• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제17권2호
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• pp.123-137
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• 2007

The advent of the Internet and related Web technologies has created an easily accessible link between a firm and its customers, and has provided opportunities to a firm to use information technology to support supplementary after-sale services associated with a product or service. It has been widely recognized that supplementary services are an important source of customer value and of competitive advantage as the characteristics of the product itself. Many of these supplementary services are information-based and need not be co-located with the product, so more and more companies are delivering these services electronically. Net-based customer service, which is defined as an Internet-based computerized information system that delivers services to a customer, therefore, is the core infrastructure for supplementary service provision. The importance of net-based customer service in delivering supplementary after-sale services associated with product has been well documented. The strategic advantages of well-implemented net-based customer service are enhanced customer loyalty and higher lock-in of customers, and a resulting reduction in competition and the consequent increase in profits. However, not all customers utilize such net-based customer service. The digital divide is the phenomenon in our society that captures the observation that not all customers have equal access to computers. Socioeconomic factors such as race, gender, and education level are strongly related to Internet accessibility and ability to use. This is due to the differences in the ability to bear the cost of a computer, and the differences in self-efficacy in the use of a technology, among other reasons. This concept, applied to e-commerce, has been called the "e-commerce divide." High Internet penetration is not eradicating the digital divide and e-commerce divide as one would hope. Besides, to accommodate personalized support, a customer must often provide personal information to the firm. This personal information includes not only name and address, but also preferences information and perhaps valuation information. However, many recent studies show that consumers may not be willing to share information about themselves due to concerns about privacy online. Due to the e-commerce divide, and due to privacy and security concerns of the customer for sharing personal information with firms, limited numbers of customers adopt net-based customer service. The limited level of customer adoption of net-based customer service affects the firm profits and the customers' welfare. We use a game-theoretic model in which we model the net-based customer service system as a mechanism to enhance customers' loyalty. We model a market entry scenario where a firm (the incumbent) uses the net-based customer service system in inducing loyalty in its customer base. The firm sells one product through the traditional retailing channels and at a price set for these channels. Another firm (the entrant) enters the market, and having observed the price of the incumbent firm (and after deducing the loyalty levels in the customer base), chooses its price. The profits of the firms and the surplus of the two customers segments (the segment that utilizes net-based customer service and the segment that does not) are analyzed in the Stackelberg leader-follower model of competition between the firms. We find that an increase in adoption of net-based customer service by the customer base is not always desirable for firms. With low effectiveness in enhancing customer loyalty, firms prefer a high level of customer adoption of net-based customer service, because an increase in adoption rate decreases competition and increases profits. A firm in an industry where net-based customer service is highly effective loyalty mechanism, on the other hand, prefers a low level of adoption by customers.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• 제44권6호
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• pp.40-50
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• 2016

The objective of this study is to suggest basic data for establishing future urban agriculture vitalization policies, by analyzing the preference of urban agriculture types in accordance with lifestyle as the standard of living for urban residents is improved. A survey was conducted targeting residents of nine autonomous regions that have established grounds for supporting the urban agriculture vitalization by enacting an urban agriculture ordinance, among 25 autonomous regions of Seoul. It aimed to verify a causal relationship between lifestyle and preferred activity of urban agriculture. In the results of the study first, a 'Health pursuit-type' was significant within the 'urban type' urban agriculture. These urban residents, pursuing safe food and health, actively participated in urban agriculture educational programs, and also preferred urban agricultural activities such as planting plants, landscape crops for the improvement of natural scenery in the downtown, and also participating in urban agriculture fairs. Second, 'Leisure activity-type' was significant with the 'House advantage type' urban agriculture. Urban residents mostly emphasizing hobby and leisure activities preferred the 'House advantage type' urban agricultural activities such as tending a vegetable garden in indoor life or using the veranda space of an apartment. Third, 'Health pursuit-type' was significant with the 'Schooling type' urban agriculture and 'Farm and Park type' urban agriculture. Urban residents pursuing health preferred tending an educational-type vegetable garden and educational farm connected to schools, running private farms outside of the downtown, and actively participating in urban agriculture park. Fourth, 'The neighborhood type' was significant with the 'Schooling type' urban agriculture. 'The neighborhood type' urban residents preferred actively participating in diverse urban agriculture education activities. The significance of this study is to examine the tendency and preferred activities of end users of urban agriculture by suggesting the necessity of viewing urban agriculture from the aspect of a consumer, and then examining the influential relationship between lifestyle and preference of urban agriculture-types.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Grassland and Forage Science
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• 제12권3호
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• pp.3-12
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• 1992

Forage grasses and legumes ar$\varepsilon$ the mam component of livestock diets in Canada. There are over 30 million ha of grassland in Canada and there is a large, undeveloped land base in fringe areas suitable for forage production. The short growing s season limits the grassland farming to the southern p parts of Canada. The win!er season is long and in most parts of Canada cold temperatures, fr$\varepsilon$ezmg, and thawing, and diseases exert sever$\varepsilon$ stress on overwintering forage plants. The development of persistent cultivars is essential for sustained production particularly in the fringe areas with short growmg s$\varepsilon$ason. The seasonality of dry matter production is a result of high growth rates in early summ$\varepsilon$r and low dry matter accumulation in late summer and fall. Innovative management practIces a and cultivars with improved regrowth capacity are n necessary to overcome such skewed production pattern and to extend effiectlVe grazmg season l Improved pasture production is an important part of reducing costs in livestock operations and remaining competitive. It is suggested that applying available technology would increase pasture productivity and reduce d$\varepsilon$pendence on stored feeds thus improving profitability of small producers in particeular. Reducing nutrient losses during harv$\varepsilon$stmg, s storage, and feeding is essential for improved production efficiency during confinement. The devclopment of low cost and labor saving methods of ensiling is critical for improved efficiency and profitability of forage based enterprises Livestock industries must respond to consumer preferences for low fat and cholesterol foods. Research and development of entire production systems is emphasized for dev$\varepsilon$loping viabl$\varepsilon$ enterprises. It is increasingly difficult to secure resources for r$\varepsilon$search, education, and extension, and alliane$\varepsilon$s and cooperation must expand among organizations with interests in forage based livestock systems.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• 제45권1호
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• pp.59-69
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• 2013

This study investigated the frequency, amount and consumption patterns of 50 potentially hazardous foods (PHF) along with consumers' risk perceptions towards PHF in Korea. A quantitative survey was performed from May through August by trained interviewers, surveying 1,000 adults aged over 18 who were randomly selected from six major provinces in Korea. Consumers perceived seafood, including shellfish, mussel, sashimi and sushi, as the top foods with the highest risk, followed by raw sliced beef. The food with the highest frequency intake per month was leafy vegetables, which is used to wrap other foods, followed by blanched vegetables, fried chicken, etc. The group of middle aged individuals with economic stability had the highest frequency intake of sashimi and sushi. Respondents living in small regions consume greater PHF portions at once. Food safety education with regard to the risk of PHF is essential for consumers, with high frequent intake of PHF.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• 제16권4호
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• pp.153-165
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• 2021

With the disappearance of boundaries between online and offline, the O2O(online to offline) platform service is rapidly growing. Unlike general products, freshness is an important decision-making factor for agri-food, and there are many limiting factors for growth as an open market among O2O platforms due to the characteristics of difficult refunds and exchanges compared to other items and new transaction methods. In order to overcome these obstacles, consumer innovation must be considered. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of O2O(online to offline) platform characteristics perception on agri-food repurchase intentions. And an empirical survey of the hypothesis is made that innovation will show a moderating effect between agri-food O2O platform characteristics and repurchase intention. And an empirical survey of the hypothesis is made that innovation will show a moderating effect between agri-food O2O platform characteristics and repurchase intention. For this purpose, Using a convenience sampling technique, an online survey was conducted through Google survey from April 1 to April 15, 2021. A total of final analysis data were collected from a total of 270 purchase experienced of agri-food O2O(online to offline) platform. The SPSS program was used for analysis, and multiple regression analysis was used for hypothesis verification. The results showed that Economic, Interaction, and Playfulness had a significant positive effect on agri-food repurchase intend. Also, Interactivity × innovation, playfulness × innovation were found to have a significant positive (+) effect on repurchase intention. The results of this study show that innovation reduces the burden on consumers for new systems and mobile transactions. The results of this study suggest that convenient interface design is important for activating O2O transactions of agri-food. In addition, education and support are needed to strengthen the IT competency of farmers. The results of this study will be able to contribute to the establishment of infrastructure for agri-food open market shopping malls. In future studies, the influence of the O2O platform type on the purchase intention should be studied continuously.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• 제25권3호
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• pp.179-200
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• 2019

Word-of-mouth (WoM) is defined by consumer activities that share information concerning consumption. WoM activities have long been recognized as important in corporate marketing processes and have received much attention, especially in the marketing field. Recently, according to the development of the Internet, the way in which people exchange information in online news and online communities has been expanded, and WoM is diversified in terms of word of mouth, score, rating, and liking. Social media makes online users easy access to information and online WoM is considered a key source of information. Although various studies on WoM have been preceded by this phenomenon, there is no meta-analysis study that comprehensively analyzes them. This study proposed a method to extract major researches by applying text mining techniques and to grasp the main issues of researches in order to find the trend of WoM research using scholarly big data. To this end, a total of 4389 documents were collected by the keyword 'Word-of-mouth' from 1941 to 2018 in Scopus (www.scopus.com), a citation database, and the data were refined through preprocessing such as English morphological analysis, stopwords removal, and noun extraction. To carry out this study, we adopted main path analysis (MPA) and word co-occurrence network analysis. MPA detects key researches and is used to track the development trajectory of academic field, and presents the research trend from a macro perspective. For this, we constructed a citation network based on the collected data. The node means a document and the link means a citation relation in citation network. We then detected the key-route main path by applying SPC (Search Path Count) weights. As a result, the main path composed of 30 documents extracted from a citation network. The main path was able to confirm the change of the academic area which was developing along with the change of the times reflecting the industrial change such as various industrial groups. The results of MPA revealed that WoM research was distinguished by five periods: (1) establishment of aspects and critical elements of WoM, (2) relationship analysis between WoM variables, (3) beginning of researches of online WoM, (4) relationship analysis between WoM and purchase, and (5) broadening of topics. It was found that changes within the industry was reflected in the results such as online development and social media. Very recent studies showed that the topics and approaches related WoM were being diversified to circumstantial changes. However, the results showed that even though WoM was used in diverse fields, the main stream of the researches of WoM from the start to the end, was related to marketing and figuring out the influential factors that proliferate WoM. By applying word co-occurrence network analysis, the research trend is presented from a microscopic point of view. Word co-occurrence network was constructed to analyze the relationship between keywords and social network analysis (SNA) was utilized. We divided the data into three periods to investigate the periodic changes and trends in discussion of WoM. SNA showed that Period 1 (1941~2008) consisted of clusters regarding relationship, source, and consumers. Period 2 (2009~2013) contained clusters of satisfaction, community, social networks, review, and internet. Clusters of period 3 (2014~2018) involved satisfaction, medium, review, and interview. The periodic changes of clusters showed transition from offline to online WoM. Media of WoM have become an important factor in spreading the words. This study conducted a quantitative meta-analysis based on scholarly big data regarding WoM. The main contribution of this study is that it provides a micro perspective on the research trend of WoM as well as the macro perspective. The limitation of this study is that the citation network constructed in this study is a network based on the direct citation relation of the collected documents for MPA.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• 제53권6호
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• pp.676-687
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• 2020

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in portion size of 11 types of foods that Korean adults frequently consume, based on the parameters of eating place, gender, and age using the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) data. Methods: The dietary survey data from 2012-2016 KNHANES was used. A total of 19,779 subjects (8,034 male [40.6%], 11,745 female [59.4%]) were classified based on gender, three age groups (19-29 years old [15.7%], 30-49 years old [46.9%], 50-64 years old [37.4%]) and three eating places (home, institution, and restaurants/convenient stores etc.). Results: The portion sizes according to the eating places were calculated as per the median intake of Korean adults. Foods that showed the highest median intake in restaurants/convenience stores were boiled rice and kimchi stew. The median intake quantity of kimchi stew was the highest in restaurants/convenience stores in men across most age groups. Women in 30-49 years age group also consumed a lot of kimchi stew in restaurants/convenience stores. Men in the age groups 30-49 and 50-64 years consumed soybean paste stew the most in institutions compared to home and restaurants/convenient stores. Stir-fried pork was consumed the most at institutional meal places across all age groups. Conclusion: The portion sizes of kimchi stew and boiled rice were the highest in restaurants/convenience stores. As kimchi stew and soybean paste stew is high in sodium, the intake should be reduced in institutions and restaurants/convenience stores. Furthermore, it is necessary to reduce sodium intake through consumer nutrition education and the development of low-salt standard recipes for restaurants.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• 제26권3호
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• pp.220-237
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• 2021

Since the functional importance of marine phytoplankton was firstly advocated from early 1880s massive data on the species composition and abundance were produced by classical microscopic observation and the advanced auto-imaging technologies. Recently, pigment composition resulted from direct chemical analysis of phytoplankton samples or indirect remote sensing could be used for the group-specific quantification, which leads us to more diversified data production methods and for more improved spatiotemporal accessibilities to the target data-gathering points. In quite a few cases of many long-term marine ecosystem monitoring programs the phytoplankton species composition and abundance was included as a basic monitoring item. The phytoplankton data could be utilized as a crucial evidence for the long-term change in phytoplankton community structure and ecological functioning at the monitoring stations. Usability of the phytoplankton data sometimes is restricted by the differences in data producers throughout the whole monitoring period. Methods for sample treatments, analyses, and species identification of the phytoplankton species could be inconsistent among the different data producers and the monitoring years. In-depth study to determine the precise quantitative values of the phytoplankton species composition and abundance might be begun by Victor Hensen in late 1880s. International discussion on the quality assurance of the marine phytoplankton data began in 1969 by the SCOR Working Group 33 of ICSU. Final report of the Working group in 1974 (UNESCO Technical Papers in Marine Science 18) was later revised and published as the UNESCO Monographs on oceanographic methodology 6. The BEQUALM project, the former body of IPI (International Phytoplankton Intercomparison) for marine phytoplankton data QA/QC under ISO standard, was initiated in late 1990. The IPI is promoting international collaboration for all the participating countries to apply the QA/QC standard established from the 20 years long experience and practices. In Korea, however, such a QA/QC standard for marine phytoplankton species composition and abundance data is not well established by law, whereas that for marine chemical data from measurements and analysis has been already set up and managed. The first priority might be to establish a QA/QC standard system for species composition and abundance data of marine phytoplankton, then to be extended to other functional groups at the higher consumer level of marine food webs.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• 제5권1호
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• pp.27-47
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• 2014

This research was conducted on the purpose of seeking the measures of how to cope with the changing industry of Topokki franchises. Despite of the fact the number of Kukdae Topokki's stores is quite smaller than that of its competitors, such as Jaws Topokki and Addal Topokki, Kukdae Topokki is recognized as one of the front-runners in the industry. But the competition in the topokki industry has become fiercer, as the market became saturated. To find a desirable solutions, this study analyzes past-to-current status of the Topokki industry by dividing it into 4 stages and provides few strategies that Kukdae Topokki can apply to the 4th stage where 'brand awareness' is very important. To this end, few drawbacks of Kukdae Topokki are proposed as the following. First, the brand image that Kukdae Topokki pursue does not correspondent with the image in consumer's mind. Second, Kukdae Topokki has selected the wrong targeting group. It aims for the image of 'retro' to target people in their 30-40s. However, most of the consumers are people in their 20-30s. Third, the taste of Kukdae Topokki is not uniform among franchises. Fourth, the awareness and accessability are low. To provide a proactive actions for the next stages, several solutions are proposed as following. First, By managing consistent Kukdae Topokki's Brand Touch point, consumers may have a strong image on the brand by communicating with consumers consistently at all touch points. Second, instead of the existing guide from the head office(franchiser), a standardized criteria for the usage of materials and periodical education for franchisee are needed. Third, to raise the awareness of Kukdae Topokki, open many branches in the area where the main consumers(20-30s women) are mostly spread out.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• 제8권3호
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• pp.17-26
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• 2010

Recently concerns have been raised due to the unbalanced supply of crops: the price of crops has been unstable and at one point the price went up so high that the word Agflation(agriculture+ inflation) was coined. Korea, in particular, is a small-sized country and needs to secure the stable supply of crops by investing in the produce importation at a national level. Investment in foreign produce importation is becoming more important as a measure for sufficient supply of crops, limited supply of domestic crops, weakened farming conditions worldwide, as well as recent changes in the use of crops due to the development of bio-fuels, influence of carbon emission on crops, the price increase in crops, and influx of foreign hot money. However, there are many problems with investing in foreign produce importation: lack of support from the government; lack of farming information and technology; difficulty in securing the capital; no immediate pay-off from the investment and insufficient management. Although foreign produce is originally more price-competitive than domestic produce, it loses its competiveness in the process of importation (due to high tariffs) and poor distribution system, which makes it difficult to sell in Korea. Therefore, investment in foreign produce importation is being questioned for feasibility; to make it possible, foreign produce must maintain the price-competitiveness. Especially, harvest of agricultural products depends on natural and geographical conditions of each country and those products have indigenous properties, so distribution system according to import and export of agricultural products should be treated more carefully than that of other industries. Distribution costs are differentiated into each item and include cost of sorting and wrapping, cost of wrapping materials, cost of domestic transport, cost of international transport and cost of clearing customs for import and export. So transporting and storing agricultural products generates considerable costs compared with other products. Also, due to upgrade of dietary life, needs for stability, taste and visible quality toward food including agricultural products are being raised and wrong way of storage causes decomposition of food and loss of freshness, making the storage more difficult than that in room temperature, so storage and transport in distribution of agricultural products needs specialty. In addition, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. However, existing distribution system of agricultural products is exposed to various problems including problems in distribution channel, making distribution and strategy for distribution and those problems are as follows. First, in case of investment in overseas agricultural industry, stable supply of the products is difficult because areas of production are dispersed widely and influenced by outer factors due to including overseas distribution channels. Also, at the aspect of quality, standardization of products is difficult, distribution system is quite complicated and unreasonable due to long distribution channels according to international trade and financial and institutional support is not enough. Especially, there are quite a lot of ineffective factors including multi level distribution process, dramatic gap between production cost and customer's cost, lack of physical distribution facilities and difficulties in storage and transport due to lack of wrapping containers. Besides, because import and export of agricultural products has been manages under the company's own distribution according to transaction contract between manufacturers and exporting company, efficiency is low due to excessive investment in fixed costs and lack of specialty in dealing with agricultural products causes fall of value of products, showing the limit to lose price-competitiveness. Especially, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. Second, among tangible and intangible services which promote the efficiency of the whole distribution, a function building distribution environment which includes distribution information, system for standard and inspection, distribution finance, system for diversification of risks, education and training, distribution administration and tax system is wanted. In general, such a function building distribution environment is difficult to be changed and supplement innovatively because its effect compared with investment does not appear immediately despite of its necessity. Especially, in case of distribution of agricultural products, as a function of collecting and distributing is performed individually through various channels, the importance of distribution information and standardization is getting more focus due to the problem of repetition of work and lack of specialty. Also, efficient management of distribution is quite difficult due to lack of professionals in distribution, so support to professional education is needed. Third, though effort to keep self-sufficiency ratio of staple food, rice is regarded as important at the government level, level of dependency on overseas of others crops is high. Therefore, plan for stable securing food resources aside from staple food is also necessary. Especially, governmental organizations of agricultural products distribution in Korea are production-centered and have unreasonable structure whose function at the aspect of distribution and consumption is quite insufficient. And development of new distribution channels which can deal with changes in distribution environment and they do not achieve actual results of strategy for distribution due to non-positive strategy for price distribution. That is, it implies the possibility that base for supply will become vulnerable because it does not mediate appropriate interests on total distribution channels such as manufacturers, wholesale dealers and vendors by emphasizing consumer protection excessively in the distribution of agricultural products. Therefore, this study examined fundamental concept and actual situation for our investment to overseas agriculture, drew necessities, considerations, problems, etc. of overseas agricultural investment and suggested improvements at the level of distribution for price competitiveness of agricultural products cultivated in overseas under five aspects; government's indirect support, distribution's modernization and distribution information function's strengthening, government's political support for distribution facility, transportation route, load and unloading works' improvement, price competitiveness' securing, professional manpower's cultivation by education and training, etc. Here are some suggestions for foreign produce importation. First, the government should conduct a survey on the current distribution channels and analyze the situation to establish a measure for long-term development plans. By providing each agricultural area with a guideline for planning appropriate production of crops, the government can help farmers be ready for importation, and prevent them from producing same crops all at the same time. Government can sign an MOU with the foreign government and promote the importation so that the development of agricultural resources can be stable and steady. Second, the government can establish a strategy for an effective distribution system by providing farmers and agriculture-related workers with the distribution information such as price, production, demand, market structure and location, feature of each crop, and etc. In order for such distribution system to become feasible, the government needs to reconstruct the current distribution system, designate a public organization for providing distribution information and set the criteria for level of produce quality, trade units, and package units. Third, the government should provide financial support and a policy to seek an efficient distribution channel for foreign produce to be delivered fresh: the government should expand distribution facilities (for selecting, packaging, storing, and processing) and transportation vehicles while modernizing old facilities. There should be another policy to improve the efficiency of unloading, and to lower the cost of distribution. Fourth, it is necessary to enact a new law covering exceptional cases for importing produce in order to maintain the price competitiveness; currently the high tariffs is keeping the imported produce from being distributed domestically. However, the new adjustment should be made carefully within the WTO regulations since it can create a problem from giving preferential tariffs. The government can also simplify the distribution channels in order to reduce the cost in the distribution process. Fifth, the government should educate distributors to raise the efficiency and to modernize the distribution system. It is necessary to develop human resources by educating people regarding the foreign agricultural environment, the produce quality, management skills, and by introducing some successful cases in advanced countries.