• Title/Summary/Keyword: management efficiency

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A Study on the Location of Retail Trade in Kwangju-si and Its Inhabitants와 Effcient Utilization (광주시 소매업의 입지와 주민의 효율적 이용에 관한 연구)

  • ;Jeon, Kyung-sook
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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    • v.30 no.1
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    • pp.68-92
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    • 1995
  • Recentry the structure of the retail trade have been chanaed with its environmantal changes. Some studies may be necessary on the changing process of environment and fundamental structure analyses of the retail trade. This study analyzes the location of retail trades, inhabitants' behavior in retail tredes and their desirable utilization scheme of them in Kwangju-si. Some study methods, contents and coming-out results are as follows: 1. Retail trades can be classified into independent stores, chain-stores (supermarket, voluntary chain and frenchiise system and convenience store), department stores, cooperative associations, traditional, markets mail-order marketing, automatic vending and others by service levels, selling-items, prices, managements, methods of retailing and store or nonstore type. 2. In Kwangju, the environment of retail trades is related to the consumers of population structure: chanes in consumers pattern, trends toward agings and nuclear family, increase of leisur: time and female advances to society. Rapid structural shift in retail trade has also been occurred due to these social changes. Traditionl and premodern markets until 1970s altere to supermarkets or department stores in 1980s, and various types, large enterprises and foreign capitals came into being in 1990s. 3. The locational characteristics of retail trades are resulted from the spatial analysis of the total population distribution, and from the calculation of segregation index in the light of potential demand. The densely-populated areas occurs in newly-built apartment housing complex which is distributed with a ring-shaped pattern around the old urban core. The numbers and rates of the aged over sixty in Kwangsan-gu and the circumference area of Mt.Moodeung, are larger and higher where rural elements are remarkable. A relation between population distribution and retail trade are analysed by the index of population per shop. The index of the population number per shop is lower in urban center, as a whole, being more convenient for consumers. In newly-formed apartment complex areas, on the other, the index more than 1,000 per shop, meeting not the demands for consumers. Because both the younger and the aged are numerous in these areas, the retail trade pattern pertinent to both are needed. Urban fringes including Kwangsan-gu and the vicinity of Mt.Moodeung have some problems owing to the most of population number per shop (more than 1, 500) and the most extensive as well. 4. The regional characteristic of retail trade is analyzed through the location quotient of shops by locational patterns and centerality index. Chungkum-dong is the highest-order central place in CBD. It is the core of retail trades, which has higher-ordered specialty store including three big department stores, supermarkets and large stores. Taegum-dong, Chungsu-dong, Taeui-dong, and Numun-dong that are neiahbored to Chungkum-dong fall on the second group. They have a central commercial section where large chain stores, specialty shopping streets, narrow-line retailing shops (furniture, amusement service, and gallary), supermarkets and daily markets are located. The third group is formed on the axis of state roads linking to Naju-kun, Changseong-kun, Tamyang-kun, Hwasun-kun and forme-Songjeong-eup. It is related to newly, rising apartment housing complex along a trunk road, and characterized by markets and specialty stores. The fourth group has neibourhood-shopping centers including older residential area and Songjeong-eup area with independent stores and supermarkets as main retailing functions. The last group contains inner residential area and outer part of a city including Songjeong-eup. Outer part of miscellaneous shops being occasionally found is rural rather than urban (Fig. 7). 5. The residents' behaviors using retail trade are analyzed by factors of goods and facilities. Department stores are very high level in preference for higher-order shopping-goods such as clothes for full dress in view of both diversity and quality of goods(28.9%). But they have severe traffic congestions, and high competitions for market ranges caused by their sma . 64.0% of respondents make combined purpose trips together with banking and shopping. 6. For more efficiency of retail-trading, it is necessary to induce spatial distribution policy with regard to opportunity frequency of goods selection by central place, frontier regions and age groups. Also we must consider to analyze competition among different types of retail trade and analyze the consumption behaviors of working females and younger-aged groups, in aspects of time and space. Service improvement and the rationalization of management should be accomplished in such as cooperative location (situation) must be under consideration in relations to other functions such as finance, leisure & sports, and culture centers. Various service systems such as installment, credit card and peremium ticket, new used by enterprises, must also be carried service improvement. The rationalization and professionalization in for the commercial goods are bsically requested.

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A Coexistence Model in a Dynamic Platform with ICT-based Multi-Value Chains: focusing on Healthcare Service (ICT 기반 다중 가치사슬의 동적 플랫폼에서의 공존 모형: 의료서비스를 중심으로)

  • Lee, Hyun Jung;Chang, Yong Sik
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.23 no.1
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    • pp.69-93
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    • 2017
  • The development of ICT has leaded the diversification and changes of supplies and demands in markets. It also caused the creations of a variety of values which are differentiated from those in the existing market. Therefore, a new-type market is created, which can include multi-value chains which are from ICT-based created markets as well as the existing markets. We defined the platform as the new-type market. In the platform, the multi-value chains can be coexisted with multi-values. In true market, when a new-type value chain entered into an existing market, it is general that it can be conflicted with the existing value chain in the market. The conflicted problem among multi-value chains in a market is caused by the sharing of limited market resources like suppliers, consumers, services or products among the value chains. In other words, if there are multi-value chains in the platform, then it is possible to have conflictions, overlapping, creations or losses of values among the value chains. To solve the problem, we introduce coexistence factors to reduce the conflictions to reach market equilibrium in the platform. In the other hand, it is possible to lead the creations of differentiated values from the existing market and to augment the total market values in the platform. In the early era of ICT development, ICT was introduced for improvement of efficiency and effectiveness of the value chains in the existing market. However, according to the changed role of ICT from the supporter to the promotor of the market, ICT became to lead the variations of the value chains and creations of various values in the markets. For instance, Uber Taxi created a new value chain with ICT-based new-type service or products with new resources like new suppliers and consumers. When Uber and Traditional Taxi services are playing at the same time in Taxi service platform, it is possible to create values or make conflictions among values between the new and old value chains. In this research, like Uber and traditional taxi services, if there are conflictions among the multi-value chains, then it is necessary to minimize the conflictions in the platform for the coexistence of multi-value chains which can create the value-added values in the platform. So, it is important to predict and discuss the possible conflicted problems between new and old value chains. The confliction should be solved to reach market equilibrium with multi-value chains in the platform. That is, we discuss the possibility of the coexistence of multi-value chains in the platform which are comprised of a variety of suppliers and customers. To do this, especially we are focusing on the healthcare markets. Nowadays healthcare markets are popularized in global market as well as domestic. Therefore, there are a lot of and a variety of healthcare services like Traditional-, Tele-, or Intelligent- healthcare services and so on. It shows that there are multi-suppliers, -consumers and -services as components of each different value chain in the same platform. The platform can be shared by different values that are created or overlapped by confliction and loss of values in the value chains. In this research, as was said, we focused on the healthcare services to show if a platform can be shared by different value chains like traditional-, tele-healthcare and intelligent-healthcare services and products. Additionally, we try to show if it is possible to increase the value of each value chain as well as the total value of the platform. As the result, it is possible to increase of each value of each value chain as well as the total value in the platform. Finally, we propose a coexistence model to overcome such problems and showed the possibility of coexistence between the value chains through experimentation.

A Ranking Algorithm for Semantic Web Resources: A Class-oriented Approach (시맨틱 웹 자원의 랭킹을 위한 알고리즘: 클래스중심 접근방법)

  • Rho, Sang-Kyu;Park, Hyun-Jung;Park, Jin-Soo
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.31-59
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    • 2007
  • We frequently use search engines to find relevant information in the Web but still end up with too much information. In order to solve this problem of information overload, ranking algorithms have been applied to various domains. As more information will be available in the future, effectively and efficiently ranking search results will become more critical. In this paper, we propose a ranking algorithm for the Semantic Web resources, specifically RDF resources. Traditionally, the importance of a particular Web page is estimated based on the number of key words found in the page, which is subject to manipulation. In contrast, link analysis methods such as Google's PageRank capitalize on the information which is inherent in the link structure of the Web graph. PageRank considers a certain page highly important if it is referred to by many other pages. The degree of the importance also increases if the importance of the referring pages is high. Kleinberg's algorithm is another link-structure based ranking algorithm for Web pages. Unlike PageRank, Kleinberg's algorithm utilizes two kinds of scores: the authority score and the hub score. If a page has a high authority score, it is an authority on a given topic and many pages refer to it. A page with a high hub score links to many authoritative pages. As mentioned above, the link-structure based ranking method has been playing an essential role in World Wide Web(WWW), and nowadays, many people recognize the effectiveness and efficiency of it. On the other hand, as Resource Description Framework(RDF) data model forms the foundation of the Semantic Web, any information in the Semantic Web can be expressed with RDF graph, making the ranking algorithm for RDF knowledge bases greatly important. The RDF graph consists of nodes and directional links similar to the Web graph. As a result, the link-structure based ranking method seems to be highly applicable to ranking the Semantic Web resources. However, the information space of the Semantic Web is more complex than that of WWW. For instance, WWW can be considered as one huge class, i.e., a collection of Web pages, which has only a recursive property, i.e., a 'refers to' property corresponding to the hyperlinks. However, the Semantic Web encompasses various kinds of classes and properties, and consequently, ranking methods used in WWW should be modified to reflect the complexity of the information space in the Semantic Web. Previous research addressed the ranking problem of query results retrieved from RDF knowledge bases. Mukherjea and Bamba modified Kleinberg's algorithm in order to apply their algorithm to rank the Semantic Web resources. They defined the objectivity score and the subjectivity score of a resource, which correspond to the authority score and the hub score of Kleinberg's, respectively. They concentrated on the diversity of properties and introduced property weights to control the influence of a resource on another resource depending on the characteristic of the property linking the two resources. A node with a high objectivity score becomes the object of many RDF triples, and a node with a high subjectivity score becomes the subject of many RDF triples. They developed several kinds of Semantic Web systems in order to validate their technique and showed some experimental results verifying the applicability of their method to the Semantic Web. Despite their efforts, however, there remained some limitations which they reported in their paper. First, their algorithm is useful only when a Semantic Web system represents most of the knowledge pertaining to a certain domain. In other words, the ratio of links to nodes should be high, or overall resources should be described in detail, to a certain degree for their algorithm to properly work. Second, a Tightly-Knit Community(TKC) effect, the phenomenon that pages which are less important but yet densely connected have higher scores than the ones that are more important but sparsely connected, remains as problematic. Third, a resource may have a high score, not because it is actually important, but simply because it is very common and as a consequence it has many links pointing to it. In this paper, we examine such ranking problems from a novel perspective and propose a new algorithm which can solve the problems under the previous studies. Our proposed method is based on a class-oriented approach. In contrast to the predicate-oriented approach entertained by the previous research, a user, under our approach, determines the weights of a property by comparing its relative significance to the other properties when evaluating the importance of resources in a specific class. This approach stems from the idea that most queries are supposed to find resources belonging to the same class in the Semantic Web, which consists of many heterogeneous classes in RDF Schema. This approach closely reflects the way that people, in the real world, evaluate something, and will turn out to be superior to the predicate-oriented approach for the Semantic Web. Our proposed algorithm can resolve the TKC(Tightly Knit Community) effect, and further can shed lights on other limitations posed by the previous research. In addition, we propose two ways to incorporate data-type properties which have not been employed even in the case when they have some significance on the resource importance. We designed an experiment to show the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm and the validity of ranking results, which was not tried ever in previous research. We also conducted a comprehensive mathematical analysis, which was overlooked in previous research. The mathematical analysis enabled us to simplify the calculation procedure. Finally, we summarize our experimental results and discuss further research issues.

The Causes of Conflict and the Effect of Control Mechanisms on Conflict Resolution between Manufacturer and Supplier (제조-공급자간 갈등 원인과 거래조정 방식의 갈등관리 효과)

  • Rhee, Jin Hwa
    • Journal of Distribution Research
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.55-80
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    • 2012
  • I. Introduction Developing the relationships between companies is very important issue to ensure a competitive advantage in today's business environment (Bleeke & Ernst 1991; Mohr & Spekman 1994; Powell 1990). Partnerships between companies are based on having same goals, pursuing mutual understanding, and having a professional level of interdependence. By having such a partnerships and cooperative efforts between companies, they will achieve efficiency and effectiveness of their business (Mohr and Spekman, 1994). However, it is difficult to expect these ideal results only in the B2B corporate transaction. According to agency theory which is the well-accepted theory in various fields of business strategy, organization, and marketing, the two independent companies have fundamentally different corporate purposes. Also there is a higher chance of developing opportunism and conflict due to natures of human(organization), such as self-interest, bounded rationality, risk aversion, and environment factor as imbalance of information (Eisenhardt 1989). That is, especially partnerships between principal(or buyer) and agent(or supplier) of companies within supply chain, the business contract itself will not provide competitive advantage. But managing partnership between companies is the key to success. Therefore, managing partnership between manufacturer and supplier, and finding causes of conflict are essential to improve B2B performance. In conclusion, based on prior researches and Agency theory, this study will clarify how business hazards cause conflicts on supply chain and then identify how developed conflicts have been managed by two control mechanisms. II. Research model III. Method In order to validate our research model, this study gathered questionnaires from small and medium sized enterprises(SMEs). In Korea, SMEs mean the firms whose employee is under 300 and capital is under 8 billion won(about 7.2 million dollar). We asked the manufacturer's perception about the relationship with the biggest supplier, and our key informants are denied to a person responsible for buying(ex)CEO, executives, managers of purchasing department, and so on). In detail, we contact by telephone to our initial sample(about 1,200 firms) and introduce our research motivation and send our questionnaires by e-mail, mail, and direct survey. Finally we received 361 data and eliminate 32 inappropriate questionnaires. We use 329 manufactures' data on analysis. The purpose of this study is to identify the anticipant role of business hazard (environmental dynamism, asset specificity) and investigate the moderating effect of control mechanism(formal control, social control) on conflict-performance relationship. To find out moderating effect of control methods, we need to compare the regression weight between low versus. high group(about level of exercised control methods). Therefore we choose the structural equation modeling method that is proper to do multi-group analysis. The data analysis is performed by AMOS 17.0 software, and model fits are good statically (CMIN/DF=1.982, p<.000, CFI=.936, IFI=.937, RMSEA=.056). IV. Result V. Discussion Results show that the higher environmental dynamism and asset specificity(on particular supplier) buyer(manufacturer) has, the more B2B conflict exists. And this conflict affect relationship quality and financial outcomes negatively. In addition, social control and formal control could weaken the negative effect of conflict on relationship quality significantly. However, unlikely to assure conflict resolution effect of control mechanisms on relationship quality, financial outcomes are changed by neither social control nor formal control. We could explain this results with the characteristics of our sample, SMEs(Small and Medium sized Enterprises). Financial outcomes of these SMEs(manufacturer or principal) are affected by their customer(usually major company) more easily than their supplier(or agent). And, in recent few years, most of companies have suffered from financial problems because of global economic recession. It means that it is hard to evaluate the contribution of supplier(agent). Therefore we also support the suggestion of Gladstein(1984), Poppo & Zenger(2002) that relational performance variable can capture the focal outcomes of relationship(exchange) better than financial performance variable. This study has some implications that it tests the sources of conflict and investigates the effect of resolution methods of B2B conflict empirically. And, especially, it finds out the significant moderating effect of formal control which past B2B management studies have ignored in Korea.

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A Conceptual Review of the Transaction Costs within a Distribution Channel (유통경로내의 거래비용에 대한 개념적 고찰)

  • Kwon, Young-Sik;Mun, Jang-Sil
    • Journal of Distribution Science
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    • v.10 no.2
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    • pp.29-41
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    • 2012
  • This paper undertakes a conceptual review of transaction cost to broaden the understanding of the transaction cost analysis (TCA) approach. More than 40 years have passed since Coase's fundamental insight that transaction, coordination, and contracting costs must be considered explicitly in explaining the extent of vertical integration. Coase (1937) forced economists to identify previously neglected constraints on the trading process to foster efficient intrafirm, rather than interfirm, transactions. The transaction cost approach to economic organization study regards transactions as the basic units of analysis and holds that understanding transaction cost economy is central to organizational study. The approach applies to determining efficient boundaries, as between firms and markets, and to internal transaction organization, including employment relations design. TCA, developed principally by Oliver Williamson (1975,1979,1981a) blends institutional economics, organizational theory, and contract law. Further progress in transaction costs research awaits the identification of critical dimensions in which transaction costs differ and an examination of the economizing properties of alternative institutional modes for organizing transactions. The crucial investment distinction is: To what degree are transaction-specific (non-marketable) expenses incurred? Unspecialized items pose few hazards, since buyers can turn toalternative sources, and suppliers can sell output intended for one order to other buyers. Non-marketability problems arise when specific parties' identities have important cost-bearing consequences. Transactions of this kind are labeled idiosyncratic. The summarized results of the review are as follows. First, firms' distribution decisions often prompt examination of the make-or-buy question: Should a marketing activity be performed within the organization by company employees or contracted to an external agent? Second, manufacturers introducing an industrial product to a foreign market face a difficult decision. Should the product be marketed primarily by captive agents (the company sales force and distribution division) or independent intermediaries (outside sales agents and distribution)? Third, the authors develop a theoretical extension to the basic transaction cost model by combining insights from various theories with the TCA approach. Fourth, other such extensions are likely required for the general model to be applied to different channel situations. It is naive to assume the basic model appliesacross markedly different channel contexts without modifications and extensions. Although this study contributes to scholastic research, it is limited by several factors. First, the theoretical perspective of TCA has attracted considerable recent interest in the area of marketing channels. The analysis aims to match the properties of efficient governance structures with the attributes of the transaction. Second, empirical evidence about TCA's basic propositions is sketchy. Apart from Anderson's (1985) study of the vertical integration of the selling function and John's (1984) study of opportunism by franchised dealers, virtually no marketing studies involving the constructs implicated in the analysis have been reported. We hope, therefore, that further research will clarify distinctions between the different aspects of specific assets. Another important line of future research is the integration of efficiency-oriented TCA with organizational approaches that emphasize specific assets' conceptual definition and industry structure. Finally, research of transaction costs, uncertainty, opportunism, and switching costs is critical to future study.

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Application of MicroPACS Using the Open Source (Open Source를 이용한 MicroPACS의 구성과 활용)

  • You, Yeon-Wook;Kim, Yong-Keun;Kim, Yeong-Seok;Won, Woo-Jae;Kim, Tae-Sung;Kim, Seok-Ki
    • The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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    • v.13 no.1
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    • pp.51-56
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    • 2009
  • Purpose: Recently, most hospitals are introducing the PACS system and use of the system continues to expand. But small-scaled PACS called MicroPACS has already been in use through open source programs. The aim of this study is to prove utility of operating a MicroPACS, as a substitute back-up device for conventional storage media like CDs and DVDs, in addition to the full-PACS already in use. This study contains the way of setting up a MicroPACS with open source programs and assessment of its storage capability, stability, compatibility and performance of operations such as "retrieve", "query". Materials and Methods: 1. To start with, we searched open source software to correspond with the following standards to establish MicroPACS, (1) It must be available in Windows Operating System. (2) It must be free ware. (3) It must be compatible with PET/CT scanner. (4) It must be easy to use. (5) It must not be limited of storage capacity. (6) It must have DICOM supporting. 2. (1) To evaluate availability of data storage, we compared the time spent to back up data in the open source software with the optical discs (CDs and DVD-RAMs), and we also compared the time needed to retrieve data with the system and with optical discs respectively. (2) To estimate work efficiency, we measured the time spent to find data in CDs, DVD-RAMs and MicroPACS. 7 technologists participated in this study. 3. In order to evaluate stability of the software, we examined whether there is a data loss during the system is maintained for a year. Comparison object; How many errors occurred in randomly selected data of 500 CDs. Result: 1. We chose the Conquest DICOM Server among 11 open source software used MySQL as a database management system. 2. (1) Comparison of back up and retrieval time (min) showed the result of the following: DVD-RAM (5.13,2.26)/Conquest DICOM Server (1.49,1.19) by GE DSTE (p<0.001), CD (6.12,3.61)/Conquest (0.82,2.23) by GE DLS (p<0.001), CD (5.88,3.25)/Conquest (1.05,2.06) by SIEMENS. (2) The wasted time (sec) to find some data is as follows: CD ($156{\pm}46$), DVD-RAM ($115{\pm}21$) and Conquest DICOM Server ($13{\pm}6$). 3. There was no data loss (0%) for a year and it was stored 12741 PET/CT studies in 1.81 TB memory. In case of CDs, On the other hand, 14 errors among 500 CDs (2.8%) is generated. Conclusions: We found that MicroPACS could be set up with the open source software and its performance was excellent. The system built with open source proved more efficient and more robust than back-up process using CDs or DVD-RAMs. We believe that the operation of the MicroPACS would be effective data storage device as long as its operators develop and systematize it.

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Adaptive RFID anti-collision scheme using collision information and m-bit identification (충돌 정보와 m-bit인식을 이용한 적응형 RFID 충돌 방지 기법)

  • Lee, Je-Yul;Shin, Jongmin;Yang, Dongmin
    • Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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    • v.14 no.5
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    • pp.1-10
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    • 2013
  • RFID(Radio Frequency Identification) system is non-contact identification technology. A basic RFID system consists of a reader, and a set of tags. RFID tags can be divided into active and passive tags. Active tags with power source allows their own operation execution and passive tags are small and low-cost. So passive tags are more suitable for distribution industry than active tags. A reader processes the information receiving from tags. RFID system achieves a fast identification of multiple tags using radio frequency. RFID systems has been applied into a variety of fields such as distribution, logistics, transportation, inventory management, access control, finance and etc. To encourage the introduction of RFID systems, several problems (price, size, power consumption, security) should be resolved. In this paper, we proposed an algorithm to significantly alleviate the collision problem caused by simultaneous responses of multiple tags. In the RFID systems, in anti-collision schemes, there are three methods: probabilistic, deterministic, and hybrid. In this paper, we introduce ALOHA-based protocol as a probabilistic method, and Tree-based protocol as a deterministic one. In Aloha-based protocols, time is divided into multiple slots. Tags randomly select their own IDs and transmit it. But Aloha-based protocol cannot guarantee that all tags are identified because they are probabilistic methods. In contrast, Tree-based protocols guarantee that a reader identifies all tags within the transmission range of the reader. In Tree-based protocols, a reader sends a query, and tags respond it with their own IDs. When a reader sends a query and two or more tags respond, a collision occurs. Then the reader makes and sends a new query. Frequent collisions make the identification performance degrade. Therefore, to identify tags quickly, it is necessary to reduce collisions efficiently. Each RFID tag has an ID of 96bit EPC(Electronic Product Code). The tags in a company or manufacturer have similar tag IDs with the same prefix. Unnecessary collisions occur while identifying multiple tags using Query Tree protocol. It results in growth of query-responses and idle time, which the identification time significantly increases. To solve this problem, Collision Tree protocol and M-ary Query Tree protocol have been proposed. However, in Collision Tree protocol and Query Tree protocol, only one bit is identified during one query-response. And, when similar tag IDs exist, M-ary Query Tree Protocol generates unnecessary query-responses. In this paper, we propose Adaptive M-ary Query Tree protocol that improves the identification performance using m-bit recognition, collision information of tag IDs, and prediction technique. We compare our proposed scheme with other Tree-based protocols under the same conditions. We show that our proposed scheme outperforms others in terms of identification time and identification efficiency.

Effects of firm strategies on customer acquisition of Software as a Service (SaaS) providers: A mediating and moderating role of SaaS technology maturity (SaaS 기업의 차별화 및 가격전략이 고객획득성과에 미치는 영향: SaaS 기술성숙도 수준의 매개효과 및 조절효과를 중심으로)

  • Chae, SeongWook;Park, Sungbum
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.151-171
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    • 2014
  • Firms today have sought management effectiveness and efficiency utilizing information technologies (IT). Numerous firms are outsourcing specific information systems functions to cope with their short of information resources or IT experts, or to reduce their capital cost. Recently, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as a new type of information system has become one of the powerful outsourcing alternatives. SaaS is software deployed as a hosted and accessed over the internet. It is regarded as the idea of on-demand, pay-per-use, and utility computing and is now being applied to support the core competencies of clients in areas ranging from the individual productivity area to the vertical industry and e-commerce area. In this study, therefore, we seek to quantify the value that SaaS has on business performance by examining the relationships among firm strategies, SaaS technology maturity, and business performance of SaaS providers. We begin by drawing from prior literature on SaaS, technology maturity and firm strategy. SaaS technology maturity is classified into three different phases such as application service providing (ASP), Web-native application, and Web-service application. Firm strategies are manipulated by the low-cost strategy and differentiation strategy. Finally, we considered customer acquisition as a business performance. In this sense, specific objectives of this study are as follows. First, we examine the relationships between customer acquisition performance and both low-cost strategy and differentiation strategy of SaaS providers. Secondly, we investigate the mediating and moderating effects of SaaS technology maturity on those relationships. For this purpose, study collects data from the SaaS providers, and their line of applications registered in the database in CNK (Commerce net Korea) in Korea using a questionnaire method by the professional research institution. The unit of analysis in this study is the SBUs (strategic business unit) in the software provider. A total of 199 SBUs is used for analyzing and testing our hypotheses. With regards to the measurement of firm strategy, we take three measurement items for differentiation strategy such as the application uniqueness (referring an application aims to differentiate within just one or a small number of target industry), supply channel diversification (regarding whether SaaS vendor had diversified supply chain) as well as the number of specialized expertise and take two items for low cost strategy like subscription fee and initial set-up fee. We employ a hierarchical regression analysis technique for testing moderation effects of SaaS technology maturity and follow the Baron and Kenny's procedure for determining if firm strategies affect customer acquisition through technology maturity. Empirical results revealed that, firstly, when differentiation strategy is applied to attain business performance like customer acquisition, the effects of the strategy is moderated by the technology maturity level of SaaS providers. In other words, securing higher level of SaaS technology maturity is essential for higher business performance. For instance, given that firms implement application uniqueness or a distribution channel diversification as a differentiation strategy, they can acquire more customers when their level of SaaS technology maturity is higher rather than lower. Secondly, results indicate that pursuing differentiation strategy or low cost strategy effectively works for SaaS providers' obtaining customer, which means that continuously differentiating their service from others or making their service fee (subscription fee or initial set-up fee) lower are helpful for their business success in terms of acquiring their customers. Lastly, results show that the level of SaaS technology maturity mediates the relationships between low cost strategy and customer acquisition. That is, based on our research design, customers usually perceive the real value of the low subscription fee or initial set-up fee only through the SaaS service provide by vender and, in turn, this will affect their decision making whether subscribe or not.

Measuring the Public Service Quality Using Process Mining: Focusing on N City's Building Licensing Complaint Service (프로세스 마이닝을 이용한 공공서비스의 품질 측정: N시의 건축 인허가 민원 서비스를 중심으로)

  • Lee, Jung Seung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.25 no.4
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    • pp.35-52
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    • 2019
  • As public services are provided in various forms, including e-government, the level of public demand for public service quality is increasing. Although continuous measurement and improvement of the quality of public services is needed to improve the quality of public services, traditional surveys are costly and time-consuming and have limitations. Therefore, there is a need for an analytical technique that can measure the quality of public services quickly and accurately at any time based on the data generated from public services. In this study, we analyzed the quality of public services based on data using process mining techniques for civil licensing services in N city. It is because the N city's building license complaint service can secure data necessary for analysis and can be spread to other institutions through public service quality management. This study conducted process mining on a total of 3678 building license complaint services in N city for two years from January 2014, and identified process maps and departments with high frequency and long processing time. According to the analysis results, there was a case where a department was crowded or relatively few at a certain point in time. In addition, there was a reasonable doubt that the increase in the number of complaints would increase the time required to complete the complaints. According to the analysis results, the time required to complete the complaint was varied from the same day to a year and 146 days. The cumulative frequency of the top four departments of the Sewage Treatment Division, the Waterworks Division, the Urban Design Division, and the Green Growth Division exceeded 50% and the cumulative frequency of the top nine departments exceeded 70%. Higher departments were limited and there was a great deal of unbalanced load among departments. Most complaint services have a variety of different patterns of processes. Research shows that the number of 'complementary' decisions has the greatest impact on the length of a complaint. This is interpreted as a lengthy period until the completion of the entire complaint is required because the 'complement' decision requires a physical period in which the complainant supplements and submits the documents again. In order to solve these problems, it is possible to drastically reduce the overall processing time of the complaints by preparing thoroughly before the filing of the complaints or in the preparation of the complaints, or the 'complementary' decision of other complaints. By clarifying and disclosing the cause and solution of one of the important data in the system, it helps the complainant to prepare in advance and convinces that the documents prepared by the public information will be passed. The transparency of complaints can be sufficiently predictable. Documents prepared by pre-disclosed information are likely to be processed without problems, which not only shortens the processing period but also improves work efficiency by eliminating the need for renegotiation or multiple tasks from the point of view of the processor. The results of this study can be used to find departments with high burdens of civil complaints at certain points of time and to flexibly manage the workforce allocation between departments. In addition, as a result of analyzing the pattern of the departments participating in the consultation by the characteristics of the complaints, it is possible to use it for automation or recommendation when requesting the consultation department. In addition, by using various data generated during the complaint process and using machine learning techniques, the pattern of the complaint process can be found. It can be used for automation / intelligence of civil complaint processing by making this algorithm and applying it to the system. This study is expected to be used to suggest future public service quality improvement through process mining analysis on civil service.

Analysis of shopping website visit types and shopping pattern (쇼핑 웹사이트 탐색 유형과 방문 패턴 분석)

  • Choi, Kyungbin;Nam, Kihwan
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.25 no.1
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    • pp.85-107
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    • 2019
  • Online consumers browse products belonging to a particular product line or brand for purchase, or simply leave a wide range of navigation without making purchase. The research on the behavior and purchase of online consumers has been steadily progressed, and related services and applications based on behavior data of consumers have been developed in practice. In recent years, customization strategies and recommendation systems of consumers have been utilized due to the development of big data technology, and attempts are being made to optimize users' shopping experience. However, even in such an attempt, it is very unlikely that online consumers will actually be able to visit the website and switch to the purchase stage. This is because online consumers do not just visit the website to purchase products but use and browse the websites differently according to their shopping motives and purposes. Therefore, it is important to analyze various types of visits as well as visits to purchase, which is important for understanding the behaviors of online consumers. In this study, we explored the clustering analysis of session based on click stream data of e-commerce company in order to explain diversity and complexity of search behavior of online consumers and typified search behavior. For the analysis, we converted data points of more than 8 million pages units into visit units' sessions, resulting in a total of over 500,000 website visit sessions. For each visit session, 12 characteristics such as page view, duration, search diversity, and page type concentration were extracted for clustering analysis. Considering the size of the data set, we performed the analysis using the Mini-Batch K-means algorithm, which has advantages in terms of learning speed and efficiency while maintaining the clustering performance similar to that of the clustering algorithm K-means. The most optimized number of clusters was derived from four, and the differences in session unit characteristics and purchasing rates were identified for each cluster. The online consumer visits the website several times and learns about the product and decides the purchase. In order to analyze the purchasing process over several visits of the online consumer, we constructed the visiting sequence data of the consumer based on the navigation patterns in the web site derived clustering analysis. The visit sequence data includes a series of visiting sequences until one purchase is made, and the items constituting one sequence become cluster labels derived from the foregoing. We have separately established a sequence data for consumers who have made purchases and data on visits for consumers who have only explored products without making purchases during the same period of time. And then sequential pattern mining was applied to extract frequent patterns from each sequence data. The minimum support is set to 10%, and frequent patterns consist of a sequence of cluster labels. While there are common derived patterns in both sequence data, there are also frequent patterns derived only from one side of sequence data. We found that the consumers who made purchases through the comparative analysis of the extracted frequent patterns showed the visiting pattern to decide to purchase the product repeatedly while searching for the specific product. The implication of this study is that we analyze the search type of online consumers by using large - scale click stream data and analyze the patterns of them to explain the behavior of purchasing process with data-driven point. Most studies that typology of online consumers have focused on the characteristics of the type and what factors are key in distinguishing that type. In this study, we carried out an analysis to type the behavior of online consumers, and further analyzed what order the types could be organized into one another and become a series of search patterns. In addition, online retailers will be able to try to improve their purchasing conversion through marketing strategies and recommendations for various types of visit and will be able to evaluate the effect of the strategy through changes in consumers' visit patterns.