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Disinfection of Fusarium-infected Rice Seeds by Prochloraz and Gaseous Chlorine Dioxide

  • Jeon, Young-ah;Lee, Young-yi;Lee, Ho-sun;Sung, Jung-sook;Lee, Seokyoung
    • 한국균학회소식:학술대회논문집
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    • 2014.10a
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    • pp.25-25
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    • 2014
  • Three species of Fusarium, F. fujikuroi, F. verticillioides and F. proliferatum, are known to be associated with bakanae disease of rice [1, 2]. F. fujikuroi infects rice flowers and survive in endosperm and embryo of the seeds. Infected seed is an important source of primary inoculum of pathogens [3]. Seeds of rice (Oryza sativa cv. Boramchan) collected from bakanae-infected field were found to be 96% infected with Fusarium sp., 52% with F. fujikuroi, 42% with F. verticillioides, and 12% with F. proliferatum as determined by incubation method and species-specific PCR assays. F. fujikuroi was detected at lemma/palea, endosperm and embryo whereas F. verticillioides and F. proliferatum were recovered only from lemma/palea by means of component plating test. Seed disinfection methods have been developed to control bakanae disease and prochloraz has been most widely used for rice seeds. Two chemicals formulated with prochloraz (PC 1) and prochloraz + hexaconazole (PC 2) that inhibit biosynthesis of ergosterol strongly reduced the incidence of Fusarium spp. on selective media to 4.7% and 2.0%, respectively. Disease symptoms of rice seedlings in nursery soil were alleviated by chemical treatment; seedlings with elongated leaves or wide angle between leaf and stem were strikingly reduced from 15.6 to 3.2% (PC 1) and 0 (PC 2), stem rots were reduced from 56.9 to 26.2% (PC 1) and 32.1% (PC 2), and normal seedling increased from 0.4 to 13.3% (PC 2). Prochloraz has some disadvantages and risks such as the occurrence of tolerant pathogens [4] and effects on the sterol synthesis in animals and humans [5]. For these reasons, it is necessary to develop new disinfection method that do not induce fungal tolerance and are safe to humans and animals. Chlorine dioxide ($ClO_2$), that is less toxic, produces no harmful byproducts, and has high oxidizing power, has been reported to be effective at disinfection of several phytopathogenic fungi including Colletotrichum spp. and Alternaria spp. [6]. Gaseous $ClO_2$ applied to rice seeds at a concentration of 20 ppm strongly suppressed mycelial growth of Fusarium fujikuroi, F. verticillioides and F. proliferatum. The incidence of Fusarium spp. in dry seed with 8.7% seed moisture content (SMC) tended to decrease as the concentration of $ClO_2$ increased from 20 to 40 ppm. Applying 40 ppm $ClO_2$ at 90% relative humidity, incidence was reduced to 5.3% and resulted in significant reduction of disease symptoms on MS media. In nursery soil, stem rot was reduced from 56.9 to 15.4% and the number of normal seedlings increased from 0.4 to 25.5%. With water-soaked seeds (33.1% SMC) holding moisture in the endosperm and embryo, the effectiveness of disinfection using $ClO_2$ increased, even when treated with only 20 ppm for four hours. This suggests that moisture was a key element for action of $ClO_2$. Removal of the palea and lemma from seeds significantly decreased the incidence of Fusarium spp. to 3.0%. Seed germination appeared to decrease slightly by water-soaking at $30^{\circ}C$ because of increased SMC and by physical damage of embryos from hulling. These results indicate that the use of gaseous $ClO_2$ was effective as a means to disinfect rice seeds infected with Fusarium spp. and that moisture around the pathogens in the seed was an important factor for the action of $ClO_2$. Further investigations should be conducted to ascertain the best conditions for complete disinfection of Fusarium spp. that infect deep site of rice seeds.

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An Optimization Study on a Low-temperature De-NOx Catalyst Coated on Metallic Monolith for Steel Plant Applications (제철소 적용을 위한 저온형 금속지지체 탈질 코팅촉매 최적화 연구)

  • Lee, Chul-Ho;Choi, Jae Hyung;Kim, Myeong Soo;Seo, Byeong Han;Kang, Cheul Hui;Lim, Dong-Ha
    • Clean Technology
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    • v.27 no.4
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    • pp.332-340
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    • 2021
  • With the recent reinforcement of emission standards, it is necessary to make efforts to reduce NOx from air pollutant-emitting workplaces. The NOx reduction method mainly used in industrial facilities is selective catalytic reduction (SCR), and the most commercial SCR catalyst is the ceramic honeycomb catalyst. This study was carried out to reduce the NOx emitted from steel plants by applying De-NOx catalyst coated on metallic monolith. The De-NOx catalyst was synthesized through the optimized coating technique, and the coated catalyst was uniformly and strongly adhered onto the surface of the metallic monolith according to the air jet erosion and bending test. Due to the good thermal conductivity of metallic monolith, the De-NOx catalyst coated on metallic monolith showed good De-NOx efficiency at low temperatures (200 ~ 250 ℃). In addition, the optimal amount of catalyst coating on the metallic monolith surface was confirmed for the design of an economical catalyst. Based on these results, the De-NOx catalyst of commercial grade size was tested in a semi-pilot De-NOx performance facility under a simulated gas similar to the exhaust gas emitted from a steel plant. Even at a low temperature (200 ℃), it showed excellent performance satisfying the emission standard (less than 60 ppm). Therefore, the De-NOx catalyst coated metallic monolith has good physical and chemical properties and showed a good De-NOx efficiency even with the minimum amount of catalyst. Additionally, it was possible to compact and downsize the SCR reactor through the application of a high-density cell. Therefore, we suggest that the proposed De-NOx catalyst coated metallic monolith may be a good alternative De-NOx catalyst for industrial uses such as steel plants, thermal power plants, incineration plants ships, and construction machinery.

Correlation between Corneal Ablation Amount and Intraocular Pressure after Corneal Refractive Surgery (각막굴절교정수술 후 각막절삭량과 안압변화의 상관관계)

  • Jung, Mi-A;Lee, Eun-Hee
    • The Korean Journal of Vision Science
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    • v.20 no.4
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    • pp.543-551
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    • 2018
  • Purpose : The purposes of this study were to evaluate the changes of intraocular pressure according to corneal ablation amount after corneal refractive surgery and the changes of intraocular pressure according to refractive errors before corneal refractive surgery. Methods : The mean age of adults who underwent LASIK corneal refractive surgery were $37.34{\pm}7.42years$, and 108 adults(48 males, 60 females) were participated in this study. Refractive errors, intraocular pressure, and corneal ablation amount were measured using an autorefractor, a noncontact tonometer, and an excimer laser. All test values were considered statistically significant when p<0.05. Results : The mean intraocular pressure before corneal refractive surgery was $15.08{\pm}2.60mmHg$ in males and $14.16{\pm}2.67mmHg$ in females. The decrease of intraocular pressure after corneal refractive surgery were 4.22mmHg in males and 3.61mmHg in females. Spherical equivalent power were $-3.89{\pm}2.17D$ in males and $-4.45{\pm}2.92D$ in females before corneal refractive surgery, and $-0.10{\pm}0.46D$ in males and $-0.04{\pm}0.46D$ in females after corneal refractive surgery. The corneal ablation amount after corneal refractive surgery were statistically significant, with $53.95{\mu}m$ in males and $61.26{\mu}m$ in females. There was significant correlation between corneal ablation amount and decrease of intaocluar pressure(r=0.2299, p<0.001). As the growth of corneal ablation amount in males, the decrease of intraocular pressure was significantly increased. As the growth of refractive error, the amount of decrease in intraocular pressure was also significant. The decrease of intraocualr pressure were $3.04{\pm}2.18mmHg$ in low refractive error, $4.10{\pm}2.16mmHg$ in middle refractive error, and $4.65{\pm}3.29mmHg$ in high refractive error. Conclusion : We found that intraocular pressure decreased after corneal refractive surgery by noncontact tonometer and the change of intraocular pressure which is an important index for glaucoma diagnosis, may affect the judgment of eye disease. We think that a preliminary questionnaire whether corneal refractive surgery is necessary for the measurement of intraocular pressure.

Space design Effect on Marketing ­ - Concentrating on B to B transaction - (공간 디자인이 마케팅에 미치는 영향 ­ - 전문전시회에서 B to B 거래중심으로 -)

  • Kim, Young Soo;Jeong, Dong Bin;Kim, Kyong Hoon
    • Korea Science and Art Forum
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    • v.20
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    • pp.147-158
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    • 2015
  • This study made an approach to the industrial exhibition space, which is a medium of marketing communication, from the position of an enterprise and consumers through the output of Space Design, and conducted it with focus on B2B transactions among specialized exhibitions. In addition, this study inquired into what factors should be considered along with space design by interpreting the purpose of participating in the exhibition and space design of the enterprise which supply capital goods, elements, related technologies and materials, etc. This study aimed at drawing the direct/indirect effect, produced by space design, on the marketing by analyzing correlation between space design and participating enterprises' marketing. Despite the marketing effect of the exhibition, which was proved by preceding research results, the reality is that exhibition-participating expenses work as considerable burden on enterprises. Particularly, booth design, which is forming the most proportion among the participating expenses, was found to have insufficient influence on visitors due to the decline in its importance among diverse factors influencing visitor's decision to visit a booth. Regardless of the business category of participating enterprises in the exhibition, the standard of exhibits was ranked as the most important consideration factor in visiting a booth. Even by business category, the standard of booth design rarely had an influence on booth visit. Booth design had an affirmative influence on participating enterprise's preference, but its influence on product purchase or business talk & contact with a participating enterprise or price was found to be extremely low. It's difficult to judge marketing success or failure of an exhibition by the form and standard of booth design. Preferably, this study infers that it's necessary to put much weight on qualitative excellence of an exhibition, which consists of participation of an enterprise in possession of excellent technologies, exhibits with higher standards and high-quality visitors with purchasing power. This study suggests that it's more effective to set up the plan for expansion of participation in exhibition by optimally regulating the proportion of space design in participating expense to increase marketing effectiveness of an exhibition. The limitations of this study, analysis of which based on the visitors to an exhibition only, requires supplementation through the follow-up research work on participating enterprises in the exhibition.

An Empirical Study on the Determinants of Supply Chain Management Systems Success from Vendor's Perspective (참여자관점에서 공급사슬관리 시스템의 성공에 영향을 미치는 요인에 관한 실증연구)

  • Kang, Sung-Bae;Moon, Tae-Soo;Chung, Yoon
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.139-166
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    • 2010
  • The supply chain management (SCM) systems have emerged as strong managerial tools for manufacturing firms in enhancing competitive strength. Despite of large investments in the SCM systems, many companies are not fully realizing the promised benefits from the systems. A review of literature on adoption, implementation and success factor of IOS (inter-organization systems), EDI (electronic data interchange) systems, shows that this issue has been examined from multiple theoretic perspectives. And many researchers have attempted to identify the factors which influence the success of system implementation. However, the existing studies have two drawbacks in revealing the determinants of systems implementation success. First, previous researches raise questions as to the appropriateness of research subjects selected. Most SCM systems are operating in the form of private industrial networks, where the participants of the systems consist of two distinct groups: focus companies and vendors. The focus companies are the primary actors in developing and operating the systems, while vendors are passive participants which are connected to the system in order to supply raw materials and parts to the focus companies. Under the circumstance, there are three ways in selecting the research subjects; focus companies only, vendors only, or two parties grouped together. It is hard to find researches that use the focus companies exclusively as the subjects probably due to the insufficient sample size for statistic analysis. Most researches have been conducted using the data collected from both groups. We argue that the SCM success factors cannot be correctly indentified in this case. The focus companies and the vendors are in different positions in many areas regarding the system implementation: firm size, managerial resources, bargaining power, organizational maturity, and etc. There are no obvious reasons to believe that the success factors of the two groups are identical. Grouping the two groups also raises questions on measuring the system success. The benefits from utilizing the systems may not be commonly distributed to the two groups. One group's benefits might be realized at the expenses of the other group considering the situation where vendors participating in SCM systems are under continuous pressures from the focus companies with respect to prices, quality, and delivery time. Therefore, by combining the system outcomes of both groups we cannot measure the system benefits obtained by each group correctly. Second, the measures of system success adopted in the previous researches have shortcoming in measuring the SCM success. User satisfaction, system utilization, and user attitudes toward the systems are most commonly used success measures in the existing studies. These measures have been developed as proxy variables in the studies of decision support systems (DSS) where the contribution of the systems to the organization performance is very difficult to measure. Unlike the DSS, the SCM systems have more specific goals, such as cost saving, inventory reduction, quality improvement, rapid time, and higher customer service. We maintain that more specific measures can be developed instead of proxy variables in order to measure the system benefits correctly. The purpose of this study is to find the determinants of SCM systems success in the perspective of vendor companies. In developing the research model, we have focused on selecting the success factors appropriate for the vendors through reviewing past researches and on developing more accurate success measures. The variables can be classified into following: technological, organizational, and environmental factors on the basis of TOE (Technology-Organization-Environment) framework. The model consists of three independent variables (competition intensity, top management support, and information system maturity), one mediating variable (collaboration), one moderating variable (government support), and a dependent variable (system success). The systems success measures have been developed to reflect the operational benefits of the SCM systems; improvement in planning and analysis capabilities, faster throughput, cost reduction, task integration, and improved product and customer service. The model has been validated using the survey data collected from 122 vendors participating in the SCM systems in Korea. To test for mediation, one should estimate the hierarchical regression analysis on the collaboration. And moderating effect analysis should estimate the moderated multiple regression, examines the effect of the government support. The result shows that information system maturity and top management support are the most important determinants of SCM system success. Supply chain technologies that standardize data formats and enhance information sharing may be adopted by supply chain leader organization because of the influence of focal company in the private industrial networks in order to streamline transactions and improve inter-organization communication. Specially, the need to develop and sustain an information system maturity will provide the focus and purpose to successfully overcome information system obstacles and resistance to innovation diffusion within the supply chain network organization. The support of top management will help focus efforts toward the realization of inter-organizational benefits and lend credibility to functional managers responsible for its implementation. The active involvement, vision, and direction of high level executives provide the impetus needed to sustain the implementation of SCM. The quality of collaboration relationships also is positively related to outcome variable. Collaboration variable is found to have a mediation effect between on influencing factors and implementation success. Higher levels of inter-organizational collaboration behaviors such as shared planning and flexibility in coordinating activities were found to be strongly linked to the vendors trust in the supply chain network. Government support moderates the effect of the IS maturity, competitive intensity, top management support on collaboration and implementation success of SCM. In general, the vendor companies face substantially greater risks in SCM implementation than the larger companies do because of severe constraints on financial and human resources and limited education on SCM systems. Besides resources, Vendors generally lack computer experience and do not have sufficient internal SCM expertise. For these reasons, government supports may establish requirements for firms doing business with the government or provide incentives to adopt, implementation SCM or practices. Government support provides significant improvements in implementation success of SCM when IS maturity, competitive intensity, top management support and collaboration are low. The environmental characteristic of competition intensity has no direct effect on vendor perspective of SCM system success. But, vendors facing above average competition intensity will have a greater need for changing technology. This suggests that companies trying to implement SCM systems should set up compatible supply chain networks and a high-quality collaboration relationship for implementation and performance.

A Study on Knowledge Entity Extraction Method for Individual Stocks Based on Neural Tensor Network (뉴럴 텐서 네트워크 기반 주식 개별종목 지식개체명 추출 방법에 관한 연구)

  • Yang, Yunseok;Lee, Hyun Jun;Oh, Kyong Joo
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.25 no.2
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    • pp.25-38
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    • 2019
  • Selecting high-quality information that meets the interests and needs of users among the overflowing contents is becoming more important as the generation continues. In the flood of information, efforts to reflect the intention of the user in the search result better are being tried, rather than recognizing the information request as a simple string. Also, large IT companies such as Google and Microsoft focus on developing knowledge-based technologies including search engines which provide users with satisfaction and convenience. Especially, the finance is one of the fields expected to have the usefulness and potential of text data analysis because it's constantly generating new information, and the earlier the information is, the more valuable it is. Automatic knowledge extraction can be effective in areas where information flow is vast, such as financial sector, and new information continues to emerge. However, there are several practical difficulties faced by automatic knowledge extraction. First, there are difficulties in making corpus from different fields with same algorithm, and it is difficult to extract good quality triple. Second, it becomes more difficult to produce labeled text data by people if the extent and scope of knowledge increases and patterns are constantly updated. Third, performance evaluation is difficult due to the characteristics of unsupervised learning. Finally, problem definition for automatic knowledge extraction is not easy because of ambiguous conceptual characteristics of knowledge. So, in order to overcome limits described above and improve the semantic performance of stock-related information searching, this study attempts to extract the knowledge entity by using neural tensor network and evaluate the performance of them. Different from other references, the purpose of this study is to extract knowledge entity which is related to individual stock items. Various but relatively simple data processing methods are applied in the presented model to solve the problems of previous researches and to enhance the effectiveness of the model. From these processes, this study has the following three significances. First, A practical and simple automatic knowledge extraction method that can be applied. Second, the possibility of performance evaluation is presented through simple problem definition. Finally, the expressiveness of the knowledge increased by generating input data on a sentence basis without complex morphological analysis. The results of the empirical analysis and objective performance evaluation method are also presented. The empirical study to confirm the usefulness of the presented model, experts' reports about individual 30 stocks which are top 30 items based on frequency of publication from May 30, 2017 to May 21, 2018 are used. the total number of reports are 5,600, and 3,074 reports, which accounts about 55% of the total, is designated as a training set, and other 45% of reports are designated as a testing set. Before constructing the model, all reports of a training set are classified by stocks, and their entities are extracted using named entity recognition tool which is the KKMA. for each stocks, top 100 entities based on appearance frequency are selected, and become vectorized using one-hot encoding. After that, by using neural tensor network, the same number of score functions as stocks are trained. Thus, if a new entity from a testing set appears, we can try to calculate the score by putting it into every single score function, and the stock of the function with the highest score is predicted as the related item with the entity. To evaluate presented models, we confirm prediction power and determining whether the score functions are well constructed by calculating hit ratio for all reports of testing set. As a result of the empirical study, the presented model shows 69.3% hit accuracy for testing set which consists of 2,526 reports. this hit ratio is meaningfully high despite of some constraints for conducting research. Looking at the prediction performance of the model for each stocks, only 3 stocks, which are LG ELECTRONICS, KiaMtr, and Mando, show extremely low performance than average. this result maybe due to the interference effect with other similar items and generation of new knowledge. In this paper, we propose a methodology to find out key entities or their combinations which are necessary to search related information in accordance with the user's investment intention. Graph data is generated by using only the named entity recognition tool and applied to the neural tensor network without learning corpus or word vectors for the field. From the empirical test, we confirm the effectiveness of the presented model as described above. However, there also exist some limits and things to complement. Representatively, the phenomenon that the model performance is especially bad for only some stocks shows the need for further researches. Finally, through the empirical study, we confirmed that the learning method presented in this study can be used for the purpose of matching the new text information semantically with the related stocks.

Dynamical Study on the Blasting with One-Free-Face to Utilize AN-FO Explosives (초유폭약류(硝油爆藥類)를 활용(活用)한 단일자유면발파(單一自由面發破)의 역학적(力學的) 연구(硏究))

  • Huh, Ginn
    • Economic and Environmental Geology
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    • v.5 no.4
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    • pp.187-209
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    • 1972
  • Drilling position is one of the most important factors affecting on the blasting effects. There has been many reports on several blasting factors of burn-cut by Messrs. Brown and Cook, but in this study the author tried to compare drilling positions of burn-cut to pyramid-cut, and also to correlate burn-cut effects of drilling patterns, not being dealt by Prof. Ito in his theory, which emphasized on dynamical stress analysis between explosion and free face. According to former theories, there break out additional tensile stress reflected at the free face supplemented to primary compressive stress on the blasting with one-free-face. But with these experimented new drilling patterns of burn-cut, more free faces and nearer distance of each drilling holes make blasting effects greater than any other methods. To promote the above explosive effect rationary, it has to be considered two important categories under-mentioned. First, unloaded hole in the key holes should be drilled in wider diameter possibly so that it breaks out greater stress relief. Second, key holes possibly should have closer distances each other to result clean blasting. These two important factors derived from experiments with, theories of that the larger the dia of the unloaded hole, it can be allowed wider secondary free faces and closes distances of each holes make more developed stress relief, between loaded and unloaded holes. It was suggested that most ideal distance between holes is about 4 clearance in U. S. A., but the author, according to the experiments, it results that the less distance allow, the more effective blasting with increased broken rock volume and longer drifted length can be accomplished. Developed large hole burn-cut method aimed to increase drifting length technically under the above considerations, and progressive success resulted to achieve maximum 7 blasting cycles per day with 3.1m drifting length per cycle. This achievement originated high-speed-drifting works, and it was also proven that application of Metallic AN-FO on large hole burn-cut method overcomes resistance of one-free-face. AN-FO which was favored with low price and safety handling is the mixture of the fertilizer or industrial Ammonium-Nitrate and fuel oil, and it is also experienced that it shows insensible property before the initiation, but once it is initiated by the booster, it has equal explosive power of Ammonium Nitrate Explosives (ANE). There was many reports about AN-FO. On AN-FO mixing ratio, according to these experiments, prowdered AN-FO, 93.5 : 6.5 and prilled AN-FO 94 : 6, are the best ratios. Detonation, shock, and friction sensities are all more insensitive than any other explosives. Residual gas is not toxic, too. On initation and propagation of the detonation test, prilled AN-FO is more effective than powered AN-FO. AN-FO has the best explosion power at 7 days elapsed after it has mixed. While AN-FO was used at open pit in past years prior to other conditions, the author developed new improved explosives, Metallic AN-FO and Underwater explosive, based on the experiments of these fundmental characteristics by study on its usage utilizing AN-FO. Metallic AN-FO is the mixture of AN-FO and Al, Fe-Si powder, and Underwater explosive is made from usual explosive and AN-FO. The explanations about them are described in the other paper. In this study, it is confirmed that the blasting effects of utilizing AN-FO explosives are very good.

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Categorizing Quality Features of Franchisees: In the case of Korean Food Service Industry (프랜차이즈 매장 품질요인의 속성분류: 국내 외식업을 중심으로)

  • Byun, Sook-Eun;Cho, Eun-Seong
    • Journal of Distribution Research
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    • v.16 no.1
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    • pp.95-115
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    • 2011
  • Food service is the major part of franchise business in Korea, accounting for 69.9% of the brands in the market. As the food service industry becomes mature, many franchisees have struggled to survive in the market. In general, consumers have higher levels of expectation toward service quality of franchised outlets compared that of (non-franchised) independent ones. They also tend to believe that franchisees deliver standardized service at the uniform food price, regardless of their locations. Such beliefs seem to be important reasons that consumers prefer franchised outlets to independent ones. Nevertheless, few studies examined the impact of qualify features of franchisees on customer satisfaction so far. To this end, this study examined the characteristics of various quality features of franchisees in the food service industry, regarding their relationship with customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The quality perception of heavy-users was also compared with that of light-users in order to find insights for developing differentiated marketing strategy for the two segments. Customer satisfaction has been understood as a one-dimensional construct while there are recent studies that insist two-dimensional nature of the construct. In this regard, Kano et al. (1984) suggested to categorize quality features of a product or service into five types, based on their relation to customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction: Must-be quality, Attractive quality, One-dimensional quality, Indifferent quality, and Reverse quality. According to the Kano model, customers are more dissatisfied when Must-be quality(M) are not fulfilled, but their satisfaction does not arise above neutral no matter how fully the quality fulfilled. In comparison, customers are more satisfied with a full provision of Attactive quality(A) but manage to accept its dysfunction. One-dimensional quality(O) results in satisfaction when fulfilled and dissatisfaction when not fulfilled. For Indifferent quality(I), its presence or absence influences neither customer satisfaction nor dissatisfaction. Lastly, Reverse quality(R) refers to the features whose high degree of achievement results in customer dissatisfaction rather than satisfaction. Meanwhile, the basic guidelines of the Kano model have a limitation in that the quality type of each feature is simply determined by calculating the mode statistics. In order to overcome such limitation, the relative importance of each feature on customer satisfaction (Better value; b) and dissatisfaction (Worse value; w) were calculated following the formulas below (Timko, 1993). The Better value indicates how much customer satisfaction is increased by providing the quality feature in question. In contrast, the Worse value indicates how much customer dissatisfaction is decreased by providing the quality feature. Better = (A + O)/(A+O+M+I) Worse = (O+M)/(A+O+M+I)(-1) An on-line survey was performed in order to understand the nature of quality features of franchisees in the food service industry by applying the Kano Model. A total of twenty quality features (refer to the Table 2) were identified as the result of literature review in franchise business and a pre-test with fifty college students in Seoul. The potential respondents of our main survey was limited to the customers who have visited more than two restaurants/stores of the same franchise brand. Survey invitation e-mails were sent out to the panels of a market research company and a total of 257 responses were used for analysis. Following the guidelines of Kano model, each of the twenty quality features was classified into one of the five types based on customers' responses to a set of questions: "(1) how do you feel if the following quality feature is fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit," and "(2) how do you feel if the following quality feature is not fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit." The analyses revealed that customers' dissatisfaction with franchisees is commonly associated with the poor level of cleanliness of the store (w=-0.872), kindness of the staffs(w=-0.890), conveniences such as parking lot and restroom(w=-0.669), and expertise of the staffs(w=-0.492). Such quality features were categorized as Must-be quality in this study. While standardization or uniformity across franchisees has been emphasized in franchise business, this study found that consumers are interested only in uniformity of price across franchisees(w=-0.608), but not interested in standardizations of menu items, interior designs, customer service procedures, and food tastes. Customers appeared to be more satisfied when the franchise brand has promotional events such as giveaways(b=0.767), good accessibility(b=0.699), customer loyalty programs(b=0.659), award winning history(b=0.641), and outlets in the overseas market(b=0.506). The results are summarized in a matrix form in Table 1. Better(b) and Worse(w) index indicate relative importance of each quality feature on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction, respectively. Meanwhile, there were differences in perceiving the quality features between light users and heavy users of any specific franchise brand in the food service industry. Expertise of the staffs was labeled as Must-be quality for heavy users but Indifferent quality for light users. Light users seemed indifferent to overseas expansion of the brand and offering new menu items on a regular basis, while heavy users appeared to perceive them as Attractive quality. Such difference may come from their different levels of involvement when they eat out. The results are shown in Table 2. The findings of this study help practitioners understand the quality features they need to focus on to strengthen the competitive power in the food service market. Above all, removing the factors that cause customer dissatisfaction seems to be the most critical for franchisees. To retain loyal customers of the franchise brand, it is also recommended for franchisor to invest resources in the development of new menu items as well as training programs for the staffs. Lastly, if resources allow, promotional events, loyalty programs, overseas expansion, award-winning history can be considered as tools for attracting more customers to the business.

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Home Economics teachers' concern on creativity and personality education in Home Economics classes: Based on the concerns based adoption model(CBAM) (가정과 교사의 창의.인성 교육에 대한 관심과 실행에 대한 인식 - CBAM 모형에 기초하여-)

  • Lee, In-Sook;Park, Mi-Jeong;Chae, Jung-Hyun
    • Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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    • v.24 no.2
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    • pp.117-134
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    • 2012
  • The purpose of this study was to identify the stage of concern, the level of use, and the innovation configuration of Home Economics teachers regarding creativity and personality education in Home Economics(HE) classes. The survey questionnaires were sent through mails and e-mails to middle-school HE teachers in the whole country selected by systematic sampling and convenience sampling. Questionnaires of the stages of concern and the levels of use developed by Hall(1987) were used in this study. 187 data were used for the final analysis by using SPSS/window(12.0) program. The results of the study were as following: First, for the stage of concerns of HE teachers on creativity and personality education, the information stage of concerns(85.51) was the one with the highest response rate and the next high in the following order: the management stage of concerns(81.88), the awareness stage of concerns(82.15), the refocusing stage of concerns(68.80), the collaboration stage of concerns(61.97), and the consequence stage of concerns(59.76). Second, the levels of use of HE teachers on creativity and personality education was highest with the mechanical levels(level 3; 21.4%) and the next high in the following order: the orientation levels of use(level 1; 20.9%), the refinement levels(level 5; 17.1%), the non-use levels(level 0; 15.0%), the preparation levels(level 2; 10.2%), the integration levels(level 6; 5.9%), the renewal levels(level 7; 4.8%), the routine levels(level 4; 4.8%). Third, for the innovation configuration of HE teachers on creativity and personality education, more than half of the HE teachers(56.1%) mainly focused on personality education in their HE classes; 31.0% of the HE teachers performed both creativity and personality education; a small number of teachers(6.4%) focused on creativity education; the same number of teachers(6.4%) responded that they do not focus on neither of the two. Examining the level and type of performance HE teachers applied, the average score on the performance of creativity and personality education was 3.76 out of 5.00 and the mean of creativity component was 3.59 and of personality component was 3.94, higher than standard. For the creativity education, openness/sensitivity(3.97) education was performed most and the next most in the following order: problem-solving skill(3.79), curiosity/interest(3.73), critical thinking(3.63), problem-finding skill(3.61), originality(3.57), analogy(3.47), fluency/adaptability(3.46), precision(3.46), imagination(3.37), and focus/sympathy(3.37). For the personality education, the following components were performed in order from most to least: power of execution(4.07), cooperation/consideration/just(4.06), self-management skill(4.04), civic consciousness(4.04), career development ability(4.03), environment adaptability(3.95), responsibility/ownership(3.94), decision making(3.89), trust/honesty/promise(3.88), autonomy(3.86), and global competency(3.55). Regarding what makes performing creativity and personality education difficult, most HE teachers(64.71%) chose the lack of instructional materials and 40.11% of participants chose the lack of seminar and workshop opportunity. 38.5% chose the difficulty of developing an evaluation criteria or an evaluation tool while 25.67% responded that they do not know any means of performing creativity and personality education. Regarding the better way to support for creativity and personality education, the HE teachers chose in order from most to least: 'expansion of hands-on activities for students related to education on creativity and personality'(4.34), 'development of HE classroom culture putting emphasis on creativity and personality'(4.29), 'a proper curriculum on creativity and personality education that goes along with students' developmental stages'(4.27), 'securing enough human resource and number of professors who will conduct creativity and personality education'(4.21), 'establishment of the concept and value of the education on creativity and personality'(4.09), and 'educational promotion on creativity and personality education supported by local communities and companies'(3.94).

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