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The Mediating Effect of Experiential Value on Customers' Perceived Value of Digital Content: China's Anti-virus Program Market (경험개치대소비자대전자내용적인지개치적중개영향(经验价值对消费者对电子内容的认知价值的中介影响): 중국살독연건시장(中国杀毒软件市场))

  • Jia, Weiwei;Kim, Sae-Bum
    • 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.

A Study on Commodity Asset Investment Model Based on Machine Learning Technique (기계학습을 활용한 상품자산 투자모델에 관한 연구)

  • Song, Jin Ho;Choi, Heung Sik;Kim, Sun Woong
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.23 no.4
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    • pp.127-146
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    • 2017
  • Services using artificial intelligence have begun to emerge in daily life. Artificial intelligence is applied to products in consumer electronics and communications such as artificial intelligence refrigerators and speakers. In the financial sector, using Kensho's artificial intelligence technology, the process of the stock trading system in Goldman Sachs was improved. For example, two stock traders could handle the work of 600 stock traders and the analytical work for 15 people for 4weeks could be processed in 5 minutes. Especially, big data analysis through machine learning among artificial intelligence fields is actively applied throughout the financial industry. The stock market analysis and investment modeling through machine learning theory are also actively studied. The limits of linearity problem existing in financial time series studies are overcome by using machine learning theory such as artificial intelligence prediction model. The study of quantitative financial data based on the past stock market-related numerical data is widely performed using artificial intelligence to forecast future movements of stock price or indices. Various other studies have been conducted to predict the future direction of the market or the stock price of companies by learning based on a large amount of text data such as various news and comments related to the stock market. Investing on commodity asset, one of alternative assets, is usually used for enhancing the stability and safety of traditional stock and bond asset portfolio. There are relatively few researches on the investment model about commodity asset than mainstream assets like equity and bond. Recently machine learning techniques are widely applied on financial world, especially on stock and bond investment model and it makes better trading model on this field and makes the change on the whole financial area. In this study we made investment model using Support Vector Machine among the machine learning models. There are some researches on commodity asset focusing on the price prediction of the specific commodity but it is hard to find the researches about investment model of commodity as asset allocation using machine learning model. We propose a method of forecasting four major commodity indices, portfolio made of commodity futures, and individual commodity futures, using SVM model. The four major commodity indices are Goldman Sachs Commodity Index(GSCI), Dow Jones UBS Commodity Index(DJUI), Thomson Reuters/Core Commodity CRB Index(TRCI), and Rogers International Commodity Index(RI). We selected each two individual futures among three sectors as energy, agriculture, and metals that are actively traded on CME market and have enough liquidity. They are Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Corn, Wheat, Gold and Silver Futures. We made the equally weighted portfolio with six commodity futures for comparing with other commodity indices. We set the 19 macroeconomic indicators including stock market indices, exports & imports trade data, labor market data, and composite leading indicators as the input data of the model because commodity asset is very closely related with the macroeconomic activities. They are 14 US economic indicators, two Chinese economic indicators and two Korean economic indicators. Data period is from January 1990 to May 2017. We set the former 195 monthly data as training data and the latter 125 monthly data as test data. In this study, we verified that the performance of the equally weighted commodity futures portfolio rebalanced by the SVM model is better than that of other commodity indices. The prediction accuracy of the model for the commodity indices does not exceed 50% regardless of the SVM kernel function. On the other hand, the prediction accuracy of equally weighted commodity futures portfolio is 53%. The prediction accuracy of the individual commodity futures model is better than that of commodity indices model especially in agriculture and metal sectors. The individual commodity futures portfolio excluding the energy sector has outperformed the three sectors covered by individual commodity futures portfolio. In order to verify the validity of the model, it is judged that the analysis results should be similar despite variations in data period. So we also examined the odd numbered year data as training data and the even numbered year data as test data and we confirmed that the analysis results are similar. As a result, when we allocate commodity assets to traditional portfolio composed of stock, bond, and cash, we can get more effective investment performance not by investing commodity indices but by investing commodity futures. Especially we can get better performance by rebalanced commodity futures portfolio designed by SVM model.

The Investigation of the Wearing Spectacles Rate of Middle School Students in Jeju Islands (제주도 지역 중학생의 안경착용률 조사)

  • Kang, In-San;Choi, Ji-Young;Song, Yun-Young
    • Journal of Korean Ophthalmic Optics Society
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    • v.11 no.3
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    • pp.231-240
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    • 2006
  • This study conducts a questionnaire survey of 492 middle school students in Jeju islands about the rate of using glasses/contact lens, the place and time of visual acuity test, the period of changing the glasses, the purchase price, the mason to change the glasses, the interrelationship between wearing spectacles and residential district, etc. The results are as follows: 1. 45.33% of the object of investigation use the glasses or contact lens to correct their visual acuity. Among them, the student who wears only glasses is 93.27%, the student who wears glasses and contact lens together is 5.83%, the student who wears only contact lens is 0.90%. 2. As for the period of changing his(her) glasses, below 6 month is 20.18%, from 6 month to one year is 52.02%, from one year to two years is 20.18% and more than two years is 7.62%. 3. As for the purchase price to change his(her) glasses, below 30,000won is 13.45%, from 30,000won to 50,000won is 43.50%, from 50,000won to 70,000won is 23.77%, from 70,000won to 100,000won is 15.25% and more than 100,000won is 4.03%. 4. As for the reason of changing his(her) glasses, cause of change of visual acuity is 55.16%, by broken frame and lens is 27.35%, as want to just change his(her) spectacles is 14.80% and as the others is 2.69%. 5. As for the relative importance in purchasing glasses, the student who thinks more frame is 16.59%, the student who thinks more lens is 67% and the student who thinks both frame and lens is 58.74%. 6. As for the frist time of visual acuity test, 1 grade of elementary school is 37.2%, 3 grade of elementary school is 12.56%, 4 grade of elementary school is 11.66% and 6 grade of elementary school is 11.66%. 7. As for the place of visual acuity test to determine the Dptr. of glasses which wear now, opitican's shop is 57.85% and ophthalmic clinic is 42.15%. 8. As for the frist time of wearing the glasses or contact lens for correct his(her) visual acuity, the most of answer(21.97%) is at 6 grade of elementary school. 9. As for the reason why does not wear the glasses or contact lens though his(her) naked binocular vision is below 0.8, as does not feel any difficulty in daily life is 62.5%, as know that the more wear, the more decrease his(her) visual acuity is 15.65%, by economical circumstance is 6.24% and as not good externally is 15.63%, respectively.

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A Study of Detainees' Perceptions of the Detention Facilities of the Police Station and their Operation (경찰서 유치장 시설 및 운영에 관한 유치인의 인식연구)

  • Jung, Woo-Yeoul;Park, Dong-Kyun;Kim, Do-Kyun
    • Korean Security Journal
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    • no.13
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    • pp.423-449
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    • 2007
  • This research is to investigate the detention facilities of police stations and their real operations through the perceptions of detainees at police station cells and to present the policy suggestions for them. To fulfill the research, a questionnaire was made out on the basis of 'the Regulation on Detention and Escort for Suspects'. 'the Regulation on a Standard Plan for Detention Facilities' and 'the Regulation on the Lowest Standard to Treat Detainees' ; and detainees at 23 police station cells under the jurisdiction of Kyungbuk Local Police Agency were asked to answer it. Policy suggestions following from the result of the investigation of detainees' perceptions of the detention facilities of the police stations are as follows; Firstly, the structure of police station cells should be arranged in straight lines in order to take their human rights into consideration and more detention facilities are needed to be built in order to separate male, female, handicapped and juvenile inmates. Secondly, shower rooms and washrooms outside the cells should always be open to detainees whenever they need to be used. Thirdly, any detention facilities deficient in fire fighting equipment should have exit doors installed as soon as possible in case of an emergency and provide sufficient fire extinguishers considering the number of detainees and the size of the facilities. Fourthly, the detention facilities should have sufficient windows for ventilation and take necessary measures to obtain natural lighting instead of electric lighting. Fifthly, air conditioners should be equipped properly taking account of the number of detainees and the dimensions of the facilities. Policy suggestions according to the result of the investigation of detainees' perceptions of the operation of detention facilities of police stations are as follows; Firstly, the problem of operating the detention facilities must deal with worn-out facilities and measures to secure the budget should be taken as soon as possible. Secondly, considering that most detained suspects have difficulties in livelihood, daily necessaries must be issued to them. Thirdly, personal belongings deposited by inmates must be properly managed with the same documentation throughout the police station detention facilities. The number of female guards to take exclusive charge of the physical checkups and processing of female detainees should be increased. Also the facilities for handicapped detainees must be expanded, improved and managed properly. Fourthly, except for handcuffs and ropes to bind detainees in the detention facilities, helmets to prevent self-harm must be withdrawn. The budget to improve the quality of meal issued by the government must be urgently secured and the price of private food sent to detainees must be readjusted to be in line with the consumer price. Health and medical care and sanitation for detainees must be substantial, and also sunbathing and outdoor exercises should be allowed to detainees.

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Exploring Sport Consumption Style of Generation Z that the 4th Industrial revolution paid attention to: Applying Decision Tree Analysis based on Data Mining (4차 산업혁명이 주목한 Z세대의 스포츠 소비 스타일 탐색: 데이터마이닝 기반 의사결정 나무 분석 적용)

  • Shin, Jin-Ho;Lim, Young-Sam;Kim, Ji-Sun
    • Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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    • v.37 no.5
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    • pp.1208-1221
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    • 2020
  • The purpose of this study was to provide basic data for predicting the sports consumption market that Generation Z will lead by applying data mining based decision tree analysis to explore Generation Z sports consumption style. Therefore, the survey was conducted by selecting males and females aged 19 or older as a sample among Generation Z, and data of 429 people were used for the final analysis. For data processing, frequency analysis, exploratory factor analysis, retest and reliability analysis, and decision tree analysis were performed using the SPSS statistics (ver. 21.0) program. The main results of this study are as follows. First, if the rational efficiency index is high and the aesthetic consumption index is low, the probability of being classified as a group of female was 96.8%. On the other hand, if the rational efficiency and perception of price index were low, the probability of being classified as a male group was 100%. Second, if the brand orientation, perception of price, and rational efficiency index were high, the probability of being classified as a capital area group was 97.3%. Contrary to the results presented above, the probability of being classified as a other area group was 82.1% when the brand orientation, commemoration rites, and status symbol index were low. Third, the status symbol and trend oriented index were high, and if the functionality index was low, the probability of being classified into daily life and fashion groups was 77.6%. On the contrary, if the status symbol index is low, the retention of membership and enjoy consumption index is high, the probability of being classified into exercise and competition groups was 81.0%.

Rollover Effects on KOSPI 200 Index Option Prices (KOSPI 200 지수 옵션 만기시 Rollover 효과에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Tae-Yong;Lee, Jung-Ho;Cho, Jin-Wan
    • The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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    • v.22 no.1
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    • pp.71-91
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    • 2005
  • The object or this paper is to analyze the rollover effect on KOSPI 200 index option prices. Especially we analyze the implied volatilities of the options that became the near maturity options as the old one expired. For this analysis, a panel data of KOSPI 200 Index Option Prices from year 1999 to year 2001 were used, and following results were obtained. First, after controlling for the underlying index returns, strike prices and other pricing factors, the call option prices tend to decrease while the put option prices tend to increase during the week of expiry. Second, if one concentrates on the daily price changes, call option prices tend to go up on Thursday (as the old options expire), and then experience a price decrease on the following day, while the reverse is true for the put options. These results imply that the option prices are affected by some of the market micro-structure effects such as whether the option is the near maturity option. We conjecture that the reason for this is related to the undervaluation of KOSPI 200 futures. The results from this paper have implications on the timing of option trades. If one wants to buy put options, and/or sell call options, he has better off by executing his intended trades before the old options expire. On the other hand, if one wants to buy call options, and/or sell put options, hi has better off by executing his intended trades after the expiry.

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Selection Model of System Trading Strategies using SVM (SVM을 이용한 시스템트레이딩전략의 선택모형)

  • Park, Sungcheol;Kim, Sun Woong;Choi, Heung Sik
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.2
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    • pp.59-71
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    • 2014
  • System trading is becoming more popular among Korean traders recently. System traders use automatic order systems based on the system generated buy and sell signals. These signals are generated from the predetermined entry and exit rules that were coded by system traders. Most researches on system trading have focused on designing profitable entry and exit rules using technical indicators. However, market conditions, strategy characteristics, and money management also have influences on the profitability of the system trading. Unexpected price deviations from the predetermined trading rules can incur large losses to system traders. Therefore, most professional traders use strategy portfolios rather than only one strategy. Building a good strategy portfolio is important because trading performance depends on strategy portfolios. Despite of the importance of designing strategy portfolio, rule of thumb methods have been used to select trading strategies. In this study, we propose a SVM-based strategy portfolio management system. SVM were introduced by Vapnik and is known to be effective for data mining area. It can build good portfolios within a very short period of time. Since SVM minimizes structural risks, it is best suitable for the futures trading market in which prices do not move exactly the same as the past. Our system trading strategies include moving-average cross system, MACD cross system, trend-following system, buy dips and sell rallies system, DMI system, Keltner channel system, Bollinger Bands system, and Fibonacci system. These strategies are well known and frequently being used by many professional traders. We program these strategies for generating automated system signals for entry and exit. We propose SVM-based strategies selection system and portfolio construction and order routing system. Strategies selection system is a portfolio training system. It generates training data and makes SVM model using optimal portfolio. We make $m{\times}n$ data matrix by dividing KOSPI 200 index futures data with a same period. Optimal strategy portfolio is derived from analyzing each strategy performance. SVM model is generated based on this data and optimal strategy portfolio. We use 80% of the data for training and the remaining 20% is used for testing the strategy. For training, we select two strategies which show the highest profit in the next day. Selection method 1 selects two strategies and method 2 selects maximum two strategies which show profit more than 0.1 point. We use one-against-all method which has fast processing time. We analyse the daily data of KOSPI 200 index futures contracts from January 1990 to November 2011. Price change rates for 50 days are used as SVM input data. The training period is from January 1990 to March 2007 and the test period is from March 2007 to November 2011. We suggest three benchmark strategies portfolio. BM1 holds two contracts of KOSPI 200 index futures for testing period. BM2 is constructed as two strategies which show the largest cumulative profit during 30 days before testing starts. BM3 has two strategies which show best profits during testing period. Trading cost include brokerage commission cost and slippage cost. The proposed strategy portfolio management system shows profit more than double of the benchmark portfolios. BM1 shows 103.44 point profit, BM2 shows 488.61 point profit, and BM3 shows 502.41 point profit after deducting trading cost. The best benchmark is the portfolio of the two best profit strategies during the test period. The proposed system 1 shows 706.22 point profit and proposed system 2 shows 768.95 point profit after deducting trading cost. The equity curves for the entire period show stable pattern. With higher profit, this suggests a good trading direction for system traders. We can make more stable and more profitable portfolios if we add money management module to the system.

The Present State and Problems of Hotel Buffet Styled Restaurant -II. A Survey of Ecology in Food and Nutrition of Some Urban Females Dining in Hotel Buffet Styled Restaurant- (호텔 뷔페음식(飮食)에 관(關)한 실태조사(實態調査) -제(弟) 2보(報). 여성(女性)들의 뷔페식당(食堂)에서의 끽식행동(喫食行動)에 관(關)한 연구(硏究)-)

  • Choi, Kyung-Suk;Mo, Su-Mi
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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    • v.6 no.2
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    • pp.185-197
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    • 1991
  • An eating behavior research was done with 50 females at a buffet styled restaurant during their lunch time. Of the respondents, 52.0% were professional and 54.0% were graduate school graduates. Of the respondents, 58.0% of the company were friends and 24.0% were relatives. The average time period of eating was $93.0{\pm}23.4$ minutes. The average frequency of taking food was $4.0{\pm}1.1$ and the average frequency of taking food after satiety was $1.4{\pm}0.8$. It is significant that lower frequency of food consumption was directly proportional to the age groups of respondents. The average selected food items were $30.4{\pm}7.1$ out of 175 and the average weight of the consumed food was $995.0{\pm}240.9$ g. The older age group chose a similar number of food items, but the amount of each food item was considerably less than younger. So the younger the age group was, the more they ate. The average food items at one time was $7.1{\pm}2.2$ and the average food weight time was $233.7{\pm}69.7$ g. The percentage of respondents who evaluated themselves as 'ate too much' was 70.0% and those who evaluate themselves 'ate properly' was 14.0%. Most of them were satisfied with the buffet service. The average of number of food items consumed by respondents before cooking was $50.5{\pm}8.9$. The consumption of calories and nutrients was compared with the Korean Daily Recommended Dietary Allowances. The consumed calories were 60.9% of RDAs, protein 104.4%, calcium 77.1%, iron 129.8%, vitamin A 66.5%, thiamin 96.0%, riboflavin 95.7%, niacin126.6% and ascorbic acid 112.3%. This data exceeded 1/3 of the Korean Daily RDAs tremendously and tells us extreme overeating. The energy ratio of carbohydrate: fat: protein was 51.6: 29.9: 18.5. Caloric consumption of animal food was 27.9% and the consumption rate of the other nutrients from animal food was considerably high. But the consumption rate of vitamin A was 90.9% from vegetable groups. Accoding to this study, buffet service gives some advantages. It gives customers an good opportunity to vary their food intake, which enhances eating experiences and can cause an improvemont of food habits. But overeating is a problem. Therefore, we think it is necessary for those women who have influence over their family's food selection, to have nutrition education about a desirable order of eating a meal, food selection, and health problems due to overeating at buffet styled restaurant. There should be some improvement in the management of buffet service. For example, proper temperature, texture, and freshness of the food should be maintained. Prevention of mixed food smells should be considered as well. To lower the price it is desirable to reduce the number of similar items and to use seasonal food as much as possible. A buffet styled restaurant with less food items with cheaper prices is recommended. Various traditional food should be developed for the menu items. We expect buffet services to be sutable to maintain good health and to be popular to any eater.

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Global Rice Production, Consumption and Trade: Trends and Future Directions

  • Bhandari, Humnath
    • Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
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    • 2019.09a
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    • pp.5-5
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    • 2019
  • The objectives of this paper are (i) to analyze past trends and future directions of rice production, consumption and trade across the world and (ii) to discuss emerging challenges and future directions in the global rice industry. Rice is a staple food of over half of the world's 7.7 billion people. It is an important economic, social, political, and cultural commodity in most Asian countries. Rice is the $1^{st}$ most widely consumed, $2^{nd}$ largely produced, and $3^{rd}$ most widely grown food crop in the world. It was cultivated by 144 million farms in over 100 countries with harvested area of over 163 million ha producing about 745 million tons paddy in 2018. About 90% of the total rice is produced in Asia. China and India, the biggest rice producers, account for over half of the world's rice production. Between 1960 and 2018, world rice production increased over threefold from 221 to 745 million tons (2.1% per year) due to area expansion from 120 to 163 million ha (0.5% per year) and paddy yield increase from 1.8 to 4.6 t/ha (1.6% per year). The Green Revolution led massive increase in rice production prevented famines, provided food for millions of people, reduced poverty and hunger, and improved livelihoods of millions of Asians. The future increase in rice production must come from yield increase as the scope for area expansion is limited. Rice is the most widely consumed food crop. The world's average per capita milled rice consumption is 64 kilograms providing 19% of daily calories. Asia accounted for 84% of global consumption followed by Africa (7%), South America (3%), and the Middle East (2%). Asia's per capita rice consumption is 100 kilograms per year providing 28% of daily calories. The global and Asian per capita consumption increased from the 1960s to the 1990s but stable afterward. The per capita rice consumption is expected to decline in Asia but increase outside Asia especially in Africa in the future. The total milled rice consumption was about 490 million tons in 2018 and projected to reach 550 million tons by 2030 and 590 million tons by 2040. Rice is thinly traded in international market because it is a highly protected commodity. Only about 9% of the total production is traded in global rice market. However, the volume of global rice trade has increased over six-fold from 7.5 to 46.5 million tons between the 1960s and 2018. A relatively small number of exporting countries interact with a large number of importing countries. The top five rice exporting countries are India, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, and China accounting for 74% of the global rice export. The top five rice importing countries are China, Philippines, Nigeria, European Union and Saudi Arabia accounting for 26% of the global rice import. Within rice varieties, Japonica rice accounts for the highest share of the global rice trade (about 12%) followed by Basmati rice (about 10%). The high concentration of exports to a few countries makes international rice market vulnerable to supply disruptions in exporting countries, leading to higher world prices of rice. The export price of Thai 5% broken rice increased from 198 US$/ton in 2000 to 421 US$/ton in 2018. The volumes of trade and rice prices in the global market are expected to increase in the future. The major future challenges of the rice industry are increasing demand due to population growth, rising demand in Africa, economic growth and diet diversification, competition for natural resources (land and water), labor scarcity, climate change and natural hazards, poverty and inequality, hunger and malnutrition, urbanization, low income in rice farming, yield saturation, aging of farmers, feminization of agriculture, health and environmental concerns, improving value chains, and shifting donor priorities away from agriculture. At the same time, new opportunities are available due to access to new technologies, increased investment by the private sector, and increased global partnership. More investment in rice research and development is needed to develop and disseminate innovative technologies and practices to overcome problems and ensure food and nutrition security of the future population.

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An analysis of daily lives of children in Korea, Japan and China (한국, 중국, 일본 유아들의 일상생활에 대한 비교연구)

  • Kisook Lee;Mira Chung;Hyunjung Kim
    • Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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    • v.12 no.5_spc
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    • pp.81-98
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    • 2006
  • The objective of this research is to do a cultural comparison on the daily lives of the children of Korea, Japan and China. To achieve this objective, the questionnares were distributed to the 2940 mothers of children from the ages of 3 to 6 in the countries of Korea, Japan and China. The target audience consisted of 941 mothers living in Seoul and Kyunggi area for Korea, 1007 mothers living in Tokyo for Japan, and 992 mothers living in Beijing for China. As a result of the research, we found out that firstly, although children in general got up anytime between 7:00am to 9:00am and went to bed between 8:00pm and 11:00pm, 61.5% of the Korean children went to bed after 10pm and 16.8% after 11pm. Besides that, we found that compared to 3.51% of Korean children who got up before 6am, 13.41% of Japanese children and 17.24% of Chinese children got up before 6:00am. So we could see that the Korean children got up later and went to bed later than their Japanese and Chinese counterpart. This pattern could also be seen in the average rising time and bed time. Korean children went to bed at 10:00pm and woke up at 7:75am whereas the Japanese children went to bed at 9:28pm and woke up at 7:39am, and the Chinese children went to bed at 9:05pm and woke up at 7:05am. The average sleeping hours for Japanese children was 10.12 hours, 9.50 hours for the Chinese and 9.75 hours for the Korean. As a result, we could see that the Korean children went to bed later, got up later and slept fewer hours than their Japanese and Chinese counterparts. Also, since the rising time and bedtime of the Korean children was later than those of the Chinese and Japanese counterparts, the former s' breakfast and dinner time was also much later. Secondly, we looked at the time children went off to and came back from institutes such as kindergarten and child care centers. The Chinese were earliest at going with average attendance at 7:83am, the Japanese came next at 8:59am and the Korean children were last at 8:90am, whereas the Japanese came first in coming back home at 3:36pm, Korean next at 3:91pm and the Chinese last at 5:46pm. Next when we looked at the hours spent at the kindergartens and child care centers, Japan spent 6.76 hours, Korea 7.01 hours and China spent the longest hours with 9.63 hours. Excluding China where all preschool institutes are centralized into kindergartens, we nest looked at time children went to and came back from the institutes as well as the time spent there. In the case of kindergarten, there was not much difference but in the case of child care centers, the Japanese children went to the child care centers mach earlier and came home later than the Korean children. Also, the time spent at the child care center was much longer for the Japanese than the Korean children. This fact coincides with the Korean mothers' number one wish to the kindergartens and child care centers i.e. for the institutes to prolong their school hours. Thus, the time spent at child care centers for Korea was 7.75 hours, 9.39 hours for Japan and 9.63 hours for China. The time for Korea was comparatively much shorter than that of Japan and China but if we consider the fact that 50% of the target audience was working mothers, we could easily presume that the working parents who usually use the child care centers would want the child care centers to prolong the hours looked after their children. Besides this, the next most wanted wish mothers have towards the child care centers and kindergartens was for those institutes to "look after their children when sick". This item showed high marks in all three countries, and the marks in Korea was especially higher when compared to Japan and China. Thirdly, we looked at the private extracurricular activities of the children. We found that 72.6% of the Korean children, 61.7% of the Japanese children, and 64.6% of the Chinese children were doing private extracurricular activities after attending kindergarten or day care centers. Amongst the private extracurricular activities done by Korean children, the most popular one was worksheet with 51.9% of the children doing it. Drawing (15.20%) and English (11.6%) came next. Swimming (21.95%) was the most popular activity for Japan, with English (17.48%), music (15,79%) and sports (14.70%) coming next. For China, art (30.95%) was first with English (22.08%) and music (19.96%) following next. All three countries had English as the most popular activity related to art and physical activities after school hours, but the rate for worksheet studies was much higher for Korea compared to Japan China. The reason Koreans universally use worksheet in because the parents who buy the worksheet are mothers who have easy access to advertisement or salespeople selling those products. The price is also relatively cheap, the worksheet helps the children to grow the basic learning ability in preparation for elementary school, and it is thought to help the children to build the habit of studying everyday. Not only that but it is estimated that the worksheet education is being conducted because parents can share the responsibility of the children's learning with the worksheet-teacher who make home visits. Looking at the expenses spent on private extracurricular activities as compared to income, we found that China spent 5% of income for activities outside of regular education, Korea 3% and Japan 2%. Fourthly, we looked at the amount of time children spent on using multimedia. The majority of the children in Korea, Japan and China watch television almost every day. In terms of video games, the Japanese children played the games the most, with Korea and China following next. The Korean children used the computer the most, with Japan and China next. The Korean children used about 21.17% of their daily time on computers which is much more than the Japanese who used 20.62% of their time 3 or 4 times a week, or the Chinese. The Chinese children were found to use considerably less time on multimedia compared to the Korean of Japanese.