applying the time concept to the expertise weights, as well as to the property weights, our algorithm controls the conflicting influence of expertise weights and enhances overall consistency of time-valued ranking. The expertise weights of the previous study can act as an obstacle to the time-valued ranking because the number of followers increases as time goes on. Third, many new properties and classes can be included in our framework. The previous HITS-based algorithm, based on the voting notion, loses ground in the situation where the domain consists of more than two classes, or where other important properties, such as "sent through twitter" or "registered as a friend," are added to the domain. Forth, there is a big difference in the calculation time and memory use between the two kinds of algorithms. While the matrix multiplication of two matrices, has to be executed twice for the previous HITS-based algorithm, this is unnecessary with our algorithm. In our ranking framework, various folksonomy ranking policies can be expressed with the ranking factors combined and our approach can work, even if the folksonomy site is not implemented with Semantic Web languages. Above all, the time weight proposed in this paper will be applicable to various domains, including social media, where time value is considered important.

• The Journal of Dong Guk Oriental Medicine
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• v.10
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• pp.119-145
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• 2008

Through a simple study of the medical classics in the '$\bar{A}yurveda$', we have summarized them as follows. 1) Traditional Indian medicine started in the Ganges river area at about 1500 B. C. E. and traces of medical science can be found in the "Rigveda" and "Atharvaveda". 2) The "Charaka(閣羅迦集)" and "$Su\acute{s}hruta$(妙聞集)", ancient texts from India, are not the work of one person, but the result of the work and errors of different doctors and philosophers. Due to the lack of historical records, the time of Charaka(閣羅迦) or $Su\acute{s}hruta$(妙聞)s' lives are not exactly known. So the completion of the "Charaka" is estimated at 1st$\sim$2nd century C. E. in northwestern India, and the "$Su\acute{s}hruta$" is estimated to have been completed in 3rd$\sim$4th century C. E. in central India. Also, the "Charaka" contains details on internal medicine, while the "$Su\acute{s}hruta$" contains more details on surgery by comparison. 3) '$V\bar{a}gbhata$', one of the revered Vriddha Trayi(triad of the ancients, 三醫聖) of the '$\bar{A}yurveda$', lived and worked in about the 7th century and wrote the "$Ast\bar{a}nga$ $Ast\bar{a}nga$ hrdaya $samhit\bar{a}$ $samhit\bar{a}$(八支集) and "$Ast\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$(八心集)", where he tried to compromise and unify the "Charaka" and "$Su\acute{s}hruta$". The "$Ast\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$" was translated into Tibetan and Arabic at about the 8th$\sim$9th century, and if we generalize the medicinal plants recorded in each the "Charaka", "$Su\acute{s}hruta$" and the "$Ast\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$", there are 240, 370, 240 types each. 4) The 'Madhava' focused on one of the subjects of Indian medicine, '$Nid\bar{a}na$' ie meaning "the cause of diseases(病因論)", and in one of the copies found by Bower in 4th century C. E. we can see that it uses prescriptions from the "BuHaLaJi(布唅拉集)", "Charaka", "$Su\acute{s}hruta$". 5) According to the "Charaka", there were 8 branches of ancient medicine in India : treatment of the body(kayacikitsa), special surgery(salakya), removal of alien substances(salyapahartka), treatment of poison or mis-combined medicines(visagaravairodhikaprasamana), the study of ghosts(bhutavidya), pediatrics(kaumarabhrtya), perennial youth and long life(rasayana), and the strengthening of the essence of the body(vajikarana). 6) The '$\bar{A}yurveda$', which originated from ancient experience, was recorded in Sanskrit, which was a theorization of knowledge, and also was written in verses to make memorizing easy, and made medicine the exclusive possession of the Brahmin. The first annotations were 1060 for the "Charaka", 1200 for the "$Su\acute{s}hruta$", 1150 for the "$Ast\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$", and 1100 for the "$Nid\bar{a}na$". The use of various mineral medicines in the "Charaka" or the use of mercury as internal medicine in the "$Ast\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$", and the palpation of the pulse for diagnosing in the '$\bar{A}yurveda$' and 'XiZhang(西藏)' medicine are similar to TCM's pulse diagnostics. The coexistence with Arabian 'Unani' medicine, compromise with western medicine and the reactionism trend restored the '$\bar{A}yurveda$' today. 7) The "Charaka" is a book inclined to internal medicine that investigates the origin of human disease which used the dualism of the 'Samkhya', the natural philosophy of the 'Vaisesika' and the logic of the 'Nyaya' in medical theories, and its structure has 16 syllables per line, 2 lines per poem and is recorded in poetry and prose. Also, the "Charaka" can be summarized into the introduction, cause, judgement, body, sensory organs, treatment, pharmaceuticals, and end, and can be seen as a work that strongly reflects the moral code of Brahmin and Aryans. 8) In extracting bloody pus, the "Charaka" introduces a 'sharp tool' bloodletting treatment, while the "$Su\acute{s}hruta$" introduces many surgical methods such as the use of gourd dippers, horns, sucking the blood with leeches. Also the "$Su\acute{s}hruta$" has 19 chapters specializing in ophthalmology, and shows 76 types of eye diseases and their treatments. 9) Since anatomy did not develop in Indian medicine, the inner structure of the human body was not well known. The only exception is 'GuXiangXue(骨相學)' which developed from 'Atharvaveda' times and the "$Ast\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$". In the "$Ast\bar{a}nga$ Sangraha $samhit\bar{a}$"'s 'ShenTiLun(身體論)' there is a thorough listing of the development of a child from pregnancy to birth. The '$\bar{A}yurveda$' is not just an ancient traditional medical system but is being called alternative medicine in the west because of its ability to supplement western medicine and, as its effects are being proved scientifically it is gaining attention worldwide. We would like to say that what we have researched is just a small fragment and a limited view, and would like to correct and supplement any insufficient parts through more research of new records.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.231-238
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• 2010

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.