• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.57-78
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• 2020

With the development of the Internet, consumers have had an opportunity to check product information easily through E-Commerce. Product reviews used in the process of purchasing goods are based on user experience, allowing consumers to engage as producers of information as well as refer to information. This can be a way to increase the efficiency of purchasing decisions from the perspective of consumers, and from the seller's point of view, it can help develop products and strengthen their competitiveness. However, it takes a lot of time and effort to understand the overall assessment and assessment dimensions of the products that I think are important in reading the vast amount of product reviews offered by E-Commerce for the products consumers want to compare. This is because product reviews are unstructured information and it is difficult to read sentiment of reviews and assessment dimension immediately. For example, consumers who want to purchase a laptop would like to check the assessment of comparative products at each dimension, such as performance, weight, delivery, speed, and design. Therefore, in this paper, we would like to propose a method to automatically generate multi-dimensional product assessment scores in product reviews that we would like to compare. The methods presented in this study consist largely of two phases. One is the pre-preparation phase and the second is the individual product scoring phase. In the pre-preparation phase, a dimensioned classification model and a sentiment analysis model are created based on a review of the large category product group review. By combining word embedding and association analysis, the dimensioned classification model complements the limitation that word embedding methods for finding relevance between dimensions and words in existing studies see only the distance of words in sentences. Sentiment analysis models generate CNN models by organizing learning data tagged with positives and negatives on a phrase unit for accurate polarity detection. Through this, the individual product scoring phase applies the models pre-prepared for the phrase unit review. Multi-dimensional assessment scores can be obtained by aggregating them by assessment dimension according to the proportion of reviews organized like this, which are grouped among those that are judged to describe a specific dimension for each phrase. In the experiment of this paper, approximately 260,000 reviews of the large category product group are collected to form a dimensioned classification model and a sentiment analysis model. In addition, reviews of the laptops of S and L companies selling at E-Commerce are collected and used as experimental data, respectively. The dimensioned classification model classified individual product reviews broken down into phrases into six assessment dimensions and combined the existing word embedding method with an association analysis indicating frequency between words and dimensions. As a result of combining word embedding and association analysis, the accuracy of the model increased by 13.7%. The sentiment analysis models could be seen to closely analyze the assessment when they were taught in a phrase unit rather than in sentences. As a result, it was confirmed that the accuracy was 29.4% higher than the sentence-based model. Through this study, both sellers and consumers can expect efficient decision making in purchasing and product development, given that they can make multi-dimensional comparisons of products. In addition, text reviews, which are unstructured data, were transformed into objective values such as frequency and morpheme, and they were analysed together using word embedding and association analysis to improve the objectivity aspects of more precise multi-dimensional analysis and research. This will be an attractive analysis model in terms of not only enabling more effective service deployment during the evolving E-Commerce market and fierce competition, but also satisfying both customers.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.9
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• pp.3856-3868
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• 2011

Until recently, research trend in real estate has been focused on real estate market and the market analysis. But the studies on real estate training program development for real estate agents to improve their job performance are relatively short in numbers. Thus, this study shows empirical analysis of the needs for the training programs for real estate agents in Cheonan to improve their job performance. The results are as follows. First, in the survey of asking what educational contents they need in order to improve real estate agents' job performance, most of the respondents show their needs for the analysis of house's value, legal knowledge, real estate management, accounting, real estate marketing, and understanding of the real estate policy. This is because they are well aware that the best way of responding to the changing clients' needs comes from training programs. Secondly, asked about real estate marketing strategies, most of respondents showed their awareness of new strategies to meet the needs of clients. This is because new forms of marketing strategies including internet ads are needed in the field as the paradigm including Information Technology changes. Thirdly, asked about the need for real estate-related training programs, 92% of the respondents answered they need real estate education programs run by the continuing education centers of the universities. In addition, the survey showed their needs for retraining programs that utilize the resources in the local universities. Other than this, to have effective and efficient training programs, they demanded running a training system by utilizing the human resources of the universities under the name of the department of 'Real Estate Contract' for real estate agents' job performance. Fourthly, the survey revealed real estate management(44.2%) and real estate marketing(42.3%) is the most chosen contents they want to take in the regular course for improving real estate agents' job performance. This shows their will to understand clients' needs through the mind of real estate management and real estate marketing. The survey showed they prefer the training programs as an irregular course to those in the regular one. Despite the above results, this study chose subjects only in Cheanan and thus it needs to research more diverse areas. The needs of programs to improve real estate agents job performance should be analyzed empirically targeting the real estate agents not just in Cheonan but also cities like Pyeongchon, Ilsan and Bundang in which real estate business is booming, as well as undergraduate and graduate students whose major is real estate studies. These studies will be able to provide information to help develop the customized training programs by evaluating elements that real estate agents need in order to meet clients satisfaction and improve their job performance. Many variables of the program development learned through these studies can be incorporated in the curriculum of the real estate studies and used very practically as information for the development of the real estate studies in this fast changing era.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1-19
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• 2010

As having the movement of developing private brand (PB) goods, domestic big retailers are facing up with new problems. Thus, it is required studies of PB products, and how consumers recognize PB products as a consideration commodity set. Also, it is worthy in order that it gives us the important meaning on the marketing strategy with focusing on evaluating the differences between customers buying PB grocery goods with respect to demographic characteristics and purchasing behaviors. PB has some advantages for customers and retailers. However, according to AC Nielson's report (2005), Asian and emerging market has 1/5 sales relatively to Western countries. But we can assume that the emerging market has the most potential growth through this result. As a result from several other studies, it becomes necessary to not only increase the rate of selling composition of PB product temporarily, but also analyze the characteristics of customers using big retailers and segmenting customer groups to make PB product as a consideration commodity set for them. In addition, it is needed to have a variety of acts of marketing. From studies related to PB, there is a prejudice - cheap products have low quality - but, evaluation by customers who have used those products shows neutral stand, and there is a study representing that it is the most important to accumulate the belief between the retailers selling PB products and consumers using those for the accurate evaluation and intention on purchasing. Also, by the result from analyzing the characteristics of customers buying PB products, we could assume that higher income and higher education level, more preference on PB products. Especially, according to TNS's research, the primary targets of PB product are 30's who seeks value for money and planned spending habits, and 40's who have teenager children, and are interested in encouraging themselves. This paper used Probit model to analyze the characteristics of consumers. This model helps us to analyze with the variables representing the demographic characteristics of consumers (gender, age, educational level, occupation, income level, living area), and variables related to purchasing behavior (visiting frequency on big retailers, the average amount that they pay for goods in there, and check-up which brand made those goods). The method we used in this study is by man to man interview and survey on-line with the rate of 89% and 11% in Seoul and Gyunggi Province, respectively, for about one month from the beginning of February, 2008. As a result of this, under the assumption that people buy PB products more as long as they go shopping more, it was not meaningful for target groups which we pointed out as frequently visiting customers to be. Although, we have expected women buy more PB products than men do, gender doesn't mean anything for the result. And, it has inferred that married people buy more PB goods than singles do. It was also meaningless with variables related to occupation. Because housewives are often exposed to any kind of supermarket than workers are, we could not get any relatives. Moreover, we couldn't proof that younger generation prefer big retailers more than older people who 50~60's. Education levels doesn't affect on the purchase of PB product as well. Related to living area, the result is statistically not similar as we expected whether living in Seoul or not. It shows there is no relationship with the preference on retail brands and PB products, and it is similar with the study researched by TNS(2008) that customers tend to buy PB product impulsively no matter which brand it is and where they are even though their shopping place is the big market where customers are often using. Variables on which we had meaningful results are income level and living place. That is, customers who have 3,000,000~6,000,000 WON every month on average are more willing to buy PB products than other customers whose income is over 6,000,000 WON, and residents not living in Seoul prefer PB goods than those who are living in Seoul. To explain more about what we got, if there is only one condition about customer's visiting frequency on big retails, we could come up with this result that more exposed to PB products, more purchasing frequency. Consequently, it brings the important insight that large retailers have to prepare something to make customers visit them often to increase selling rate of PB products. To demonstrate the result of analyzing more, what is more efficient variables are demographically including marital status, income level, and residential area to buy items that affect the PB products and could include the frequency of visiting large markets by the purchase habits. Specifically, then, married couples rather than singles, middle-income customers than high-income customers, and local residents not living in Seoul than customers in Seoul are more likely to purchase PB goods. In addition, as long as a customer visits two times more, then the purchasing rate of PB products is to increase over 5.3%. Therefore, it seems that retailers are better to make a shopping place as fun and comfortable places. With overwhelming the idea that PB products are just cheap, one-time purchase goods, it is needed to increase the loyalty on those goods like NB products, try to make PB products as a consideration products set, and occur to sustainable sales. Especially, as suggested by this paper, it seems like it strongly needs to identify the characteristics of customers who prefer PB, to segment those customers, and to select the main target, and to do positioning with well-planned marketing strategies. Then, it is able to give us a meaningful point on marketing strategy by developing the field of PB study, identifying the difference of life style and shopping habits of customers.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.213-221
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• 2013

The mouth rinsing solution currently on the market is used for oral hygiene and reduction of halitosis, and alkaline ionized water is used for drinking purposes. The aim of this germiculture and observation through a microscope is to investigate the effect they have on the oral bacteria, and the results are as follows. 1. The change in the number of cultivated bacteria before and after the use of gargle was most dramatic for Hexamedin. It showed the highest rate of decrease in bacteria by 71.29%, followed by Listerine with 62.25%, Caregargle with 42.26%, Garglin with 33.52%, saline solution with 21.62%, alkaline ionized water with 16.08% and distilled water with 7.67%. 2. After careful analysis of statistics, Hexamedin was found to result in a significant decrease in the number of bacteria after gargling (p<0.05). 3. From observing through an light microscope after gram staining, it was evident that both a number of cocci and a few of filamentous were present before the use of gargle, whereas mostly cocci was present after the use of gargle. 4. The difference in the pH of oral rinses and alkaline ionized water had no significant influence on the number of oral bacteria. In conclusion, Hexamedin and Listerine, with the rate of decrease of bacteria of co71.29% and 62.25% respectively, have proven to be highly effective when applied before dental treatment. Other oral rinses and alkaline ionized water are relatively less efficient in decreasing the number of oral bacteria. Also, the decrease of bacteria is more affected by the antibacterial component of oral rinses than by the change in pH.

• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.131-153
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• 1984

Fishery resources are still abundant compared with other resources and the possibility of exploitation is probably great. The Korean fishery industry has grown remarkably since 1957, and Korea is ranked as one of the major fishery countries. Its of fishery products reached the 9th in the world and the value of exports was 5th in 1982. But recently a growth rate has slowed down, due to the enlargement of territorial seas by the declaration of the 200 mile, Exclusive Economic Zone, the tendency to develop fishery resources strate-gically in international bargaining, the change in function of the international organizations, the expansion of regulated waters, the illegal arrest of our fishing boats, the rapid rise in oil prices, and the fall in fish prices, the development of fishery resources as a symbol of nationalism, the fishing boats decreptitude, the rise of crew wages, regulations on fishing methods, fish species, fishing season, size of fish, and mesh size, fishing quotas and the demand of excessive fishing royalties. Besides the the obligation of coastal countries, employing crews of their host countries is also an example of the change in the international environment which causes the aggravation of foreign profit of fishing firms. To ameliorate the situation, our Korean fishery firms must prepare efficient plans and study systematically to internationalize themselves because such existing methods as conventional fishing entry and licence fishing entry are likely to be unable to cope with international environmental change. Thus, after the systematic analysis of the problem, some new combined alternatives might be proposed. These are some of the new schemes to support this plan showing the orientation of our national policy: 1. Most of the coastal states, to cope with rapid international environmental change and to survive in the new era of ocean order, have rationalized their higher governmental structure concerning the fishery industries. And the coastal countries which are the objectives of our expecting entry, demand excessive economic and technical aid, limit the number of fishing boats’entry and the use of our foreign fishing bases, and regulate the membership of the international fishery commissions. Especially, most of the coastal or island countries are recently independent states, which are poorer in national budget, depend largely on fishing royalties and licence entry fees as their main resources of national finance. 2. Alternatives to our entry to deep sea fishing, as internationalization strategies, are by direct foreign investment method. About 30 firms have already invested approximately US $ 8 million in 9 coastal countries. Areas of investment comprise the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean, the Moroccan sea and five other sea areas. Trawling, tuna purse seining and five other fields are covered by the investment. Joint-venture is the most prominent method of this direct investment. If we consider the number of entry firms, the host countries, the number of seas available and the size of investment, this method of cooperation is perhaps insufficient so far. Our fishery firms suffer from a weakness in international competitive ability, an insufficiency of information, of short funds, incompetency in the market, the unfriendliness of host coastal countries, the incapability of partners in joint-ventures and the political instability of the host countries. To enlarge our foreign fishing grounds, we are to actively adopt the direct investment entry method and to diversity our collaboraboration with partner countries. Consequently, besides proper fishing, we might utilize forward integration strategies, including the processing fied. a. The enterprise emigration method is likely to be successful in Argentina. It includes the development of Argentinian fishing grounds which are still not exploited in spite of abundant resources. Besides, Arentina could also be developed as a base for the exploitation of the krill resources and for further entries into collaboration with other Latin American countries. b. The co-business contract fishing method works in American territorial seas where American fishermen sell their fishery products to our factory ships at sea. This method contributes greatly to obtaining more fishing quotas and in innovation bottom fishing operation. Therefore we may apply this method to other countres to diffuse our foreign fishing entry. c. The new fishing ground development method was begun in 1957 by tuna long-line experimental fishing in the Indian Ocean. It has five fields, trawling, skipjack pole fishing and shrimp trawling, and so on. Recently, Korean fisheries were successful in the development of the Antarctic Ocean krill and tuna purse seining. 3. The acceleration of the internationalization of deep sea fishing; a. Intense information exchange activities and commission participation are likely to be continues as our contributions to the international fishery organizations. We should try to enter international fishery commissions in which we are not so far participating. And we have to reform adequately to meet the changes of the function of the international commissions. With our partner countries, we ought to conclude bilateral fishery agreements, thus enlarging our collaboration. b. Our government should offer economic and technical aids to host countries to facilitate our firms’fishery entry and activities. c. To accelerate technical innovation, our fishery firms must invest greater amount in technical innovation, at the same time be more discriminatory in importing exogeneous fishery technologies. As for fishing methods; expanded use of multi-purpose fishing boats and introduction of automation should be encuraged to prevent seasonal fluctuations in fishery outputs. d. The government should increases financial and tax aid to Korean firms in order to elevate already weak financial structure of Korean fishery firms. e. Finally, the government ought to revise foreign exchange regulations being applied to deep sea fishery firms. Furthermore, dutes levied on foreign purchaed equipments and supplies used by our deep sea fishing boats thould be reduced or exempted. when the fish caught by Korean partner of joint-venture firms is sold at the home port, pusan, import duty should be exempted.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.39-70
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• 2017

Data-drive analytics techniques have been recently applied to public surveys. Instead of simply gathering survey results or expert opinions to research the preference for a recently launched product, enterprises need a way to collect and analyze various types of online data and then accurately figure out customer preferences. In the main concept of existing data-based survey methods, the sentiment lexicon for a particular domain is first constructed by domain experts who usually judge the positive, neutral, or negative meanings of the frequently used words from the collected text documents. In order to research the preference for a particular product, the existing approach collects (1) review posts, which are related to the product, from several product review web sites; (2) extracts sentences (or phrases) in the collection after the pre-processing step such as stemming and removal of stop words is performed; (3) classifies the polarity (either positive or negative sense) of each sentence (or phrase) based on the sentiment lexicon; and (4) estimates the positive and negative ratios of the product by dividing the total numbers of the positive and negative sentences (or phrases) by the total number of the sentences (or phrases) in the collection. Furthermore, the existing approach automatically finds important sentences (or phrases) including the positive and negative meaning to/against the product. As a motivated example, given a product like Sonata made by Hyundai Motors, customers often want to see the summary note including what positive points are in the 'car design' aspect as well as what negative points are in thesame aspect. They also want to gain more useful information regarding other aspects such as 'car quality', 'car performance', and 'car service.' Such an information will enable customers to make good choice when they attempt to purchase brand-new vehicles. In addition, automobile makers will be able to figure out the preference and positive/negative points for new models on market. In the near future, the weak points of the models will be improved by the sentiment analysis. For this, the existing approach computes the sentiment score of each sentence (or phrase) and then selects top-k sentences (or phrases) with the highest positive and negative scores. However, the existing approach has several shortcomings and is limited to apply to real applications. The main disadvantages of the existing approach is as follows: (1) The main aspects (e.g., car design, quality, performance, and service) to a product (e.g., Hyundai Sonata) are not considered. Through the sentiment analysis without considering aspects, as a result, the summary note including the positive and negative ratios of the product and top-k sentences (or phrases) with the highest sentiment scores in the entire corpus is just reported to customers and car makers. This approach is not enough and main aspects of the target product need to be considered in the sentiment analysis. (2) In general, since the same word has different meanings across different domains, the sentiment lexicon which is proper to each domain needs to be constructed. The efficient way to construct the sentiment lexicon per domain is required because the sentiment lexicon construction is labor intensive and time consuming. To address the above problems, in this article, we propose a novel product reputation mining algorithm that (1) extracts topics hidden in review documents written by customers; (2) mines main aspects based on the extracted topics; (3) measures the positive and negative ratios of the product using the aspects; and (4) presents the digest in which a few important sentences with the positive and negative meanings are listed in each aspect. Unlike the existing approach, using hidden topics makes experts construct the sentimental lexicon easily and quickly. Furthermore, reinforcing topic semantics, we can improve the accuracy of the product reputation mining algorithms more largely than that of the existing approach. In the experiments, we collected large review documents to the domestic vehicles such as K5, SM5, and Avante; measured the positive and negative ratios of the three cars; showed top-k positive and negative summaries per aspect; and conducted statistical analysis. Our experimental results clearly show the effectiveness of the proposed method, compared with the existing method.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.477-500
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• 1999

Korean labor market has showed remarkable change of the increase in the amount of unemployment and contingent employment since IMF bailout agreement. There is a theoretical position to explain this increase in contingent employment at hospitals with the notion of flexibility. The high flexibility of employment due to the increase of contingent employees is becoming very important part in new business strategy of hospitals. The types of contingent employment of the nurse are part-time employment temporary employment, fixed-term employment, and internship which was introduced in early 1999. Recently, Korean health care industry managers have paid attention to the customer oriented service, rationalization of business administration, service quality control so that they can adjust their business to outer environment. Especially their efforts concentrate on the wage reduction through efficient and scientific control of man power because wage shares about 40% of total cost. This dissertation aims at verifying the phenomena of the contingent employment of the nurse and analyzing the related factors and problems. To rephrase these aims in ordinal: First, verifying the phenomena of contingent employment of the nurse. Second, verifying the problems of that phenomena. Third, analyzing the related factors of the contingent employment of the nurse. To accomplish these research goals, a statistical survey was executed. in which 384 questionnaires-66 for manager nurses, 318 for contingent nurses - were given to nurses working at 66 hospitals-which have at least 100 beds-in Seoul. Among them, 187 questionnaires-38 from manager nurses, 149 from contingent nurses'- 'were returned. Then, the data coded and submitted to T-test, $X^2$ -test, variance analysis(ANOVA), correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, Logistic Regression with SAS program. The research results of the contingent nurses are followings: 1. The average career term at the present hospital 8.4 months: duty-on days per month are 24.2 days: working time per day is 7.9 hours. These results showed little difference from regular nurses. 2. Their wage level is about 70% of regular nurses except for internship nurses whose wage level is 41% of regular nurses. To break down the wage composition, part-time nurses and internship nurses get few allowance and bonus. And contingent nurses get very low level of additional pay except for fixed-term nurses who are under similar condition of employment to regular nurses. These results show that hospital managers are trying to reduce the labor cost not only through the direct way of wage reduction but through differential treatment of bonus, retirement allowance, and other additional pay. 3. The problem of contingent employment: low level of pay; high level of turn-over rate: weakening of union; low level of working condition: heavy burden of work; inhuman treatment. The contingent nurses consider these problems more seriously than manager nurses do. What manager nurses regard problematic is the absence of feeling-belonged and responsibility of the contingent nurses. 4. The factors strongly related with the rate of the number of contingent nurses for the number of regular nurses; gross turn-over nurses; average in-patients per day; staring wage of graduate from professional college: the type of hospital ownership; the number of beds; the gap between gross newcomer nurses and gross turn-over nurses. The factors related with their gross wage per month; the number of beds; applying of health insurance; applying of industrial casualty insurance; applying of yearly-paid leave; the type of hospital ownership; average out-patients per day; gross turn-over nurses. The meaningful factors which make difference by employment type: monthly-paid leave; physiological leave. The logistic regression analysis using these two factors shows that monthly-paid leave is related with the type of hospital ownership; the number of beds; average out-patient per day, and physiological leave is related with the gross newcomer nurses; gross turn-over nurses; the number of beds.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.24-41
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• 2008

This research is aimed at analyzing and understanding the perception and attitudes of inpatients in a general hospital in Seoul towards the activation of private health insurance. Survey was conducted against 231 inpatients, results of which were analyzed in the methods of frequency analysis, chi square test, and logistic regression. The results are summarized as follows; First, better-educated population who finished college education at least, higher-income population, and people who had more knowledge about private health insurance showed more perception about activation of private health insurance. Second, better-educated population who finished college education at least, higher-income population, those who are insured in existing private insurance, oncological patients, and people who had more knowledge about private health insurance showed more positive attitude towards private health insurance paying for actual damages, long-term care insurance, and income security insurance. Third, age and education were the factors affecting perception about activation of private health insurance. The older the age is, perception was 1.035 times positive towards activation of private health insurance, and those who finished college education or above showed 3.148 times positive perception towards the same. Forth, surgical patients showed 1.087 times more positive attitude towards private health insurance paying for actual damages than internal medicine patients, while oncological patients showed 2.314 times more positive attitude than internal medicine patients. Further, understanding on the activation of private health insurance was 6.014 times higher in the higher understanding group than in the lower understanding group. Intention to use long-term care insurance was 2.692 times stronger in the male group than in the female group, and 3.616 times stronger in the oncological patients group than in internal medicine patients group. Further, understanding on the activation of private health insurance was 3.881 times deeper in the higher understanding group than in the lower understanding group. Intention to use income security insurance was 3.185 times stronger in those who have academic background of under the high school than those over the college, and 4.175 times higher in the group those whose monthly average income is over 4 million won than those under 4 million won. Also, intention to use income security insurance was 4.323 times higher in the group those who are insured by existing private insurances than those who are not insured by those insurances and it was 5.234 times higher in the group of oncological patients than in the group of internal medicine patients. Further, intention to use income security insurance was 3.559 times higher in the group those who thought that out-of-pocket money of the National Health Insurance is too much to bear than those it is quite endurable. Understanding on the activation of private health insurance was 4.875 times deeper in the higher understanding group than in the lower understanding group. There were some suggestions could be made based on the results of this research. First, reinforced publicity and education is needed for the low-educated or low-income group, as there are gaps in the understanding on the activation of private health insurance depending on the degree of education and income. Second, government should prepare administrative complementary measures to solve the problem of adverse selection by the consumer which is foreseen when private health insurances are activated. Third, government should suggest the desirable course of development of private health insurance items to ensure efficient use of enormous fund of private insurance market for health security of the people. Further, institutional complementary measures are needed to convert existing cancer insurances or specific disease insurances to private health insurances paying for actual damages guaranteeing against every kind of disease. Forth, it judged that, not only private health insurances paying for actual damages, but also long-term care insurances and income security insurances are prospective as fields to create fresh demand for insurance industry.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.153-169
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• 2011

Today using Internet environment is considered absolutely essential for establishing corporate marketing strategy. Companies have promoted their products and services through various ways of on-line marketing activities such as providing gifts and points to customers in exchange for participating in events, which is based on customers' membership data. Since companies can use these membership data to enhance their marketing efforts through various data analysis, appropriate website membership management may play an important role in increasing the effectiveness of on-line marketing campaign. Despite the growing interests in proper membership management, however, there have been difficulties in identifying inappropriate members who can weaken on-line marketing effectiveness. In on-line environment, customers tend to not reveal themselves clearly compared to off-line market. Customers who have malicious intent are able to create duplicate IDs by using others' names illegally or faking login information during joining membership. Since the duplicate members are likely to intercept gifts and points that should be sent to appropriate customers who deserve them, this can result in ineffective marketing efforts. Considering that the number of website members and its related marketing costs are significantly increasing, it is necessary for companies to find efficient ways to screen and exclude unfavorable troublemakers who are duplicate members. With this motivation, this study proposes an approach for managing duplicate membership based on the social network analysis and verifies its effectiveness using membership data gathered from real websites. A social network is a social structure made up of actors called nodes, which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency. Social networks represent the relationship between the nodes and show the direction and strength of the relationship. Various analytical techniques have been proposed based on the social relationships, such as centrality analysis, structural holes analysis, structural equivalents analysis, and so on. Component analysis, one of the social network analysis techniques, deals with the sub-networks that form meaningful information in the group connection. We propose a method for managing duplicate memberships using component analysis. The procedure is as follows. First step is to identify membership attributes that will be used for analyzing relationship patterns among memberships. Membership attributes include ID, telephone number, address, posting time, IP address, and so on. Second step is to compose social matrices based on the identified membership attributes and aggregate the values of each social matrix into a combined social matrix. The combined social matrix represents how strong pairs of nodes are connected together. When a pair of nodes is strongly connected, we expect that those nodes are likely to be duplicate memberships. The combined social matrix is transformed into a binary matrix with '0' or '1' of cell values using a relationship criterion that determines whether the membership is duplicate or not. Third step is to conduct a component analysis for the combined social matrix in order to identify component nodes and isolated nodes. Fourth, identify the number of real memberships and calculate the reliability of website membership based on the component analysis results. The proposed procedure was applied to three real websites operated by a pharmaceutical company. The empirical results showed that the proposed method was superior to the traditional database approach using simple address comparison. In conclusion, this study is expected to shed some light on how social network analysis can enhance a reliable on-line marketing performance by efficiently and effectively identifying duplicate memberships of websites.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.66-75
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• 2001

A survey was conducted to investigate consumers'attitudes toward the foods developed by gene recombination techniques from December, 1999 to April, 2000. The questionnaires were mailed to 1,500 people, and the 1,101 people responded. The consumers were asked about knowledge, acceptance, intention of purchasing, and labeling information. Although the portion of the consumers (88.8%) knowing the genetically modified floods (GMF) was lower than that of the flood expert group (98.7%), many consumers had some knowledge on the GMF, which may be influenced by news released from mass media. Seventy-nine percent of the consumers responded that gene recombination technology is necessary in food production, which is similar to the findings on the survey of the expert group. The portion of the consumers responding that these foods are potentially hazard was 88.1%, which is a little higher than the data (80.9%) from the expert group. The consumers having greater knowledge less worried about a potential hazard of the gene recombinant foods (p<0.01). Although 62.9% of the consumers responded to be willing to purchase those foods, only 16.2% of them responded to purchase the foods with no conditions, which is lower to that from the expert group (23.5%). There was no statistically significant relationship between the knowledge and the intention of purchasing. The ninety point three percent of the consumers wanted the information on gene recombination to be labeled on the foods. The data from this survey suggest that knowledge of the consumers on the GMF are not accurate, so proper strategy for consumer education may need to be developed. In addition, it is necessary to improve safety assessment system and analytical techniques for genetically modified foods (GMF) and to build pre- and post-market surveillance system fur efficient implementation of the GMF labeling.