• 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 Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.269-277
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• 2010

Previous studies have shown that the most important factor affecting customer loyalty in the service industry is service quality. However, on the subject of whether service quality has a direct or indirect effect on customer loyalty, scholars' views apparently vary. Some studies suggest that service quality has a direct and fundamental influence on customer loyalty (Bai and Liu, 2002). However, others have shown that service quality not only directly affects customer loyalty, it also has an indirect impact on customer loyalty by influencing customer satisfaction and perceived value (Cronin, Brady, and Hult, 2000). Currently, there are few domestic articles that specifically address the relationship between service quality and customer loyalty in the mobile communication industry. Moreover, research has studied customer loyalty as a whole variable, rather than breaking it down further into multiple dimensions. Based on this analysis, this paper summarizes previous study results, establishes an effect mechanism model among service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty in the mobile communication industry, and presents a statistical test on model assumptions by using customer investigation data from Heilongjiang Mobile Company. It provides theoretical guidance for mobile service management based on the discussion of the hypothesis test results. For data collection, the sample comprised mobile users in Harbin city, and the survey was taken by random sampling. Out of a total of 300 questionnaires, 276 (92.9%) were recovered. After excluding invalid questionnaires, 249 remained, for an effective rate of 82.6 percent for the study. Cronbach's ${\alpha}$ coefficient was adapted to assess the scale reliability, and validity testing was conducted on the questionnaire from three aspects: content validity, construct validity. and convergent validity. The study tested for goodness of fit mainly from the absolute and relative fit indexes. From the hypothesis testing results, overall, four assumptions have not been supported. The ultimate affective relationship of service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty is demonstrated in Figure 2. On the whole, the service quality of the communication industry not only has a direct positive significant effect on customer loyalty, it also has an indirect positive significant effect on customer loyalty through service quality; the affective mechanism and extent of customer loyalty are different, and are influenced by each dimension of service quality. This study used the questionnaires of existing literature from home and abroad and tested them in empirical research, with all questions adapted to seven-point Likert scales. With the SERVQUAL scale of Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1988), or PZB, as a reference point, service quality was divided into five dimensions-tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy-and the questions were simplified down to nineteen. The measurement of customer satisfaction was based mainly on Fornell (1992) and Wang and Han (2003), ending up with four questions. Based on the study’s three indicators of price tolerance, first choice, and complaint reaction were used to measure attitudinal loyalty, while repurchase intention, recommendation, and reputation measured behavioral loyalty. The collection and collation of literature data produced a model of the relationship among service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty in mobile communications, and China Mobile in the city of Harbin in Heilongjiang province was used for conducting an empirical test of the model and obtaining some useful conclusions. First, service quality in mobile communication is formed by the five factors mentioned earlier: tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. On the basis of PZB SERVQUAL, the study designed a measurement scale of service quality for the mobile communications industry, and obtained these five factors through exploratory factor analysis. The factors fit basically with the five elements, indicating the concept of five elements of service quality for the mobile communications industry. Second, service quality in mobile communications has both direct and indirect positive effects on attitudinal loyalty, with the indirect effect being produced through the intermediary variable, customer satisfaction. There are also both direct and indirect positive effects on behavioral loyalty, with the indirect effect produced through two intermediary variables: customer satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty. This shows that better service quality and higher customer satisfaction will activate the attitudinal to service providers more active and show loyalty to service providers much easier. In addition, the effect mechanism of all dimensions of service quality on all dimensions of customer loyalty is different. Third, customer satisfaction plays a significant intermediary role among service quality and attitudinal and behavioral loyalty, indicating that improving service quality can boost customer satisfaction and make it easier for satisfied customers to become loyal customers. Moreover, attitudinal loyalty plays a significant intermediary role between service quality and behavioral loyalty, indicating that only attitudinally and behaviorally loyal customers are truly loyal customers. The research conclusions have some indications for Chinese telecom operators and others to upgrade their service quality. Two limitations to the study are also mentioned. First, all data were collected in the Heilongjiang area, so there might be a common method bias that skews the results. Second, the discussion addresses the relationship between service quality and customer loyalty, setting customer satisfaction as mediator, but does not consider other factors, like customer value and consumer features, This research will be continued in the future.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.219-222
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• 2003

This paper is to propose e-business strategies for individual SME's(small and medium-sized enterprises). e-business maturity model is used to assess e-business maturity level of a target SME, and then corresponding e-business strategy is proposed based on the current maturity level. We studied two SME's to show how it works. Most SME's are small and do not have enough resources to invest on information systems. As it turns out, e-business strategies of SME should heavily depend on its relationship with customers and suppliers. One of the studied SME's is found to be in higher maturity level, because its manufacturing system is tightly related to its customer. One of major implications of this study is that e-business level of SME's should be upgraded considering how it is doing business with its customers and suppliers.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-27
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• 2011

In an attempt to cope with widespread, dynamic, and accelerating changes in both internal and external business environments, companies often utilize information technologies such as SCM(Supply Chain Management). To date, SCM research has mainly focused on the effects of dynamic factors on SCM success and emphasized adoption strategies and critical success factors. Consequently, the effects of more static factors such as interdependency between SCM partners have been largely ignored. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine the effects of both dynamic and static factors on SCM performance by controlling for information quality and partnership quality. The five factors examined in this study include innovative ness, mutual dependency, quality of information, partnership quality, and SCM performance. All factors were examined from the perspective of part suppliers, except the mutual dependency which was examined from two aspects: supplier's dependency on customer and customer's dependency on supplier. Data was collected through five hundred survey questionnaires distributed to the part supplier companies that have implemented SCM systems for at least one year. As a result, a total of 170 valid responses were obtained. A structural equation research model was fitted using SAS 9.1.3 and SMART-PLS 2.0. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, innovativeness positively affected SCM information quality. SCM partnership quality, and ultimately SCM performance. The path coefficient between innovativeness and information quality was 0.387, with a t-value of 3.528. Innovativeness also had a positively direct effect on partnership quality. The path coefficient was 0.351 with a t-value of 3.366. The total effect of innovativeness on partnership quality was significant, although its indirect effect on partnership quality by altering information quality was negligible. The total indirect effect of innovativeness on SCM performance by affecting information quality and partnership quality was significant with a p-value of 0.014. Innovativeness played an important role in determining SCM performance. Second, mutual dependency showed no significant effect on SCM information quality. This result contradicts the earlier assertion that the more dependent two companies are, the more accurate and timely the information they exchange ought to be. This study showed that this may not be the case; a partner may provide information of poor quality even when it is strongly dependent on the other. Mutual dependency showed significant effect on partnership quality. However, when the mutual dependency perceived by suppliers was divided into two parts, one being a supplier's dependency on its customer company and the other being a customer's dependency on the supplier, the latter showed a significant impact on the perceived SCM partnership quality. This result indicates that a customer company can hardly improve the partnership quality perceived by suppliers by making them more dependent. It improves only when the suppliers perceive that their partners, typically having more bargaining power, are more dependent on them. The overall effect of mutual dependency of any kind on SCM performance, however, was not significant. Although mutual dependency has been mentioned as an important static factor influencing almost every aspect of cooperation on a supply chain, its influences may not be as significant as it was initially perceived to be. Third, the correlation between information quality and partnership quality was 0.448 with a p-value of less than 0.001. Information quality had a path coefficient of 0.256 to partnership quality with a t-value of 2.940. The quality of information exchanged between partners may have an impact on their partnership quality. Fourth, information quality also had a significant impact on SCM performance with a path coefficient of 0.325 with a t-value of 3.611. In this study, SCM performance was divided into four categories: product quality, cost saving, service quality, and order fulfillment. Information quality has Significant impacts on product quality, cost saving and service quality, but not on order fulfillment. Fifth, partnership quality, as expected, had a significant impact on SCM performance. The path coefficient was 0.403 with a t-value of 3.539. Partnership quality, like information quality, had positive impacts on product quality, cost saving and service quality, but showed no impact on order fulfillment. It seemed that order fulfillment is the hardest category of performance that SCM can satisfy. One major limitation of this study is that it surveyed only the suppliers. To better understand the dual aspects of SCM, it is important to survey both suppliers and the assemblers, especially in pairs. This research, to our best knowledge, was the first attempt to study the level of dependency between the two groups by measuring the dual aspects of SCM and studying mutual dependency from the categories of suppliers and assemblers each.. In the future, a more comprehensive and precise measurement of SCM characteristics needs to be achieved by examining from both the supplier's and assembler's perspectives.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.301-309
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• 2017

The study analyzes the effects of quality factors of health check-up service applied to military officer every year on the value and the behavioral intention of consumers so that it is be able to suggest alternatives to realize a systematic and realistic health check-up system. The survey period was from September 27 to October 4, 2016 and 294 out of 300 patients were finally selected; Frequency analysis, ANOVA analysis, Pearson's correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were performed. In conclusion, the Age(p<0.05), Number of examinations(p<0.01), Medical communication(p<0.01), Quality of service(p<0.001), Medical Services Value(p<0.001) were drawn as characterized results by sectors regarding health screening service quality and customer satisfaction and behavioral intention. In the future, the military should improve the quality of education and publicity programs to improve the awareness of health checkup system, and improve quality of health checkup service to detect diseases early.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.29-43
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• 2001

Database marketing is a series of marketing activities based on the customer database for increasing the customer's life-time value. In this thesis. we applied database marketing to the sales promotional strategies of Casual Korean Traditional Clothes to activate wearing of Casual Korean Traditional Clothes. To achieve this goal, we surveyed the consciousness of wearing and purchases for Casual Korean Traditional Clothes. and extract information that can be utilized in the sales promotional strategies. According to the result, the proposed sales promotional strategies for Casual Korean Traditional Clothes are summarized as follows : (1) Useful information for the customer should be stored in the database and utilized in the marketing. (2) It is necessary to shorten the cycle of repeated purchases by emphasizing daily-life clothing of Casual Korean Traditional Clothes especially for the aged 20-40. (3) Since Casual Korean Traditional Clothes are usually weared as a ceremonial clothes in the fall, direct mail, fashion show, and advertising in the mass media should be concentrated on this season. (4) Value-added marketing should be derived by cross-selling of items harmonized with Casual Korean Traditional Clothes. (5) To guarantee fixed customers and increased usage of Casual Korean Traditional Clothes, - give point score, discount, or selling on an installment basis for the customers who use credit cards or department cards. - select privileged customers by analyzing purchase history and provide multiple services for these customers. - let the customers rent Casual Korean Traditional Clothes in an appropriate cost, and make customer cards for the construction of elaborated customer database. (6) To increase the acknowledgement of Casual Korean Traditional Clothes, not only Persistent publicity, but also fashion show, visual merchandising, and advertisement in mass media should be conducted as well.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.13-22
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• 2013

Purpose - Product purpose for optimal values solution for synthesize evaluative criteria and optimize product design values. In addition, product designer has to consider the product design to conform to project, laws and regulations, authentication, from the product design stage. Research design, data, methodology - How to use an evaluative criteria model's imprecise market data by evaluative criteria research design; product mapping relationships between design parameters and customer requirements using product predicted value method. An evaluative criteria model and their associated criteria status, product evaluative criteria model of results. Results - Therefore, after the enterprise product design project analysis, effectiveness and the customer degree of satisfaction must be appraised to obtain the maximum value for the benefit on behalf of the implementation goals, the promotion product level and market competition strength. Conclusions - In multi criterion decision making (MCDM), using its searching software capacity to obtain the optimal solution.

• The Korean Journal of Food And Nutrition
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.525-534
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a quality assesment of a university dormitory foodservice on the satisfaction degree, value awareness and relationship intention toward the foodservice. A total of 328 questionnaires were completed. Using SPSS package, Cronbach's alpha, analysis of variance and multiple regression analysis were applied. The results are as follows. First, the quality assessment of the foodservice varied depending on the period of service utilization. Customers of less than one year rated the nutrition supply of the university foodservice the highest, followed by those who were customers for more than 3 years and those who were customers for 2 to 3 years, respectively. Second, the quality assessment of the foodservice was substantially influenced by price as compared to service quality. Third, the quality assessment was significantly influenced by the price appropriateness of the foodservice. Fourth, foodservice assessment items such as customer-centeredness, pursuit of nutrition supply and food quality had a meaningful effect on the satisfaction degree toward the university foodservice. Fifth, customer-centeredness, pursuit of nutrition supply and food quality had a significant effect on relationship intention. Sixth, among the items of value awareness for the foodservice, value assessment as compared to service quality, and not price appropriateness, greatly affected the relationship intention. Seventh, the overall degree of satisfaction for the foodservice affected the relationship intention.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.215-224
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• 2012

This study performs an exploratory investigation of the needs of the customers who use academic information service from a research institute, K, that provides information services for domestic academic institutions of natural science and technology. K institute is planning customized services in order to improve customer satisfaction on the academic information service And therefore, the institute begins the research on customer needs analysis and customer segmentation. The research is regarded as well-timed, because CRM implementation in public organizations has been activated recently. Data mining and data warehousing techniques were used for pilot analyses. For the purpose of customer segmentation, a mixed segmentation model, which adds product life cycle concept to the 'balanced customer segmentation' model, which in turn considers the value of customers from the organizational viewpoint and the value of organizations from the customer's viewpoint, simultaneously, was applied. The result of investigation indicated that, in the case of K, 'balanced customer segmentation' and 'contents reach approach' which uses data warehouse/OLAP, rather than those customer segmentation techniques that are often used within the industry, are the more potent ways of approach. This exploratory case study is expected to provide a useful guideline for 'deriving an organizationally unique CRM model' that recently is one of the hot topics in the CRM area.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.1-11
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• 2014

The present study aimed to survey doctors working in five university hospitals about internal customer satisfaction and organization commitment level in order to identify casual relationships through structure equations. According to the analysis, organization management had the biggest impact on internal customer satisfaction level, and the sooner the factor was named personnel, leadership, job, and compensation, the bigger the impact it had on the level. The research model was generally found to be good in terms of goodness of fit, considering the value of $x^2$ calculated as 103.314, the degrees of freedom of 38, GFI 0.924, AGFT 0.868, NFI 0.888, CFI 0.925, and RMSEA 0.086. In conclusion, the internal customer satisfaction level of doctors was significantly proportionate to organization commitment by means of their general satisfaction level, while also being directly proportionate to organization commitment (p<0.05). Meanwhile, statistical significance could not be found when measuring the effects of the doctors' basic characteristics on the levels of internal customer satisfaction and general satisfaction in hospitals.