• 마케팅과학연구
• /
• 제19권2호
• /
• pp.53-67
• /
• 2009

For the last decades, service quality has been studied as one of the most important tools for a service company to compete with the other companies. Based on these past researches, it has been agreed that the service quality is a basic and powerful tool to create the competitive advantage. Due to similar reason, many service marketing practitioners have been also focused on the service quality to retain the existing consumers and collect the new consumers. However, service quality is subjectively perceived by individual consumers. Consumer evaluation of service quality can be different from each other. Especially consumers with one life-style may evaluate the service quality differently from the consumers with the other life-styles. Therefore we need to know whether there are differences in service quality perception on the categories of life-style. Life-style refers to a distinctive mode of living in its aggregate and broadest sense. It embodies the patterns that were developed and emerged from the dynamics of living in a society. Since the concept of life-style and its relationship to marketing was introduced in 1963 by William Lazer, methods of measuring the life-style and their application have been developed. Life-style has been usually used to segment the marketplace because it offers marketers a unique and important view of the market. When Life-style is combined with clustering methods, life-style segmentation can generate identifiable whole persons rather than isolated fragment. Life-style segmentation begins with people instead of products and classifies them into different life-style types, each characterized by a unique style of living based on a wide range of activities, interests, and opinions(Plummer, 1974). In this study we applies the life-style segmentation based on the AIO(Activities, Interests, and Opinions) to the consumers of the large discount stores. In Korea, the large discount store market has entered into maturity stage so that the market differentiation strategy is becoming a more critical issue to the marketing practitioners. One of the most important tools to differentiate from the competitors in large discount store market is continuously to provide service of better quality than competitors. This study tries to find answers about the following questions: 1) How can we categorize the consumer life-styles in the large discount store? 2) What are the characteristics of the categorized groups? 3) Are there any differences in service quality perception among the consumers with different life-styles 4) Are there any differences in consumer behavior among them in the large discount store? For the purpose, we collected survey data from consumers and analyzed the data with the SPSS package where we had $X^2$-test, factor analysis, ANOVA, MANOVA, and cluster analysis. The survey was made during one month in the April of 2008. Among the collected 306 copies of questionnaires, 281 copies were chosen as the effective samples for empirical analysis except 25 copies with wrong responses. To identify the life-style patterns, we used the measures employed by Kim and Kwon(1999), where 44 items on a seven-point scale were used to measure factors of the life-style patterns. The Principal Component Method was used for factor extraction, and the VARIMAX orthogonal factor rotation was employed. The 7 items showing low factor loading were eliminated. The results of the factor analysis suggested that nine factors of the life-style patterns were identified as follows: 1) the equality-of-sexes and pursuit-of-independence tendency 2) self-management tendency 3) sociable tendency 4) self-display tendency 5) degree of a dilettante life 6) pursuit-of-information tendency 7) bargain hunter tendency 8) TV preference tendency 9) pursuit-of-leisure tendency. Next, after the K-means cluster analysis was performed with nine factors of the life-style patterns, the life-styles of the respondents were classified into four groups which are named as the 'progressive practicality-oriented group', 'positive success-oriented group', 'sociable ostentation-oriented group', 'stable conservation-oriented group'. The analysis results for usage behavior between the market segments showed statistically significant differences in the frequency of usage, duration time in the store, consumer satisfaction, and loyalty. Also, we tried to investigate whether the large discount store consumers differently perceive the quality of service based upon the types of life-style. To measure the service quality of large discount store, we adapted several measurement models measuring the service quality such as SERVPERF, BCP, R-SERVPERF, R-BCP. MANOVA and One-Way ANOVA were performed to confirm the difference in service quality perception based on the market segments. The results have also shown significant differences between life-style types in service quality perception. These findings show that the large discount store marketers should consider consumer life-style as one of the most important market segments for marketing and understand the difference in service quality perception between life-style types. Our findings give important implications to marketers of large discount stores as well as life-style researchers. First, this study showed there were significant differences in consumer's service quality perception and usage behavior between the types of life-style. It provides evidence that the life-style approach can be a important basis in segmenting the large discount store market and will make consumers perceive the service quality high. Second, most previous researches on service quality have been in aggregate level. However, our results imply that the future research on service quality have to focus on segment level.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• 제60권4호
• /
• pp.419-425
• /
• 2006

배경: 중증 지역사회 획득 폐렴은 항생제의 발달과 보조요법의 발전에도 불구하고 사망률이 높은 질환으로 호흡부전으로 진행되어 기계환기가 필요한 경우 사망률은 더욱 증가하게 된다. 최근 중증 지역사회 획득 폐렴에서 저용량 하이드로코르티손 주입이 사망률을 감소시킨다고 보고되었다. 본 연구는 기계환기가 요구된 중증 지역사회 획득 폐렴 환자에서 하이드로코르티손 정주의 효과를 알아보기 위하여 시행하였다. 방법: 2005년 2월부터 7월까지 중증 지역사회 획득 폐렴으로 기계환기를 유지한 13명의 환자(남:여=10:3, 평균 연령: $68.6{\pm}14.1$)를 대상으로 하이드로코르티손을 240mg을 부하로 정주하고 시간당 10mg을 지속적으로 7일간 주입하였다. 대조군은 연구 기간 이전 중증 지역사회 획득 폐렴으로 기계환기를 유지하고 스테로이드 치료를 하지 않았던 13명의 환자를 대상으로 하였다. 하이드로코르티손 주입 전과 주입 8일째 두 군 간의 임상적, 생리적 지표의 차이와 최종 결과를 비교하였다. 결과: 1) 하이드로코르티손 주입 전 주입군과 대조군의 나이, 성별, 내원 당시의 SAPS II, SOFA 점수, 체온, 백혈구 수, PaO2/FiO2(P/F) 비, P/F 200이하인 환자수, 흉부방사선 사진 점수, 폐손상 점수, 카테콜라민 의존성 패혈성 쇽의 빈도 등은 유의한 차이가 없었다. 2) 하이드로코르티손 주입 8일 후 대조군에 비해 주입군이 P/F비가 100이상 호전된 환자의 비율과 흉부 방사선 점수가 호전된 환자의 비율이 유의하게 높았다(61.5% vs. 15.4% p=0.016, 76.9% vs. 23.1% p<0.05). 이외 다른 임상적 및 생리적 지표들은 주입군과 대조군 사이에 유의한 차이는 없었다. 3) 두 군 간에 기계환기 유지기간, 중환자실 재원기간, 병원내 재원기간, 재원 10일째와 30일째의 사망률은 유의한 차이가 없었다. 결론: 기계환기가 요구되는 중증 지역사회 획득 폐렴에서 하이드로코르티손 정주는 산소화와 흉부 방사선 점수의 빠른 호전을 보이지만 최종 치료 성적에 대해서는 많은 환자를 대상으로 한 전향적 무작위 대조 연구가 필요할 것으로 사료된다.