• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.15-38
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• 2014

This paper explores the influence of pursuing goals on customer channel preference in Chinese rural market. With the rapid change in distribution channels and increase in multi-channels, it is necessary to understand the preference for channel choice as well as product choice. This study empirically validated the conceptual framework of the relationship between the pursuing goals and customer channel choice proposed by Balasubramanian, Raghunathan, and Mahajan (2005). Based on the survey data of 232 fertilizer customers in Chinese rural market, this study explores how economic, social, and psychological pursuing goals can impact customer channel preference by mediating variables of product utility and process utility. The results indicate that pursuing goals positively related with product utility and process utility, and product / process utility can mediate the relationship between pursuing goals and customer channel preference positively. Consequently, we can conclude that customers' economic-social-psychological pursuing goals can directly influence customer channel preference via their purchase process utility and product utility. This result also implies that product utility is effective on process utility during consumer's buying decision making, and process utility and product utility are not mutually independent. Therefore, purchase process utility is a "latent driving force" on customer's channel choice decision.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.39-49
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• 2019

Purpose - Customer loyalty and citizenship behavior are key success factors of franchise system. They make the management of franchisee more effective and efficient. Prior studies, however, mainly dealt with only acquisition utility of customer, such as perceived product/service quality and brand reputation to explain customer loyalty and citizenship behavior, which explains only on one side. We tried to investigate the effect of exchange utility of customer, such as relationship strength and psychological obligation together with the acquisition utility. In addition, we tried to investigate the relationship between customer loyalty and citizenship behavior in franchise context. Research design, data, and methodology - This study used data collected from the dining franchisee managers of 342 franchisors in South Korea. The franchisors consist of more than ten franchisees, the majority of which participated directly in the transaction with franchisor and have worked for more than six months. To test the hypotheses, the study used structural equation model analysis. Results - H1-1, 1-2, 1-3 predicted that acquisition utility would increase customer loyalty to franchisee. In support of H1-1, 1-2, 1-3, the results indicated that acquisition utilities such as perceived product value, perceived service value, and franchise brand reputation had positive effects on customer loyalty. H2-1, 2-2 predicted that exchange utility would increase customer loyalty to franchisee. In support of H2-2, the result indicated that psychological obligation had positive effects on customer loyalty like other acquisition utilities. However, H2-1 was not supported. Relationship strength had no significant effect on customer loyalty. H3 predicted that customer loyalty would increase customer citizenship behavior. In support of H3, the results indicated that customer loyalty had positive effect on customer citizenship behavior. Overall, the evidences generally supported the hypotheses. Conclusion - The results of the study show that not only acquisition utility but also exchange utility increases customer loyalty to franchisee and also show that customer loyalty increases customer citizenship behavior. Interestingly, however, relationship strength has no significant effect on customer loyalty. These results have two implications. The one is that increasing exchange utility can improve customer loyalty as acquisition utility can. The other one is that both of customer utilities can improve customer citizenship via customer loyalty.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.260-266
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• 2018

The concept of customer utility, which affects customer's adoption, is important to understand the process of technology diffusion and substitution regarding multiple generation technology. This research defined the concept of attribute-based customer utility and developed a model for measuring attribute-based customer utility. Based on the literature review and modeling, we provided the definition and a model regarding customer utility and the accuracy of the model is verified through a case study of the semiconductor industry. Customer utility for a multiple generation technology needs to consider changes by generation, or time within the same generation, and is defined as the summation of both technological and economic utilities. In addition, we can model the measurement of customer utility after converting technological and economical attributes into utilities. This research is valuable in understanding not only customer utility as a driver of customer adoption, but also for establishing technological strategy after forecasting diffusion and substitution paths based on customer utility.

• East Asian Journal of Business Economics (EAJBE)
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 2020

Purpose - This study is to classify quality characteristics of online environment-friendly agricultural products shopping malls into 6 categories and to empirically test their relationship with customer trust, perceived manageability, perceived utility and purchase intention. Research design, data, and methodology - This study targeted adults who have purchased ecofriendly agricultural production online malls for 4 weeks from September 3 to September 30, 2019. The survey type used was a structuralized self-report survey questionnaire made to meet the research purpose in 2019 as the time range. Out of 800 questionnaires, 500 copies are used after excluding surveys with insincere responses. Results - First, results to hypothesis 1, which was about independent variables and customer trust. Analysis showed that health, familiarity, platform reputation, reviews and product quality were found to have significant effect on customer trust; the hypothesis was adopted. On the other hand, system security did not affect customer trust significantly; it was rejected. Second, customer trust was shown to have significant effect on perceived manageability and perceived utility, so the hypothesis was adopted. Third, the hypothesis that perceived manageability moves onto perceived utility was adopted. Moreover, the hypothesis that perceived manageability moves onto purchase intention and the hypothesis that perceived utility moves onto purchase intention were adopted as well. Conclusions - Furthermore, the results of the study imply that it's imperative for online environment-friendly agricultural products shopping malls to consider their characteristics as the means to increase purchase intention of customers.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.19-19
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• 2002

In this paper the authors explore the effect of bandwidth sharing to the utility of the customer for the best-effort Internet services and draw a basis for the pricing principle in Internet Protocol networks. Especially, we investigate the behavior of a customer′s utility in case an arbitrary amount of additional bandwidth is allowed to each customer for the elastic traffic, which is the typical example of the non-real time Internet data traffic. After drawing the utility curve, which will be proved to follow the concave curve, we will apply it to the pricing of Internet traffic. Finally, via numerical experiments, we will illustrate the validity and implication of the proposed method.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.277-284
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• 2002

In this paper the authors explore the effect of bandwidth sharing to the utility of the customer for the best-effort Internet services and draw a basis for the pricing principle in Internet Protocol networks. Especially, we investigate the behavior of a customer's utility in case an arbitrary amount of additional bandwidth is allowed to each customer for the elastic traffic, which is the typical example of the non-real time Internet data traffic. After drawing the utility curve, which will be proved to follow the concave curve, we will apply it to the pricing of Internet traffic. Finally, via numerical experiments, we will illustrate the validity and implication of the proposed method.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.266-272
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• 2011

Real Time Pricing(RTP) is used not only to stabilize the price volatility in electricity market, but to hedge the price risk for Load Serving Entity(LSE). This paper presents an efficient method to reduce the risk of the price volatility in real-time electricity market. For designing the RTP, load patterns of customer are calculated by applying the demand elasticity and customer's utility is also analyzed to compute the RTP revenue through the risk-attribute of the LSE. In the end, the distribution of the LSE's profits can be evaluated to lead the optimal RTP value, depending on the level of customer's participation. Results from the case study based on PJM data are reported to illustrate the proposed method.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.1-20
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• 2008

Based on the multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT), we present a survey method to measure consumer preferences. The multi-attribute utility theory has been used to make decisions in OR/MS field; however, we show that the method can be effectively used to estimate the demand for new services by measuring individual level utility function. Because conjoint method has been widely used to measure consumer preferences for new products and services, we compare the pros and cons of two consumer preference survey methods. Further, we illustrate how swing weighing method can be effectively used to elicit customer preferences especially for new telecommunications services, Multi-attribute utility theory is a compositional approach for modeling customer preference, in which researchers calculate overall service utility by summing up the evaluation results for each attribute. On the contrary, conjoint method is a decompositional approach, which requires holistic evaluations for profiles. Partworth for each attribute is derived or estimated based on the evaluation, and finally consumer preferences for each profile are calculated. However, if the profiles are quite new and unfamiliar to the survey respondents, they will find it very difficult to accurately evaluate the profiles. We believe that the multi-attribute utility theory-based survey method is more appropriate than the conjoint method, because respondents only need to assess attribute level preferences and not holistic assessment. We chose swing weighting method among many weight assessment methods in multi-attribute utility theory, because it is designed to perform in a simple and fast manner. As illustrated in Clemen and Reilly (2001), to assess swing weights, the first step is to create the worst possible outcome as a benchmark by setting the worst level on each of the attributes. Then, each of the succeeding rows "swings" one of the attributes from worst to best. Upon constructing the swing table, respondents rank order the outcomes (rows). The next step is to rate the outcomes in which the rating for the benchmark is set to be 0 and the rating for the best outcome to be 100, and the ratings for other outcomes are determined in the ranges between 0 and 100. In calculating weight for each attribute, ratings are normalized by the total sum of all ratings. To demonstrate the applicability of the approach, we elicited and analyzed individual-level customer preference for new telecommunication services-WiBro and HSDPA. We began with a randomly selected 800 interviewees, and reduced them to 432 because other remaining ones were related to the people who did not show strong intention for subscription to new telecommunications services. For each combination of content and handset, number of responses which favored WiBro and HSDPA were counted, respectively. It was assumed that interviewee favors a specific service when expected utility is greater than that of competing service(s). Then, the market share of each service was calculated by normalizing the total number of responses which preferred each service. Holistic evaluation of new and unfamiliar service is a tough challenge for survey respondents. We have developed a simple and easy method to assess individual level preference by estimating weight of each attribute. Swing method was applied for this purpose. We believe that estimating individual level preference will be quite flexibly used to predict market performance of new services in many different business environments.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of IIIuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.365-369
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• 2006

It is concentrated on a methodology to establish a scheme of investment on power distribution systems of components. This paper provides a methodology to estimate the scheme as using a customer interruption cost regarding reliability indices in power distribution systems. The proposed method basically uses the failure rate depending on time for explaining the deterioration of a component. Therefore, the theory of the sensitivity is used for deciding the precedence of the investment to consider an effect of each component's failure rate on the system reliability. After Estimating the sensitivity on component investment cost making incremental reliability level is produced by component's investment cost accumulated according to the precedence of the sensitivity. After that, the failure rate corresponding with reliability level on the curve of investment cost is used as producing the curve of customer interruption cost. Two curves have the crossing point that is proposed to acceptable reliability level for customer and utility. In this paper, the acceptable reliability level for customer with the utility is assessed to analyze customer interruption cost and sensitivity of reliability indices. In conclusion the result of investment based on this method is shown to the reliability level with two cost.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2004.11b
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• pp.252-254
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• 2004

This paper studies power quality problem of utility interconnected distributed generation. Recently, electronic devices that are sensitive to power quality have been increasing. Both utility and customer are interested in power quality problem. Therefore, we studied an effect of utility power quality caused by distributed generation. We detect and analysis voltage sag which is one of power quality indicator. Also, we used Matlab to simulate power quality problem.