• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.153-169
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• 2024

Purpose: The main goal of this study was to identify the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on grocery purchases (i.e., fresh and processed foods by grain, vegetable, fruit, seafood, and meat categories) in Korea. To understand the specific impact of COVID-19, the study period was divided into 3 segments: PRE-COVID-19, INTER-COVID-19, and POST-COVID-19. Methods: We used the microdata of household income and expenditure from Statistics Korea (KOSTAT), representing households across the country. The data comprised monthly grocery expenditure data from January 2019 to September 2022. First, we compared the PRE-COVID-19 period to INTER-COVID-19 and then INTER-COVID-19 to POST-COVID-19 and used multiple regression analysis. The covariates used were the gender and age of the head of the household, the household's monthly income, the number of family members, the price index, and the month (dummy variable). Results: The expenditures on all grocery categories except fresh fruit increased from PRE-COVID-19 to INTER-COVID-19. From INTER-COVID-19 to POST-COVID-19, almost all grocery category spending declined, with processed meat being the only exception. Most purchases of protein sources, increased during INTER-COVID-19 compared to PRE-COVID-19, while ham/sausage/bacon for meat protein, fish cakes and canned seafood for seafood protein, and soy milk for plant-based protein did not decrease during POST-COVID-19 compared to INTER-COVID-19. Conclusion: These results show an overall increase in in-home grocery expenditure during COVID-19 due to an increase in eating at home, followed by a decrease in this expenditure in the POST-COVID-19 period. Among the trends, the protein and highly processed convenience food categories did not see a decline in spending during the POST-COVID-19 period, which is a reflection of the preferences of consumers in the post-COVID-19 period.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.68 no.4
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• pp.262-275
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• 2023

This study aimed to assess the preferences of African, American, and Asian panels, in comparison to a Korean panel, for various Korean rice varieties, including three japonica, two indica, and one Tongil-type, all developed by the Rural Development Administration in Korea. Regarding rice appearance, most panelists, except for the Koreans, favored long and slender rice varieties like 'Hanyeol', 'Hyangyeol', and 'Amissal'. In contrast, the Koreans preferred wider varieties like 'Sindongjin' and 'Deuraehyang'. Notably, the overseas panelists consistently favored rice varieties with high appearance quality in sensory evaluations of cooked rice. Both overseas and Korean panelists strongly preferred the indica rice variety 'Hanyeol' in terms of appearance quality and sensory evaluations. However, Korean rice varieties like 'Amissal' and 'Sindongjin' scored high in appearance quality with overseas panelists but received low ratings in sensory aspects, including shape, stickiness, and taste, compared to those for 'Hanyeol'. This suggests that considering sensory characteristics is important when exporting Korean rice varieties. Regarding taste characteristics preferred by the panelists derived from the correlation analysis between taste traits, Africans preferred rice with a smooth texture and no stickiness, especially favoring long-grain rice. Americans leaned towards rice with a slightly firm texture, some stickiness, and late aging characteristics. Asians preferred rice with a smooth texture, low stickiness, and long-grain varieties. In contrast, Koreans favored round rice with a glossy appearance, a slightly firm texture, late aging traits, and some stickiness. These research findings can serve as valuable data for the development of rice varieties for overseas markets and are expected to contribute to securing competitiveness in international markets.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.239-249
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• 2024

In this study, we investigated the concentrations of pesticide residues in agricultural products marketed in northern Seoul and assessed their potential health risks. A total of 1,737 samples were collected using the QuEChERS method, followed by LC-MS/MS and GC-MS/MS. Pesticide residues below the MRLs were detected in 560 samples of 72 items (32.2%), but 38 samples of 22 items had pesticide residues above the MRLs. Residual pesticides were detected in 53.8% of fruits, 33.0% of vegetables, 28.6% of herbs, 15.4% of beans, and 10.5% of rice samples. Most of the samples that exceeded the MRLs were vegetables, especially leafy, stalk, stem, and root vegetables; herbs and mushrooms also exceeded the permitted MRLs. Of the 105 pesticides investigated, dinotefuran, fluxametamide, chlorfenapyr, azoxystrobin, and carbendazim were the most frequently detected, whereas 23 pesticide residues, including terbufos, carbendazim, and fluxametamide, were detected above the MRL values. The hazard indices were calculated as 0.00003-1.31406%, which suggests that the investigated pesticide residues in the samples were within safe levels, but continuous monitoring of pesticides in agricultural products is needed to ensure the safety of consumers.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.51-89
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• 2007

INTRODUCTION Due to the high broadband internet penetration rate and its group-oriented culture, various types of online communities operate in Korea. This study use 'Uses and Gratification Approach, and argue that members' usage-needs satisfaction with brand community is an important factor for promoting community commitment. Based on previous studies identifying the effect of brand image on consumers' responses to various marketing stimuli, this study hypothesizes that brand image can be a moderate variable affecting the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction with brand community and members' commitment to brand community. This study analyzes the influence of usage-needs satisfaction on brand community commitment and how apparel brand image affects the relationships between usage-needs satisfactions and community commitments. The hypotheses of this study are proposed as follows. H1-3: The usage-needs satisfaction of apparel brand community (interest, transaction, relationship needs) influences emotional (H1), continuous (H2), and normative (H3) commitments to apparel brand communities. H4-6: Apparel brand image has a moderating effect on the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction and emotional (H4), continuous (H5), and normative (H6) commitments to apparel brand communities. METHODS Brand communities founded by non-company affiliates were excluded and emphasis was placed instead on communities created by apparel brand companies. Among casual apparel brands registered in 6 Korean portal sites in August 2003, a total of 9 casual apparel brand online communities were chosen, depending on the level of community activity and apparel brand image. Data from 317 community members were analyzed by exploratory factor analysis, moderated regression analysis, ANOVA, and scheffe test. Among 317 respondents answered an online html-type questionnaire, 80.5% were between 16 to 25 years old. There were a total of 150 respondents from apparel brand communities(n=3) recording higher-than-average brand image scores (Mean > 3.75) and a total of 162 respondents from apparel brand communities(n=6) recording lower-than-average brand image scores(Mean < 3.75). In this study, brand community commitment was measured by a 5-point Likert scale: emotional, continuous and normative commitment. The degree of usage-needs satisfaction (interest, transaction, relationship needs) was measured on a 5-point Likert scale. The level of brand image was measured by a 5-point Likert scale: strength, favorability, and uniqueness of brand associations. RESULTS In the results of exploratory factor analysis, the three usage-needs satisfactions with brand community were classified as interest, transaction, and relationship needs. Brand community commitment was also divided into the multi-dimensional factors: emotional, continuous, and normative commitments. The regression analysis (using a stepwise method) was used to test the influence of 3 independent variables (interest-needs satisfaction, transaction-needs, and relationship-needs satisfactions) on the 3 dependent variables (emotional, continuous and normative commitments). The three types of usage-needs satisfactions are positively associated with the three types of commitments to apparel brand communities. Therefore, hypothesis 1, 2, and 3 were significantly supported. Moderating effects of apparel brand image on the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction and brand community commitments were tested by moderated regression analysis. The statistics result showed that the influence of transaction-needs on emotional commitment was significantly moderated by apparel brand image. In addition, apparel brand image had moderating effects on the relationship between relationship-needs satisfaction and emotional, continuous and normative commitments to apparel brand communities. However, there were not significant moderate effects of apparel brand image on the relationships between interest-needs satisfaction and 3 types of commitments (emotional, continuous and normative commitments) to apparel brand communities. In addition, the influences of transaction-needs satisfaction on 2 types of commitments (continuous and normative commitments) were not significantly moderated by apparel brand image. Therefore, hypothesis 4, 5 and 6 were partially supported. To explain the moderating effects of apparel brand image, four cross-tabulated groups were made by averages of usage-needs satisfaction (interest-needs satisfaction avg. M=3.09, transaction-needs satisfaction avg. M=3.46, relationship-needs satisfaction M=1.62) and the average apparel brand image (M=3.75). The average scores of commitments in each classified group are presented in Tables and Figures. There were significant differences among four groups. As can be seen from the results of scheffe test on the tables, emotional commitment in community group with high brand image was higher than one in community group with low brand image when transaction-needs satisfaction was high. However, when transaction-needs satisfaction was low, there was not any difference between the community group with high brand image and community group with low brand image regarding emotional commitment to apparel brand communities. It means that emotional commitment didn't increase significantly without high satisfaction of transaction-needs, despite the high apparel brand image. In addition, when apparel brand image was low, increase in transaction-needs did not lead to the increase in emotional commitment. Therefore, the significant relationship between transaction-needs satisfaction and emotional commitment was found in only brand communities with high apparel brand image, and the moderating effect of apparel brand image on this relationship between two variables was found in the communities with high satisfaction of transaction-needs only. Statistics results showed that the level of emotional commitment is related to the satisfaction level of transaction-needs, while overall response is related to the level of apparel brand image. We also found that the role of apparel brand image as a moderating factor was limited by the level of transaction-needs satisfaction. In addition, relationship-needs satisfaction brought significant increase in emotional commitment in both community groups (high and low levels of brand image), and the effect of apparel brand image on emotional commitment was significant in both community groups (high and low levels of relationship-needs satisfaction). Especially, the effect of brand image was greater when the level of relationship-needs satisfaction was high. in contrast, increase in emotional commitment responding to increase in relationship-needs satisfaction was greater when apparel brand image is high. The significant influences of relationship-needs satisfaction on community commitments (continuous and normative commitments) were found regardless of apparel brand image(in both community groups with low and high brand image). However, the effects of apparel brand image on continuous and normative commitments were found in only community group with high satisfaction level of relationship-needs. In the case of communities with low satisfaction levels of relationship needs, apparel brand image marginally increases continuous and normative commitments. Therefore, we could not find the moderating effect of apparel brand image on the relationship between relationship-needs satisfaction and continuous and normative commitments in community groups with low satisfaction levels of relationship needs, CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS From the results of this study, we draw several conclusions; First, the increases in usage-needs satisfactions through apparel brand communities result in the increases in commitments to apparel brand communities, wheres the degrees of such relationship depends on the level of apparel brand image. That is, apparel brand image is a moderating factor strengthening the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction and commitment to apparel brand communities. In addition, the effect of apparel brand image differs, depending on the level and types of community usage-needs satisfactions. Therefore, marketers of apparel brand companies must determine the appropriate usage-needs, depending on the type of commitment they wish to increase and the level of their apparel brand image, to promote member's commitments to apparel brand communities. Especially, relationship-needs satisfaction was very important factor for increasing emotional, continuous and normative commitments to communities. However the level of relationship-needs satisfaction was lower than interest-needs and transaction-needs. satisfaction. According to previous study on apparel brand communities, relationship-need satisfaction was strongly related to member's intention of participation in their communities. Therefore, marketers need to develope various strategies in order to increase the relationship- needs as well as interest and transaction needs. In addition, despite continuous commitment was higher than emotional and normative commitments, all types of commitments to apparel brand communities had scores lower than 3.0 that was mid point in 5-point scale. A Korean study reported that the level of members' commitment to apparel brand community influenced customers' identification with a brand and brand purchasing behavior. Therefore, marketers should try to increase members' usage-needs satisfaction and apparel brand image as the necessary conditions for bringing about community commitments. Second, marketers should understand that they should keep in mind that increasing the level of community usage needs (transaction and relationship) is most effective in raising commitment when the level of apparel brand image is high, and that increasing usage needs (transaction needs) satisfaction in communities with low brand image might not be as effective as anticipated. Therefore, apparel companies with desirable brand image such as luxury designer goods firms need to create formal online brand communities (as opposed to informal communities with rudimentary online contents) to satisfy transaction and relationship needs systematically. It will create brand equity through consumers' increased emotional, continuous and normative commitments. Even though apparel brand is very famous, emotional commitment to apparel brand communities cannot be easily increased without transaction-needs satisfaction. Therefore famous fashion brand companies should focus on developing various marketing strategies to increase transaction-needs satisfaction.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.27-45
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• 1990

Two opposing views prevail regarding the economic impact of rural out-migration on the rural areas of origin. The optimistic neoclassical view argues that rapid rural out-migration is not detrimental to the income and welfare of the rural areas of origin, whereas Lipton (1980) argues the opposite. We developed our own alternative model for rural to urban migration, appropriate for rapidly developing economies such as Korea's. This model, which adopts international trade theories of nontraded goods and Dutch Disease to rural to urban migration issues, argues that rural to urban migration is caused mainly by two factors: first, the unprofitability of farming, and second, the decrease in demand for rural nontraded goods and the increase in demand for urban nontraded goods. The unprofitability of farming is caused by the increase in rural wages, which is induced by increasing urban wages in booming urban manufacturing sectors, and by the fact that the cost increases in farming cannot be shifted to consumers, because farm prices are fixed worldwide and because the income demand elasticity for farm products is very low. The demand for nontraded goods decreases in rural and increases in urban areas because population density and income in urban areas increase sharply, while those in rural areas decrease sharply, due to rapid rural to urban migration. Given that the market structure for nontraded goods-namely, service sectors including educational and health facilities-is mostly in monopolistically competitive, and that the demand for nontraded goods comes only from local sources, the urban service sector enjoys economies of scale, and can thus offer services at cheaper prices and in greater variety, whereas the rural service sector cannot enjoy the advantages offered by scale economies. Our view concerning the economic impact of rural to urban migration on rural areas of origin agrees with Lipton's pessimistic view that rural out-migration is detrimental to the income and welfare of rural areas. However, our reasons for the reduction of rural income are different from those in Lipton's model. Lipton argued that rural income and welfare deteriorate mainly because of a shortage of human capital, younger workers and talent resulting from selective rural out-migration. Instead, we believe that rural income declines, first, because a rapid rural-urban migration creates a further shortage of farm labor supplies and increases rural wages, and thus reduces further the profitability of farming and, second, because a rapid rural-urban migration causes a further decline of the rural service sectors. Empirical tests of our major hypotheses using Korean census data from 1966, 1970, 1975, 1980 and 1985 support our own model much more than the neoclassical or Lipton's models. A kun (county) with a large out-migration had a smaller proportion of younger working aged people in the population, and a smaller proportion of highly educated workers. But the productivity of farm workers, measured in terms of fall crops (rice) purchased by the government per farmer or per hectare of irrigated land, did not decline despite the loss of these youths and of human capital. The kun having had a large out-migration had a larger proportion of the population in the farm sector and a smaller proportion in the service sector. The kun having had a large out-migration also had a lower income measured in terms of the proportion of households receiving welfare payments or the amount of provincial taxes paid per household. The lower incomes of these kuns might explain why the kuns that experienced a large out-migration had difficulty in mechanizing farming. Our policy suggestions based on the tests of the currently prevailing hypotheses are as follows: 1) The main cause of farming difficulties is not a lack of human capital, but the in­crease in production costs due to rural wage increases combined with depressed farm output prices. Therefore, a more effective way of helping farm economies is by increasing farm output prices. However, we are not sure whether an increase in farm output prices is desirable in terms of efficiency. 2) It might be worthwhile to attempt to increase the size of farmland holdings per farm household so that the mechanization of farming can be achieved more easily. 3) A kun with large out-migration suffers a deterioration in income and welfare. Therefore, the government should provide a form of subsidization similar to the adjustment assistance provided for international trade. This assistance should not be related to the level of farm output. Otherwise, there is a possibility that we might encourage farm production which would not be profitable in the absence of subsidies. 4) Government intervention in agricultural research and its dissemination, and large-scale social overhead projects in rural areas, carried out by the Korean government, might be desirable from both efficiency and equity points of view. Government interventions in research are justified because of the problems associated with the appropriation of knowledge, and government actions on large-scale projects are justified because they required collective action.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.17-35
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• 2015

Demand forecasting is the activity of estimating the quantity of a product or service that consumers will purchase for a certain period of time. Developing precise forecasting models are considered important since corporates can make strategic decisions on new markets based on future demand estimated by the models. Many studies have developed market growth curve models, such as Bass, Logistic, Gompertz models, which estimate future demand when a market is in its early stage. Among the models, Bass model, which explains the demand from two types of adopters, innovators and imitators, has been widely used in forecasting. Such models require sufficient demand observations to ensure qualified results. In the beginning of a new market, however, observations are not sufficient for the models to precisely estimate the market's future demand. For this reason, as an alternative, demands guessed from those of most adjacent markets are often used as references in such cases. Reference markets can be those whose products are developed with the same categorical technologies. A market's demand may be expected to have the similar pattern with that of a reference market in case the adoption pattern of a product in the market is determined mainly by the technology related to the product. However, such processes may not always ensure pleasing results because the similarity between markets depends on intuition and/or experience. There are two major drawbacks that human experts cannot effectively handle in this approach. One is the abundance of candidate reference markets to consider, and the other is the difficulty in calculating the similarity between markets. First, there can be too many markets to consider in selecting reference markets. Mostly, markets in the same category in an industrial hierarchy can be reference markets because they are usually based on the similar technologies. However, markets can be classified into different categories even if they are based on the same generic technologies. Therefore, markets in other categories also need to be considered as potential candidates. Next, even domain experts cannot consistently calculate the similarity between markets with their own qualitative standards. The inconsistency implies missing adjacent reference markets, which may lead to the imprecise estimation of future demand. Even though there are no missing reference markets, the new market's parameters can be hardly estimated from the reference markets without quantitative standards. For this reason, this study proposes a case-based expert system that helps experts overcome the drawbacks in discovering referential markets. First, this study proposes the use of Euclidean distance measure to calculate the similarity between markets. Based on their similarities, markets are grouped into clusters. Then, missing markets with the characteristics of the cluster are searched for. Potential candidate reference markets are extracted and recommended to users. After the iteration of these steps, definite reference markets are determined according to the user's selection among those candidates. Then, finally, the new market's parameters are estimated from the reference markets. For this procedure, two techniques are used in the model. One is clustering data mining technique, and the other content-based filtering of recommender systems. The proposed system implemented with those techniques can determine the most adjacent markets based on whether a user accepts candidate markets. Experiments were conducted to validate the usefulness of the system with five ICT experts involved. In the experiments, the experts were given the list of 16 ICT markets whose parameters to be estimated. For each of the markets, the experts estimated its parameters of growth curve models with intuition at first, and then with the system. The comparison of the experiments results show that the estimated parameters are closer when they use the system in comparison with the results when they guessed them without the system.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.9-53
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• 2004

This paper described the contents of theme entitled "Domestic Legislative Problems on the Civil Liability of Air Carrier in Korea" including the current example of fourteen countries' legislation ((1) Great Britain, (2) United States of America, (3) Canada, (4)European Union), (5) Germany, (6) France, (7) Italy, (8) Spain, (9) Swiss, (10) Australia, (11) Japan, (12) People's Republic of China, (13) Taiwan, (14) North Korea) relating to the aviation law or air transport law. Though the Korean and Japanese aviation act has provided only the public items such as (1) registration of aircraft, (2) persons engaged in aviation, (3) operation of aircraft, (4) aviation facilities including airport, (5) air transport business, (6) investigate of aircraft accidents etc., but they could not regulated the private items such as the legal relations of the air transport contract (1) air passenger ticket, (2) air luggage ticket, (3) airway bill, (4) liability of air carrier, (5) amount of compensation for damage caused by aircraft accidents, (6)jurisdiction, (7) arbitration, (8) limitation of action, (9) combined carriage, (10) carriage by air performed by an actual carrier other than contracting carrier, damage caused by aircraft to the third parties etc. in their aviation act until now. In order to solve speedily the legal problems on the limitation of air carrier's liability and long law suit and disputes between wrongdoers and survivors etc, it is necessary and desirable for us to enact a new "Draft for the Air Transport Act" including the abovementioned private items. I would like to propose personally and strongly the legislation of "Draft for the Air Transport Act" in Korea in emphasizing the importance of ensuring protection of the interests of consumers air passengers and shippers in carriage by air and the need for equitable compensation between air carriers and survivors caused by the aircraft accidents such as the German Air Transport Act (Luftverkerhrsgesetz).

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.327-353
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• 2017

The issue submitted to the Court of Justice on the merits of case C---573/13 originated from a claim brought in the context of a dispute between Air Berlin and the German Federal Union of Consumer Organisations and Associations. The challenge concerned the way in which air fares were displayed in Air Berlin's computerised booking system. The system was organised in such a way that, after selecting a date and a departure airport, one would find all possible flight connections in a summary table. However, the final price of the ticket was displayed only for the clicked connection, and not for all connections, thus preventing customers from being able to compare such price with the prices of other connections. The German Federal Union took the view that this practice did not meet the requirements laid down by Article 23 of Regulation (EC) No. 1008/2008, which requires transparency in the prices set for air services. This led the German State to bring an injunctive action to cause Air Berlin to discontinue said practice. The claim was upheld at both the application and appeal stage of the relevant proceedings. Subsequently, Air Berlin submitted the matter to the German Federal High Court, which decided to stay the proceedings and ask for a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice as to 1. whether Article 23 of Regulation (EC) No. 1008/2008 must be interpreted as meaning that, during the computerised booking process, the final price to be paid must be indicated at all times when prices of air services are shown, including when they are shown for the first time; and 2. whether, during the computerised booking process, the final price must be indicated only for the air service specifically selected by the customer or for each air service shown. In a nutshell, the Court, by the here---discussed judgment determined that Article 23 of Regulation (EC) No. 1008/2008 must be interpreted as meaning that, in the context of a computerised air ticket booking system, the final price to be paid must be indicated not only for the air service specifically selected by the customer, but also for each air service in respect of which the fare is shown. Clearly the above judgment will place air companies under an obligation to update and adjust (when needed) their computerised ticket booking and payment systems, in consideration of the primary need for consumers to be aware at all times of the actual price payable for a ticket and be able to compare the price of the service selected with the prices for other air services in respect of which the fare is shown.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.3-51
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• 2017

From a historical point of view, while the Warsaw Convention was passed in 1924 to regulate the unified judicial responsibility in the global air transportation industry, protection of airline consumers was somewhat lacking in protecting air carriers. In principle, the air carrier does not bear any obligation or liability when the aircraft is not operated normally due to natural disasters such as typhoon or heavy snowfall. However, in recent years, in developed countries such as the US and Europe, there has been a movement in which regulates the air carriers' obligation to protect their passengers even if there is no misconduct or negligence. Furthermore, the legislation of such advanced countries imposes an obligation on the airlines to compensate the loss separately from damages in case the abnormal operation of the aircraft is not caused by force majeure but caused by their negligence. Under this historical and international context, Korea is also modifying the system of aviation consumer protection by referring to other foreign legislation. However, when compared with foreign countries, our norm has a few drawbacks. First, the airline's protection or care obligations are mixed with the legal liability for damages in the provision, which seems to be due to the lack of understanding of the airline's passenger protection obligation. The liability for damages, which is governed by the International Convention or the Commercial Act, shall be determined by judging the cause of the airline's liability in respect of the damage of the individual passenger in the course of the air transportation. However, the duty to care and the burden for compensation shall be granted to all passengers who feel uncomfortable with the abnormal operation regardless of the cause of the accident. Also, our compensation system for denied boarding due to oversale is too low compared to the case of foreign countries, and setting the compensation amount range differently based on the time for the re-routing is somewhat unclear. Regarding checked-baggage claim, it will be necessary to refund the fee only from the fact that the baggage is delayed without asking whether there is any damage occurred from the delayed baggage. This is the content of the duty to care, which is different from the current Commercial Act or the international convention, in which responsibility is different depending on whether the airline takes all the necessary measures in order to prevent delaying of the baggage. The content of force majeure, which is a requirement for exemption from the obligation to care passengers on the airplane, shall be reconsidered. Maintenance for safe navigation is not considered to be included in force majeure, and connection to airplanes, airport conditions are disputable. According to the EC Regulation, if the cause of the abnormal operation of the airline is force majeure, the airline's compensation obligation is exempted but the duty to care of airline company is still meaningful. Furthermore, even if the main role of aviation consumer protection is on an airline, it is the responsibility of government agencies to supervise the fulfillment of such protection obligations. Therefore, it is necessary for the Korean government to actively take measures such as enforcing incentives for airlines that faithfully fulfill their obligation to care and imposed penalties on the contrary.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.89-105
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• 2014

After emergence of Internet, social media with highly interactive Web 2.0 applications has provided very user friendly means for consumers and companies to communicate with each other. Users have routinely published contents involving their opinions and interests in social media such as blogs, forums, chatting rooms, and discussion boards, and the contents are released real-time in the Internet. For that reason, many researchers and marketers regard social media contents as the source of information for business analytics to develop business insights, and many studies have reported results on mining business intelligence from Social media content. In particular, opinion mining and sentiment analysis, as a technique to extract, classify, understand, and assess the opinions implicit in text contents, are frequently applied into social media content analysis because it emphasizes determining sentiment polarity and extracting authors' opinions. A number of frameworks, methods, techniques and tools have been presented by these researchers. However, we have found some weaknesses from their methods which are often technically complicated and are not sufficiently user-friendly for helping business decisions and planning. In this study, we attempted to formulate a more comprehensive and practical approach to conduct opinion mining with visual deliverables. First, we described the entire cycle of practical opinion mining using Social media content from the initial data gathering stage to the final presentation session. Our proposed approach to opinion mining consists of four phases: collecting, qualifying, analyzing, and visualizing. In the first phase, analysts have to choose target social media. Each target media requires different ways for analysts to gain access. There are open-API, searching tools, DB2DB interface, purchasing contents, and so son. Second phase is pre-processing to generate useful materials for meaningful analysis. If we do not remove garbage data, results of social media analysis will not provide meaningful and useful business insights. To clean social media data, natural language processing techniques should be applied. The next step is the opinion mining phase where the cleansed social media content set is to be analyzed. The qualified data set includes not only user-generated contents but also content identification information such as creation date, author name, user id, content id, hit counts, review or reply, favorite, etc. Depending on the purpose of the analysis, researchers or data analysts can select a suitable mining tool. Topic extraction and buzz analysis are usually related to market trends analysis, while sentiment analysis is utilized to conduct reputation analysis. There are also various applications, such as stock prediction, product recommendation, sales forecasting, and so on. The last phase is visualization and presentation of analysis results. The major focus and purpose of this phase are to explain results of analysis and help users to comprehend its meaning. Therefore, to the extent possible, deliverables from this phase should be made simple, clear and easy to understand, rather than complex and flashy. To illustrate our approach, we conducted a case study on a leading Korean instant noodle company. We targeted the leading company, NS Food, with 66.5% of market share; the firm has kept No. 1 position in the Korean "Ramen" business for several decades. We collected a total of 11,869 pieces of contents including blogs, forum contents and news articles. After collecting social media content data, we generated instant noodle business specific language resources for data manipulation and analysis using natural language processing. In addition, we tried to classify contents in more detail categories such as marketing features, environment, reputation, etc. In those phase, we used free ware software programs such as TM, KoNLP, ggplot2 and plyr packages in R project. As the result, we presented several useful visualization outputs like domain specific lexicons, volume and sentiment graphs, topic word cloud, heat maps, valence tree map, and other visualized images to provide vivid, full-colored examples using open library software packages of the R project. Business actors can quickly detect areas by a swift glance that are weak, strong, positive, negative, quiet or loud. Heat map is able to explain movement of sentiment or volume in categories and time matrix which shows density of color on time periods. Valence tree map, one of the most comprehensive and holistic visualization models, should be very helpful for analysts and decision makers to quickly understand the "big picture" business situation with a hierarchical structure since tree-map can present buzz volume and sentiment with a visualized result in a certain period. This case study offers real-world business insights from market sensing which would demonstrate to practical-minded business users how they can use these types of results for timely decision making in response to on-going changes in the market. We believe our approach can provide practical and reliable guide to opinion mining with visualized results that are immediately useful, not just in food industry but in other industries as well.