• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.19 no.4
• /
• pp.57-63
• /
• 2009

With an exponential increase in electronic commerce (e-commerce), marketers are attempting to gain a competitive advantage by emphasizing service quality and post interaction service aspects, which leads to customer satisfaction or behavioral consequence. Particularly for apparel, service quality is one of the key determinants in encouraging customer e-loyalty, and hence the success of apparel retailing in the context of electronic commerce. Therefore, this study explores e-service quality (E-SERVQUAL) factors and their unique effects on e-loyalty for apparel online shopping based on Parasuraman et al' s (2005) framework. Specific objectives of this study are to identify underlying dimension of E-SERVQUAL, and analyze a structural model for examining the effect of E-SERVQUAL on e-loyalty for online apparel shopping. For the theoretical framework of service quality in the context of online shopping, literatures on traditional and electronic service quality factors were comparatively reviewed, and two aspects of core and recovery services were identified. This study hypothesized that E-SERVQUAL has an effect on e-loyalty; customer satisfaction has a positive effect on e-service loyalty for apparel online shopping; and customer satisfaction mediates in the effect of E-SERVQUAL on e-loyalty for apparel online shopping. A self-administered questionnaire was developed based on literatures. A total of 252 usable questionnaires were obtained from online consumers who had purchase experience with online shopping for apparel products and reside in standard metropolitan areas, in the United States. Factor analysis (e.g., exploratory, confirmatory) was conducted to assess the validity and reliability and the structural equation model including measurement and structural models was estimated via LISREL 8.8 program. Findings showed that the E-SERVQUAL of shopping websites for apparel consisted of five factors: Compensation, Fulfillment, Efficiency, System Availability, and Responsiveness. This supports Parasuraman (2005)'s E-S-QUAL encompassing two aspects of core service (e.g., fulfillment, efficiency, system availability) and recovery related service (e.g., compensation, responsiveness) in the context of apparel shopping online. In the structural equation model, there are five exogenous latent variables for e-SERVQUAL factors; and two endogenous latent variables (e.g., customer satisfaction, e-loyalty). For the measurement model, the factor loadings for each respective construct were statistically significant and were greater than .60 and internal consistency reliabilities ranged from .85 to .88. In the estimated structural model of the e-SERVEQUAL factors, the system availability was found to have direct and positive effect on e-loyalty, whereas efficiency had a negative effect on e-loyalty for apparel online shopping. However, fulfillment was not a significant predictor for explaining consequences of E-SERVQUAL for apparel online shopping. This finding implies that perceived service quality of system available was likely to increase customer satisfaction for apparel online shopping. However, it was not supported that e-loyalty was determined by service quality, because service quality has an indirect effect on e-loyalty (i.e., repurchase intention) by mediating effect of value or satisfaction in the context of online shopping for apparel. In addition, both compensation and responsiveness were found to have a significant impact on customer satisfaction, which influenced e-loyalty for apparel online shopping. Thus, there was significant indirect effect of compensation and responsiveness on e-loyalty. This suggests that the recovery-specific service factors play an important role in maximizing customer satisfaction levels and then maintaining customer loyalty to the online shopping site for apparel. The findings have both managerial and research implications. Fashion marketers can establish long-term relationship with their customers based on continuously measuring customer perceptions for recovery-related service quality, such as quick responses to problem and returns, and compensation for customers' problem after their purchases. In order to maintain e-loyalty, recovery services play an important role in the first choice websites for consumers to purchase clothing. Given that online consumers may shop anywhere, a marketing strategy for improving competitive advantages is to provide better service quality, maximize satisfaction, and turn to creating customers' e-loyalty for apparel online shopping. From a researcher's perspective, there are some limitations of this research that should be considered when interpreting its findings. For future research, findings provide a basis for the further study of this important topic along both theoretical and empirical dimensions. Based on the findings, more comprehensive models for predicting E-SERVQUAL's consequences can be developed and tested. For global fashion marketing, this study can expand to a cross-cultural approach into e-service quality for apparel by including multinational samples.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.22 no.3
• /
• pp.113-127
• /
• 2016

Among the techniques for recommendation, collaborative filtering (CF) is commonly recognized to be the most effective for implementing recommender systems. Until now, CF has been popularly studied and adopted in both academic and real-world applications. The basic idea of CF is to create recommendation results by finding correlations between users of a recommendation system. CF system compares users based on how similar they are, and recommend products to users by using other like-minded people's results of evaluation for each product. Thus, it is very important to compute evaluation similarities among users in CF because the recommendation quality depends on it. Typical CF uses user's explicit numeric ratings of items (i.e. quantitative information) when computing the similarities among users in CF. In other words, user's numeric ratings have been a sole source of user preference information in traditional CF. However, user ratings are unable to fully reflect user's actual preferences from time to time. According to several studies, users may more actively accommodate recommendation of reliable others when purchasing goods. Thus, trust relationship can be regarded as the informative source for identifying user's preference with accuracy. Under this background, we propose a new hybrid recommender system that fuses CF and social network analysis (SNA). The proposed system adopts the recommendation algorithm that additionally reflect the result analyzed by SNA. In detail, our proposed system is based on conventional memory-based CF, but it is designed to use both user's numeric ratings and trust relationship information between users when calculating user similarities. For this, our system creates and uses not only user-item rating matrix, but also user-to-user trust network. As the methods for calculating user similarity between users, we proposed two alternatives - one is algorithm calculating the degree of similarity between users by utilizing in-degree and out-degree centrality, which are the indices representing the central location in the social network. We named these approaches as 'Trust CF - All' and 'Trust CF - Conditional'. The other alternative is the algorithm reflecting a neighbor's score higher when a target user trusts the neighbor directly or indirectly. The direct or indirect trust relationship can be identified by searching trust network of users. In this study, we call this approach 'Trust CF - Search'. To validate the applicability of the proposed system, we used experimental data provided by LibRec that crawled from the entire FilmTrust website. It consists of ratings of movies and trust relationship network indicating who to trust between users. The experimental system was implemented using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and UCINET 6. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed system, we compared the performance of our proposed method with one of conventional CF system. The performances of recommender system were evaluated by using average MAE (mean absolute error). The analysis results confirmed that in case of applying without conditions the in-degree centrality index of trusted network of users(i.e. Trust CF - All), the accuracy (MAE = 0.565134) was lower than conventional CF (MAE = 0.564966). And, in case of applying the in-degree centrality index only to the users with the out-degree centrality above a certain threshold value(i.e. Trust CF - Conditional), the proposed system improved the accuracy a little (MAE = 0.564909) compared to traditional CF. However, the algorithm searching based on the trusted network of users (i.e. Trust CF - Search) was found to show the best performance (MAE = 0.564846). And the result from paired samples t-test presented that Trust CF - Search outperformed conventional CF with 10% statistical significance level. Our study sheds a light on the application of user's trust relationship network information for facilitating electronic commerce by recommending proper items to users.

• Food Science of Animal Resources
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.494-499
• /
• 2009

To investigate the relationship between the carcass defects considered by a meat grader and quality grade A, a total of 59,700 broiler carcasses, which were reared from September 1, 2007 to August 31, 2008 and randomly selected from 597 broiler farms with 100 broilers in each farm, were graded by a meat grader using the Korean meat grading system. The average slaughter weight of the broilers increased at the 31- to 33-d age but decreased after the 37-d age. The average daily gain to grade A ratio of the broilers was highest in autumn, and the bruises, flesh blemishes, and abnormalities of the carcasses were found to have been most frequent in winter (p<0.05). The number of economical defects (EDs) increased with the increase in the slaughter age, and the correlation coefficients of the EDs and grade A were -0.88, -0.48, and -0.12 in terms of the conformation, exposed flesh/cuts/tears, and skin discolorations of the carcasses, respectively. The correlation coefficients of the non-economical defects (NEDs) and the grade A of the broiler carcasses were -0.16, -0.22, and -0.32 in terms of the feathers, alien substances, and carcass treatment, respectively. The total number of defects (EDs + NEDs) and the grade A were highly correlated (-0.93), and in particular, the correlation between the grade A and the EDs was -0.91. It can be deemed that the grade A from a meat grader is highly correlated with the EDs. Therefore, the results suggest that broiler carcass grade evaluation using a meat grading system can provide direct information on profits in the market. The resulting carcass grade of broilers can also provide the information needed to decide on a proper incentive for a farm that has attained a good quality grade.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.147-159
• /
• 1995

This study was conducted to introduce fundamental data of hand-arm vibration and noise exposure levels with impact wrenches(double-hammer impact wrenches and oil-pulse impact wrenches) used in automobile assembly lines considering the process variables and tool variables. In studing, products per day, required time screwing the bolts or nuts per bolts or nut were considered as process variables, and capacity of bolts or nuts, air consumptions per minute, tool weights, RPM were considered as tool variables. Hand-arm vibration levels of 3 axis in each hand were measured using the instruments compling with ISO/DIS 5349 and noise levels were measured using a noise logging dosimeter. The results were as follows : 1. Required time to screwing the bolt or nut by oil-pulse impact wrenches is shorter than double-hammer impact wrenches but total daily exposure time of oil-pulse impact wrenches was higher than double-hammer impact wrenches because the number of bolts or nuts per cycle was many. 2. Oil-pulse impact wrenches have been used to screwing the large bolt or nut in comparing with double-hammer impact wrenches and required time to screwing the bolts or nuts were shorter than double-hammer impact wrenches because oil-pulse impact wrenches were using high RPM and large air consumption per minute. Noise level of oil-pulse impact wrenches was 8 dB(A) lower than double-hammer impact wrenches. 3. Dominant hand-arm vibration levels of double-hammer impact wrenches in each hand were $8.24m/sec^2$ of Zh axis in right hand and $9.60m/sec^2$ of Xh axis in left hand. Dominant hand-arm vibration level of oil-pulse impact wrenches in each hand was $2.59m/sec^2$ of Xh axis in right hand and $3.23m/sec^2$ of Yh axis in left hand. 4. In double-hammer impact wrenches, corresponding hand-arm vibration levels of Xh, Yh, Zh axis in left hand were higher than hand-arm vibration levels of right hand in 3 axis. In oil-pulse impact wrenches, Xh axis of right, Yh axis of left, Zh axis of left were higher than the corresponding hand-arm vibration levels of Xh, Yh, Zh axis in right and left hand. 5. Correlation coefficients among Xh, Yh. Zh axis of right and left hand hand-arm vibration levels in double-hammer impact wrenches and oil-pulse impact wrenches were commonly high in Yh axis and correlation coefficients of Yh axis in double-hammer impact wrenches and oil-pulse impact wrenches were 0.76 and 0.86,respectively. 6. As a measure repetitiveness, plotting total daily exposure time with the number of bolts or nut per cycle, direct correlation was shown between repetitiveness and hand-arn vibration exposure, and correlation coefficient between the number of bolts or nut per cycle and total daily exposure time in double-hammer impact wrenches, oil-pulse impact wrenches were 0.84 and 0.50, respectively. 7. Considering the total acceleration level and tool variables in double-hammer impact wrenches and oil-pulse impact wrenches, air consumption in right hand, and bolt or nut capacity in left hand were commonly the variable that explainability was high. Considering the noise and tool variables in double-hammer impact wrenches and oil-pulse impact wrenches, air consumption per minute was commonly the variable that explainability was high.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.91-110
• /
• 2011

This paper analyzes the cases where the hotels have increased their services and enhanced their work process through IT solutions to cope with computerization globalization. Also the cases have been studies where national hotels use the CRM solution internally to respond effectively to customers requests, increase customer analysis, and build marketing strategies. In particular, this study discusses the introduction of the CRM solutions and CRM sales business and marketing services using a process for utilizing the presumed, CRM by introducing effective DEA(Data Envelopment Analysis). First, the comparison has done regarding the relative efficiency of L Company with the CCR model, then compared L Company's restaurants and facilities' effectiveness through BCC model. L Company reached a conclusion that it is important to precisely create and manage sales data which are the preliminary data for CRM, and for that reason it made it possible to save sales data generated by POS system on each sales performance database. In order to do that, it newly established Oracle POS system and LORIS POS system concerned with restaurants for food and beverage as well as rooms, and made it possible to stably generate and manage sales data and manage. Moreover, it set up a composite database to control comprehensively the results of work processes during a specific period by collecting customer registration information and made it possible to systematically control the information on sales performances. By establishing a system which unifies database and managing it comprehensively, impeccability of data has been greatly enhanced and a problem which generated asymmetric data could be thoroughly solved. Using data accumulated on the comprehensive database, sales data can be analyzed, categorized, classified through data mining engine imbedded in Polaris CRM and the results can be organized on data mart to provide them in the form of CRM application data. By transforming original sales data into forms which are easy to handle and saving them on data mart separately, it enabled acquiring well-organized data with ease when engaging in various marketing operations, holding a morning meeting and working on decision-making. By using summarized data at data mart, it was possible to process marketing operations such as telemarketing, direct mailing, internet marketing service and service product developments for perceived customers; moreover, information on customer perceptions which is one of CRM's end-products could feed back into the comprehensive database. This research was undertaken to find out how effectively CRM has been employed by comparing and analyzing the management performance of each enterprise site and store after introducing CRM to Hotel enterprises using DEA technique. According to the research results, efficiency evaluation for each site was calculated through input and output factors to find out comparative CRM system usage efficiency of L's Company four sites; moreover, with regard to stores, the sizes of workforce and budget application show a huge difference and so does the each store efficiency. Furthermore, by using the DEA technique, it could assess which sites have comparatively high efficiency and which don't by comparing and evaluating hotel enterprises IT project outcomes such as CRM introduction using the CCR model for each site of the related enterprises. By using the BCC model, it could comparatively evaluate the outcome of CRM usage at each store of A site, which is representative of L Company, and as a result, it could figure out which stores maintain high efficiency in using CRM and which don't. It analyzed the cases of CRM introduction at L Company, which is a hotel enterprise, and precisely evaluated them through DEA. L Company analyzed the customer analysis system by introducing CRM and achieved to provide customers identified through client analysis data with one to one tailored services. Moreover, it could come up with a plan to differentiate the service for customers who revisit by assessing customer discernment rate. As tasks to be solved in the future, it is required to do research on the process analysis which can lead to a specific outcome such as increased sales volumes by carrying on test marketing, target marketing using CRM. Furthermore, it is also necessary to do research on efficiency evaluation in accordance with linkages between other IT solutions such as ERP and CRM system.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.1-13
• /
• 2017

The purpose of this study is to find out which factors determine the success of start-up in the initial market and what are the most important determinants. For the empirical analysis, the questionnaire related to the analysis of success factors for start-up success was designed according to the quantitative analysis (AHP technique). First, we selected 8 representative success factors for successful start-up in the initial market. In order to determine the degree of priority among these factors, we surveyed 12 entrepreneurs who are interested in entrepreneurship, universities, research institutes, and public officials. As a result of the empirical analysis, 51% of the funds in the tier 1 were ranked as the top priority to determine success factors. Followed by research and development (32.5%), management (8.7%) and marketing (7.8%). In particular, when each of the four items is calculated as 100 according to the result of the tier 1, and the tier 2 is converted, the foreign investment is analyzed as 43.7%. It was followed by 15.14% of R & D facilities, 14.07% of ideas, 8.7% of managerial ability, 7.29% of domestic investment, 5.85% of buyer feedback, 3.3% of development strategy and 1.95% of marketing strategy. Among the eight success factors, overseas investment items showed the closest preference to half, and it was the most important variable that determines the success or failure of market entry. The implication of this study is that many start-ups in Korea expect to receive investment and support from overseas accelerators. This means that overseas investment itself has been recognized as a start-up that makes services and products that can be used in the global market. A high preference for attracting foreign investment is due to the fact that the amount of investment is larger than that of Korea and that it can flexibly cope with the pressure on the performance compared to domestic investors. In this study, it was meaningful that we could confirm this fact through questionnaires of start-up experts. In future research, we need to find a viable alternative through studying how to provide start-up to foreign direct investment at the national level.

• Journal of Life Science
• /
• v.19 no.9
• /
• pp.1328-1332
• /
• 2009

Anisakidosis is caused by anisakid nematodes (family Anisakidae) larvae which can cause not only direct tissue damage but also a severe allergic response related to excretory-secretion products. Lots of different species of anisakid larvae, including Anisakis simplex, Contracaecum, Goezia, Pseudoterranova, and Hysterothylacium, cause the anisakidosis. But it is difficult to diagnosis the species of larvae since the morphologies of larval anisakid nematodes are almost indistinguishable. In order to diagnosis the differential infections of larval anisakid nematodes, polymerase chain reaction - restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) of 18S rDNA - was conducted. Three major species of anisakid larvae including A. simplex, C.ontracaecum spp, and Goezia spp. were collected from mackerel (Scomber japonicus), mullet (Mugil cephalus), founder (Paralichthys olivaceus), eel (Astroconger myriaster) and red sea bream (Pagrus major). PCR amplified 18S rDNA from each species of anisakid larvae was digested with eight restriction enzymes including Taq I, Hinf I, Hha I, Alu I, Dde I, Hae III, Sau96 I, and Sau3A I. The original sizes of PCR amplified 18S rDNA were 2.0Kb in both anisakid larvaes and Goezia. Restrction enzymes including Hinf 1, Alu 1, Hha I, Dde 1 and Hae III cut differently and distinguished the A. simplex and Contracaecum type C'. However, Contracaecum type A showed two different restriction enzyme cutting patterns by Taq 1, Hinf I, Alu 1, and Dde 1. One of the patterns was the same as those of A. simplex, Contracaecum type C' and Goezia and the other was unique. These results suggest that PCR-RFLP pattern by Hinf 1, Alu 1, Hae I, Dde 1 and Hae III can be applied to differential diagnosis of human infection with A. simplex and Contracaecum type C'. Contracaecum type A needs further study of classification by morphological characteristics and genetic analysis.

• Management & Information Systems Review
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.1-21
• /
• 2018

According to the results of the FKI's ethical management status and CSR promotion status, about 95% of domestic companies enact the Code of Ethics, while 64% of companies operating systems for communication and dialogue with stakeholders in the process of CSR activities, It seems that strategic CSR activities of domestic companies have not been fully established yet compared with the introduction of ethical management. Even if companies conduct CSR activities strategically, there is very little CSR level of the companies that consumers perceive. This is because the psychological mechanism of CSR on consumers' perceptions is too complicated and detailed, resulting in a positive result and a negative result depending on the investigator's research method. So far, there have been many studies on the direct impact of CSR on corporate evaluation, purchase intention, and corporate image. However, there are few studies on the effect of CSR and CA on purchase intention through product attitude. Therefore, The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the effect of corporate social responsibility(CSR) and corporate Ability(CA) on the purchase intention through product attitudes perceived by consumers, and the moderating effect of corporate reputation between product attitude and purchase intention. As a research method, we selected 4 companies, such as Samsung etc, who have been conducting CSR for the past 10 years, as a sample. The relationship between the CSR and the corporate competence of these companies on purchasing intention was examined through questionnaires for general consumers. The results of this study show that CSR and CA have a positive effect on product attitude, and consumers' product attitude has a positive effect on purchase intention. In addition, CSR and CA were found to have a positive (+) effect on purchase intention through consumer attitude. Finally, it is found that the reputation of the firm has a moderating effect on the relationship between consumer's product attitude and purchase intention. This study suggests that CSR should be strategically promoted in order to positively shape the attitude of consumers toward products of companies and their companies. As a theoretical implication, this study showed that the effect of CSR activities and CA on consumer's product attitude and purchase intention, centered on mediating effects of product attitude and corporate reputation discrimination.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.65-81
• /
• 2004

With the arrival of the 21th century, the management environments such as the knowledge system, information system, and technology system surrounding small and medium enterprises are being rapidly changed. These rapidly changing the environment of enterprises like the above can be thought rather profitable for the elastic and resiling medium enterprises than large enterprises. Additionally, these environments are recognized as the management circumstances which provide with the change by which medium enterprises equipped with the trustworthy creativity in the 21th century are able to become the main player of the industrial development. The position and role of medium enterprises in the national economical system are very important. The execution of the local autonomy system and the policy to activate the local economy will generally enlarge the power of medium enterprises which are based on the concerned local society more ant more. But, by the standpoint of designer, it is pointed out that there is the problem that the effective application means or the availability of the industrial design was not sufficiently recognized or understood by the manager in enterprises. Notwithstanding the above problem, a lot of domestic small and medium enterprises became to apply the industrial design as the means for improving the competitiveness of their own products in the relatively short time powered by the governmental policy, and moreover both of the concerned partners(the manager and industrial designer) had the opportunity to newly recognize the industrial design and evaluate the availability or problem of the industrial design in the actual aspect. This event means very important change. With the understanding on the above situation, the purpose of this study is to recognize whether the design is strategically applied in the management level of domestic small and medium enterprises, whether the strategical establishment of the design management is performed without any problem, whether the field designer and CEO are well recognizing the design management and what their recognition level is in order to seek the new solution for plenty of problems. Therefore, the actual proof analysis was performed for the field designer and management CEO of small and medium enterprises with the questionnaire survey and direct interview method to understand the actuality of small and medium enterprises.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.1-23
• /
• 2008

As managing customer relationship gets more important, companies are strengthening information service using multi-channels to their customers as a part of their customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives. It means companies are now accepting such information services not as simple information -delivering tools, but as strategic initiatives for acquiring and maintaining customer loyalty. In this paper, we attempt to validate whether or not such various information services would impact on organizational performance in terms of CRM strategy. More specifically, our research objective is to answer the next three questions: first, how to construct the instruments to measure not information quality but information service quality?; second, which attributes of information service quality can influence corporate image and customer loyalty?; finally, does each information service type have unique characteristics compared with others in terms of influencing corporate image and customer loyalty? With respect to providing answers to those questions, the previous studies had been limited in that those studies failed to consider the variety of types of information service or restricted the quality of information service to information quality. An appropriate research model answering the above questions should consider the fact that most companies are utilizing multi channels for their information services, and include the recent strategic information service such as customer online community. Moreover, since corporate information service could be regarded as a type of products or services delivered to customer, it is necessary to adopt the criteria for assessing customer's perceived value when to measure the quality of information service. Therefore, considering both multi-channels and multi-traits may enable us to tell the detailed causal routes showing which quality attributes of which information service would affect corporate image and customer loyalty. As information service channels, we include not only homepage and DM (direct mail), which are the most frequently applied information service channels, but also online community, which is getting more strategic importance in recent years. With respect to information service quality, we abstract information quality, convenience of information service, and timeliness of information service through a wide range of relevant literature reviews. As our dependant variables, we consider corporate image and customer loyalty that both of them are the critical determinants of organizational performance, and also attempt to grasp the relationship between the two constructs. We conducted a huge online survey at the homepage of one of representative dairy companies in Korea, and gathered 367 valid samples from 407 customers. The reliability and validity of our measurements were tested by using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and principal factor analysis respectively, and seven hypotheses were tested through performing correlation test and multiple regression analysis. The results from data analysis demonstrated that timeliness and convenience of homepage have positive effects on both corporate image and customer loyalty. In terms of DM, its' information quality was represented to influence both corporate image and customer loyalty, but we found its' convenience have a positive effect only on corporate image. With respect to online community, we found its timeliness contribute significantly both to corporate image and customer loyalty. Finally, as we expected, corporate image was revealed to provide a great influence to customer loyalty. This paper provides several academic and practical implications. Firstly, we think our research reinforces CRM literatures by developing the instruments for measuring information service quality. The previous relevant studies have mainly depended on the measurements of information quality or service quality which were developed independently. Secondly, the fact that we conducted our research in a real situation may enable academics and practitioners to understand the effects of information services more clearly. Finally, since our study involved three different types of information service which are most frequently applied in recent years, the results from our study might provide operational guidelines to the companies that are delivering their customers information by multi-channel. In other words, since we found that, in terms of customer loyalty, the key areas would be different from each other according to the types of information services, our analysis would help to make decisions such as selecting strengthening points or allocating resources by information service channels.